History Thursday: 923 Hanover Street
Property survived the Battle of Fredericksburg and has ties to Austin, Texas; Italy; and Jamaica.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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Among the many owners of this property are members of the family for whom Austin, Texas is named; a Black barber who purchased and emancipated family members and later became chief butler at the White House under John Tyler; and immigrants from Italy and Jamaica who went on to become local leaders.
Confederate troops were situated on the property during the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862 and the entire area was bombarded by Union artillery, but the circa-1822 house remained intact. Its Civil War-era inhabitants, the Wrenn family, are the subject of a 2004 book of historical fiction, Beside the Stone Wall, written by a descendant.
The original builder, Charles Austin, moved to Fredericksburg in 1809 after the lead mill he and his father owned in Wythe County went bankrupt. His cousin, Stephen Fuller Austin, was responsible for colonizing the then-territory of Texas and the state capital, Austin, is named for him.
Charles Austin was a shipping agent who sold all kinds of merchandise from millstones to flour to pianos to hogs, according to research prepared by Wayne and Donna Stanton for the Historic Fredericksburg Foundation’s marker program. The lot that is now 923 Hanover Street was one of his many holdings and in 1823, the land tax records note that a house had been built there.
By 1824, there were apparently four frame buildings on the property—a workshop, a blacksmith, a kitchen, and a stable. James Wilkins—a barber who worked out of a shop on Caroline Street and is described in local newspapers as “a professor of shaving, adept at hair coloring, and a Connoisseur of Perfuming”—bought the property in 1826.
Wilkins owned other properties nearby, including 919 Hanover Street. He had been born into slavery, but by four years after his emancipation, he had made enough money as a barber to purchase and free his two daughters, Sarah Ann and Frances, his son Charles, and his wife or sister, Becky.
According to Wilkins’s 1858 obituary in the Virginia Herald, John Tyler visited his shop in Fredericksburg while he was vice president. When Tyler became president in 1841, he remembered Wilkins’s skill and installed him as chief butler in the White House. Wilkins’s daughter was also employed there, at a salary of $300 per year.
Wilkins later moved to Philadelphia, according to his obituary, where “though quite wealthy, he presided over the destinies of a Barber Shop, which seemed to have a charm for him.”
By 1847, 923 Hanover Street was owned by Lewis Wrenn, who had a license to operate an “ordinary”—a business offering food, drink, and accommodation. He also worked as a tinner and a cooper.
During the Civil War, four of Wrenn’s sons enlisted in the Confederate Army, and Wrenn himself was detained along with 13 other Fredericksburg residents at Old Capitol Prison, held as hostages in exchange for the release of Union officers imprisoned in Richmond. He was released before the bombardment of Fredericksburg in 1862 but was taken prisoner again in 1864.
In the late 1890s, 923 Hanover was owned by the McDonnell brothers and housed a concrete business, which won a contract to pave National Boulevard—now Lafayette Boulevard—between Princess Anne Street and the National Cemetery.
In 1938, Giovanni Rosario (Solly) Ventura bought 923 Hanover at auction. Ventura was born in Caccamo, Italy and immigrated to the U.S. with his family in 1906, when he was 14 years old. He and his wife and another couple ran the Fredericksburg Fruit Market. In 1922, he opened Jacob’s Old Stand, a shoeshine parlor, and in 1938, he opened Fredericksburg Distributing Company, a wholesale fruit, beer, and wine company.
The Venturas used 923 Hanover as a rental property and invested $1,500 in the house in 1949. It stayed in the Ventura family until 1971, when Daphne and Norman Brooks—immigrants from Jamaica—bought it together with their daughter Moonyean and her husband Raymond Jones.
Jones was a physician in the Army and in 1967, he opened a pediatrics practice in Fredericksburg. According to a 1985 Free Lance-Star article, Jones was among a group of physicians in private practice to open and staff a Children’s Center at Mary Washington Hospital. It was open from 6 to 9 p.m. to serve the needs of parents who were unable to bring their children in during regular office hours.
Today, 923 Hanover Street is owned by the Stantons, who carried out extensive repairs to the property between 2018 and 2021. According to Stanton, the renovations resulted in several interesting discoveries, such as a second roof made of tin under the current one, and “bricks, beams, stones and blacksmithing debris that span centuries of time.”
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