Historic Shrines of America

Paul Revere's house, Faneuil Hall, the Craigie House where Longfellow wrote, a hundred more — an American pilgrimage told building by building, when many of these places were still fighting to survive.

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The Mary Washington House, Fredericksburg, Virginia: Laurence

This "Belle of the Northern Neck," as she came to be called, continued her conquests of young and old until, at twenty-two, an orphan, she left Epping Forest to live with her brother, Joseph Ball, at "Stratford-by-bow, Nigh London." There, on March 6, 1730, she became the second wife of Augustine Washington, the second son of Laurence Washington, who was visiting England at the time.

Less than two years later, at Wakefield, on the Potomac, in Westmoreland County, Virginia, George Washington was born. He was not three years old when the mansion was burned.

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