Chatham

Chatham, a Georgian manor house, was completed in 1771 for planter William Fitzhugh and his wife, Ann Randolph. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were visitors here. Many enslaved African Americans worked on the plantation, and in Jan. 1805 a number of them rebelled against Fitzhugh's overseer. During the Civil War, Union Gen. Irvin McDowell set up headquarters at Chatham in Apr. 1862, and Pres. Abraham Lincoln met with him here. Walt Whitman and Clara Barton assisted physicians at the Union hospital established here after the Battle of Fredericksburg in Dec. 1862. Industrialist John Lee Pratt bequeathed Chatham to the National Park Service in 1975.