Kenmore, the home of Fielding and Betty Washington Lewis. Built in the 1770's, this house was part of a plantation of almost 1,300 acres. Fielding Lewis purchased the first parcel of this estate in 1752, two years after he married Betty. Her brother, George Washington, surveyed the Lewises' new property, which was outside the village of Fredericksburg at the time. In 1754 Fielding inherited adjoining land from his father. The plantation had fields of tobacco, wheat and corn, as well as a store and a shipyard on the Rappahannock River. A planter and merchant

shipping to and from England, Fielding Lewis was a prominent citizen of Spotsylvania County. He sacrificed his fortune to build and operate an arms manufactory for the American Revolution. Col. Fielding Lewis died in mid-December 1781, only weeks after Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington in October of that year.

The only buildings to survive from the Lewises' plantation are the main house and a store near the river. Other buildings on the original property were of wood and included a kitchen, a dairy, a laundry, a meat house, store houses, farm buildings, and slave quarters. Many people lived and worked on the plantation, including the Lewises, four of their seven surviving children, and over eighty slaves. The house was built by skilled tradesmen (some recently immigrated from England), indentured servants and enslaved African Americans.

After Betty Lewis died in 1797, the plantation was sold. The Gordon family purchased the property in 1819, naming it "Kenmore" after their ancestral home in Scotland. Occupying the property until just before the Civil War, the Gordons added the slate roof and stone portico that are still in existence today. The house remained in private hands until the Kenmore Association (now known as George Washington's Fredericksburg Foundation) saved the house from destruction or division into apartments in the early 1920s.

The wallpaper restoration began with the installation of "painted paper" in the main entry and stairs. Painted paper was the simplest form of wallpaper during the late eighteenth century. The "paper stainer" simply brushed on several coats of distemper inks. At this time continuous paper had not but invented so a roll of paper was made by pasting together sheets ( 18" by 21") into a roll 33' long. The paper used during this restoration is an accurate: hand painted, joined paper reproduced by Ad e lphi Paper Hangings.. The installation is also typical of the period. Edges are scissor trimmed and overlaped an inch. The craftsmen for this phase were Jim Yates, Bob Kelly and Eileen Carroll. The installation took place in March, 2004. Other rooms to receive reproduction wallpaper will be the Dining Room and the Drawing Room..

Historic reproduction paints and application was also the work of Adelphi. The paint was made using traditional methods and materials. Prussian Blue and Yellow Ochre pigments were hand ground into linseed oil using a traditional "muller and slab". The yellow and blue pigments were then blended into abase of white linseed oil paint to achieve a perfect match to the original blue green found in many rooms of Kenmore. Adelphi's historic paints specialist Jack Fisher and his crew applied the paint using traditional round bristle brushes for a perfect replication of the original texture and sheen of the first period surface.