Fredericksburg Gunnery

In 1775, the Third Revolutionary Convention commissioned the establishment of a gun manufactory in Fredericksburg, Virginia, to provide for the protection of the colony of Virginia. With local merchants Fielding Lewis and Charles Dick in charge of its supervision, the gunnery began operations that same year and continued to repair and manufacture muskets up until 1783. After operations in the gunnery closed, it served as the site of the Academy and Charity School, and later the Poorhouse, a municipal facility to provide work and shelter for the poor. By the time of the Civil War, however, these facilities that were once a part of the gunnery were missing from records and no structures remain today. This 3D model was produced to illustrate the scale of the gunnery and what it may have looked like during its operations. It was created based on a map that was developed using a 1793 plat map of the academy and archaological evidence from an archaeological survey conducted in the 1970s.