The Rising Sun Tavern, was owned and, traditionally, built about 1760 by Charles Washington, the youngest brother of George Washington. It was known as the Washington Tavern when Charles kept it and also served as Fredericksburg's postmaster.

In the hands of a later host, George Weedon, the tavern became a political as well as social center. Weedon was a former German officer from Hamburg who fought in the French and Indian campaigns and settled in Fredericksburg. It was a favorite meeting place of Virginia Revolutionary patriots: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, George Mason, Hugh Mercer, John Marshall, the Lees, and other colonial leaders on their way from the South to Philadelphia. Here George Mason, George Wythe, Edmund Pendleton, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Ludwell Lee met on January 13, 1777, and outlined the bill that Jefferson later phrased and Madison presented to the Virginia Assembly in 1785 as the Statute of Virginia for Religious Liberty. The Peace Ball, attended by Washington and his mother, his officers, LaFayette, Rochambeau, Admiral de Gras, and others to celebrate the victory at Yorktown, was held in 1781 in the assembly room which has since burned.

The tavern was a social center for the colonial town. Dinners and balls were held here, and traveling entertainers stopped to perform. It Was the town post office and stagecoach stop.

The Rising Sun Tavern ceased to be operated as a tavern sometime prior to the Civil War. The Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities acquired the property in 1907, and began a program of careful restoration and refurnishing. The tavern is a story-and-half frame building covered with broad hand-beveled clapboards. It is approached by a small stone porch which has been restored. The gabled roof is pierced by three very small dormers and built-in end chimneys. Despite its age, the building has never been structurally altered and is considered an architectural gem. - NRHP, 15 October 1966