The Marye house, now known as Brompton, standing where long ago one of the homes of the Willis’s, of Willis Hill stood, is today a handsome, imposing brick structure with white-columned porch that overlooks the city of Fredericksburg and the plain nearer the Heights, across which thousands of Federal soldiers charged to their death during the Civil War. The house was built by Mr. Laurence Marye, in 1838. The Maryes were prominent in Virginia in the days before and during the War Between the States.
But the old home gains its greatest fame from the fact that against the heights in which it sits, Burnside sent eight Federal divisions in attacks, his men being slaughtered by the fire from the guns on the hills about the house and the musketry in the Sunken Road just below it. On the house and outbuildings are hundreds of scars of battle. Trenches are still to be seen along the edge of the beautiful lawn, and are reached by driving in the Hanover Street entrance, the trenches being on the left, near the gate.