A house that's been in the same family for more than a century, some cab-hopping rabbits, and a club called the Spot are all a part of the story that is 317 Princess Anne Street and Lot 236

The house that now stands at 315 Princess Anne Street has remained in the same family for more than a century.

 “Seven generations have walked the floors of that house,” said Iretha Bumbrey, who was born there in 1937.

The “home place,” as Bumbrey calls the house, was constructed in 1920 by John G. Washington, her grandfather.

In 2005, when Janet Edson conducted research on the property for the Historic Fredericksburg Foundation’s marker program, it was owned and occupied by Iretha Bumbrey and her husband Charles. Today, the house is owned and occupied by Iretha’s son Charles Bumbrey Jr. and his wife, Arleatha.

“It is rare that a house built so long ago has remained in one family,” Edson wrote.

According to Iretha Bumbrey, the house was designed by John Diamond, the pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church (Old Site). Diamond also designed 515 Amelia Street and like that house, 315 Princess Anne features the designer’s signature diamond-shaped window.

Iretha Bumbrey’s father, James “Socks” Richardson, was a cab driver—first the horse-and-buggy version and then the automobile version, according to Edson.

“Everybody loved my father,” Iretha Bumbrey said. “He knew a lot of the history of Fredericksburg” and would share it with his clients as he drove them around town.

The Free Lance-Star chronicled several of Richardson’s adventures as a cab driver. A 1957 article titled “Hares, Not Fares” describes how Richardson came back to his cab, which was parked in front of his 315 Princess Anne, after supper one evening to find a white rabbit sitting in the front seat. He carried the rabbit inside the house and went back out to work.

At the end of the night, he returned to the cab from the cab stand on Lafayette Boulevard and opened the door to find another rabbit—a large black one.

 

“I thought it might have been a joke,” Richardson told the Free Lance-Star, “but I talked to a particular person today and he said he didn’t do it.”

Richardson told the paper that the rabbits initially “scared the devil out of him,” but later he was able to laugh about it. He kept both rabbits in the bathtub at 315 Princess Anne Street and was hoping someone would turn up to claim them—it’s not clear if anyone did.

A few years earlier, in 1951, the paper described how Richardson, a “colored cab driver,” saved a family of nine from a house fire. He noticed the fire as he drove by the house on Cool Spring Road in Stafford and “broke into the house to awaken the family, who escaped in time to save only a few personal possessions.”

In addition to 315 Princess Anne Street, city lot 236 used to include 317 Princess Street as well. The building that still stands at this address was built in 1854 by Andrew B. Adams.

Adams owned a livery stable—where people paid to board their horses—at the corner of Hanover and Princess Anne Street. It was one of many businesses in the area. According to Edson, Sanborn fire insurance company maps show that the majority of buildings in the area were businesses—cobbler shops, groceries, warehouses, and carriage houses—with small dwellings attached.

By the 1920s, the neighborhood had changed over to mostly residential occupancy, except for 317 Princess Anne Street, which was a bar and restaurant called “The Spot.”

“It was apparently the social hub of the neighborhood for many years,” Edson wrote.

The business lasted into the 1970s.