He came to Fredericksburg early in 1760 on "The Friendship," as a boy of thirteen years. Born in a lowly home, he was a mere apprentice seaman, and without doubt he deserted his ship in those days, when sea life was a horror, to come to Fredericksburg and join his brother, William Paul, whose home was here, and who is buried here. There is some record of his having been befriended by a man in Carolina, and traditions that he left his ship in a port on the Rappahannock after killing a sailor, and walked through the wilderness to Fredericksburg. Neither tradition is of importance; the fact is that he came here and remained four years during the developing period of his life. [Sidenote: _Jones' American Home Here_] William Paul had immigrated to Fredericksburg from the Parish of Kirkbeam, Scotland, (where he and his brother, John, were born), about 1760, had come to Fredericksburg and conducted a grocery store and tailor shop on the corner of Caroline and Prussia streets. William died here in 1773, and is buried in St. George's Church Yard. In his will he left his property to sisters in the Parish of Kirkbeam, Scotland. Alexander McKenzie, in his life of John Paul Jones, says, after referring to the fact that William Paul is buried in Fredericksburg: "In 1773 he went back to Fredericksburg to arrange the affairs of his brother, William Paul," and John Paul Jones himself wrote of Fredericksburg: "It was the home of my fond election since first I saw it." The Legislature of Virginia decided in settling William Paul's estate that John Paul Jones was a legal resident of Fredericksburg. Obviously, then, Fredericksburg was the great Admiral's home, for, though not born here, he chose it when he came to America. When he first reached the little town on the Rappahannock he went to work for his brother, William Paul and one can surmise that he clerked and carried groceries and messages to the gentry regarding their smart clothes for his brother. The Rising Sun Tavern was then a gathering place for the gentry and without doubt he saw them there. He may well have learned good manners from their ways, good language from hearing their conversation and "sedition" from the great who gathered there. We may picture the lowly boy, lingering in the background while the gentlemen talked and drank punch around Mine Host Weedon's great fire, or listening eagerly at the counter where the tavern-keeper, who was to be a Major-General, delivered the mail. Certainly John Paul Jones was a lowly and uneducated boy at 13. He left Fredericksburg after four years to go to sea again, and in 1773 came back to settle his brother's estate, and remained here until December 22, 1775, when he received at Fredericksburg his commission in the Navy. [Sidenote: _From Cabin Boy to Courtier_]