The city of Fredericksburg, situated on the Rappahannock River, was established in 1728 and was named for Prince Frederick of England. Today it is home to the University of Mary Washington, where civil rights leader James L. Farmer Jr. was a faculty member and Claudia Emerson, 2006 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry, continues to be on the faculty. Though very much a modern urban city, Fredericksburg still has a historic downtown district and surrounding military parks that remind locals and visitors alike of its humble beginnings as a Colonial port town more than a century before it was ravaged during the Civil War.