Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 117, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 May 1916 — LITTLE LEFT OF OLD APPOMATTOX [ARTICLE]

LITTLE LEFT OF OLD APPOMATTOX

Soldiers of 1865 who revisit the tpwn of Appomattox find that the half-century which has done so much for their country has done nothing for the hamlet made famous by the great event of Lee’s surrender. Indeed, the place has gone (backward in fifty years, its houses have fallen into decay or have disappeared, and its fields have grown up to pine. The village of Appomattox Courthouse was never a considerable settlement. Like many another county seat in the South, it had its origin in a courthouse, a Jail, a tavern, a house or two and a blacksmith shop—a center to which the inhabitants of a rural district could come at intervals to transact legal business. A visitor to Appomattox Courthouse today—or “old Appomattox," as it is now: called in that neighborhood—must be disappointed, unless he has the faculty of visualizing the momentous events that took place there, and near there, in April, 1865. The court building had then stood there half a century. About 1890 it whs burned. Today the square in which the old courthouse stood is covered with the debris of the fire, but out of the wreckage trees have grown up as companions to those that shaded the old courthouse before the fire.

The village that clustered around the courthouse has nearly disappeared. Four old frame structures have survived fire, storm and neglect, but these are sagging and out of joint and seem soon to pass away. One or two of these houses are tenantless. The tavern, once the Appomattox hotel, is the home of a farmer and the overseer of about 1,500 acres of adjacent land now owned by Col. George A. Armes, a retired officer of the United States army, who lives in Washington. Another house is occupied by a small farmer who has not dwelt long in that part of the state. The Surrender house, the McLean house, in which General Grant and his staff met Lee and his military secretary, is not there. It was a broadfronted brick house with a covered porch across the front, with the entrance in the middle and a hallway through the center. The hduse was torn down in 1892. It was proposed to reconstruct it at the World’s Fair in Chicago, but after the demolition of the house the plan was carried no further, presumably for lack of funds. The piles of brick and lumber that had been the house are rotting in the garden. There has been some talk of a patriotic society building the house on its oM site. An interesting personal story goes with the history of the Surrender house. It was the home of William McLean, who had moved to Appomattox from the vicinity of Bull Run, to avoid the scenes of war that destroyed the peace and safety of his family in 186 L

McLean was a farmer, then living in a frame house near Manassas on the road leading to Blackburns Ford, on Bull Run. July 18 the first fighting between th,e ; troops of Gen. Irwin McDowell and Gen. G. T. Beauregard took place at that ford, and General Beauregard took up his headquarters in the McLean house. A shell trom a Union battery struck the house. After the battle of Bui! Run, July 21, 1861, McLean and his family moved to upper Fauquier county. He next moved to Lunenburg county. War followed him. Then, declaring that he would

take his family so far from the fighting grounds that war would not further trouble them, he rented a house in the hamlet of Appomattox. Fate made this house the Surrender house. The McLean house near Manassas long ago was a ruin, but another house near it, which Beauregard also used as headquarters, is often erroneously pointed out as the McLean house. McLean’s son—J. Wilmer McLean — is a business man in Manassas —a hamlet that since the war has grown into a thriving town. The table in the McLean house at Appomattox on which the articles of surrender were written is in the National museum at Washington. The flag of truce under which the negotiations between Grant and Lee were conducted is also there, having been loaned to that institution by the widow of George A. Custer. Colonel Whittaker of Grant’s staff, who carried the flag, lives in Washington and Is expected to take part in the celebration at Appomattox. Maj. George C. Rounds of Manassas, a Civil war veteran, resident since the war at Manassas, who promoted the Blue and Gray reunion on the field of Bull Run, has promoted the coming fraternal celebration at Appomattox. Major Rounds has been urging upon the war department and congress for years the desirability of converting the battlefields of Bull Run into a national park. He also takes a keen interest in the future of Appomattox Courthouse. On the surrender ground is now a dense pine growth, in which is the only important monument at Appomattox. It was erected by North Carolina, April 9, 1905. ra Though the Appomattox Courthouse village of the Civil war period has practically disappeared, there is a new and thriving town called Appomattox, which is now the county seat of Appomattox county. It is three miles from old Appomattox and is on the Norfolk & Western railroad. During the Civil war there was a siding on this railroad called Appomattox station. It was here that Custer with his cavalry division got in front of Lee. The place has grown to be the town which today is called Appomattox. When the old court building was destroyed by fire, the courthouse was rebuilt at Appomattox station. *