Friday, April 5, 2013
Confederate General Lee surrendered to Union General Grant in the parlor of the McLean home at Appomattox Court House in April, 1865.
This house was torn down once with plans to move it, but eventually was rebuilt at this site; in the meantime the wood had deteriorated during the time the house was torn apart, so pretty much just the bricks are from the original house. The person showing us the house said the McLeans did own slaves, and Mrs. McLean was 46 years old and pregnant when Lee surrendered to Grant in their parlor. An amazing coincidence is that at the First Battle of Manassas, in 1861, the McLeans had a home in that area, and General Beauregard, commanding the Confederates, had his headquarters on the McLean property there. Apparently Mr. McLean was fond of saying the Civil War started in his yard and ended in his parlor.
At breakfast in the motel we had met an impersonator of General Lee, so we stopped by the place where he and his wife were planning to do a re-enactment that weekend. He offered to take the time to put on his Civil War uniform for our taking pictures, but we did not want to trouble him to do that since he was busy building a road at the site when we stopped by.
After leaving the Appomattox area we drove on to Salisbury, North Carolina, and the symposium began that evening with a Friendship Banquet at the Landmark Church. I forgot, as I was writing the blog, to mention that the four of us descendants of William Ferdinand Bowdish each won a door prize! WE chose a fire extinguisher, LM chose a book (BUTTERNUT TEARS, written by Arlene Showalter, the speaker for the banquet), DH chose a tee-shirt, and AR chose a Hickory Farms box of goodies. Sue Curtis, Symposium Chair, said our family was having such good luck, we should play the lottery.
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