Appomattox Court House National Historical Park

• 1. Introduction

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  Appomattox Court House National Historical Park preserves a nineteenth century Virginia village. On the 9th of April 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee met Union General Ulysses S. Grant inside a home called the McLean House. There, Lee agreed to surrender the Army of Northern Virginia. The meeting is widely regarded as marking the close of the Civil War, even though fighting continued elsewhere. Before that day, this same hamlet in Appomattox County was known simply as Clover Hill, a stagecoach stop most outsiders had never heard of. How did a small county seat end up hosting that surrender? Why did it nearly disappear from the map afterward? And how did the National Park Service later rebuild what had been lost? This documentary follows those threads.

• 2. County Seat Origins

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  The stagecoach road linking Richmond and Lynchburg ran straight through the settlement. Local organizational meetings were also held there, making it a natural choice for public business. When Appomattox County was created by an Act on the 8th of February 1845, this village became the county seat. The new county was carved from parts of Buckingham, Prince Edward, Charlotte, and Campbell counties. It took its name from the Appomattox River, whose headwaters rise nearby. That river name is believed to come from the Apumetec, a Native American tribe. Beginning around 1842, a landowner named Hugh Raine controlled most of the Clover Hill area. He had obtained it from his brother John Raine, who defaulted on his loans. Once the county seat was established, about 30 acres of the hamlet were divided into town lots, with 2 acres set aside for government buildings. The courthouse itself went up across the Stage Road from the Clover Hill Tavern's stable, with the jail placed behind it. In late 1845, Hugh Raine and another brother sold the area to Samuel D. McDearmon. McDearmon then tried, and largely failed, to sell off the town lots. By 1854, county leaders chose to route a new railroad through nearby Appomattox Depot rather than through the county seat. Many businesses in the village packed up and moved to the depot area to be near the tracks. Around the same time, the stagecoach route into the village was discontinued entirely. Without through traffic or a rail connection, the village began a long decline. That slow fade left a quiet, half emptied village waiting for a war it never expected to draw it back into national memory.

• 3. The Battle And Terms

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  By early April 1865, Union troops under Grant had chased Lee's Confederate forces to the edge of this village, cutting off any path of retreat. On the morning of the 9th, Lee's remaining troops attacked in what became known as the Battle of Appomattox Court House. The assault failed. That day, Lee and Grant sat down to work out terms of surrender, not just agree to the fact of it. Lee signed those terms before the day was over. Three days later, on the 12th of April, the Army of Northern Virginia formally laid down its arms and marched away from the village. Fighting continued elsewhere for a time after Lee's army marched off, a detail this single village's surrender tends to overshadow.

• 4. After The Surrender

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  In 1892, a fire destroyed the courthouse, taking Appomattox County's records with it. By that same point, the McLean House itself had also been dismantled. In response, the county seat itself was moved to the nearby depot settlement, which by then had grown into the town of Appomattox. That same year, George B. Davis learned how badly the village had deteriorated and received permission to mark it with metal tablets noting the locations of its important historic sites. Those modest metal tablets were the only marker at the old village for decades, until Congress took an interest in the site.

• 5. Preserving The Village

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  Congress acted in 1930, passing legislation that let the War Department claim ground at the village for a monument tied to the 1865 surrender. By 1933, three years on, control of those War Department holdings at the site passed to the National Park Service. In 1935, new legislation renamed the site from the Appomattox Battlefield Site to the Appomattox Court House National Historical Monument, while also authorizing an expanded park and a reconstruction of the McLean House. The park's footprint reached 970 acres by 1940, alongside a formalized plan to reconstruct the courthouse and the McLean House. World War II put those reconstruction plans on hold. By 1949, the McLean House had been rebuilt and its doors opened again to visitors. The park took its current name, Appomattox Court House National Historical Park, in 1954. The National Register of Historic Places added the site to its rolls on the 15th of October 1966. Some of the buildings that greet visitors now are original nineteenth century survivors; others had to be rebuilt from nothing.

• 6. The Park Today

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  The Clover Hill Tavern is one of several original nineteenth century structures still standing inside the park today. Today the park covers roughly 1700 acres, expanded many times over since the 30 acres first divided into town lots back in the 1840s. Alongside those surviving original buildings, the National Park Service has reconstructed other historic structures, including the McLean House and the courthouse, the latter now serving as the park's visitor center. Trail markers point out Lee's wartime headquarters site and an artillery park of historic cannons, alongside signage interpreting the grounds. A driving tour and a set of hiking trails give visitors two different ways to move through the site. That visitor center, inside the rebuilt courthouse, is where every visit to the park now begins.