Fighting starts, ends with one family

Some people think bad luck follows them everywhere. For Wilmer and Virginia McLean, it really did. In what has aptly been called a “coincidence of fantastic dimensions,” the Civil War started in the kitchen of the McLeans’ Manassas home in 1861; four years later, the war ended in the parlor of their house in Appomattox, where they had moved to get away from the war.

Wilmer McLean and Virginia Hooe Mason were married in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Alexandria on Jan. 19, 1853. In 1854, they acquired from her ancestors the building and 1,200-acre Yorkshire Plantation near Bull Run in Prince William County.

Virginia had two daughters from a prior marriage: Maria Beverly Mason and Oscesla (“Ocie”) Seddonia Mason. Together, Virginia and Wilmer had a son and three daughters — Wilmer Jr., Lucretia (“Lula”), Nannie and Virginia Beverley (“Jennie”).

On July 17, 1861, McLean rented the Yorkshire Plantation to the Confederate army for use as a hospital and the headquarters for Gen. Pierre G.T. Beauregard: “For rent of two dwelling houses, as Surgeons quarters, one barn, as Hospital and outbuildings as quarters for Hospital attendants, from 17th July 1861 to Dec 31st, 1861, 5 months and 15 days at $150.00 per month — $825.00.”

This was not the first known financial transactions between the parties. On June 30, 1861, McLean had sold a horse to the Confederate army quartermaster for $100.

At this point in the Civil War, cadets from the Citadel had fired on the Union ship Star of the West, preventing it from providing supplies to Fort Sumter; Fort Sumter had been fired upon and surrendered to the Confederate army; and a few small skirmishes had occurred. However, no major battle had yet taken place, but both sides knew it was imminent.

A ruined dinner

On July 18, 1861, Union Army cannons took aim at the buildings of Yorkshire, scoring a direct hit on the chimney of the McLean house kitchen. In his memoirs, Beauregard recalled the incident: “A comical effect of this artillery fight (which added a few casualties to both lists) was the destruction of the dinner of myself and staff by a Federal shell that fell into the fireplace of my headquarters at the McLean House.”

Edward P. Alexander, Beauregard’s chief signal officer, was present at Yorkshire on July 18 and witnessed the event:

“My spy glass showed me everything as clearly as if I were quite close to them & I watched with great interest. … They loaded three or four guns, taking quite a time at aiming very carefully & then they fired all three simultaneously & in about five seconds all three arrived shrieking in chorus. One ploughed into the ground close by the house, one smashed into a corn & cob grinding machine standing in the yard & a third … came directly through the kitchen, a large log cabin close by the house in which our headquarters servants were just dishing up a dinner they had cooked for us.

“Fortunately not a soul was touched. But there was a general stampede of all the houses hitched about the yard & an ambulance or two standing around & of a good many miscellaneous people. … our dinner was ruined by the mud daubing between the logs jarred out as the shell passed through both walls falling into the sliced up meat & dished up vegetables.”

No escape

A few days later, in the aftermath of the Battle of First Manassas, Yorkshire was used as a hospital and a place of overnight imprisonment for captured soldiers and a captured member of Congress. Rep. Alfred Ely of New York, who like many other citizens had gone to Manassas to view the battle, was captured and eventually held by the Confederates in Richmond’s Libby Prison as a prisoner of war for six months.

To get far away from the war, McLean and his family left Manassas and settled in the hamlet of Appomattox Court House. McLean had hopes and expectations of getting away from the war and never seeing another soldier. In about the summer of 1862, McLean purchased the Raine House, an Appomattox residence built in 1848 by Charles Raine, which had been on the market for several years.

Almost four years after the First Battle of Manassas, the fighting was just about over. “There is nothing left for me to do but to go and see General Grant, and I would rather die a thousand deaths,” Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee said.

In the early afternoon of April 9, 1865, Palm Sunday, Lee went to see Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. Arrangements to use McLean’s Appomattox house had been made at about 2 a.m. that day when McLean was approached about helping find a suitable venue. Lee and Grant met in the McLeans’ parlor and agreed to the surrender terms that essentially ended the Civil War.

’Silent Witness’

Afterward, there was a “spirited auction,” and many of the home’s furnishings left by theft or sale. Union Gen. Philip H. Sheridan was said to have purchased the table that the surrender agreement was signed on for $20 in gold. McLean claimed the furnishings were stolen by Union soldiers; the soldiers claimed they purchased the items.

New York Herald reporter Sylvanus Cadwallader, who was present at Appomattox, reported that Gen. George Custer paid McLean $25 for one of the tables used during the signing.

“Officers then began forcing money into McLean’s hands, but McLean threw it back. Suddenly there was a rush, and the furniture was gone. Cane-bottomed chairs were ruthlessly cut to pieces, the cane splits broken into pieces a few inches long, and parceled out among those who swarmed around. Haircloth upholstery was cut from chairs, and sofas were also cut into strips and patches carried away.”

According to Wilmer McLean’s son-in-law: “I have heard Mrs. McLean say frequently that the Union troops not only stole the tables and chairs besides other small furniture, but even took the children’s playthings.”

One of those playthings was 7-year-old Lula McLean’s rag doll, “lovingly handmade by a doting mother.” “The younger officers tossed [it] from one to the other, and called [it] the ’Silent Witness.’”

The April 22, 1950, edition of the Saturday Evening Post had a story about the McLean house at Appomattox. The story ended with the sentence: “Where Lula’s rag doll is, nobody knows — but dolls have a way of turning up unexpectedly.” Well, in 1992, the doll turned up. It had been kept for over a century by the family of one of the Union officers present at the surrender. The doll, along with some of the original furniture, has been donated to Appomattox Court House National Historical Park and is now on display. By the way, replicas of the rag doll are offered for sale at the Appomattox Court House gift shop.

A dismal ruin

After the furnishings were taken by soldiers, souvenir-seekers started taking everything else from the house, including some bricks. With the surrender, the Confederacy and its currency died and McLean’s wealth became an enormous heap of worthless paper.

McLean’s surrender house was foreclosed and sold at public auction in 1869 for $3,060. In 1891, Myron Dunlap of Niagara Falls, N.Y., bought the land and house for $10,000 with the intention of dismantling and rebuilding it for the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, or as a Washington tourist attraction.

The house was disassembled in 1893, but the Appomattox Surrender House and National War Museum never materialized. The original dismantled parts of the house were taken by souvenir hunters or rotted away in the elements.

The great Union soldier Joshua Chamberlain, who had been in charge of the formal surrender parade in April 1865 at Appomattox, revisited the McLean house in 1903 and noted that it was “torn down and left a dismal heap of ruin.”

Congress subsequently appropriated $100,000 in 1930 to acquire the land and rebuild the house. The house was rebuilt on the same location as the former residence by the same firm that had dismantled it for Myron Dunlap — C. W. Hancock & Sons.

Flooring and paneling from other old houses were used to make the interior look its age. The new house was opened to the public on April 9, 1949.

In attendance at the dedication ceremony were Ulysses S. Grant III and Robert E. Lee IV. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Douglas Southall Freeman gave the dedication speech in front of a crowd of about 20,000.

The other house

McLean’s Yorkshire house is gone, and unlike the Appomattox house, it has never been rebuilt. What’s left of the foundation of the building lies quietly under an unidentified and unmarked mound of earth and rubble, with several old rusted automobiles, in the back yard of a dilapidated house in the Yorkshire subdivision of Manassas.

The occupant of the house as well as several neighbors were contacted and asked if they were aware of the historical significance of their neighborhood. One was.

Bobby Williams knew of McLean and mentioned that relic hunters with metal detectors sometimes show up in his yard. Mr. Williams usually gives the relic hunters permission to use their detectors as long as they bring an extra detector for Williams’ 13-year-old son, Beau. Mr. Williams said these hunts have often turned up bullets, buckles and other souvenirs.

There is a highway marker next to a CVS Pharmacy along Route 28 in Manassas, erected in 1988, pointing out the significance of the McLean house.

After the war

Through his friendship with Confederate raider John S. Mosby, who became a Republican after the war, McLean obtained federal employment as a “gauger” (comparable to an auditor) for the Internal Revenue and later as an inspector with the U.S. Bureau of Customs. McLean’s stepdaughter Ocie was married to a man who served with Mosby and his Rangers.

After the war, Wilmer and Virginia McLean lived in Alexandria at the corner of Pitt and Wolfe streets next to the grounds of Christ Episcopal Church; the buildings were so close, in fact, that “there was a turnstile between them, so family members could merely step from their garden into the church premises.”

They are buried in St. Paul’s Episcopal Cemetery in Alexandria. The June 7, 1882, edition of the Alexandria Gazette mentioned that local resident Wilmer McLean had died, but the paper made no mention of McLean’s connection to the war.

McLean assisted the Confederacy and sold goods to them but does not appear to have ever served in a military capacity. Interestingly, he was referred to as Maj. McLean by Mosby, Army of Northern Virginia artillery chief E.P. Alexander, and Douglas S. Freeman, the biographer of Robert E. Lee.

Wilmer McLean and Lee likely knew each other as children and probably both attended the Alexandria Academy, which was located on the east side of Washington Street between Duke and Wolfe streets.

After January 1821, the school was made free to all boys in Alexandria. Oct. 16, 1824, would have found McLean and Lee eagerly awaiting and cheering the arrival of Lafayette, who visited Alexandria that day.

• Paul N. Herbert lives in Fairfax, Virginia.