Everything about Wilmer Mclean totally explained
Wilmer McLean (
May 3,
1814 –
June 5,
1882) was a wholesale grocer from
Virginia. It is said that the
American Civil War started in Wilmer McLean's front yard and ended in his front parlor.
The initial enagagements on
July 18,
1861, in what would become the
First Battle of Bull Run, fought on
July 21, took place on McLean's farm, the Yorkshire Plantation, in
Manassas,
Prince William County, Virginia.
Union Army artillery fired at McLean's house, headquarters for
Confederate Brigadier General P.G.T. Beauregard, and a cannonball dropped through the kitchen fireplace. Beauregard wrote after the battle, "A comical effect of this artillery fight was the destruction of the dinner of myself and staff by a Federal shell that fell into the fire-place of my headquarters at the McLean House." McLean was a retired major in the Virginia
militia, but was too old to return to active duty at the outbreak of the Civil War; he did make his living during the war as a sugar broker supplying the
Confederate States Army. He decided to move because his commercial activities were centered mostly in southern Virginia and the Union army presence in his area of northern Virginia made his work difficult. He undoubtedly was also motivated by a desire to protect his family from a repetition of his battle experience. In the spring of 1863 he and his family moved about 120 miles (200 km) south to
Appomattox County, Virginia, near
Appomattox Court House.
On
April 9,
1865, the war came back to Wilmer McLean when
Confederate General
Robert E. Lee surrendered to Lieutenant General
Ulysses S. Grant in the parlor of McLean's house near Appomattox Court House, effectively ending the Civil War. Later, McLean is supposed to have said "The war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor". Once the surrender was over, members of the Army of the Potomac began taking the tables, chairs, and various other furnishings in the house-essentially, anything that wasn't tied down-as souvenirs. They simply handed the protesting McLean money as they made off with his property. George Custer was given the table on which the surrender document was signed by Grant. McLeans' second home is now part of the Appomattox Court House National Historical Monument operated by the
National Park Service of the United States
Department of the Interior.
After the War, McLean and his family sold their house in
1867, unable to keep up the mortgage payments, and returned to their home in
Manassas. They later moved to
Alexandria, Virginia. He worked for the
Internal Revenue Service from 1873 to 1876.
McLean died in Alexandria and is buried there at St. Paul's Episcopal Cemetery.
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