About Appomattox County, VA

January Monthly Market Update

Sales Period: January 2008

Property Type Area Liv Area Units Sold Average List Price Average Sold Price DOM

Single family Lynchburg 1951 50 166,924 161,796 89

Campbell County 1723 26 159,811 152,275 108

Bedford County 2271 36 283,409 272,219 116

Amherst County 1998 21 178,390 173,635 95

Appomattox County 1463 5 154,120 144,500 256

A total of 138 properties sold the month of January 2008. That is down a little from January 2007 when 147 properties sold. And it has taken longer for homes to sell the month of January than in previous months. Once the spring gets here there is a much better opportunity for the activity to increase.

Following the fall of Petersburg and Richmond in early April 1865, Robert E. Lee led his exhausted Army of Northern Virginia on a fighting retreat west. The goal was to link up with Gen. Joseph Johnston and his Army of Tennessee near Danville, but Ulysses S. Grant's forces harried the Rebels at every step. On April 6, the Battle of Sailor's Creek cost Lee 7,000 Confederate men, one-fifth of the remaining ranks, including Lee's son Custis and seven other generals who were captured. The next day, Lee refused Grant's request for a discussion of surrender, saying he would rather "die a thousand deaths." But after Lee's supplies were captured at Appomattox Station on the evening of April 8, Lee was compelled to meet with the Union leader.

On Sunday morning, April 9, the two generals met in the parlor of Wilmer McLean's home in Appomattox Court House. They drafted the terms of surrender - the Confederates would be allowed to return home unmolested, they could keep their horses and officers their sidearms - and Lee signed the paper, surrendering his army and signaling the end of four years of bloodshed and chaos. At a ceremony on April 12, the ragtag Rebel army laid down its flags and weapons and each man received a printed parole. "The war is over," said Grant, prohibiting any celebration among his troops out of respect. "The rebels are our countrymen again." During the ceremonial stacking of arms, the Federal soldiers rendered a salute to the surrendering Confederates, which was returned in kind.

The McLean House was dismantled in 1893 amid plans to ship it to the capital and rebuild it as part of a war museum, but this never happened, and the pieces lay decaying for decades. Luckily the largely abandoned village was designated a national Historical Park in 1954 and eventually restored to its 1865 appearance.

Appomattox Court House National Historical Park(434-352-8987 ext 26 daily 8:30 a.m. - 5 p.m., $4 pp or $10 per vehicle in summer) is on Route 24, three miles north of U.S. 460 and the town of Appomattox. Start at the visitors center and get your bearings with two 15 minute slide presentations and a map display of Lee's retreat. Take a look at the museum, which holds relics such as little Lula McLean's doll, the "silent witness" to the signing.

In the village, a reconstruction version of the McLean House is decorated as accurately as possible from painting and firsthand accounts. The nearby Clover Hill Tavern dates to 1819. The park includes a section of the Richmond-Lynchburg Stage Road where the Confederates stacked their arms during the surrender ceremony.

Park interpreters can answer questions and point you down the trails to both Lee's and Grant's final headquarters. Living-history programs are held daily from Memorial Day to Labor Day. call 434-352-0493 for more information.

Of all the areas surrounding the independent city of Lynchburg, Appomattox County may have the most drawing power for Civil War Buffs. It has a heritage that no one else can claim. Emblazoned proudly on signs at the county line are the words Appomattox - Where Our Nation Reunited.

The signs invite a nation of tourists to unite again, revisiting the events of 1865, when Gen. Robert E. Lee handed his sword to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at the McLean House.

In a way, Wilmer McLean has become a metaphor for Appomattox County's initial attitude toward its place in history. McLean was living near Manassas, Virginia when the First Battle of Bull Run broke out within a few miles of his front porch. Badly shaken he moved his family southeast to Appomattox, a place he felt the war would never reach. His assumption was one of the conflict's great ironies.

After the war, Appomattox also tried to escape its connection with the conflict. Feeling the stigma of living near what became known as the "surrender grounds," the people in the area wanted nothing more than to leave their epic defeat behind.

Today, however, the prevailing outlook has dramatically changed. The community is actively embracing its past. New ines of communication have formed between the town, county and federal overseers of the restored battlefield. More than a quarter of a million visitors, from North, South and even overseas, stop at the Appomattox Court House National Historic Park each year. and more out-of-towners are making their way a few miles south from the park into the thriving little town of Appomattox.

Appomattox is building a tourism infrastructure to augment its Civil War heritage. The county's 343 square miles sprawl across one of the main routes between Roanoke and Richmond, U.S. 460. As the once-dominant tobacco culture declines, the relatively flat land in Appomattox is increasingly available for residential, retail and industrial use.