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Things I Didn’t Know: Appomattox Court House Surrender
Monday, April 9th, 2007 | Misc |
Today is the anniversary of Robert E. Lee’s formal surrender. Katherine Coble explains why it’s wrong to say that Lee surrendered at Appomattox. Clickety.
That surrender took place at Appomattox COURT HOUSE. Now, I know you think this means there was a town called Appomattox and they had a little white court house building and the men went inside and officially surrendered.
You are wrong. The name of the village was Appomattox Court House.
Now that’s good trivia!
3 Comments to Things I Didn’t Know: Appomattox Court House Surrender
This is not uncommon in Virginia geography. There is also a Spotsylvania Court House. In these rural counties in the Colonial era the only noticeable “towns” were the buildings surrounding the county court houses. In fact, largely inhabited towns were rare enough in Colonial Virginia that they were placed outside the confines of the county. Thus, today, Virginia’s largest cities are “independent cities” and not even part of counties. For example, the cities of Richmond, Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Alexandria and Charlottesville are actually not in any county.
That’s pretty cool. Thanks!
April 17, 2007
Appomattox Court House is within a state park.
http://www.nps.gov/apco/
The old village of Appomattox Court House is located on the Appomattox River. When the railroad came through central Virginia, the new town of Appomattox sprang up five miles away on the railroad.
Sixty years ago I would ride my bicycle from my home in Appomattox to the “surrender grounds” at Appomattox Court House. The buildings, especially the chimneys were shored up with two by twelves. Sometime after I left Appomattox in 1951 to go to college, the State took those buildings down and put them back up brick by numbered brick, painted them, and put up white picket fences. There is a little Civil War Museum located there. Another ten miles into the park is Holliday Lake.
If you have school age children and are driving US 460 between Roanoke and Norfolk in the summer, they would enjoy a day trip to Appomattox Court House and Holliday Lake.
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April 10, 2007