In July 1861, a wholesale grocer named Wilmer McLean was living comfortably on his plantation near Manassas, Virginia. That tranquility shattered during the First Battle of Bull Run when Confederate General P. G.
T. Beauregard commandeered McLean's home as his headquarters. During a meal, a Union artillery shell crashed straight through the kitchen chimney, ruining the general's dinner and signaling that full-scale war had arrived.
Realizing that his farm sat on prime real estate for bloodshed, McLean decided to pack up his family and move away from the front lines. He settled roughly 120 miles south in the sleepy, isolated village of Appomattox Court House, Virginia, convinced the fighting would never reach such a quiet backwater. For nearly four years, his plan worked.
But in April 1865, General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia found itself surrounded and forced to surrender to Union General Ulysses S. Grant.
Lee needed a suitable grand room to sign the terms, and a Confederate aide approached McLean on the street asking for recommendations. After offering a dilapidated building first, McLean reluctantly offered his own well-furnished parlor. On April 9, 1865, Grant and Lee met in McLean's home to officially draft and sign the documents ending the deadliest conflict in American history.
McLean later famously remarked, 'The war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor.' To add insult to injury, after the surrender was signed, Union officers stripped his parlor bare, buying or simply stealing his tables, chairs, and furnishings as historic souvenirs.