Civil War History

July 2, 2010

We’ve spent a couple of days absorbing history. On Friday we drove into present day Appomattox. We were too early for the museum which is housed in the old Appomattox jail in Courthouse square.You can learn more at www.nps.gov/apco/index.htm

These buildings were built in 1897 and the museum said it contained memorabilia from days gone by. There is a war memorial there for military folks who lost their lives in WWI, WWII, Korean and Vietnam wars.
There is much more to do in the area, but not enough time to do it all. We continued on to Appomattox Court House National Historical Park. This site is the original village of Appomattox Court House and has been preserved exactly the way it stood on April 9, 1865. Along the way you come across a cemetary where 12 confederate and one union soldier are buried. Also is a view of the exact road that the union army blocked basically trapping the confederate army in Appomattox. In the parlor of a local merchant, it was on this day that General Robert E. Lee surrendered the army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant, essentially ending the civil war. We enjoyed listening and interacting with both a confederate and a union soldier as they told us the story from their perspective, staying in character as though they were truly soldiers of the civil war that had just ended a few weeks before.

More to come: Visit http://www.precisionrv.com/ for our schedule