The Mariah Wright house is a structure within the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park

Appomattox Court House National Historical Park

The Appomattox Court House National Historical Park is a National Historical Park of original and reconstructed nineteenth century buildings. It was signed into law August 3, 1935. The village was made a national monument in 1940 and a national historical park in 1954...

. It was registered in the National Park Service

National Park Service

The National Park Service is the U.S. federal agency that manages all national parks, many national monuments, and other conservation and historical properties with various title designations...

's database of Official Structures on June 26, 1989.

History

The Mariah Wright house was constructed in 1823 by Pryor Wright. The one-story post and beam building was inherited by his wife Mariah upon his death in 1851.

It is important to the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park because of its association with the site where the surrender of the Confederate Army

Confederate States of America

The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S...

 under Robert E. Lee

Robert E. Lee

Robert Edward Lee was a career military officer who is best known for having commanded the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the American Civil War....

 to Union

Union (American Civil War)

During the American Civil War, the Union was a name used to refer to the federal government of the United States, which was supported by the twenty free states and five border slave states. It was opposed by 11 southern slave states that had declared a secession to join together to form the...

 commander Ulysses S. Grant

Ulysses S. Grant

Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States as well as military commander during the Civil War and post-war Reconstruction periods. Under Grant's command, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and ended the Confederate States of America...

 took place on April 9, 1865 with their major commanders. On that morning Brigadier General Joshua Chamberlain

Joshua Chamberlain

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain , born as Lawrence Joshua Chamberlain, was an American college professor from the State of Maine, who volunteered during the American Civil War to join the Union Army...

's Union infantry advancing through the village was halted on the outskirts of town. As his right flank reached the Mariah Wright house, a flag of truce came out from the Confederate lines. General George Armstrong Custer

George Armstrong Custer

George Armstrong Custer was a United States Army officer and cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the Indian Wars. Raised in Michigan and Ohio, Custer was admitted to West Point in 1858, where he graduated last in his class...

 of Little Bighorn

Battle of the Little Bighorn

The Battle of the Little Bighorn, also known as Custer's Last Stand and, by the Indians involved, as the Battle of the Greasy Grass, was an armed engagement between combined forces of Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho people against the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army...

 fame received the flag.

Historical significance

The Mariah Wright House is historically important because it embodies the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, and method of construction in the nineteenth century in rural Virginia. The building and resources are typical of both a county government seat and of a farming community in Piedmont Virginia in the nineteenth century.

Historical marker

A marker near titled "Lee's Last Attack" says:

House description

The single story Mariah Wright House is topped with a gable roof and attic. The structure is roughly forty feet deep by eighteen feet wide. The west side of the house has a full length front porch and a central east porch of sixteen and a half feet by seven and a half feet. Both porches are on stone piers with wood shingle shed roofs. The house siding is beaded pine weatherboard.

The Mariah Wright House has centered external gable chimneys of filestone to the second floor level. It is stepped back in stone and continuing up as free-standing brick stacks with corbelled drips and accented whitewashed course just below the drip. The doors have six panels with raised centers on the west, east and south facades. The windows are a combination of 4/4 double hanging and 6/6 double hanging. There are two four-light casements flanking the chimney.

The Mariah Wright House had an attached kitchen wing added around 1890. In 1965 the National Park Service restored the house, removing the kitchen wing and excavating a basement and full cement foundation. Extensive archeological investigations were conducted at this time and many artifact

Artifact (archaeology)

An artifact or artefact is "something made or given shape by man, such as a tool or a work of art, esp an object of archaeological interest"...

s were found.

Footnotes

Sources

• Bradford, Ned, Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Plume, 1989

• Carroll, Orville W., Historic Structures Report Part III, Architectural Data Section on Mariah Wright House, Appomattox Court House National Historical Park. Ms. on file, National park Service, Chesapeake and Allegheny Systems Support Office, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1965

• Catton, Bruce, A Stillness at Appomattox, Doubleday 1953, Library of Congress # 53-9982, ISBN 0-385-04451-8

• Catton, Bruce, This Hallowed Ground, Doubleday 1953, Library of Congress # 56-5960

• Davis, Burke, The Civil War: Strange & Fascinating Facts, Wings Books, 1960 & 1982, ISBN 0-5173715-1-0

• Davis, Burke, To Appomattox - Nine April Days, 1865, Eastern Acorn Press, 1992, ISBN 0-9159921-7-5

• Farrar, Stuart McDearmon, Historical Notes of Appomattox County, Virginia, self published by Farrar, 1989, Original from the University of Virginia

• Featherston, Nathaniel Ragland, Appomattox County History and Genealogy, Genealogical Publishing Company, 1998, ISBN 0-8063476-0-0

• Fiero, Kathleen, Archeological Research Mariah Wright House Outbuildings, Historic Roads. National Park Service, Denver Service Center. Denver, Colorado, 1983

• Glassie, Henry H., Vernacular Architecture, Indiana University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-2532139-5-9

• Gutek, Patricia, Plantations and Outdoor Museums in America's Historic South, University of South Carolina Press, 1996, ISBN 1-5700307-1-5

• Hosmer, Charles Bridgham, Preservation Comes of Age: From Williamsburg to the National Trust, 1926-1949, Preservation Press, National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States by the University Press of Virginia, 1981

• Howard, Blair et al., The Virginia Handbook, Hunter Publishing, Inc, 2005, ISBN 1-5884351-2-1

• Kaiser, Harvey H., The National Park Architecture Sourcebook, Princeton Architectural Press, 2008, ISBN 1-5689874-2-0

• Kennedy, Frances H., The Civil War Battlefield Guide, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990, ISBN 0-395522-8-2X

• Korn, Jerry et al., The Civil War, Pursuit to Appomattox, The Last Battles, Time-Life Books, 1987, ISBN 0-8094478-8-6

• Marvel, William, A Place Called Appomattox, UNC Press, 2000, ISBN 0-8078256-8-9

• Marvel, William, Lee's Last Retreat, UNC Press, 2006, ISBN 0-8078570-3-3

• McPherson, James M., Battle Cry of Freedom, Oxford University Press, 1988,

• National Park Service, Appomattox Court House: Appomattox Court House National Historical Park, Virginia, U.S. Dept. of the Interior, 2002, ISBN 0-9126277-0-0

• Schlegel, Marvin W. and Carroll, Orville W., Historic Structures Report Part I, Administrative, Historical, and Architectural Data Mariah Wright House, Appomattox Court House National Historical Park, National Park Service, Chesapeake and Allegheny Systems Support Office, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1959

• Tidwell, William A., April '65: Confederate Covert Action in the American Civil War, Kent State University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-8733851-5-2

• Tyler, Lyon Gardiner, Tyler's Quarterly Historical and Genealogical Magazine, 1952

• Weigley, Russel F., A Great Civil War: A Military and Political History, 1861-1865, Indiana University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-2533373-8-0