The Woodson Law Office is part of the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park identified as structure number 9A. [1]
History
The law office building was built between 1851 and 1856.[1] It was purchased by lawyer John W. Woodson in 1856 and he owned it until his death in 1864.[2] John W. Woodson was no longer living at the time when General Lee surrendered to General Grant.[3]
Woodson was born March 8, 1824 and died July 1, 1864. There is no confirmed evidence that it was necessarily always occupied by Woodson.[1] He was an attorney that practiced law in the Old Appomattox Court House until his death in 1864.[2] Woodson rented the building from Samuel McDearmon starting on January 1, 1854. He used the building to store his law books, legal documents, and a change of clothing. In 1856 he purchased the building from McDearmon, who was bankrupt by then.[4]
Historical significance
The Woodson Law Office has historical value by virtue of its association with the site of General Robert E. Lee's surrender to General Ulysses S. Grant at the end the American Civil War.[3] It is important because it embodies the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, and method of construction in the mid-nineteenth century in Virginia. The building and resources of the law office at the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park constitute both a typical county government seat in Piedmont Virginia in the mid-nineteenth century and of a farming community in the state of Virginia. It was a working law office during the time of the surrender on April 9, 1865. The Woodson Law Office was registered and documented in the National Register of Historic Places on June 26, 1989.[1]
Description
The Woodson Law Office is a beige frame building. It is a typical Virginia's small town lawyer's office of the mid-nineteenth century. In her book Plantations and Outdoor Museums in America's Historic South, historian Patricia Gutek describes the building as follows:
Woodson Law Office, a beige frame building, was purchased in 1856 by John W. Wilson, an attorney who practiced law in Appomattox Court House until his death eight years later. Appointed as a typical small town's lawyer's office of the mid-nineteenth century, it contains an attorney's desk, a safe, and a large portrait of George Washington.[2]
The Woodson Law Office is a single story structure that is twelve and a half feet wide by fourteen and a half feet deep.[3] Its construction is post and beam on brick piers with a standing seam gable roof.[3] It was moved from its original location to be connected to north side of the Plunkett-Meeks store before 1874.[3] It presently shows the relationship as it was to the Plunkett-Meeks Store and village scene at the time of surrender of General Lee to General Grant. The National Park Service restored the building in 1959 and in 1985.[1]
Interior
Footnotes
Sources
- Gutek, Patricia, Plantations and Outdoor Museums in America's Historic South, University of South Carolina Press, 1996, ISBN 1-5700307-1-5
- 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
- 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