page_title: Wilmer McLean
section_title: First Battle of Bull Run
hierarchical_section_title: Wilmer McLean / American Civil War / First Battle of Bull Run
caption_attribution_description: English: en:Wilmer McLean's first house near Manassas, Virginia. McLean would move after the First Battle of Bull Run to Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, where Lee eventually surrendered to Grant.
context_page_description: Wilmer McLean was an American wholesale grocer from Virginia. His house near Manassas, Virginia, was involved in the First Battle of Bull Run in 1861. After the battle, he moved to Appomattox, Virginia to escape the war, thinking that it would be safe. Instead, in 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant in McLean's house in Appomattox. His houses were, therefore, involved in one of the first and one of the last encounters of the American Civil War. He lived in his house with his wife, Virginia.
context_section_description: The initial engagement on July 21, 1861 of what would become the First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas) took place on McLean's farm, the Yorkshire Plantation, in Manassas, Prince William County, Virginia. Union Army artillery fired at McLean's house, which was being used as a headquarters for Confederate Brigadier General P. G. T. Beauregard, and a cannonball dropped through the kitchen fireplace. Beauregard wrote after the battle, "A comical effect of this artillery fight was the destruction of the dinner of myself and staff by a Federal shell that fell into the fire-place of my headquarters at the McLean House."
  McLean was a retired major in the Virginia militia but, at age 47 he was too old to return to active duty at the outbreak of the Civil War. He made his living during the war as a sugar broker supplying the Confederate States Army. He decided to move because his commercial activities were centered mostly in southern Virginia and the Union army presence in his area of northern Virginia made his work difficult. He undoubtedly was also motivated by a desire to protect his family from a repetition of their combat experience. In the spring of 1863, he and his family moved about 120 miles (190 km) south to Appomattox County, Virginia, near a dusty, crossroads community called Appomattox Court House.
caption: McLean's first house, in Manassas
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