Berkeley, Shirley and Appomattox Court House

For our fourth day in Richmond, we actually went way outside the city limits to explore even more history for this amazing trip through the Old South. Our only stop for the day was the old town of Appomattox Court House. We learned that this is, in fact, the town name and there is also a court house within the town named the Appomattox Courthouse; and then there is the McLean house in which Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant agreed upon a Lee's surrender of his army. All of the buildings except for the McLean house and one other are the original buildings from the Civil War era. These two buildings are reconstructed, though, so tourists can get a feel for what the town actually looked like 150 years ago. No one actually knows what the inside of the house looked like, but there were written inventories of what type furniture was included, each room was reconstructed to mimick the original house as close as possible. This was a really neat place to visit because the dirt highway that ran from Lynchburg to Richmond was still a dirt highway that included the courthouse in the direct center so that people coming through had to go around the building. Also, very near to the center of Appomattox Court House was the three story jail house. This only included two offices on the ground level and four more buildings for prisoners to stay in (and we thought todays' prisons were bad). This was the only place we visited yesterday because it was two hours outside Richmod.