Wilmer McLean’s Yorkshire
From Front Lawn to Front Parlor
Yorkshire, the home of Wilmer McLean, once stood near here. McLean acquired the property through his wife’s family in 1854. Located near two major fords on Bull Run, McLean’s plantation became the scene of one of the Civil War’s earliest actions. On July 18, 1861, Confederate Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard moved his headquarters to the McLean house as the nearby Battle of Blackburn’s Ford erupted. McLean’s barn served as a Confederate field hospital, and the farm was under constant Federal artillery fire. A shell supposedly struck the kitchen chimney, sending debris downward and ruining a meal being prepared for Beauregard. As the First Battle of Manassas raged several miles west on July 21, skirmishing continued near the McLean home. The fighting and the subsequent Confederate occupation ravaged the farm.
After the Confederates evacuated the area in March 1862, McLean moved first to Richmond and then to Appomattox Court House in Southside Virginia. There he felt safe from the campaigning armies and continued his business ventures with the Confederate government. In 1865, however, the war came home again to Wilmer McLean. On April 9, Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in McLean’s parlor. Afterward, the parlor was stripped of its furniture and other pieces of the house were carried away for souvenirs as well. McLean returned to this area in 1867 and died in Alexandria in 1882.
“These armies tore my place on Bull Run all to pieces … so I just sold out and came here, two hundred miles away, hoping I should never see a soldier again. Now, just look around you! Not a fence-rail is left on the place, the last guns trampled down all my crops, and Lee surrenders in my house.”
– Wilmer McLean
Marker is at the intersection of Centreville Road (Virginia Route 28) and Yorkshire Lane, on the right when traveling south on Centreville Road.
Courtesy hmdb.org
