Peers House

Peers house

Peers House from where was fired the last shot from the artillary of the army of northern Virginia on the morning of April 9th, 1865.

The Peers House is part of the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park which is identified as structure number 16. The Peers House was constructed in 1855. It was restored in 1954 and preserved in 1997 to 1999.

When General Lee surrendered to General Grant the house was owned and occupied by George Peers, an Appomatox County clerk for some forty years. This house has many of the same characteristics as the Bocock-Isbell House.

Historical significance

The Peers House has significance by virtue of its association with the site of General Robert E. Lee's surrender to General Ulysses S. Grant. The Confederate soldiers marched past the house on the Richmond-Lynchburg Stage Road to go into battle on April 9, 1865. This is where they stacked their arms on April 12, 1865. The last artillery shots were fired from the Peers yard on the morning of April 9, 1865. One of the last artillery shots fired, perhaps the very last shot fired, killed Lieutenant Hiram Clark of the 185th New York cavalry near the Peers house.

The Peers House embodies the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, and method of construction of mid-nineteenth century rural Virginia. The buildings and resources are considered a holistic landscape typical of both a county government seat in Piedmont Virginia in the mid-nineteenth century and of a farming community in Virginia.

Description

The two story Peers House is thirty four feet wide by eighteen feet deep. It has a raised basement five feet eight inches above grade and comes with an attic. It has single step external end chimneys and narrow wood siding. The west elevation has a temple form entry porch raised to the first floor. There are simple box posts that support the pedimented gable over the porch. The porch gable and main roof are covered with square-butt wood shingles and covers a four-paneled entry door. The windows are a combination of 8/8, 8/12 (first floor west elevation), 6/9 and 6/6 sash. The east side elevation has a porch with a shed roof on the first floor.

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