Wilmer McLean Wilmer McLean ( May 3 , 1814 – June 5 , 1882 ) was a wholesale grocer from Virginia . It is said that the American Civil War started in his front yard and ended in his front parlor . American Civil War . First Battle of Bull Run . The initial engagement on July 21 , 1861 of what would become the First Battle of Bull Run 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 of my headquarters at the McLean House . " McLean was a retired major in the Virginia militia , but at 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 ( 200 km ) south to Appomattox County , Virginia , near a dusty , crossroads community called Appomattox Court House . Appomattox Court House . On April 9 , 1865 , the war revisited Wilmer McLean . Confederate General Robert E . Lee was about to surrender to Lieutenant General Ulysses S . Grant . He sent a messenger to Appomattox Court House to find a place to meet . On April 8 , 1865 , the messenger knocked on McLean ' s door and requested the use of his home , which McLean reluctantly agreed to . Lee surrendered to Grant in the parlor of McLean ' s house , effectively ending the Civil War . Later , McLean is supposed to have said " The war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor " . Once the ceremony was over , members of the Army of the Potomac began taking the tables , chairs , and various other furnishings in the house — essentially , anything that was not tied down — as souvenirs . They simply handed the protesting McLean money as they made off with his property . Major General Edward Ord paid $ 40 for the table Lee had used to sign the surrender document , while Major General Philip Sheridan got the table on which Grant had drafted the document for $ 20 in gold . Sheridan then asked George Armstrong Custer to carry it away on his horse . The table was presented to Custer ' s wife and is now on exhibit at the American History Museum at the Smithsonian . McLean ' s second home is now part of the Appomattox Court House National Historical Monument operated by the National Park Service of the United States Department of the Interior . After the War . After the war , McLean and his family sold their house in 1867 , unable to keep up the mortgage payments , and returned to their home in Manassas . They later moved to Alexandria , Virginia . He worked for the Internal Revenue Service from 1873 to 1876 . McLean died in Alexandria and is buried there at St . Paul ' s Episcopal Cemetery .