The Mariah Wright house was constructed in 1823 by Pryor Wright. The one-story post and beam building was inherited by his wife Mariah upon his death in 1851. It is important to the Appomattox Court HouseNational Historical Park because of its association with the site where the surrender of the Confederate Army under Robert E. Lee to Union commander Ulysses S. Grant took place on April 9, 1865 with their major commanders. On that morning Brigadier General Joshua Chamberlain's Union infantry advancing through the village was halted on the outskirts of town. As his right flank reached the Mariah Wright house, a flag of truce came out from the Confederate lines. General George Armstrong Custer of Little Bighorn fame received the flag.
Historical significance
The Mariah Wright House is historically important because it embodies the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, and method of construction in the nineteenth century in rural Virginia. The building and resources are typical of both a county government seat and of a farming community in Piedmont Virginia in the nineteenth century.
Historical marker
A marker near titled "Lee's Last Attack" says:
Description and architecture
The single story Mariah Wright House is topped with a gable roof and attic. The structure is roughly forty feet deep by eighteen feet wide. The west sideof the house has a full length front porch and a central east porch of sixteen and a half feet by seven and a half feet. Both porches are on stone piers with wood shingle shed roofs. The house siding is beaded pine weatherboard. The Mariah Wright House has centered external gable chimneys of filestone to the second floor level. It is stepped back in stone and continuing up as free-standing brick stacks with corbelled drips and accented whitewashed course just below the drip. The doors have six panels with raised centers on the west, east and south facades. The windows are a combination of 4/4 double hanging and 6/6 double hanging. There are two four-light casements flanking the chimney. The Mariah Wright House had an attached kitchen wing added around 1890. In 1965 the National Park Service restored the house, removing the kitchen wing and excavating a basement and full cement foundation. Extensive archeological investigations were conducted at this time and many artifacts were found.
