For starters, it is essentially a reconstruction in a Williamsburg kind of way. The place was abandoned due to the railroad being located further away where a newish town sprout up. Because of this, the history of the courthouse and the events that transpired was in danger of just…vanishing. Some local ladies (it’s always some local ladies, right?) banded together to preserve what buildings were left and then to reconstruct all that had been in place at the time of the surrender.

Every piece is in place just as it was. I literally stood in my ancestor’s footprints, on the ground where he stacked arms and stood very near Robert E. Lee who told the rag-tag bunch of survivors to “go to our homes the best way we could.” Parole notes were handed out the following day (10 April) with permission “to go to his home, and there remain undisturbed”.

But one step beyond was having detailed information about my ancestor’s brigade. Trails around the historical park allowed for walking the last steps of the Walker Brigade which included my ancestor and several other men left in his company as they attempted to do battle one last time. I got chills being in the woods where he had been, walking on the very ground he had.

Most poignant was to re-read his own firsthand account in tandem with this visit. Which emphasizes the pointlessness of war and how a life of a regular guy was affected.

After procuring his parole note, John R. “Doc” Shipe trudged back over the next five days to where his family resided in the Piedmont area of northern Virginia. There, he lived out the rest of his days for another fifty or so years, a confirmed bachelor, working as a ferryman and then a tollgate keeper on the Shenandoah River. I can only assume that he processed this experience every day.

The last line of his account guts me: “And I came home. And that was the end of the war for me.” Because, of course, it wasn’t.