The McCoull House

Farmer Neil McCoull lived here with his unmarried sisters Mary, Eliza, and Milly on a typical Spotsylvania County farm of a few hundred acres that produced a modest income from corn and other grains. Like their Harrison neighbors, the McCoull family owned slaves, as did more than half of Spotsylvania's residents. A kitchen and other outbuildings stood around the house, and simple dirt roads connected the family to the Harrisons to the south and the Landrams three-quarters of a mile north. During the fighting here in May 1864, Neil McCoull was away, but his sisters survived by sheltering in the basement of the house. When they emerged, they found a landscape dominated by death.

Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia · United States