Pamplin Park Will Open Restored Grant Headquarters
Feb./March ’02 issue
DINWIDDIE COUNTY, Va

On Feb. 23 Pamplin Historical Park & The National Museum of the Civil War Soldier will open a 7-acre parcel containing the Banks House, the headquarters of Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant on April 2-3, 1865.

Park officials and guests will cut the ribbon at the opening celebration. The Banks House, portions of which date to the mid-1700s, is the second antebellum home at Pamplin Historical Park near Petersburg that housed a general and his headquarters. Tudor Hall Plantation, which is situated on the park’s main campus, was headquarters to Confederate general Samuel McGowan and his staff from October 1864 to March 1865.

Pamplin Historical Park has restored the Banks House to its wartime appearance. The large parlor has been furnished to suggest its appearance during Grant’s stay. Maps are spread on a large central table. A Union general’s uniform coat is draped over a chair and a felt hat sits nearby on the table. Both are of the style Grant is known to have worn in the late war period. A half-smoked stogie sits is evidence of Grant’s well-known fondness for cigars.

An adjacent slave/kitchen quarter has also been restored. Few original slave dwellings still stand in Virginia, making the structure historically significant.

The Banks House parcel was a gift to the park by Roslyn Farms Corporation, which owns much of the surrounding land. As that land is zoned for industrial use, the park’s acquisition of the house was critical to preservation efforts. The park also received $75,000 toward preservation of the house from TXI Corporation, parent company of nearby industry Chapparal Steel. In all, Pamplin Historical Park has spent over $600,000 in preparing the Banks House site for visitors.
In the fall of 1864, the landscape around Margaret Banks’s 231-acre farm changed when Petersburg became the focus of conflict. Gen. Robert E. Lee, seeking to protect his lines of communication to the south and west, extended his main line of defense southwestward from the city. Confederate soldiers dug an imposing line of fortifications that ran across the Banks farm just east of the house.

On the early morning of April 2, 1865, the Union Sixth Corps broke the Confederate line just south of the Banks House, at a site within today’s main campus of Pamplin Historical Park. After the immediate area was cleared of Confederate resistance, Grant sought to place his command post at a vantage point from which he could direct and observe further assaults against the western sector of Lee’s defenses. The Banks House, sitting on a knoll near the Boydton Plank Road and less than a mile from Confederate Ft. Gregg, proved a good location.

Grant dispatched an early morning telegram to Gen. George Meade that read, "Hd Qrs armies U.S. will be at the Banks House, north of [F]t. Fisher and near the Boydton Plank Road." By 10:45 that morning, dispatches from Grant bore the address "T. Banks’ House."

Grant’s imperturbability under fire was on display at the Banks House. Confederate gunners, spotting the knot of Federal officers in the Banks House yard, lobbed artillery shells at the group. As exploding missiles fell about the landscape, Grant sat on the ground writing out dispatches, ignoring the pleas of his staff to move to a place of safety. Once finished with his work, Grant arose and walked away, remarking to his aides, "Well, they do seem to have the range on us, don’t they?"

In the aftermath of that day’s Union victory that ended the 10-month campaign, the house must have witnessed a celebration by Grant’s staff. It was from the Banks House that Grant sent word to President Abraham Lincoln, then at City Point, to meet him in the conquered city of Petersburg the next day.

Pamplin Historical Park & The National Museum of the Civil War Soldier is located at I-85, Exit 63-A, just south of Petersburg. For more information call (877) PAMPLIN or visit www.pamlinpark.org.