• Home
• Maps
  • Mecklenburg Civil War Sites Map
  • 1864 Confederate Engineers Map
  • 1870 Mecklenburg County District Map
• Historic Sites
• Our Soldiers
  • Mecklenburg Civil War Dead, Wounded, & POW
• More Info
  • Articles
  • Reading List
  • Links of Interest
  • Walk in their Footsteps

*National Register of Historic Places--Boydton Historic District William Osborne Goode, son of John Chesterfield Goode, built Cedar Crest in 1821. William Goode, a College of William and Mary graduate, was licensed to practice law in Mecklenburg in 1821. He served as state and national representative. His political career began in 1822 when he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates. He died in 1859 while serving in the United States Congress.

Goode married Sarah Bolling Tazewell in January 1820. The couple lived at Cedar Crest until her death at age 22 in 1825. After marrying his second wife, Sarah Massie, the couple moved to Wheatland, near Christiansville (Chase City). Their son, Colonel John Thomas Goode, was a Virginia Military Institute graduate, commissioned in the U.S. Army in 1854. He served as the U.S. Army Commander of the Western Frontier in Utah. At the outbreak of the war, he returned to Boydton and joined the Confederacy as Colonel. After outstanding performance at the Battle of Saylor's Creek, he was commissioned a Brigadier General although the commission did not receive approval before the evacuation from Richmond at war's end.

Major-General P.H. Sheridan very briefly made the house at Cedar Crest his office in 1865 at the close of the Civil War. After the surrender in Appomattox, on April 25, 1865, Sheridan and his cavalry arrived in Boydton on their way to rendezvous with the Sixth Army Corps. The objective was to travel south to engage the army of Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston, which had not surrendered. He headquartered at Cedar Crest, while his soldiers encamped around or near the Episcopal Church, Randolph Macon College and the town of Boydton. On April 26, Sheridan and his troops moved on toward South Boston, where, upon their arrival the following day, he learned Johnston had surrendered.

This property was placed under a historic easement with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. Included in the easement are the house and many historic dependencies-two barns, a smokehouse, chicken coop, shed, garage, silo, kitchen and servants' quarters.

Contributors: Carol Corker, Mecklenburg County Civil War Sesquicentennial Committee & Susan B. Sheppard, author of Life by the Roaring Roanoke

---