The house was owned by Wilmer McLean and his wife Virginia near the end of the American Civil War.

Soon after that battle the McLeans, seeking to avoid the war, moved to the village of Clover Hill, Virginia (the name of which was changed to "Appomattox Court House," having just become the county seat).

[7] Because the First Battle of Bull Run, fought on July 21, 1861, took place on Wilmer McLean's farm about 120 miles (190 km) to the north in Virginia, it can be said that the Civil War started in McLean's backyard in 1861 and ended in his parlor in 1865 (although neither event marked the true beginning or ending of hostilities).

After the war, he would say of himself that he moved because he loved peace, but he made a small fortune running sugar through the Union blockade.

[8] The terms of surrender were: "The officers to give their individual paroles not to take up arms against the government of the United States until properly exchanged, and each company or regimental commander to sign a like parole for the men of their commands,"... neither "side arms of the officers nor their private horses or baggage" to be surrendered; and, as many privates in the Confederate Army owned horses and mules, all horses and mules claimed by men in the Confederate Army to be left in their possession.

[7] Although he had made a considerable fortune smuggling sugar, McLean's money was in Confederate currency, which became worthless with the collapse of the Confederacy, and he was nearly ruined by the end of the war.

The banking house of Harrison, Goddin, and Apperson of Richmond, Virginia, obtained a judgment against Wilmer McLean when he defaulted on loans against the property.

After Nathaniel died in 1888, his widow Martha sold the property in 1891 for $10,000 to a Captain Myron Dunlap of Niagara Falls, New York.

The house became just a heaping piles of boards and bricks and sat prey to vandals, collectors, and the environment for fifty years.

Eighty-four years after the historic surrender, reuniting the country, the McLean House was opened by the National Park Service for the first time to the public on April 9, 1949.

In front of a crowd of approximately twenty thousand people a speech was given by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Douglas Southall Freeman.

[10] A ribbon was cut by the guests of honor at the dedication ceremony by Major General Ulysses S. Grant III and Robert E. Lee IV on April 16, 1950.