Qualla: Gen. John McCausland House

Gen. John McCausland House: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roger B. Wise, CC BY-SA 3.0. John McCausland ordered the burning of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania on July 30, 1864 - a town of three thousand civilians set ablaze when its leaders refused to pay a ransom of $100,000 in gold or $500,000 in U.S. currency. After the Civil War, McCausland refused to apply for the official pardon offered to former Confederate officers. He fled briefly to Mexico, then to Europe, before quietly returning to West Virginia and settling on a Mason County farm he called Grape Hill. He built a sandstone house there in 1885, lived in it for forty-two years, and died in 1927 at age ninety - one of the last surviving Confederate generals. The house still stands above the Kanawha River. It is, in many ways, the most morally complicated building in the county.

Image: Roger B. Wise | CC BY-SA 3.0

Gen. John McCausland House: Grape Hill

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roger B. Wise, CC BY-SA 3.0. The main house at Grape Hill, completed in 1885, is a two-story sandstone residence with a full-length, one-story porch across the front. Five bays of fluted Doric columns support the porch roof. The hip roof above is covered in standing-seam metal. The whole composition is restr...

Image: Roger B. Wise | CC BY-SA 3.0

Gen. John McCausland House: The Burning of Chambersburg

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roger B. Wise, CC BY-SA 3.0. McCausland was born in St. Louis in 1836, orphaned young, and raised by relatives in western Virginia. He graduated from Virginia Military Institute in 1857 and joined the Confederate army when the war began. He fought through the Vicksburg campaign and was given a cavalry brigad...

Image: Roger B. Wise | CC BY-SA 3.0

Gen. John McCausland House: The Unreconstructed General

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roger B. Wise, CC BY-SA 3.0. After Appomattox, the United States offered general amnesty to former Confederate soldiers who applied. McCausland would not. The terms required an oath of loyalty to the federal government, and McCausland refused to take it. He left the country, traveling to Mexico and Europe fo...

Image: Roger B. Wise | CC BY-SA 3.0

Gen. John McCausland House: Restoration and Reckoning

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SuperDalio, CC BY-SA 4.0. The McCausland House was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. The boundary increase in 2000 covered the broader farm and its outbuildings. In 2015, a complete restoration began with the goal of returning the site to its original condition - the sandstone wal...

Image: SuperDalio | CC BY-SA 4.0