Courtesy Wheeler House
COURTLAND, Alabama — Confederate Gen. Joseph Wheeler’s family home, in Lawrence County, Ala., on the historic Pond Spring Plantation, is now open to the public for guided tours for the first time in more than 12 years after an extensive restoration.
The historic house museum features Wheeler and his family’s memorabilia and furnishings, all original to the home they built and occupied from 1868 through the 1950s.
The Alabama Historical Commission restored the house to the period in the early 1900s when Wheeler’s daughter, Annie, displayed her father’s uniforms, medals and memorabilia from the Civil War and Spanish-American War.
After serving in the Civil War as a Confederate major general, Wheeler was a U.S. congressman and served in the Spanish-American War.
Annie, who served as a volunteer Red Cross nurse in three wars, lived in the house until 1955. In 1993, Wheeler’s descendants donated the Pond Spring site to the state of Alabama and the Alabama Historical Commission.
In addition to the Wheeler house, the 50-acre site includes a dogtrot log house built around 1818, a circa-1830 Federal-style house, eight farm-related outbuildings, two family cemeteries, an African-American cemetery, a small Indian mound, a pond, a boxwood garden and other garden areas.
256-637-8513
www.wheelerplantation.org
