Talk:Old Appomattox Court House

Copyright contributor investigation and Good article reassessment
This article is part of Contributor copyright investigations/20210315 and the Good article (GA) drive to reassess and potentially delist over 200 GAs that might contain copyright and other problems. An AN discussion closed with consensus to delist this group of articles en masse, unless a reviewer opens an independent review and can vouch for/verify content of all sources. Please review Good article reassessment/February 2023 for further information about the GA status of this article, the timeline and process for delisting, and suggestions for improvements. Questions or comments can be made at the project talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:36, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Issues
Rjjiii (talk) 08:29, 20 February 2023 (UTC)
 * played no role in the surrender of General Robert E. Lee to General Ulysses S. Grant, as it was Palm Sunday and the court was closed for the day close paraphrase of https://web.archive.org/web/20120525104657/http://www.hscl.cr.nps.gov/insidenps/report.asp?STATE=VA&PARK=APCO&STRUCTURE=&SORT=&RECORDNO=1
 * It represents the participation of the federal government in the preservation and commemoration of historically significant events related to the conclusion of the American Civil War. same as above.
 * The first building constructed after the county became official was the original wooden county jail built in 1845. The original courthouse was built across the street from the Clover Hill Tavern in 1846. Not sure what source verifies this. The link at the end of the paragraph covers other material but not this.
 * Material in various places seems to be closely paraphrasing this document: http://npshistory.com/publications/apco/nr-appomattox-court-house.pdf Compare for example, "The four-panel entry doors on the main level are flanked by 12/12 double hanging sash windows." to "The doors within the porches are paired, 4-panelled, and the porches are flanked by 12/12 double-hung sash with 2-panel, non-operable, louvered shutters." and note the retention of the document's peculiar language (12/12 double hung) and also that this description which made sense in a text-only document makes little sense alongside the excellent photos of the building.
 * - I've rewritten or removed everything in the article as part of the Coldwell copyright cleanup, so these issues have been resolved. Not going to apply revision deletion though, as all of the copyvio above and a little bit else I noted was all from public domain Federal gov't sources. Hog Farm Talk 00:24, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed
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Court House vs. courthouse
The National Park FAQ page says:
 * Where's the courthouse, where the surrender took place? The surrender occurred in the village of Appomattox Court House, Virginia in a private home owned by the McLean family. In Virginia many of the towns which were county seats were called "Court House". The building is spelled courthouse (one word) and the town is Court House (two words).

That suggests the name of the article is incorrect. Do we need to consider correcting it? Is the National Park (NP) mistaken?

I looked up some other towns that were named after their court houses, to see what name they used:
 * Amelia Court House, Virginia. Although the building itself shows the title in all caps, "AMELIA COUNTY COURT HOUSE", the text for the Wikipedia image says "County courthouse in Amelia" consistent with the NP.
 * Washington Court House, Ohio. Similarly, the text for the image says "from the courthouse lawn" also consistent with the NP.

After reading Courthouse and noting that Court house wikilinks to Courthouse, and googling "courthouse", it does appear that is often the official name of these buildings, but that it seems to vary quite a lot and can to some extent be used interchangeably. So I am inclined to propose renaming the article. Would like to hear what others have to say before I make a proposed move. --David Tornheim (talk) 05:18, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I strongly disagree. The word "courthouse" is an example of how a compound word gradually lost a space and evolved into a single word during the mid-to-late 20th century, but the historical usage was preserved in the official names of many buildings. For example, the Spring Street Courthouse originally opened in 1940 as the "United States Court House." The correct approach, as seen in the current version of this article as of this date, is to continue to use the official names of such buildings as they were originally established, but to use the modern term "courthouse" to refer to them generically (e.g., "[official name] Court House" is a courthouse").  Preserving historical official names but using modern terminology to refer to such things generically is a standard writing practice that is pounded by graduate student instructors into history undergraduates in all the top-tier history departments in the United States. (I earned my bachelor's degree from a department which is usually ranked in the top five nationally and top ten globally, and the current department chair was one of my recommenders for law school.)  --Coolcaesar (talk) 15:54, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your reply. You are more qualified than me on this issue, so I support your position absent any further responses.  Could you provide any sources that explain those aspects that were drilled in your classes?  I know I googled "courthouse" vs. "court house", hoping to find guidance, and I don't recall seeing anything along those lines.
 * Last night while I was looking into this, I was hoping to find a document with the original name of the structure--like how the words "Amelia County Court House" can be seen on that building. I wonder what Amelia County's court calls itself in its official correspondence.  It became exhausting googling these and getting mostly low quality sources, and eventually I stopped and posted the above.
 * It's an interesting subject: I first became interested with how ungrammatical name changes became ossified when I researched the naming of Dans Mountain.  I often had wondered if the frequent omission of the apostrophe was deliberate, poor knowledge of English, for convenience, etc.  I did just notice this reason. If you know of better sources on that subject, I'm all ears.  And interesting the challenges of the double-naming of Derry/Derry / Londonderry.
 * I would like to be clearer on what we typically do here when the name changes and/or has something like "courthouse" (that to me seems grammatically wrong) and/or include archaic names or spellings. I had thought we used the most current name, like we do with cities, but I believe you are correct that if its about the historical structure, we use the original name (e.g. Fort Duquesne rebuilt and renamed Fort Pitt). Is there policy on that that I can read up on? --David Tornheim (talk) 23:14, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Do you think the National Park's guide is a bit misleading? It certainly makes it look like when they say "the building", they mean Old Appomattox Court House.
 * Also, were you okay with my edit described here:
 * Talk:Appomattox_Court_House_National_Historical_Park
 * --David Tornheim (talk) 23:41, 21 March 2024 (UTC)