Brian Rose - Nat Turner's Sword

Nat Turner's Sword

The Landscape of Southampton County, Virginia

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Brian Rose

...and this poor negro, who did not even possess a name, beyond one abrupt monosyllable, — for even the name of Turner was the master’s property, — still lives a memory of terror and a symbol of retribution triumphant. – Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The Atlantic, 1861

Southampton County – © Brian Rose

I "ran away" from Virginia when I was 20 or so with dreams of making it in New York. But I wasn’t fleeing the state as much as I was trying to free myself from a sense of darkness that cloaked my family’s past. My grandparents on my father's side had died young, and my mother did actually run away when she was 16. As a result, I did not know anything about her side of the family. As I grew older I lost contact with most of my relatives, and those that I knew began to die off. I remained haunted, however, by the landscape of Isle of Wight and Southampton Counties – the Southside of the James River – a mental and physical topography both alien and familiar.

In New York, I made photographs and wrote songs, splitting my time as best I could between two demanding pursuits. One day a song emerged effortlessly as if from the ether. “I spoke my name out loud/It floated like a cloud/not knowing that I was freed/I quivered like a reed/whispering my name/down below the James.” I was, it seems, expressing a desire for liberation from an unseen past, but I also knew instinctively that this was a song about slavery and the sins of my ancestors. “What smoke-thin ghost is wont, among these tin roof haunts, endless trains of coal, pass by the old swimming hole, my history and shame, down below the James.”

Stony Creek, Virginia, 2024 – © Brian Rose

In March of 2024, I made an exploratory trip into my lost heritage and a deep dive into the darkest heart of America. I am on my way to Courtland, Virginia, to tour the route of Nat Turner's slave rebellion of 1831. My hotel, just off I-95, is next to a truck stop with fast food and a Starbucks. Down the service road along the freeway, I found Los Compradres, a Mexican restaurant. The patrons appeared to be country folks – one man had a sweatshirt emblazoned with "Virginia is for Hunters" – but the vibe was good, the food spectacular, and the Mexican restaurant staff apparently on friendly terms with the locals. Now that Donald Trump has been elected, however, things might get tough for these recent immigrants. And in nearby Jarratt, Boar's Head just laid off 500 meatpackers due to a Listeria outbreak originating from the plant.

Cross Keys, Southampton County – © Brian Rose

Rick Francis, the county clerk, led the tour that followed the route of Nat Turner’s murderous rampage through the countryside of Southampton County, the biggest slave revolt in American history. We traveled together by bus, a group of both whites and blacks, some locals and some who drove in from miles away, like me. Some had family connections to the people of 1831 when the uprising took place, but few were as close as mine.

The Southampton Insurrection by William Sidney Drewry, 19090

Near the southeastern border of Virginia, in Southampton County, there is a neighborhood known as “The Cross Keys.” It lies fifteen miles from Jerusalem, the county-town or “court-house,” seventy miles from Norfolk, and about as far from Richmond. It is some ten or fifteen miles from Murfreesboro’ in North Carolina, and about twenty-five from the Great Dismal Swamp. Up to Sunday, the twenty-first of August, 1831, there was nothing to distinguish it from any other rural, lethargic, slipshod Virginia neighborhood, with the due allotment of mansion-houses and log-huts, tobacco fields and “old-fields,” horses, dogs, negroes, “poor white folks,” so called, and other white folks, poor without being called so. – Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The Atlantic, 1861

Porter Plantation, Southampton County – © Brian Rose

A steady soaking rain kept us in the bus most of the day, but I jumped out here and there and made pictures mostly from the roadside. There is little left of the Richard Porter house, where a young enslaved girl warned the family of Turner’s approaching band, enabling them to escape into the nearby woods. The chimney is visible at the center, while two vultures perch on the branches at the upper right. I came back the next day and photographed the ruin from a different angle. Across the road, behind an abandoned shack, I found the graves of Richard Porter and his wife.

Porter Plantation, Southampton County – © Brian Rose

Porter Gravestones, Southampton County – © Brian Rose

Cabin Pond, Southampton County – © Brian Rose

In 1831, Nat Turner, an enslaved man, was well-known by many in the county, black and white, for his religious preaching. He was literate in a rural community where many were not. He claimed to have visions and was called upon to lead an uprising against the slaveholders of Southampton County. They would gather reinforcements as they moved from farm to farm. Their goal was the county seat of Jerusalem. In an area where blacks outnumbered whites 3 to 2, success seemed plausible, if not, in the end, practical. The core group of Turner’s band met here at Cabin Pond at two in the morning and then struck the nearby Travis farm where Turner was enslaved.

I was thirty-one years of age the 2nd of October last, and born the property of Benj. Turner, of this county. In my childhood a circumstance occurred which made an indelible impression on my mind, and laid the ground work of that enthusiasm, which has terminated so fatally to many, both white and black, and for which I am about to atone at the gallows. It is here necessary to relate this circumstance–trifling as it may seem, it was the commencement of that belief which has grown with time, and even now, sir, in this dungeon, helpless and forsaken as I am, I cannot divest myself of. – Confessions of Nat Turner

Travis Plantation, Southampton County – © Brian Rose

Although few structures remain from 1831, when Nat Turner led his compatriots in a rampage against the slaveholders of Southampton County, the locations of the various farms are known. Whether freedom fighters or terrorists, their methods were brutal, and the retaliation by whites was equally brutal. When Turner was in jail awaiting trial, he recounted the grisly details of his rebellion to Thomas Gray, a lawyer. Gray may have sensationalized the telling, but the facts remain undisputed.

Hark got a ladder and set it against the chimney, on which I ascended, and hoisting a window, entered and came downstairs, unbarred the door, and removed the guns from their places. It was then observed that I must spill the first blood. On which, armed with a hatchet, and accompanied by Will, I entered my master’s chamber, it being dark, I could not give a death blow, the hatchet glanced from his head, he sprang from the bed and called his wife, it was his last word, Will laid him dead, with a blow of his axe, and Mrs. Travis shared the same fate, as she lay in bed. – Confessions of Nat Turner

Southampton County – © Brian Rose

The Catherine Whitehead house stood in the vicinity of this cabin on Porter House Road. Catherine's daughter Margaret was the only victim of the Turner uprising who was killed personally by Nat Turner. Catherine, I have discovered, is my 3rd cousin 5 times removed.

I returned to commence the work of death, but they whom I left, had not been idle; all the family were already murdered, but Mrs. Whitehead and her daughter Margaret. As I came round to the door I saw Will pulling Mrs. Whitehead out of the house, and at the step he nearly severed her head from her body, with his broad axe. Miss Margaret, when I discovered her, had concealed herself in the corner, formed by the projection of the cellar cap from the house; on my approach she fled, but was soon overtaken, and after repeated blows with a sword, I killed her by a blow on the head, with a fence rail. – Confessions of Nat Turner

Cotton field near original location of the Rebecca Vaughan House – © Brian Rose

The Southampton Insurrection by William Sidney Drewry, 1909

Mrs. Vaughan was the next place we visited—and after murdering the family here, I determined on starting for Jerusalem—Our number amounted now to fifty or sixty, all mounted and armed with guns, axes, swords and clubs... – Confessions of Nat Turner

My great great grandmother was a Vaughan, and tracing back that line of the family, I realized that the Vaughans of the Southside of the James were all related to each other. The Doyals were another line of the family. Was I related to Trajan Doyal who died in the insurrection. Undoubtedly. Probably a first cousin, maybe closer. There are blood relations, but then there are also relationships of proximity. The families and neighbors of Isle of Wight and southampton County were as tightly intertwined as the seeds in a cotton boll.

Rebecca Vaughan House driveway – © Brian Rose

Blackhead Signpost Road, Southampton County – © Brian Rose

BLACKHEAD SIGNPOST ROAD

In Aug. 1831, following the revolt led by enslaved preacher Nat Turner, white residents and militias retaliated by murdering an indeterminable number of African Americans – some involved in the revolt, some not – in Southamnpton County and elsewhere. At this intersection, where Turner’s force had turned toward Jerusalem (now Courtland), the severed head of a black man was displayed on a post and left to decay to terroize others and deter future uprisings against slavery. The beheaded man may have been Alfred, an enslaved blacksmith who, though not implicated in any revolt killings, was slain by militia near here. The name of this road was changed from Blackhead Signpost to Signpost in 2021.

Southampton County, – © Brian Rose

Southampton County – © Brian Rose

Boykins, Southampton County – © Brian Rose

Southampton County looks much as it did in the 19th century. The roads have been paved, of course, and tobacco, once prevalent, has been supplanted by cotton, soybeans, and peanuts. Jerusalem is now Courtland, and remains a small town, while other settlements like Capron and Boykins, once busy trading posts along railroad lines, now slumber quietly. Virtually the entire landscape of the county is unspoiled by suburban sprawl, fast food, or big box retail.

Cypress Bridge remnants, Nottoway River, Southampton County – © Brian Rose

Southampton County split off from Isle of Wight County in 1749. The Blackwater River serves as a boundary between the two jurisdictions, and Southampton County is bisected by the Nottoway River, named for the Native American tribe that occupied the area before the encroachment of European settlers.

Jerusalem was the county seat, and almost certainly Nat Turner's immediate goal. The town lay on the far side of the river, and Turner attempted unsuccessfully to cross by way of a less traveled route to the south.

The Southampton Insurrection by William Sidney Drewry, 1909

Hark had his horse shot under him, and I caught another for him as it was running by me; five or six of my men were wounded, but none left on the field; finding myself defeated here I instantly determined to go through a private way, and cross the Nottoway river at the Cypress Bridge, three miles below Jerusalem, and attack that place in the rear, as I expected they would look for me on the other road, and I had a great desire to get there to procure arms and ammunition. – Confessions of Nat Turner

Clarksbury Church, Southampton County – © Brian Rose

This building, erected in 1896, took the place of a much older Clarksbury Church, which less than 50 years ago still occupied the original site in an oak grove diagonally across the road. According to William S. Drewry’s “History of the Southampton Insurrection,” at the time of the slave uprising in August, 1831, Clarksbury was known as Turner’s M. E. Church, or Turner s Old Meetinghouse. The majority of the victims of the massacre were members of Turner’s M. E. Church. – The Tidewater News, 1955

Peanut harvesting, Southampton County – © Brian Rose

Peanut field, Southampton County – © Brian Rose

Southampton County – © Brian Rose

Elm Grove, Southampton County – © Brian Rose

Although Elm Grove, a plantation located just outside Courtland, did not figure in the events of 1831, it is one of the few well-preserved structures dating from that period. Southampton County plantations were generally modest compared to the majestic mansions that rose along the shores of the James River. Most were of wood rather than brick; in many cases, planters counted more wealth in their enslaved assets than in their buildings and land.

Belmont Plantation, Southampton County – © Brian Rose

Nat Turner's uprising came to an end at the plantation of Dr. Samuel Blunt. His son, Simon Blunt, 13 years old at the time, and reputed to have fired the first shot at Turner and his approaching band, went on to an illustrious, though short-lived naval career. He married Ellen Lloyd Key, a daughter of Francis Scott Key, the writer of the Star Spangled Banner. Dr. Blunt (Samuel Blunt) is my 3rd cousin six times removed.

Com. Elliot, who has just left my room, informs me of a little incident at which I am much gratified. He went to the President (Andrew Jackson) this morning, and gave him a minute account of some incidents connected with the heart-rending scenes in Southampton; and among others, of the conduct of the aged Dr. Blunt and his little party, on hearing of the approach of the inhuman monsters who were coming to destroy them. The President was so much pleased with the account the Commodore gave him of the gallant conduct of the boy, (the son of the Doctor,) that he ordered a Midshipman’s Warrant to be made out for him forthwith and that he should be placed under the Commodore’s command; under whose attention and care I have no doubt he will be made worthy of the country that gave him birth and of the parents he so bravely defended.” – Richmond Enquirer, 1832

Southampton County – © Brian Rose

On the side of Highway 58 are several signs that provide evidence of the extraordinary overlapping history of the immediate area. Cars speed by at 60mph making it inadvisable to pull over here. I parked on an adjacent road and then walked out along the edge of the highway. Obviously, no one can read these signs as they whizz by.

The first sign states that Nat Turner's insurrection met its end nearby, and the second says that Dred Scott, enslaved, was born nearby, moved to Missouri and was sold to an army officer who was stationed in various free territories. Scott sued for his freedom upon returning to Missouri, but the Supreme Count in the infamous Dred Scott Decision ruled that he was property not a citizen. The sons of his original master from here in Southampton County then purchased Scott's freedom.

Capron, Southampton County – © Brian Rose

Capron train station, Southampton County – © Brian Rose

Capron, Southampton County – © Brian Rose

Capron train station, Southampton County – © Brian Rose

The train station in Capron has been abandoned for many years. But evidence of the Jim Crow South remains. Two doors. One marked COLORED, the other WHITE.

Capron train station, Southampton County – © Brian Rose

Southampton County – © Brian Rose

I wondered greatly at these miracles, and prayed to be informed of a certainty of the meaning thereof—and shortly afterwards, while laboring in the field, I discovered drops of blood on the corn as though it were dew from heaven—and I communicated it to many, both white and black, in the neighborhood—and I then found on the leaves in the woods hieroglyphic characters, and numbers, with the forms of men in different attitudes, portrayed in blood, and representing the figures I had seen before in the heavens. – Confessions of Nat Turner

Southampton County – © Brian Rose

About 16,000 people lived in Southampton County in 1830. Blacks, enslaved and freed, made up over 60% of the population. The population grew to 27,000 in the middle of the 20th century, but agricultural mechanization led to a mass exodus, primarily of blacks who worked the cotton, soybean, and peanut fields. There are today, just under 18,000 people in the county, and the black/white ratio has flipped.

Although there are different reasons for voting Democratic or Republican, it should be noted, that the vote for Donald Trump in 2024 tracked almost precisely with the racial proportion of the county – 63/36 percent, white/black.

Southampton County – © Brian Rose

I drove with my son along Pinopolis Road winding through the countryside. A hill rose up ahead, unusual in this mostly flat tidewater plain of pine trees and swampy creeks. I instinctively pulled the car over and walked to the crest of the hill looking across soybean fields and a small man-made lake.

In my research, I discovered that many of my forebears had connections to the Nat Turner uprising, but not necessarily direct ancestors. I dug deeper. Each step I took seemed to bring me closer to something hidden. Something I knew in my bones, and had known since I was young person growing up in Virginia.

And then, scouring the county records, I found a series of maps made in the late 1820s. On one of the maps the name Edmund Stephenson jumped out. He was one of my direct ancestors, and nearby was property labeled the Warren tract, another line of my family. There they were, smack dab in the middle of the cauldron of terror and righteous anger that was the Nat Turner rebellion of 1831, one of the most fraught moments in American history.

John Stephenson, my 3rd great grandfather, was there, hunkered down with his family, or perhaps, hiding in the woods while many of his neighbors lay dead. When I stood on that hillock with my son, training my camera on the distant line of trees, I was unconsciously photographing my ancestral landscape, and I realize now, that I had been searching for this place my whole life.

Boykins, Southampton County – © Brian Rose

Drewryville, Southampton County – © Brian Rose

When Jefferson built Monticello and the University of Virginia campus, he placed columned temples in the wilderness of the Blue Ridge Mountains. They symbolized democracy, the enlightenment, and the quest for learning. They were built by enslaved labor. We have columned government buildings in Washington and countless civic buildings across the country including the Southampton County courthouse. The columns represent justice, fairness, and the rule of law. They stand in front of schools, retirement communities, hotels, you name it. And in the South, they graced the porticos of plantation mansions. In Drewryville, a school once stood here – now the columns are all that remain. We are just a few steps from the scene of Nat Turner's slave uprising. The contradictions and ironies abound.

Drewryville, Southampton County – © Brian Rose

Nat Turner's Cave, Southampton County – © Brian Rose

Having found the location of Turner's so-called cave, I skirted a locked gate and walked about a half mile on a sandy trail through a pine forest. In a clearing, a grove of trees and a bullet-riddled sign marked the spot where a fugitive Nat Turner hid out at the end of the slave uprising of 1831.

The Southampton Insurrection by William Sidney Drewry, 1909

Knowing then they would betray me, I immediately left my hiding place, and was pursued almost incessantly until I was taken a fortnight afterwards by Mr. Benjamin Phipps, in a little hole I had dug out with my sword, for the purpose of concealment, under the top of a fallen tree. On Mr. Phipps' discovering the place of my concealment, he cocked his gun and aimed at me. I requested him not to shoot and I would give up, upon which he demanded my sword. I delivered it to him, and he brought me to prison. During the time I was pursued, I had many hair breadth escapes, which your time will not permit you to relate. I am here loaded with chains, and willing to suffer the fate that awaits me. – Confessions of Nat Turner

There is no Nat Turner memorial in Southampton County. No museum or documentation center. There are only fragments of buildings, and Turner's sword remains under lock and key in the county courthouse. Primarily, there is the landscape, largely frozen in time, as memorial in itself. How do you photograph that which is missing? How do you fill in the gaps in the story? And how do I come to grips with the fact that my family and I are part of this story of violent retribution? In the adjacent picture, made somewhere along the trail of Turner's righteous path of destruction, a grove of mature trees marks where a farmhouse once stood. Sometimes absence and presence blend into one another, and the past and present conjoin and occupy the same ground.

My uncle had a hog buying business located in Courtland. It's still in the family, so I hear. He sold hogs to the big meatpackers in Smithfield back when it was Luters and Gwaltney. We got a genuine Smithfield ham every Christmas, and as a result, I acquired a taste for salt-cured pork made from pigs that were raised on Virginia peanuts, which are without argument, the best. This is stuff people on the Southside of the James fight about, and all the more power to them.

I shall not attempt to describe the effect of his narrative, as told and commented on by himself, in the condemned hole of the prison. The calm, deliberate composure with which he spoke of his late deeds and intentions, the expression of his fiend-like face when excited by enthusiasm, still bearing the stains of the blood of helpless innocence about him; clothed with rags and covered with chains; yet daring to raise his manacled hands to heaven, with a spirit soaring above the attributes of man; I looked on him and my blood curdled in my veins. – Confessions of Nat Turner

Two of the oldest buildings in Courtland were originally taverns directly across the street from the courthouse and the jail. This assemblage was the closest thing to an urban civic center in an otherwise rural county, and both were hotbeds of activity during the uprising and subsequent trial. The Courthouse was rebuilt a few years after the Turner rebellion, and the name of the town was changed from Jerusalem to Courtland. Supposedly, when the railroad connected the town to Norfolk, ladies making shopping trips complained that they were teased as "those Arabs from Jerusalem."

Across a parking lot next to the courthouse, the Southampton County Civil War Memorial stands among some pine trees. The shaft with soldier atop was erected in 1902, but a more recent plaque has the following inscription:

Not Forgotten

The two hundred and nineteen names that are engraved on the bricks before you are the men from Southampton County who gave their lives defending their family, friends and their homes from the Northern Invaders. They were killed in action or died from wounds or disease in the War of Northern Aggression 1861-1865. We honor their bravery and ultimate sacrifice. We will not forget their struggle to preserve the principles on which our country was founded.

The Rebecca Vaughan house, which originally stood abandoned in a field several miles from Courtland has been moved into town. The most recent property owner donated the house to the local historical society and it sits awkwardly behind the now-demolished Museum of Southampton History. It has been restored to a pristine condition, like the houses of Colonial Williamsburg, which seems, somehow, to hit a wrong note.

A sign leans up against one of the chimneys of the Vaughan House. “Its historical significance in our county history: The last house on the Insurrection Scene in which anyone was killed.”

Rebecca Vaughan is my 3rd cousin, six times removed.

When my mother left home at 16 years of age, she was taken under the wings of two women who groomed her to be a gracious southern lady. Bessie and Foxy were like surrogate family to me and my sister. Bessie had prize winning roses in her garden, and Foxy – Elizabeth Fox – was the widow of the mayor of Portsmouth, Virginia. When Foxy died, she left me a substantial sum of money, which enabled me to complete my first major photo project. While researching my family roots in Southampton County, out of curiosity, I looked up Foxy. To my astonishment, I discovered that she grew up here on Bride Street in Courtland. Nat Turner was hanged from a tree that once stood, more or less, in her front yard.

The time between this and your execution, will necessarily be very short; and your only hope must be in another world. The judgment of the court is, that you be taken hence to the jail from whence you came, thence to the place of execution, and on Friday next, between the hours of 10 A.M.and 2 P.M. be hung by the neck until you are dead! dead! dead! and may the Lord have mercy upon your soul. – Confessions of Nat Turner

Nat Turner is buried just off the street here – at least his torso – so says Rick Francis, the clerk of the court of Southampton County. "X marks the spot." There are many grisly stories about what happened to his body after his hanging. He was decapitated, skinned for purses and wallets, rendered for wagon wheel grease. Dr. Stephenson of Toana, Virginia, supposed possessed his skull which he acquired for medical study.

Dr. Stephenson, so I've discovered, is my second cousin three time removed.

The general public is not aware that the skeleton of old Nat Turner, the negro insurrectionist, who, in 1831, killed about fifty-five white people in Southampton county, Va., is preserved and now in the possession of Dr. H.U. Stephenson, at Toano. Dr. Stephenson received the skeleton from a son of Dr. S.B. Kellar. Dr. Kellar bought Nat's body, paying him $10 for it. The negro used his money in high living in jail at Jerusalem. After Turner was executed Dr. Kellar had the bones scraped and strung, and they have been used by medical students frequently since, Dr. Stephenson being the last. - Richmond Times

Several years after the Turner uprising, the railroad was built, connecting Jerusalem to the cities of Richmond and Norfolk. Three rail lines crossed Southampton County, providing passenger service and access to markets for the agriculture of the Virginia Southside. Coal trains passed through Courtland on the way to Norfolk where the black gold was shipped throughout the world.

The highways came, and trucks became the chief movers of farm products. Rail hubs like Courtland, lost much of their commerce, and the pace of life slowed like the sluggish Nottoway River flowing just behind the county courthouse. What remained – stubbornly – like an embarrassing tattoo, was the legacy of Nat Turner’s murderous uprising. Now, people like me ride on a chartered bus gawking at the mostly vanished remnants of that history.

At the end of the tour given by the county clerk, we entered a courtroom and he opened a rifle case on one of the counsel tables revealing the curved blade and ivory handle of Turner’s sword. For decades it has been largely hidden from view, but now the Southampton Historical Society is opening a museum that will house this artifact freighted with so much conflicting meaning and symbolism. It’s about time.

We need to see the sword, if not touch its steel edge, however blunted by the passage of time.

The Southampton Insurrection by William Sidney Drewry, 1909