Several years ago I began visiting the sites of the Nat Turner slave revolt in Southampton County, Virginia. My interest began after teaching an early American slavery class and spending some time with the work the revolt, particularly Steven Oates’s The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner’s Fierce Rebellion and Kenneth
Greenburg’s Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory.[1] I was particularly spurred on by Irving Tragle’s older but still quite useful source book The Southampton Slave Revolt of 1831: A Compilation of Source Material, Including the Full Text of The Confessions of Nat Turner.[2] My goal was to locate what I could find of what survived of the old landscape and see what there was to see.
I brought a team of archaeology students there for the first time in 2003 (as memory serves) and we drove around guided by Tragle’s 1960s photos of then-still-surviving homes as well as some of his hand-drawn maps. I matched those up as best as possible with a county map and off we set to see what we could see. My reasoning was simple. If a building was still standing in the 1960s, there was at least a chance that it was still standing in 2003. We whirled up and down the region’s dusty roads stopping here and there and looking over the land. We even knocked on doors to see what local people knew. It was fascinating to hear how they spoke of the events and their landscape. This was particularly valuable to me as I had made a conscious choice to avoid the official arbiters of the landscape and its stories—a strategy I always employ and highly recommend. Learn a place first using your own resources and then only later turn to the “officials.”
After much valuable trial and error I was able to locate four buildings still on their sites—including the ruined Whitehead, Porter, and Edwards houses.
The Peter Edwards House in 2006. Now gone having been dismantled the following year by salvagers for its framing members sold to developers in northern Virginia.
Since then, subsequent annual trips have allowed me to see the loss of the Edward’s house and watch the ongoing decay of the Whitehead house. One benefit has been getting to know one local farmer and his wife. The family owns much of the land and some of the most important sites, but, as is so often the case, is not on good terms with the local official history folks. But, my farmer friend has been more than willing to grant me access to the site, share his collection of found objects and his and his family’s own life stories. He showed me the site where the former owner disposed of the old Whitehead family grave stones to gain more plowing space and is even willing to allow me to excavate some day perhaps. He invited Colonial Williamsburg architectural historian Matt Webster and I to do a sustained “crawl through” of the Whitehead House ruins–a considerable risk since the ruin could collapse at any moment. I also located the cellar hole of the Francis House, and a trip into the woods on the advice of another aged neighbor showed me the plywood-covered remains of the home which had been moved in the 1980s. Two other buildings survive, one restored and occupied by a Norfolk lawyer and the other, the Rebecca Vaughn House, was long ago moved to a park in Courtland and all but abandoned.
Over the years I have brought a few dozen students around the land, toured friends and professional colleagues, and even drove the Smithsonian’s Museum of African
The decaying remains of the Whitehead House. Hidden away far from the modern road system and on private land.
American history’s director Lonnie Bunch over hill and dale to see what might fit the museum’s needs (as far as I know, nothing much came of that adventure) But, I have not written about it. Why have I not done that? Like the nation, I have helped Turner continue his long imposed silence.
That question bugs me. The easy reason is that Ferry Farm and George Washington have kept me pretty busy. Another problem is that this might need to be a first person essay and that is a tricky thing. Mostly though it has been hard to see the hook, but I am getting close though, and this entry is part of getting those ducks in a row. Here is what I learned in preliminary form. For one thing, I am pretty sure that the ruins of the Porter House and the now lost Edwards House probably post-dated the revolt even though local stories set events there. For another thing, there is no real possibility of doing any meaningful historical preservation on this landscape. It is in fact virtually forgotten and entirely un-commemorated. Race and divisive local politics play a huge role in this fact, but there is as many have noted, a larger national lack of willingness to come to terms with Turner. Local memory is a carefully guarded commodity making treacherous political shoals. What it comes down to is that no one really wants to talk about Turner, and thus no one does, or at least when they do it all within a carefully constructed framework.
Nevertheless, what matters about this landscape still is its emotional power. I have seen people’s reactions and there are something. There is something amazing about standing by the ruins of the Whitehead House. Although it underwent some changes, study of its collapsing subfloor framing showed that at least that part dated to the late eighteenth century—this was indeed the house that Turner and his men visited. With some work and careful crawling I have made my way to the spot where Turner’s ally Hark cut off Katherine Whitehead’s head at her doorstep. We have seen what is said to be the chimney corner where Margaret Whitehead hid before Turner caught her and killed her a short ways away (this was the relationship William Styron’s novel made so problematic). If we believe the Thomas Gray account (which we currently do) then this is the only killing by the most famous slave rebel in American history. I have brought students to a very good guess about where that place is based on old road cuts and fence lines.
The front door of the Whitehead house. If a few good suppositions line up, this was a killing spot–perhaps the only one we can be sure of.
There is a rise just before the old house and it was on this hump that locals laid out the bloody remains of the Whitehead family after the revolt so that arriving militia men from other counties could get fired up before going off to exact revenge on what survived of the enslaved and free black population. A meaningful place, and people can still feel something there.
This sort of connection is the essence of historical landscapes. Feeling the past is what motivates most people to visit sites all over the nation. But not all sites are the same. Some are too troublesome (to borrow the word) to warrant attention. A century of neglect has done a good job in erasing what survived of an event most wanted to forget. For a while the Navy considered moving its airfields away from Norfolk to the more in-land Southampton. The move would have enclosed much of the Turner lands and made them unapproachable to the public. The plan was sidelined, for now. Gradually though, the last vestiges of this event are fading away.
Turner spoke so loudly that permanent silencing was his punishment.
[1] Steven Oates, The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner’s Fierce Rebellion (New York: Harper Perennial, 1990); Kenneth Greenburg, ed., Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
[2] Irving Tragle, ed.,The Southampton Slave Revolt of 1831: A Compilation of Source Material, Including the Full Text of The Confessions of Nat Turner (New York: Vintage Books 1973).
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Remnantology 
Hi Mr. Levy,
I just returned from my second visit to Southampton county in the past year. What I found there was a great surprise to me and will change the trajectory of my entire project. The Southampton County historical society has been working on a tour and visitor’s center/museum related to the rebellion for 6 or 7 years now, and new waysides have been popping up at sites as they are funded and produced. The foundation of my project on Nat Turner was fueled by the thought that the landscape was not being properly commerorated and interpreted. Getting to know those working on doing just that, though, has been invaluable. I will now be consulting and conducting research for inclusion in this larger ongoing project being undertaken in Southampton. I hope we can be in touch to discuss this further!
Michele, send me an email and let’s chat.
It’s a shame all of the homes Turner killed in wasn’t saved.a berry important part of history is being erased.
Hello – I’m a life-long Virginian, a playwright whose focus has been on Virginia history. When I was 16 I discovered Nat Turner at a family gathering in Courtland, Va. Up until then, I had not heard of Nat. That was in 1968. My maternal great grandparents were from Southampton, County – their last name was Turner, I was attending a white Turner family gathering where kids several years younger than me took me to the site where Nat was hung and then they gleefully, menacingly and gruesomely told me this man, Nat Turner – had been hung, his head cut off and his body skinned. I was horrified. I asked what did this man do? When they realized I didn’t know who Nat was they told me that all too familiar phrase – “he was a slave who killed a bunch of white people and he got what we he deserved” – I was relieved because for a few moments I thought he might be a past Turner relative of mine. I was relieved and then I became angry – because these kids knew this history and I didn’t – I wasn’t taught it school. A life-time has passed since then but for awhile after that incident I was haunted by Nat Turner. I didn’t become a writer until 1998. Another lifetime has passed since then. In 2008 I began researching Nat’s story. I went to Southampton because places and spaces tell much of a story if we let them. I began by meeting with the head of the historical society there. I was sitting in her living room, in a house on the street just a few doors down from where I attended that party. I didn’t tell her, just got the information. I also interviewed James McGee and did some work at the library and spoke to locals. I wrote my play that year, revised it after some workshop productions, got it published and this summer it finally made it’s way across the country and played in California twice, It’s was a sucess and this cross country viewing has been the trigger that finally allowed me to look into my genealogy. I had wondered if my Southampton family was there during the rebellion. But I didn’t want to know until I knew my play was the way it should be without any personal bias. Last week, I found in the search my 5th great grand mother was Catherine Whitehead. I was shocked, I began wondering was it really Nat Turner who haunted me all those years ago, or was it Missy Whitehead, my 4th great aunt, who Nat had bludgeoned to death – was she haunting me to find and tell her story. I’m still trying to process this inforamation. I’m doing Google searches and I came across this blog and felt I had contact you. This piece spoke to me like nothing else I’ve come across. Perhaps we could talk sometime . . .
Dr. Levy – I recently discovery that Catherine Whitehead is my great, great, great, great grandmother, so I read your blog with great interest, but by the end I felt gravely wounded by the idea of my relatives mutilated bodies being laid out to enrage arriving militias (I would like to know your source for this information) and that their headstones are in a heap with rubbish. I am also distressed that the sites have not been preserved. I just recently purschase an undeveloped 4.8 acre lot on Porter House Rd where I plan to create, with the imput of others, a Mememorial and Unity Garden – since the graves of my ancestor and other relatives were plowed under. The garden will honor all lost lives during the insurrectrion and will open as a natural refuge for visitors stop and reflect. It will also be used for art and historical presentations to increase awareness, burn up errors with the truth and build bridges. Locals will be invited to give input, I will be working with a nearby Juneteenth Organization, and local historians. I have contacted Sarah Roth with the Nat Turner Project and she is interested. I thought perhaps you might be interested as well. Just learned of Kelly Fanto Deetz interest in the need for mememorialization and will be contacting her as well. Thank for your work.