Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 18, 1993 TAG: 9302180179
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: COURTLAND LENGTH: Medium
WITH OLD TENSIONS EASED, COUNTY MARKS SLAVE REVOLT
Cecelia Davis says she hears more about Nat Turner when she visits her sister in New York than from folks around Southampton County, where Turner led the nation's only open slave rebellion in 1831."When my sister's friends hear I'm from Southampton County, the first thing they say is something about Nat Turner," said Davis. "They say he was a runaway slave. He went around killing the white people."
Turner and his followers killed 56 white men, women and children in a 31-hour rampage that prompted a violent retribution in which white posses killed a greater number of slaves, many of them innocent.
The 150th anniversary of Turner's rebellion passed in August 1981 with no local commemoration. Garrett White, a former president of the county's historical society, said his proposal for a public discussion was strongly opposed.
But feelings seem to have eased since then, and the rebellion - sometimes called "Ole Nat's Fray" or "Nat's Civil War" - at last is being treated as history.
In November, a roadside marker describing the rebellion was erected, the first since the original marker was destroyed in a car wreck more than 15 years earlier.
The historical society, which paid $995 for the marker, also is making a videotape about Turner that shows the many houses still standing where whites were slain.
One of the videotape's narrators, Gilbert Francis, 73, had seven ancestors killed in the rebellion. If a slave named Red Nelson had not tipped off the Nathaniel Francis family, Gilbert Francis said, he never would have been born.
Local sentiment against Nat Turner persisted so long after the rebellion that Asphy Turner, a sixth-generation descendant, grew up ashamed of his blood connection.
"I felt proud of it in later years," said Turner, a retired farmer who lives near Capron. "In the early years, I didn't understand what he was headed for. He had a great purpose behind him."
In 1831, Southampton was a poor, rural county where blacks outnumbered whites 9,500 to 6,500. Almost one in five blacks were "free persons of color," an unusually high proportion of free blacks for the time.
Quakers and Methodists had preached that owning slaves was a sin, wrote Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Stephen B. Oates in "The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion."
Many Southampton residents had freed their slaves. But Nathaniel Turner, born Oct. 2, 1800, to a slave owned by Benjamin Turner, was not free.
By most accounts, Nat Turner led a better life than most slaves. Until about age 12, he played with his master's son, as was the custom. Along with the son, Nat was taught to read and to be a Christian.
Even his enemies would later say he was smart. He was flailed once for saying slaves should be free.
He and his wife, Cherry, were sold to separate owners after Benjamin Turner died, but both new owners were in Southampton County, so they still could see each other from time to time.
Francis blamed the rebellion on a change he said came over Turner from reading certain Scriptures. Nat was a slave preacher and often was called a prophet by other slaves.
In the summer of 1831, Turner saw a sign: The sun changed colors mysteriously, a fact much remarked on in papers at the time, and a black spot appeared on it.
The rebellion began with a feast by about five slaves, including Nat, on the evening of Aug. 21, 1831. At its peak, about 60 slaves joined in.
Probably a little before midnight, the original five or so marched toward the house of Nat's owners, the Joseph Travis family. The house still stands, unoccupied and dilapidated.
At the other slaves' insistence, Nat struck the first blow. But the ax glanced off Travis' head, and another slave killed him.
The rebellion ended 31 hours later when the militia arrived, but Nat was not captured for another three months. He took full responsibility for the revolt but refused to plead guilty. He was hanged.
"Before Nat died, he predicted there would be one more rain, then it would never rain again," Francis said.
There was a powerful thunderstorm the night he died, followed by a long drought. "It scared the hell out of white Christian believers," Francis said.