![]() ”The sword he used, we think, is in the hands of the Southampton Historical Society, and they don’t want anyone to see it,” Newby-Alexander said. Holcomb is trying to collect artifacts to illustrate that hopelessness: leg and wrist irons for slave men and women, personal slave histories, drawings of slave quarters. So instead of trying to tell Turner’s story, Holcomb’s museum will tell the brutally oppressive story of what slave life was like – the sense of hopelessness from which Turner’s rebellion sprang. Holcomb said he believes the Bible used by Turner still exists but doesn’t know its whereabouts. The lack of a detailed personal history and of any Turner belongings or other artifacts poses a challenge for Holcomb’s planned museum. While the gruesome story of the uprising and its aftermath has been told often, little is known about Turner’s personal life. Lamp shades and pocketbooks were made from his skin, Newby-Alexander said. The bones were distributed and body fat was used to make soap. After his execution, Turner’s body was torn apart: It was stripped of skin and boiled, Newby-Alexander said. He and 27 other rebel slaves were tried, and Turner and 15 others were hanged. ![]() Turner escaped, but he was captured six weeks later. In retaliation, white Southampton residents killed about 200 blacks – not all of them participants in the uprising. When it was over, nearly 60 whites had been murdered. Turner was convinced that once word spread of his uprising, blacks throughout the South would throw off the bond of slavery. Minutes later, all five sleeping family members were dead.įrom there, more than 60 slaves armed themselves with axes, swords and other weapons and roamed Southampton County for 31 hours. He climbed a ladder and crawled through a second-story window of the home of his owners, the Travis family. ![]() 21, 1831, the 31-year-old man organized a band of other slaves in an effort he hoped would liberate all his enslaved brethren in the South. Turner’s Southampton County uprising is well documented. An adjoining restaurant and convenience store also will provide refreshments. Holcomb has established the Nat Turner Historical Society and has launched a fund-raising campaign to build a museum to the legendary figure – a place that will give visitors a sense of the grinding hopelessness that prompted Turner’s murderous rampage. ![]() The 77-year-old history buff envisions something much more. A number of books and videotapes – including one filmed by Holcomb in 1995 – can be checked out at your local library. The privately owned home of Turner’s murdered owners was bulldozed into a pit a few years ago. Right now, the only thing to alert passers-by to the scene of the only armed slave uprising in American history is a metal highway marker. Squire Holcomb is an unlikely advocate for the memory of Nat Turner, the 19th-century slave who led a short-lived but bloody rebellion.īut Holcomb is pressing forward in highlighting a piece of Virginia history that people now living in Southampton, where Turner triggered a small race war, have done little to claim as their own. As a white senior citizen who doesn’t even live in Southampton County, Stanley E.
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