After much research and soul searching, I made an exploratory journey to Southampton County in southern Virginia. 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, thankfully, a Starbucks. Down the road that parallels the freeway, the Blue Star Highway, I found Los Compadres Mexican. The crowd was Trumpy looking – 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.

Stony Creek, Virginia, 2014 – © 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. More on that later.

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.

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 road. There aren’t many structures still standing from 1831, but the landscape remains relatively unchanged and relatively undeveloped. This is Cross Keys, at the center of Turner’s meandering path across the countryside. It was not a town – there were none in those days – save for Jerusalem, the county seat about eight miles away.

This is what is left of the Richard Porter house, where a young enslaved girl warned the family of Turner’s approaching band, and they were able 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.

My connection to the story of Nat Turner’s slave rebellion – one of my connections I should say – concerns this small house. Rebecca Vaughan, one of the victims of Turner’s rampage through the Virginia countryside, is my 3rd cousin six times removed. The house once stood abandoned in a field several miles from Courtland, previously called Jerusalem. The current property owner donated the house to the local historical society and it now sits awkwardly behind the now-closed Museum of Southampton History. It has been restored to a pristine condition, which seems, somehow, to hit a wrong note.

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

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.

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 relatiation 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 down stairs, 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

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.

I was told about an artist in Capron who painted scenes relating to the Nat Turner insurrection. I took a few pictures along the main street of the town including this one of the abandoned passenger train station. Behind me a few doors down I saw someone in his front yard and asked if he knew of a well-known artist in Capron. He said he lives right here next door. I did something I rarely do, I walked straight up and knocked on his door.

Mr. James Magee ushered me into his parlor and called for his wife and daughter to sit with us. He was a tall, thin, Black man – 94 years old – with a soft Virginia accent, and he asked why I had come, and how I had found him. We talked for about a half hour. He was disdainful of the tour I had taken retracing the path of Nat Turner and his compatriots, but eager to engage in conversation. He then showed me around his house full of antiques, two rooms of books, African-inspired art, his studio, and his paintings – large realistic paintings of historical events. They were painted with an astonishing vigor, powerful, disturbing, but beautiful.

He made it clear from the moment I sat down that I was not to photograph anything. The image above, greatly enlarged, was the only one I could find on the internet. None of his paintings have been sold. None are in public collections. McGee said his wife and daughter would take care of his legacy. I told him about my relationship to Rebecca Vaughan, one of Turner’s victims. 3rd cousin six times removed sounds close I said, or not so close. Whatever the case, Rick Francis told me on the tour bus that I was the closest relative to Vaughan he had yet encountered.

McGee was not convinced that the Southampton County Historic Society had the real Rebecca Vaughan house, but I couldn’t see any reason why they would make something up like that. It was evident that McGee was beginning to wrap up our visit. He told me that he would show me the upstairs of his house when I made my next visit, which I took as an invitation to return. He then reached for the knob of a battered door that was hinged to the wall but did not open or close on an actual doorway. It merely swung on the wall. McGee looked at me with a penetrating stare and exclaimed dramatically, “This is the door of the Rebecca Vaughan house!

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, a past that was essentially a black hole. No grandparents on either side of the family. They had died young, at least on my father’s side. My mother did actually run away when she was 16, and as a result, I had no contact with 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.” It was the first song I ever recorded and appeared in the Fast Folk Musical Magazine in 1981.

Despite this bolt out of the blue that hinted, unconsciously, a connection to the infamous Nat Turner insurrection, I did not pursue it, and in those days, there were few ways to trace family history short of going to local courthouses and libraries and doing painstaking research. I was familiar with the Turner story having read William Styron’s “Confessions of Nat Turner” when in high school. The book made a lasting impression on me, and I related to Styron himself, who had left Virginia for New York City and a literary career. Moreover, I was aware that my uncle’s hog trucking business was located in Courtland, Virginia, the Southampton County seat, and originally called Jerusalem. Capturing Jerusalem was undoubtedly the proximate goal of Nat Turner as he led his band of rebels from farm to farm across the county. My father, who never said much about his upbringing in Walters, Virginia – located about 15 miles from Courtland – but he told me once that he remembers as a child waking one night to the terrifying sight of a cross aflame in the yard of his house. He could not explain why or whether the Roses were being targeted by the KKK. It remains a mystery.

During the Covid pandemic of 2020 I began researching my family roots online. I quickly discovered that my mother’s side of the family had come to Virginia from Mississippi and that my great, great, great, grandfather had been killed in the Battle of Vicksburg fighting on the side of the South. On my father’s side, however, the trail back in time was more difficult, as the genealogy work done by others only took me so far. So, I began the slow process of tracking down documents and making connections on my own. A few generations back, I followed the trail to the Doyals of Southampton County. My 3rd great-grandfather was Richard Doyal.

We again divided, part going to Mr. Richard Porter’s, and from thence to Nathaniel Francis’, the others to Mr. Howell Harris’, and Mr. T. Doyles. On my reaching Mr. Porter’s, he had escaped with his family. I understood there, that the alarm had already spread, and I immediately returned to bring up those sent to Mr. Doyles, and Mr. Howell Harris’; the party I left going on to Mr. Francis’, having told them I would join them in that neighborhood. I met these sent to Mr. Doyles’ and Mr. Harris’ returning, having met Mr. Doyle on the road and killed him…