This year is the 200th anniversary of his birth. The New Yorker ran a long feature in December, professors at two elite universities are about to publish years of work, and a Williamsburg writer plans to post a book on the Internet. Some of this work gathered by outsiders occasionally boomerangs and raises eyebrows in Southampton County. Rick never heard his Dad say that. Rick drives down a dirt road and pulls the Suburban onto the shoulder next to a murky bog.
Sunlight glares through the holly and scrubby pines surrounding the water.
This is Cabin Pond, where Turner and his first half-dozen recruits met to plan the raids. The text was written in 1900 by William Sidney Drewry, a scholar doing post-graduate work at Johns Hopkins University. Most early historical accounts sought to ease white fears by depicting the insurrection as one man's fanatical mission, and Drewry's was no exception. His words often strain to portray Southampton County slaveholders as benevolent, but Drewry's book is considered among the most accurate works on Turner. The author had the chance to gather oral history and speak with some who remembered the raid.