Nat Turner: Whites Massacred
Courtland, Virginia
On August 21, 1831, Nat Turner led a small army of Southampton County enslaved people, and some free blacks as well, in a bloody uprising. Over 50 whites were killed, and the last four died at this site: widow Rebecca Vaughn, her niece, one of her sons, and a plantation overseer. A sign outside the house calls it, "The last house on the Insurrection Scene in which anyone was killed." Over subsequent days vengeful whites killed many blacks, but apparently none in houses. Turner himself was tried, convicted, and hanged by November of the same year.
In 2004 the building was moved here from its original spot on County Road 658, several miles southwest of town. It is slowly being restored, and may be the only murder structure surviving from Nat Turner's grisly rebellion.