The distance was so great and Point Peter was so well concealed that he could successfully kill these troops and avoid being captured by them. Timothy Bloodworth was born in North Carolina and began designing muskets and bayonets for the Continental Army in 1776, carrying on his father's expertise and using the hollow tree to his advantage against the redcoats in the town. And so they shot their two-ounce balls at the redcoats and were successful in their hidden ambush. He and his teenage son at the time, Thomas, set up camp for two weeks in that tree and created an opening targeting Market Dock, where the British troops tended to assemble themselves. He did just that, and made a rifle of uncommon length and caliber. When Colonel Bloodworth discovered this tree, he believed he could create a rifle to pick off British troops in the town while remaining concealed and far from danger. The Bloodworths were mechanical experts and worked handily with metals to create swords, pistols, and rifles. However, Patriot Colonel Alexander Lillington used it to reach these loyalist troops and marched his minutemen down this historic road on their way to fight the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge, where North Carolina Revolutionaries proved victorious over Southern Loyalists.Ĭolonel Timothy Bloodworth (sometimes spelled Bludworth) discovered a hollow tree 7 feet in diameter at Point Peter on Negro Head Road. Negro Head Road was used by Loyalists to safely reach the sea and rendezvous with arriving British forces. Troops were encamped on Nigger head road – about the boundary of the City of Wilmington N.C.", and that they remained there from the time that he got to Wilmington in July 1864 to the end of the war, in May, 1865. The location is now a street named Blackhead Signpost Road. Peter Churchill was a runaway prisoner of the American Civil War. TIL that in 1831 after the Nat Turner slave revolt, in an effort to intimidate potential imitators, militia men severed those involved in the rebellion and placed their heads on sticks at a crossroads. They were beaten and tortured and forced to " confess". There is no proof that the men were involved or planning anything. This display was also used to warn children of how to treat whites and what would happen if they did not behave, creating a scared and submissive younger generation at the time. Their heads, too, were staked and placed along the road, with one at Point Peter, marking the entrance to Negro Head Road. In Wilmington, 15 blacks were arrested, and 6 were found guilty and killed. These slaves would be marched through the road, forced to look at the display, as a clear threat of what would happen to them if they misbehaved. Their heads were then staked on poles and placed along the road as a warning to other slaves. Dave was tortured into admitting that he was the leader of this revolt, and he and his accomplice, Jim, were killed and decapitated. In Wilmington, they planned to meet up with over 2,000 other slaves and free blacks to continue their killing raid. Morrisey, was planning to march to Wilmington with a group of conspirators, killing white land owners on the way. A slave named Dave, who belonged to Sheriff Thomas K. After the Nat Turner slave rebellion in Virginia, a similar slave revolt was building in Wilmington. In late August of 1831 in Southampton County Virginia, the 30-year-old slave Nat Turner, inspired by visions and signs, led a group of other slave rebels –eventually more than forty – who began to kill all of the white people they encountered.īy the time the rebel force was captured, some 55-60 white people had died.Negro Head Road ran from Point Peter in New Hanover County to Duplin County, opposite of Wilmington, North Carolina. White mobs responded by rounding up some 200 blacks (none of whom were known to have been involved at all), who were burned alive, beheaded, and/or lynched. Severed heads were mounted on stakes along a country road, the location of which is still identified as Blackhead Signpost Road. Turner had initially escaped, but was eventually discovered, tried, and sentenced to die. For the first time in a long and racialised history, the Confederate battle. He was hanged on November 11, 1831, decapitated, and skinned. Tim Kaine: Change the names of Blackhead Signpost Rd and Hanging Tree. Strips of his skin were used to make souvenir purses. In the aftermath of the slave rebellion, the Virginia General Assembly passed new legislation making it unlawful to teach slaves, free blacks, or mulattoes to read or write. The General Assembly also passed a law restricting all blacks from holding religious meetings without the presence of a licensed white minister. Other slave-holding states across the South enacted similar laws restricting activities of slaves and free blacks. In 1991, the Virginia Department of Historic Resources erected the not entirely accurate marker shown below in Cross Keys, Virginia, in Southampton County.
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