![]() The family’s patriarch was a doctor in Richmond, Virginia, in the early 20th century. The administrator’s family had kept it in a closet for decades. Hatcher had received the skull from two Indiana civil rights activists, a husband and wife who themselves had gotten the skull from a longtime school administrator in Indiana. That night, he unveiled what would be the museum’s centerpiece: the skull of Nat Turner. Hatcher held a fundraising gala for a project he hoped to usher to fruition, the National Civil Rights Hall of Fame. In 2002, a former mayor of Gary named Richard G. There are multiple theories about where it ended up, but one skull believed to be his is now in a laboratory at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., after a bizarre detour through Gary, Indiana.Īnd the Smithsonian scientists aren’t saying what they’ve found so far. No less certain is the fate of Turner’s skull. Another contemporary source remembered his headless body being buried. Drewry said a local doctor took possession of his skeleton. The sources disagree on the fate of Turner’s corpse from the neck down. Many of them had been alive during the attacks. His flesh was made into grease, according to “The Southampton Insurrection,” by William Drewry, a Southampton native who interviewed more than 80 white and Black residents for that 1900 volume. Multiple sources say his head was separated from the rest of his body, which was skinned. Library of CongressĪfter Turner’s death, local doctors mutilated his corpse. An 1831 woodcut depicted Nat Turner’s insurrection. His legacy is complex - diminished in death to ornaments, and lauded then and now as a freedom fighter.ĭiscovering whether part of him still physically exists will illuminate a formative era in American history and help an expansive family find closure in an honored memorial. His deeds have proven to be an enduring episode that still stirs emotion. His numerous descendants have fanned out from a rural pocket of Tidewater. Nat Turner looms large 190 years after his death. The uncertain identity of those remains invites reflection on the historical mistreatment of human lives and bodies. But available evidence strongly suggests that this sordid tale had a gruesome appendix, and there began the mystery of what happened to Nat Turner’s body, and whether part of it now resides in a lab of the Smithsonian Institution. Many facts, such as the precise number of people who died in the insurrection and subsequent reprisals, will never be known. He was taken to the county seat, then called Jerusalem (now Courtland), tried, convicted and hanged. Turner fled and remained in hiding for more than two months until his discovery and capture by a local farmer. Well-armed militiamen arrived and within two days crushed the revolt. Over the next two days, he and a growing band of rebels hacked and clubbed to death upwards of 55 white people - men, women and children alike.Īlarm spread through the countryside, and the rebels lost the element of surprise. 21, 1831, Nat Turner, a 30-year-old, literate, enslaved preacher, launched a rebellion in Southampton County, intending to strike a fatal blow to the institution of slavery. University of Virginia Libraryīeginning late on the night of Aug. ![]()
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