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Dr. Stephen Graham's Narration of the “ Duplin Insurrection ”: Additional Evidence of the Impact of Nat Turner

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Lynn Veach Sadler
Lynn Veach Sadler
Affiliation:
Director of the Humanities Division, Bennett College, Greensboro,North Carolina.
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Extract

When Liberty Hall, as it came to be called, the ancestral home of the Kenan family, was being restored some years ago in Kenansville (Duplin County), North Carolina, among the many books left in the library was discovered an accounts ledger used by two members of the Chauncey Graham family. The most significant feature of this complex book is the obscurely-entered, first-hand account of a supposed slave insurrection and its consequences. The author is Dr. Stephen Graham, and the uprising that he depicts in Kenansville can be linked to the furor unleashed by the Nat Turner rebellion.

The ledger is approximately fifteen inches long and six inches wide. Its dark binding remains intact; but the front and back, both of which contain longhand notations and arithmetical calculations, are practically illegible now.

Inside, the owner is identified as Chauncey Graham [Jr.]; and the book is said to have been started in January 1800 in Murfreesboro, North Carolina. Dr. Graham recorded his patients' names, the work he did for them (e.g., extracting teeth), and prescriptions he gave them, as well as the ways by which he was paid (e.g., four pounds of butter; one cord of wood; or, less frequently, by cash).

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , December 1978 , pp. 359 - 367
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

1 The Grahams became related to the Kenans by marriage. The ledger was brought to my attention by Mrs. Mattie Barbee, one of the curators of Liberty Hall. I should like to thank her as well as Mr. Thomas S. Kenan III, who has kindly given me permission to use the journal.

2 Also housed in the library of Liberty Hall is a copy of Carpenter, Helen Graham, The Reverend John Graham of Woodbury, Connecticut and His Descendants (Chicago: The Monastery Hill Press, 1942)Google Scholar. I am indebted to this work for the information about the Grahams.

3 Page 99 (Numbers in the ledger are provided by the respective writer.) This entry has no specific date but appears between entries for the “ 3 & 4 Oct.” and “ Oct. 15th,” with the year 1831 provided as is customary throughout, at the top of page.

4 See Taylor, Rosser Howard, “ Slaveholding in North Carolina: An Economic View. ” The James Sprunt Historical Publications, 18 (1926), 5–103Google Scholar.

5 See Taylor, , “ Slave Conspiracies in North Carolina,” North Carolina Historical Review, 5 (1928), 25Google Scholar; and Aptheker, Herbert, American Negro Slave Revolts (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1943), p. 209Google Scholar.

6 See Aptheker, p. 103; Taylor, “ Slave Conspiracies in North Carolina,” pp. 27–29; and Oates, Stephen B., The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), p. 134Google Scholar.

7 Aptheker, , Nat Turner's Slave Rebellion (New York: Humanities Press, 1966), pp. 28–29Google Scholar; and Johnson, F. Roy, The Nat Turner Slave Insurrection (Murfreesboro, N.C.: Johnson Publishing Co., 1966), p. 161Google Scholar.

8 Raper, Derris Lea, “ The Effects of David Walker's Appeal and Nat Turner's Insurrection on North Carolina,” Master's Thesis, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, 1969), p. 48Google Scholar.

9 From approximately 23 August to 14 October. Housed in the State Department of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina.

10 These are summarized in Elliott, Robert N., “ The Nat Turner Insurrection as Reported in the North Carolina Press,” North Carolina Historical Review, 38 (1961), 1–18Google Scholar; and in Foner, Eric, ed., Nat Turner, Great Lives Observed Series (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1971)Google Scholar.

11 See Elliott and Raper.

12 In a letter to Samuel Langdon, 19 09 1831, cited in Raper, p. 66.

13 Cited in Raper, p. 67.

14 Raper, p. 96, cites the affidavit of Colonel Wright housed among Governor Stokes's papers, the State Department of Archives and History, Raleigh, North Carolina.

15 As will be seen, Dr. Graham is inconsistent in, his spelling of “ Morrisay ” and refers to him throughout as “ Colonel ” Morrisay. On the other hand, an extra put out by the Carolina Observer of Fayetteville, North Carolina (14 09 1831), for example, identifies him as “ Thomas K. Morrisey,” the “ sheriff ” of Sampson County.

16 The Carolina Observer of 14 09 1831 says that a “ free mulatto man ” made known Dave's plot.

17 A dispatch from Major General Nathan B. Whitfield, of Lenoir County, to Governor Montfort Stokes, in the North Carolina Archives, says that the slaughter was to begin 1 October. Contrastingly, the Carolina Observer of 14 September 1831 cites the target date as 4 October.