Words of the formerly enslaved will be shared in a lecture at Bennett Place State Historic Site on Thursday, Feb. 16, from 6:30 to 9 p.m. The presentation, "The First Year of Freedom in North Carolina: Pursuing Freedom with the Hoe and the Sword, the Book and the Lord," by Dr. Reginald Hildebrand of UNC-Chapel Hill, will offer first-hand accounts based on his research.
Among experiences documented are reports of black soldiers entering Wilmington who participated in the Union capture of Fort Fisher in February 1865, the first July 4th celebration by the newly independent former slaves and recollections of a watch night service to mark both the New Year and the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.
The program, hosted by the Durham Civil War Roundtable and the Bennett Place Support Fund, is free to members and has a $5 fee for visitors. The lecture is part of the Civil War Sesquicentennial Commemoration organized by the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources.
This and other special events at Bennett Place are funded and sponsored by the Bennett Place Support Fund, Inc., a nonprofit which provides additional funding to this historic site. For information, visit Bennett Place.
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Showing posts with label Civil War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Civil War. Show all posts
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Author to speak on a slave escape from a Durham plantation
In 1848, Mary Walker fled slavery and the plantation that is now Historic Stagville in Durham, leaving behind her son and daughter. She spent 17 years trying to recover her family.
Dr. Syd Nathans, professor emeritus with Duke University, tells of Walker's remarkable ordeal in the book "To Free A Family: The Journey of Mary Walker" at Historic Stagville on Sunday, Feb. 12, at 2 p.m., and at the N.C. Museum of History in Raleigh, on Monday, Feb. 13, at 11 a.m. The programs are free.
The tale of Mary Walker is representative of the secret labors of hundreds of women escaping bondage and trying to reclaim their families in the South. The story is also the basis for the Addy Walker doll in the American Girl doll collection.
Two extraordinary collections provide the basis for the story—the letters and diaries of Walker's former North Carolina slaveholders and those of the northern family who protected and employed her. In spite of her persistence and the assistance of black and white abolitionists, she was not reunited with her children until the end of the Civil War.
The programs are sponsored by the N.C. African American Heritage Commission, whose mission is to preserve, protect and promote North Carolina's African American history, arts and culture for all people. The AAHC is affiliated with the Department of Cultural Resources.
For additional information call Michelle Lanier at (919) 477-7103. The Division of
State Historic Sites and the Division of State History Museums are within the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources.
Dr. Syd Nathans, professor emeritus with Duke University, tells of Walker's remarkable ordeal in the book "To Free A Family: The Journey of Mary Walker" at Historic Stagville on Sunday, Feb. 12, at 2 p.m., and at the N.C. Museum of History in Raleigh, on Monday, Feb. 13, at 11 a.m. The programs are free.
The tale of Mary Walker is representative of the secret labors of hundreds of women escaping bondage and trying to reclaim their families in the South. The story is also the basis for the Addy Walker doll in the American Girl doll collection.
Two extraordinary collections provide the basis for the story—the letters and diaries of Walker's former North Carolina slaveholders and those of the northern family who protected and employed her. In spite of her persistence and the assistance of black and white abolitionists, she was not reunited with her children until the end of the Civil War.
The programs are sponsored by the N.C. African American Heritage Commission, whose mission is to preserve, protect and promote North Carolina's African American history, arts and culture for all people. The AAHC is affiliated with the Department of Cultural Resources.
For additional information call Michelle Lanier at (919) 477-7103. The Division of
State Historic Sites and the Division of State History Museums are within the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
‘Visual mythologist’ Lynn Marshall-Linnemeier brings exhibition to Stone Center gallery
From Feb. 9 to April 30, the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will feature the work of artist Lynn Marshall-Linnemeier in an exhibition titled “Dry Run: Defining Determination, Testing Reconstruction.”
On display in the center’s Robert and Sallie Brown Gallery and Museum, Marshall-Linnemeier’s latest work uses the Penn Center papers and photographs held in the Southern Historical Collection of UNC’s Wilson Library.
As with previous work, “Dry Run” is inspired by her travels to Mound Bayou, Miss., the largest predominantly African American town in the United States. The exhibition explores notions of experimentation, reconstruction and the idea of self-determination through images of the experimental plantations set up by the Union government at Davis Bend (where the founders of Mound Bayou were enslaved) and Port Royal, during the Civil War.
Marshall-Linnemeier was inspired by the unique history of both places and how and by whom self-determination was defined.
She re-imagines the experimental plantation space by manipulating archival photographs that include stereographic images. Her visual narratives explore myth, spirituality and memory through vivid paintings, collages and textile works. She focuses on toural communities—rural agricultural communities that rely on and/or are developing tourism—urban enclaves and indigenous communities observing culturally significant connections that are often overlooked.
An honors graduate of the Atlanta College of Art (Presidential Scholar), Marshall-Linnemeier received a Master of Arts degree in Southern studies in 2005 from the University of Mississippi. She has received numerous awards and her work is held in various collections including the High Museum of Art in Altlanta, Atlanta University and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
An opening reception for the exhibition featuring a talk by Marshall-Linnemeier will be held on Thursday, Feb. 9, at 7 p.m. at the Stone Center. The reception is free and open to the public.
“Dry Run: Defining Determination, Testing Reconstruction” will be on display through April 30. The gallery is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. or by appointment. For information on the exhibition, call (919) 962-9001 or visit the website.
On display in the center’s Robert and Sallie Brown Gallery and Museum, Marshall-Linnemeier’s latest work uses the Penn Center papers and photographs held in the Southern Historical Collection of UNC’s Wilson Library.
As with previous work, “Dry Run” is inspired by her travels to Mound Bayou, Miss., the largest predominantly African American town in the United States. The exhibition explores notions of experimentation, reconstruction and the idea of self-determination through images of the experimental plantations set up by the Union government at Davis Bend (where the founders of Mound Bayou were enslaved) and Port Royal, during the Civil War.
Marshall-Linnemeier was inspired by the unique history of both places and how and by whom self-determination was defined.
She re-imagines the experimental plantation space by manipulating archival photographs that include stereographic images. Her visual narratives explore myth, spirituality and memory through vivid paintings, collages and textile works. She focuses on toural communities—rural agricultural communities that rely on and/or are developing tourism—urban enclaves and indigenous communities observing culturally significant connections that are often overlooked.
An honors graduate of the Atlanta College of Art (Presidential Scholar), Marshall-Linnemeier received a Master of Arts degree in Southern studies in 2005 from the University of Mississippi. She has received numerous awards and her work is held in various collections including the High Museum of Art in Altlanta, Atlanta University and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
An opening reception for the exhibition featuring a talk by Marshall-Linnemeier will be held on Thursday, Feb. 9, at 7 p.m. at the Stone Center. The reception is free and open to the public.
“Dry Run: Defining Determination, Testing Reconstruction” will be on display through April 30. The gallery is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. or by appointment. For information on the exhibition, call (919) 962-9001 or visit the website.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Events mark the Civil War arrival in North Carolina in 1862
This year marks the 150th anniversary of when the Civil War came home to North Carolina in 1862. Union Gen. Ambrose Burnside captured Roanoke Island in February, New Bern in March and Fort Macon in April. Takeover of North Carolina's coast was meant to stop supplies to the Confederate Army through the state's ports.
On the 150th anniversary, those events and many others will be reviewed in a series of programs at historic sites and museums statewide.
"The Lights of the Great Armada: The 147th Anniversary of the Battle of Fort Fisher," Jan. 21 to 22, will focus on the Navy and Marines and the maritime war. Small arm and artillery demonstrations, presentations by U.S. Coast Guard Chief Historian Dr. Robert Browning, U.S. Marine Corps Historical Company representatives Larry Bopp and Steve Bockmiller, and N.C. Department of Cultural Resources Deputy State Archaeologist Mark Wilde-Ramsing, are among activities scheduled.
Two programs in Durham focusing on the enslaved are scheduled for February. At Historic Stagville on Feb. 12, "To Free A Family" will include a free lecture and book signing by Dr. Sydney Nathans, Duke University history professor emeritus. At Bennett Place on Feb. 16, Reginald Hildebrand, UNC-Chapel Hill historian, will lecture on "The First Year of Freedom in North Carolina: Pursuing Freedom with the Hoe and the Sword, the Book and the Lord." Admission will be charged.
A symposium, "Thunder in the East: The Civil War in Eastern North Carolina," will be presented by Tryon Palace and the New Bern Historical Society on March 10, featuring Civil War historians Ed Bearrs and Mark Bradley, and Hari Jones, curator of the African American Civil War Memorial and Museum in Washington, D.C. It is one of the events in the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources Civil War Sesquicentennial Commemoration (Civil War 150).
A Civil War medical program, "War So Terrible," at Bentonville Battlefield in Four Oaks on March 17 and 18, will compare and contrast medical practices of the Civil War to 21st century treatment in Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S. Army and Marine Corps triage units will participate dependent on availability. Candlelight tours of the Harper House, which served as a field hospital in 1865, will allow visitors to see the medical setting and experience the search for a loved one at that time.
The exhibit, "Watched by Sound and Sea: Occupied Beaufort, 1862" continues at the N.C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort through September. It features artifacts from the period and will present a speaker each month.
The April 26 through 28 "Flags Over Hatteras" Symposium will feature historians James McPherson, Ed Bearss, Craig Symonds and others speaking at the Hatteras Village Civic Center. A Civil War Trails marker will be unveiled during the weekend, and the "Flags Over Hatteras" exhibit will continue through July at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum.
Other lectures and programs will occur during the year and through April 2015. A traveling photography exhibit "Freedom, Sacrifice, Memory: The Civil War Sesquicentennial Photography Exhibit" is visiting libraries and museums in the state through May 2013.
The N.C. Office of Archives and History oversees the state's sesquicentennial observance, which includes production of posters, symposia, a vehicle license plate, an atlas and other books, and other commemorative activities through 2015. The Office of Archives and History is part of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources.
On the 150th anniversary, those events and many others will be reviewed in a series of programs at historic sites and museums statewide.
"The Lights of the Great Armada: The 147th Anniversary of the Battle of Fort Fisher," Jan. 21 to 22, will focus on the Navy and Marines and the maritime war. Small arm and artillery demonstrations, presentations by U.S. Coast Guard Chief Historian Dr. Robert Browning, U.S. Marine Corps Historical Company representatives Larry Bopp and Steve Bockmiller, and N.C. Department of Cultural Resources Deputy State Archaeologist Mark Wilde-Ramsing, are among activities scheduled.
Two programs in Durham focusing on the enslaved are scheduled for February. At Historic Stagville on Feb. 12, "To Free A Family" will include a free lecture and book signing by Dr. Sydney Nathans, Duke University history professor emeritus. At Bennett Place on Feb. 16, Reginald Hildebrand, UNC-Chapel Hill historian, will lecture on "The First Year of Freedom in North Carolina: Pursuing Freedom with the Hoe and the Sword, the Book and the Lord." Admission will be charged.
A symposium, "Thunder in the East: The Civil War in Eastern North Carolina," will be presented by Tryon Palace and the New Bern Historical Society on March 10, featuring Civil War historians Ed Bearrs and Mark Bradley, and Hari Jones, curator of the African American Civil War Memorial and Museum in Washington, D.C. It is one of the events in the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources Civil War Sesquicentennial Commemoration (Civil War 150).
A Civil War medical program, "War So Terrible," at Bentonville Battlefield in Four Oaks on March 17 and 18, will compare and contrast medical practices of the Civil War to 21st century treatment in Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S. Army and Marine Corps triage units will participate dependent on availability. Candlelight tours of the Harper House, which served as a field hospital in 1865, will allow visitors to see the medical setting and experience the search for a loved one at that time.
The exhibit, "Watched by Sound and Sea: Occupied Beaufort, 1862" continues at the N.C. Maritime Museum in Beaufort through September. It features artifacts from the period and will present a speaker each month.
The April 26 through 28 "Flags Over Hatteras" Symposium will feature historians James McPherson, Ed Bearss, Craig Symonds and others speaking at the Hatteras Village Civic Center. A Civil War Trails marker will be unveiled during the weekend, and the "Flags Over Hatteras" exhibit will continue through July at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum.
Other lectures and programs will occur during the year and through April 2015. A traveling photography exhibit "Freedom, Sacrifice, Memory: The Civil War Sesquicentennial Photography Exhibit" is visiting libraries and museums in the state through May 2013.
The N.C. Office of Archives and History oversees the state's sesquicentennial observance, which includes production of posters, symposia, a vehicle license plate, an atlas and other books, and other commemorative activities through 2015. The Office of Archives and History is part of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Transportation Museum presents historic Cival War-era tale
North Carolina historian Matthew Bumgarner will bring a tale of two Civil War-era railroads to the N.C. Transportation Museum Saturday, Jan. 7, at 1 p.m. in the Bob Julian Roundhouse. The program is a timely piece of history presented during the sesquicentennial observations of the U.S. Civil War.
Bumgarner will focus on the role of North Carolina's western-most railroads during the Civil War and the after-effects during the nation’s Reconstruction.
The Atlantic Tennessee & Ohio, which ran from Charlotte to Statesville, was conceived before the war but not actually built until the war was well underway. No sooner than the line was completed, it was ripped up in order to shore up the ever-tattered southern rail network.
The Western North Carolina Railroad, which stretched from Salisbury to the foot of the mountains at Morganton, likewise served the western part of the state. Most of its management played major roles in key battles of the war including Manassas, Gettysburg and Appomattox. The railroad also was victimized in a raid of Union bushwhackers in an attempt to free prisoners from the Salisbury POW camp, and its final days of the war came to an exciting climax during Stoneman's Great Locomotive Chase.
Still, the end of the war was not the end of either railroad's story as Reconstruction personalities and politics set both railroads back for several decades.
The 1 p.m. program will be followed by a book signing.
Matthew Bumgarner is the author of several railroad- and Civil War-themed books, including “The Legacy of the Carolina & North-Western Railway,” “Kirk’s Raiders: The 2nd & 3rd NC Mounted Infantries” and “My Face to the Enemy: Insights to the 6th NC State Troops.” He lives in Hickory.
The N.C. Transportation Museum, located in historic Spencer Shops, the former Southern Railway repair facility is located just five minutes off I-85 at Exit 79 in Spencer and about an hour from Charlotte, Greensboro or Winston-Salem. The museum is part of the Division of Historic Sites and the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources.
Bumgarner will focus on the role of North Carolina's western-most railroads during the Civil War and the after-effects during the nation’s Reconstruction.
The Atlantic Tennessee & Ohio, which ran from Charlotte to Statesville, was conceived before the war but not actually built until the war was well underway. No sooner than the line was completed, it was ripped up in order to shore up the ever-tattered southern rail network.
The Western North Carolina Railroad, which stretched from Salisbury to the foot of the mountains at Morganton, likewise served the western part of the state. Most of its management played major roles in key battles of the war including Manassas, Gettysburg and Appomattox. The railroad also was victimized in a raid of Union bushwhackers in an attempt to free prisoners from the Salisbury POW camp, and its final days of the war came to an exciting climax during Stoneman's Great Locomotive Chase.
Still, the end of the war was not the end of either railroad's story as Reconstruction personalities and politics set both railroads back for several decades.
The 1 p.m. program will be followed by a book signing.
Matthew Bumgarner is the author of several railroad- and Civil War-themed books, including “The Legacy of the Carolina & North-Western Railway,” “Kirk’s Raiders: The 2nd & 3rd NC Mounted Infantries” and “My Face to the Enemy: Insights to the 6th NC State Troops.” He lives in Hickory.
The N.C. Transportation Museum, located in historic Spencer Shops, the former Southern Railway repair facility is located just five minutes off I-85 at Exit 79 in Spencer and about an hour from Charlotte, Greensboro or Winston-Salem. The museum is part of the Division of Historic Sites and the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Bennet Place State Historic Site depicts Civil War-time Christmas traditions
The smells and tastes of seasonal delights of smoked ham, potato and sausage soup, biscuits, mincemeat pie, and other period pleasures will greet you at the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources' Bennett Place State Historic Site. The Christmas in the Carolinas During the Civil War program—held Saturday, Dec. 10. from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 11, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.—will showcase a traditional Christmas observance of North Carolina farm families in the 1860s.
Costumed interpreters will represent civilians and soldiers on furlough and demonstrate holiday cooking, decorating and the preparation of packages and letters for soldiers at war. The roasting of a hog's head and apple pressing, unique to the Bennett Place celebration, will again be a focal point of activity on Saturday. Only the Saturday appearance of Old Saint Nick could be more special.
Banjo and fiddle music of the 1800s from well known musicians Morrison, Boggs and Weems will fill the air on Sunday. Visitors can warm up with hot apple cider and enjoy holiday cookies on both days. Admission is free, but donations are appreciated.
Costumed interpreters will represent civilians and soldiers on furlough and demonstrate holiday cooking, decorating and the preparation of packages and letters for soldiers at war. The roasting of a hog's head and apple pressing, unique to the Bennett Place celebration, will again be a focal point of activity on Saturday. Only the Saturday appearance of Old Saint Nick could be more special.
Banjo and fiddle music of the 1800s from well known musicians Morrison, Boggs and Weems will fill the air on Sunday. Visitors can warm up with hot apple cider and enjoy holiday cookies on both days. Admission is free, but donations are appreciated.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Burwell School hosts speaker on slavery and the civil war
The Burwell School Historic Site, N. Churton St., will host Katherine Mellen Charron, Ph.D., for a lecture titled “William Henry Singleton’s Recollections of My Slavery Days: a North Carolina Slave’s View of the Civil War and Its Legacies” on Wednesday, April 20, at 7 p.m.
Admission to this programs is free and is open to the public with reception to follow. For more information, contact the Burwell School at 732-7451 or email info@burwellschool.org. This program is made possible by a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council, a statewide nonprofit and affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
ABOUT THE PRESENTATION
In 1922, the former slave and Union Army veteran William Henry Singleton published an autobiography that provided a fascinating glimpse of life in a North Carolina coastal city and rural neighborhood. His Recollections of My Slavery Days vividly reminds us how slavery impacted black and white families, the church and the marketplace in the antebellum South as well as the upheaval that accompanied the Civil War. The talk explores what Singleton’s narrative revealed about a place and the people in it, about slavery and freedom, and the bridge between the two.
For Singleton, that bridge was built in the crucible of the Civil War and rested on the militant black political self-assertion that emerged early in the war in coastal North Carolina. Considering the 57 years between the war’s end and Singleton’s writing, this talk also considers the question of memory, of what we choose to remember, how we remember it and why that matters.
Admission to this programs is free and is open to the public with reception to follow. For more information, contact the Burwell School at 732-7451 or email info@burwellschool.org. This program is made possible by a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council, a statewide nonprofit and affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
ABOUT THE PRESENTATION
In 1922, the former slave and Union Army veteran William Henry Singleton published an autobiography that provided a fascinating glimpse of life in a North Carolina coastal city and rural neighborhood. His Recollections of My Slavery Days vividly reminds us how slavery impacted black and white families, the church and the marketplace in the antebellum South as well as the upheaval that accompanied the Civil War. The talk explores what Singleton’s narrative revealed about a place and the people in it, about slavery and freedom, and the bridge between the two.
For Singleton, that bridge was built in the crucible of the Civil War and rested on the militant black political self-assertion that emerged early in the war in coastal North Carolina. Considering the 57 years between the war’s end and Singleton’s writing, this talk also considers the question of memory, of what we choose to remember, how we remember it and why that matters.
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