In honor of Black History Month, Abandoned Country is republishing the following article, which originally appeared in The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press on August 21, 2021 as “It’s been 190 years since Nat Turner’s Rebellion. Brutal mysteries remain unsolved.”

One hundred ninety years is a lot of time for a case to grow cold. But thanks to extraordinary circumstances — a family seeking truth and science that can reach beyond the grave — an ongoing forensic analysis may finally provide an answer. Or it may just add another wrinkle.

Among many Americans, the general details of Nat Turner’s Rebellion may be fairly well known. Not so familiar is the long and grisly aftermath of the short-lived insurrection — that the bodies of participants and bystanders were reduced to trophies, and that the lingering pain of the shocking episode would continue to arouse passion nearly two centuries later.

Beginning late on the night of Aug. 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. 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.

Alarm spread through the countryside, and the rebels lost the element of surprise. Well-armed militiamen arrived and within two days crushed the revolt. Turner fled and remained in hiding for more than two months until his discovery and capture by a local farmer. He was taken to the county seat, then called Jerusalem (now Courtland), tried, convicted and hanged.

Many facts, such as the precise number of people who died in the insurrection and subsequent reprisals, will never be known. Some sources contradict one another. 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.

The uncertain identity of those remains invites reflection on the historical mistreatment of human lives and bodies. Nat Turner looms large 190 years after his death. His numerous descendants have fanned out from a rural pocket of Tidewater. His deeds have proven to be an enduring episode that still stirs emotion. His legacy is complex — diminished in death to ornaments, and lauded then and now as a freedom fighter.

Discovering 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.

After Turner’s death, local doctors mutilated his corpse. Multiple sources say his head was separated from the rest of his body, which was skinned. 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. Many of them had been alive during the attacks.

The sources disagree on the fate of Turner’s corpse from the neck down. Drewry said a local doctor took possession of his skeleton. Another contemporary source remembered his headless body being buried.

No less certain is the fate of Turner’s skull. 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.

And the Smithsonian scientists aren’t saying what they’ve found so far.

In 2002, a former mayor of Gary named Richard G. Hatcher held a fundraising gala for a project he hoped to usher to fruition, the National Civil Rights Hall of Fame. That night, he unveiled what would be the museum’s centerpiece: the skull of Nat Turner.

The chain of custody seemed plausible. 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. The administrator’s family had kept it in a closet for decades. The family’s patriarch was a doctor in Richmond, Virginia, in the early 20th century. One of his patients was the daughter of a physician who was present when Turner’s body was cut up.

For years, Hatcher held on to the skull, but in 2016, long after it became clear the hall of fame wouldn’t happen, he agreed, with the National Geographic Society facilitating, to hand over the skull to descendants of Nat Turner. Cousins and two of Turner’s great-great-great-great-great-granddaughters, Shanna Batten Aguirre and Shelly Lucas Wood, took possession of the skull and turned it over to a team led by Douglas Owsley at the National Museum of Natural History for forensic analysis. (Hatcher died in 2019.)

“For me, the skull in and of itself is a very symbolic and emotional reference point,” said Aguirre, who like Wood lives in Maryland. “Obviously if we are able to determine that it is the skull of our ancestor … that would be tremendously important on a spiritual and emotional level for the family.”

She is quick to point out that she does not speak for all of Turner’s descendants who, seven generations on, are numerous.

Owsley confirmed that the institution retains possession of the skull but did not offer details on the progress of the forensic analysis or an estimated date of completion. The skull has been in the museum’s custody for more than 4 ½ years.

He said that his team is taking great care with the identification of the skull and that the sophisticated techniques they’re employing take time. The pandemic did nothing to speed the process along, he said, but “the complicating factor is the level of direct genetic comparisons” they are undertaking.

Harvard University’s David Reich Lab is also assisting in the identification of the skull. Reich, a geneticist, is a controversial figure among some scholars for assertions he has made about genetic variations between different races.

Although Owsley and his team are not talking publicly about their progress, it is possible to speak generally about the processes used to glean identifying information from human bones. Michael Blakey is director of William & Mary’s Institute for Historical Biology. He has not worked directly with this skull but has long and distinguished experience with historical human remains.

With objective measures of skeletal remains, it’s possible to estimate the age of an adult within about 10 years, he said. Sex and race are more problematic because there is a lot of crossover in different traits. “One skull is a very small sample of this highly variable world,” he said.

Much more accurate, according to Blakey, is genetic analysis. It’s possible to retrieve genetic material from protein that could still exist in an old skull, such as in the dentin of a tooth. Comparing that to DNA of descendants should be able to provide an answer, and can typically be done within months. “I think it is possible, depending on the quality of the DNA sample, to get a highly likely or unlikely determination,” he said.

But Blakey cautions that scientific analysis should not stand alone. “The cultural and historical documentation, even if it’s oral, is likely to be qualitatively more reliable than genetics,” he said.

And on the subject of Nat Turner’s skull, the historical record offers no straightforward answers.

At some point in his life, Nat Turner got kicked in the head by a mule. This injury could be one piece of evidence that helps identify the skull at the Smithsonian as Turner’s, said Kelley Fanto Deetz, a Black history scholar who was a consultant for “The Birth of a Nation,” a 2016 film about the insurrection written and directed by Norfolk native Nate Parker.

Deetz cited a description of Turner that a Southampton resident created while authorities were trying to capture him in 1831; it said he had “a scar on one of his temples produced by the kick of a mule.” The skull at the National Museum of Natural History possibly shows signs of this injury. What’s more, there’s evidence that the brain was removed from this skull forcefully, consistent with mutilation.

There’s also reason to believe the skull at the Smithsonian may not be Turner’s. Bruce Turner, a Virginia Beach resident and a great-great-great-great-grandson of Nat Turner, is not convinced it’s his. One issue: There are potential competitors.

A different skull, also reputed to be Nat Turner’s, was displayed and labeled as such at the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio, from about 1866 until sometime in the 20th century, surviving a catastrophic fire in 1901. It, too, bore credentials and a plausible provenance.

Yet another possible Nat Turner skull might have stayed closer to home. An article from April 1920 in The Journal of Negro History, an academic publication, claims that Turner’s “skull graces the collection of a physician in the city of Norfolk.”

It wasn’t just Turner’s skull that numerous people claimed ownership of in the decades after his execution. In 1892, The Roanoke Record said a city physician had a razor strap made from Turner’s skin: “The strap is a plain affair, glued to a wooden back, and has evidently seen service although it is by no means worn out.”

Five years later, a Richmond Times article claimed that Turner’s skeleton was in Toano, near Williamsburg, being used for anatomical study by a local doctor. The Journal of Negro History article said Turner’s ear was kept as a curiosity somewhere in Virginia. In 1949, a man who lives in Southampton County today saw a change purse with a label claiming it was made from Turner’s skin. There are other, similar references in written and oral history about pieces of Turner that were kept as curiosities.

Whether any of these morbid relics was actually once part of Nat Turner may never be known. But scores of enslaved and free Blacks were killed in the wake of the rebellion, some through trial and conviction, others by vigilantes, and mutilation of their bodies was not unheard of. A road in Southampton County earned the name Blackhead Signpost Road. County lore has it that at least one decapitated head was placed there on a pole as a warning of insurrection’s consequences.

In fact, throughout American history, many corpses have been mutilated, especially Black ones, though not exclusively. “There are probably tens of thousands of remains of African descended people in museums or sitting on shelves, and that’s an incredible injustice,” said Deetz, the historian.

Aguirre said that’s why this skull will be accorded honor and respect, no matter the outcome. The family’s stewardship acknowledges and rejects the historical objectification of human remains of people of color. “Even if it cannot be proved to be Reverend Turner’s skull,” she said, “I don’t think that diminishes the relevance and its symbolic importance.”

Many in the family would like to see the skull buried in Southampton. According to Bruce Turner, if there’s even a remote possibility that it belonged to Nat Turner, there are three possible spots for burial, the most logical being a small, unmarked and overgrown plot in Courtland where the bodies of executed rebels were interred in a mass grave, and where archaeologists conducting a preliminary dig discovered human remains in 2016.

Rick Francis, a descendant of victims and survivors of the rebellion, is Southampton County’s clerk of the Circuit Court. He’s also the unofficial keeper of the county’s insurrection memorabilia and documents, such as Nat Turner’s original sentencing orders. Francis believes that any acknowledgment accompanying buried remains should be simple and respectful, something like “Nat Turner, Leader of the Insurrection of 1831.”

Regardless of the skull’s ultimate identity and resting place, many feel that the attention it is receiving signals a larger shift in perceptions about the importance of the rebellion to American identity.

In Southampton, as elsewhere, Nat Turner’s Rebellion still sparks strong emotions. It’s not hard to find Southampton residents who refuse to speak to strangers about the event. A sign erected by Turner descendants to acknowledge the places where he concealed himself while hiding from authorities has been repeatedly riddled with gunshots.

Still, the skull’s potential identification comes at a time of change. Decades ago in Southampton, few people brought up the insurrection in racially mixed company. Bruce Turner said he learned more about it from reading history books in California than he did as a boy in Southampton.

Other than the Rebecca Vaughn House in Courtland, the homes associated with the rebellion have been neglected, nearly all fallen into ruin. The Richard Porter House, where rebels found that the home’s namesake had fled, was standing as late as a few years ago. Today it is a twisted jumble of boards, bricks and vegetation. But within the past couple decades there’s been a noticeable shift.

In recent years, Francis has been leading tours around Southampton to acknowledge some of the important sites, although he’s conducted none since the onset of the pandemic. The Southampton County Historical Society began a push to create a tour years ago, and Francis said that walking guides of Courtland will be available soon and that an official driving tour will be developed. A goal is to have an accompanying interactive smartphone app to assist where the history has been erased.

Amid the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, activists saw inspiration in Nat Turner’s Rebellion. Bruce Turner said many people sympathized with his ancestor’s motivations. “Nat Turner organized and planned to overthrow a system that supported oppression,” he said.

In February 2021, Southampton officials changed the name of Blackhead Signpost Road to just Signpost Road, an acknowledgment of the name’s unsettling origin.

That’s not to say the past should be forgotten. Aguirre, Nat Turner’s fifth-great-granddaughter, said that examining history, uncomfortable as it may be, serves the common good. “We should be able to talk about the events that have been the foundation of our country’s continuing evolution,” she said. “If we are encouraged to face the truths of our past through certain events that capture people’s attention or imagination, if it pushes people to learn and understand history, that is a good thing.”