Aversboro Battlefield

Andy, having studied the map, aimed us at Aversboro Battlefield. I can’t find the information that led me to go there, except that zerotime.com suggests that places where violent deaths have occurred are excellent ghost hunting sites. We cruised over Bumpass Creek and more fields. I saw a machine harvesting cotton, ripping it from the stalks and mashing it into a fiber brick bigger than a mini-van. Historical markers commemorating a private home used as a Confederate hospital during the Battle of Aversboro, March 15 & 16 stuck up alongside the highway like signs leading to a yard sale. Off by McGruder Rd. we found the battlefield. I was sad to discover that the gift shop had closed for the day. I remembered that the teeth of dead soldiers who had fought against Napolean were hot souvenirs used in the dentures of living patriots. I doubted I could find Union or Confederate molars for sale in the gift shop, but I could have bought a Confederate flag or a miniature cannon. I thought about how tragedy is transformed into merchandise. I told my brother of my daughter’s field trip to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. “What do they sell in the gift shop?” he asked me, “Ashtrays?” Ouch.
A seasonal sign announced a Ghost Tour, “a living history event” on Oct 28 & 29th. That sounded pretty good. To our right was the old carriage house. To the left, the battlefield. Straight ahead were some sheds or outbuildings. Beyond them were woods and blackberry brambles. On the side of the gift shop was a sign:

WARNING
These Premises Protected by
Audio and Video Systems.
Taping in Progress

That was bad news for me because I had already consumed one half gallon of sweet tea. I had to pee. I did not want to be audio and video taped doing it in the blackberries at the edge of the battlefield. I figured peeing in the scrub would be, in effect, an historical re-enactment but I didn’t have the proper costume. I minced over to one of the sheds. Darned if it wasn’t an historically accurate privy erected by the local Sons of Confederate Veterans. My dead relatives from Granville County fought in the Confederate army so I am a daughter of the Confederacy. I sent a heartfelt thanks out to the sons who kept me from shaming my people on tape and picking up chiggers.
Much revived, I continued toward the battlefield proper. At the edge of the field I stepped down a minute grassy ledge on to the closely mowed fescue and dandelions. A wooden footbridge labeled “Creepy Creek” led to the site of the calamity. I hoped it was for the Halloween program and not some version of Confederate kitsch. The creepiest thing about it was that there was no water in the ditch under the footbridge. I walked toward the middle of the field. Behind me was what I guessed was a tobacco patch behind a twisted wire and wood fence. Tobacco is related to morning glories, I think, and morning glory like blooms wound through the fence and field.The location of the Battle of Aversboro looked like the fields where my kids used to play soccer. I closed my eyes and said softly, “Okay. If there are any ghosts here, show me a sign please.” I waited. I heard blue jays beyond the field in the trees. A lot of people don’t like them, but I was called “Jaybird” as a child, so I like them. They are pretty and spunky. I heard a dog barking in the subdivision that I could not quite see on the other side of the trees. That was all I heard. Andy was taking pictures of the stables and the gift shop.
I moved back and leaned on the tobacco fence. “Help me out here,” I said to the grass. “If there are spirits here, let me know somehow, please.” This time, I kept my eyes open. The fence and the footbridge made the air smell of creosote. I scanned myself for chills or goosebumps or images in my peripheral vision. Nothing. I stayed still and listened again. I heard a boy singing and playing an acoustic guitar. Just in my range of hearing. I couldn’t make out the tune or the words but it was not a hymn or dirge. More of a James Taylor-y feel to it. But then it was gone.
I said, “Thank you” just in case it was a manifestation. I gazed again at the field. It was a field alright. Why would the Yankees want it? And in this part of rural North Carolina what could they have accomplished? There was probably even less on the outskirts of Erwin, NC a hundred years ago. I wondered what some kid from Boston thought about tobacco country. I thought maybe a soldier from Ohio might see Carolina farms and feel a bit homesick. I remembered how young the soldiers tended to be toward the end of the Civil War. Some of them 14 or 15, my son’s age. I wondered how I would feel if my son had died in a battle and the scene of his death was like this battlefield. Especially if my side lost the war.
It was time to go. I took some pictures since my ghost research on the internet included the admonition to take pictures because sometimes apparitions appear on the photograph that the observer didn’t see.
Within spitting distance of the battlefield was the battlefield cemetery and a “Civil War Era Cabin” that had been the home of slaves. It was a log cabin with new mortar relocated from the Lebanon Plantation. You couldn’t go in. It resembled the cabin President Andrew Jackson was born in that was relocated to the Mordecai House grounds in Raleigh. The Civil War cemetery was small and well-kept. Inside a fence of iron pikes stood a plinth dedicated “In memory of our Confederate dead who fell upon that day”. Nearby a fresh heirloom Jenny Duval rose leaned in a bud vase. The gesture of a descendent of a family represented in the battle, I guessed. A woman, too, I figured. A bud vase didn’t seem like a masculine choice. If I had lost my young son in a battle down the road a piece, I would be glad that someone was taking care of the graves or at least stones dedicated to the soldiers. There were other markers that read “6 dead” or “4 dead”. I had never seen such a thing. Better than not even being counted among the lost, but it definitely put the counted in the footnotes of the Book of the Dead. I liked the cemetery better than the battlefield because it looked like something. Even if the slave cabin came from somewhere else it was a visual aid. Then, too, the rose made me think that someone remembered that the Battle of Aversboro wasn’t about selling plastic swords and corn husk dolls. I thought that I could honor my dead relatives from Granville County for defending their homes and family without seeming to come out in favor of slavery. I remembered that some great-great uncle lost a finger in the war and stuck his handprint in red paint on the wall by the front door to the Homeplace so that no one in the family would forget the war. Then he went back to farming.