Sunday, June 03, 2007

Sunday Scribblings: Fort Hell


The photograph of the left is of Fort Hell during wartime (1864-65). I lifted it off a history teacher resource site. By the time we lived nearby, the woods had returned. Today’s Sunday Scribbling prompt is “town and country” and I recall the three years of my youth in Petersburg, Virginia.
Walnut Hills was in town, but was still partly country when we moved there. I was in the first grade and Kennedy was just about to be shot that fall when my parents purchased the house on Bishop Street. Petersburg’s suburbs were expanding outward and it was then considered a nice neighborhood, not as rich as those who lived in the big homes along Sycamore Street, but a good place to be a kid. Behind our house was an alley; across it was another row of houses and the last street. Behind those houses were woods that stretched all the way back to Carter Road. On Saturdays, my friends and I would play Johnny Reb in these woods, covering the same terrain our ancestors fought over a hundred years earlier during that final bloody year of the Civil War. At the Crater Road turn off into our subdivision was a genuine civil war fort operated as a private museum. Folks who attended our church owned it but I don’t remember their name. However, I’ll never forget the name of the fort. Fort Hell it was called; although its real name was Fort Sedgwick. When my uncle Frank came to visit, he asked me why they called it Fort Hell and I said “‘cause they really gave the Yankees hell.” I only vaguely remember saying that, and maybe I don’t really remember saying it, instead just remember Frank reminding me of it as he did for the umpteenth time last summer at a family reunion. I later learned that it wasn’t a Southern fort after all, but a part of the Union siege line and at the time was the largest inland artillery battery in the country. In the summer of ’66, after three years of roaming those woods, we moved back to North Carolina. It was just the nick of time for they were cutting down trees and laying out roads through the woods and the people who owned Fort Hell had sold it earlier that spring to developers who immediately bulldozed the bombproof shelters that had been dug by hand a hundred years earlier. They built a strip mall. By the time we left, there was no more country in Walnut Hills.

Other Stuff: How did that 60s song go? “I’m leaving on a jet plane, don’t know what I’ll come back too…” We’ll maybe that’s not the exact lyrics, but I am leaving and ain’t exactly sure what I might come back to find. I’m heading down south to recharge my accent and am going to leave Nevada Jack in charge of a special birthday party that will start tomorrow morning and run all week. Do drop in!

14 comments:

  1. Great post! And the John Denver song goes, "I'm leaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again ..."

    Hope your trip goes well! Have a great time!

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  2. Did they at least do a lasting tribute by naming the strip mall 'Fort Hell Shopping Center'?

    Nevada Jack's in charge of a week long birthday party?!? For some reason, I'm experiencing fear and trepidation.

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  3. Michael, thanks.

    V, I couldn't remember who sang it (for some reason I thought maybe Peter, Paul and Mary). I change the ending to reflect what might happen in my absence.

    Murf, you should be more careful for what you ask, for as the Good Book says, "ask and you shall receive"

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  4. Sage, if you are coming through Raleigh, please email me and maybe we can have a cup of coffee or lunch.

    kenju99@gmail.com

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  5. Kenju, I'd love to, but will have to take a raincheck, I'm flying into Asheville and won't be down east at all.

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  6. Enjoy your trip...I'll be singing that Peter Paul & Mary song til you get back most likely now that you've got it stuck in my head :)

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  7. That made such an interesting reading.

    You have a great time and write about it when you get back.

    I like that John Denver song along with all the rock music!

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  8. Sage - It was written by John Denver for Peter, Paul and Mary. John then started singing it himself later on.

    Personally any shopping mall is Fort Hell.

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  9. What a wonderful place to grow up so rich in history. I agree, that strip mall is now fort hell. :(

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  10. Interesting historical insights!

    Enjoy your trip!

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  11. Love that you've included history here!

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  12. Around 1961 or '62 I visited Ft. Hell and was impressed with how well everything was preserved. In '63 I was transferred to NC and later, after I was married with a child of my own, I came back up to show them this fabulous fort. I was so sad to see a strip mall covering history! Have these people no respect for history and the lives given there?
    Let it never happen again, no matter what the greedy developers say about "improving" the land!

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