killed Mrs. Turner with one blow of his ax, and after Nat had struck Mrs. Newsome over the head with his sword, Will turned and killed her also.  By this time the company amounted to fifteen.  Nine went mounted to the home of Mrs. Whitehead and six others went along a byway to the home of Henry Bryant.  As they neared the first house Richard Whitehead, the son of the family, was standing in the cotton-patch near the fence.  Will killed him with his ax immediately.  In the house he killed Mrs. Whitehead, almost severing her head from her body with one blow.  Margaret, a daughter, tried to conceal herself and ran, but was killed by Turner with a fence-rail.  The men in this first company were now joined by those in the second, the six who had gone to the Bryant home, who informed them that they had done the work assigned, which was to kill Henry Bryant himself, his wife and child, and his wife’s mother.  By this time the killing had become fast and furious.  The company divided again; some would go ahead, and Nat would come up to find work already accomplished.  Generally fifteen or twenty of the best mounted were put in front to strike terror and prevent escape, and Nat himself frequently did not get to the houses where killing was done.  More and more the Negroes, now about forty in number, were getting drunken and noisy.  The alarm was given, and by nine or ten o’clock on Monday morning one Captain Harris and his family had escaped.  Prominent among the events of the morning, however, was the killing at the home of Mrs. Waller of ten children who were gathering for school.[1]

[Footnote 1:  In “Horrid Massacre,” or, to use the more formal title, “Authentic and Impartial Narrative of the Tragical Scene which was Witnessed in Southampton County (Virginia) on Monday the 22d of August Last,” the list below of the victims of Nat Turner’s insurrection is given.  It must be said about this work, however, that it is not altogether impeccable; it seems to have been prepared very hastily after the event, its spelling of names is often arbitrary, and instead of the fifty-five victims noted it appears that at least fifty-seven white persons were killed: 

  Joseph Travis, wife and three children 5
  Mrs. Elizabeth Turner, Hartwell Peebles, and Sarah Newsum 3
  Mrs. Piety Reese and son, William 2
  Trajan Doyal 1
  Henry Briant, wife and child, and wife’s mother 4
  Mrs. Catherine Whitehead, her son Richard, four daughters
      and a grandchild 7
  Salathael Francis 1
  Nathaniel Francis’s overseer and two children 3
  John T. Barrow and George Vaughan 2
  Mrs. Levi Waller and ten children 11
  Mr. William Williams, wife and two boys