History on a Stick

I’m cruising down a lonely stretch of Highway 731 in Montgomery County. I’ve passed the turn off to Town Creek Indian Mound. There seems to be no one else driving this road today and not many houses built along this way, either. I’m driving the speed limit having taken the long way home—just for a change.

I don’t think I’ve ever been on this stretch of road before. And then suddenly, a familiar black on silver shape beside the road catches my eye. Way out here in the middle of nowhere, it’s a state historical marker perched on a metal post five feet off the ground right where the road crosses a small creek. I know at my speed I’ll never be able to read more than the first couple of words, so I glance in the rearview mirror (no one there), downshift and brake.

I pass the marker, do a three point turn and pull off the road in front of the sign. I am much surprised by what I read. It says: “Flora MacDonald: Scottish heroine who lived in N.C., 1774-79. Loyalist in the Revolution.

Her home stood on this creek a few miles north.” Well, that hardly does the Flora MacDonald story justice, I think. I had recently read up on Flora MacDonald’s famous escape with Bonnie Prince Charlie from the bloody Duke of Cumberland after the Scottish defeat at Culloden in 1746, and Flora’s subsequent unhappy immigration to and sojourn in North Carolina during the tumultuous Revolutionary War period. (A truly fascinating story, by the way). I had also recently visited the Cross Creek home site (in present-day Fayetteville) where Flora Mac had lived when she first arrived in North Carolina. So I knew at least a part of the rich story that dwelt between the lines of the terse, twenty-one word inscription on this historical marker.

And I would have happily walked a mile or two along the little creek that crossed Highway 731 if I could be sure to stand on the site of another of Flora MacDonald’s homeplaces. But “on this creek a few miles north” wasn’t going to help me much to find the precise spot where Flora Mac lived. And I don’t think it was ever intended to The placement of the marker on this secondary road, miles from the actual house site, with a twenty-one word summary of Flora’s significance and no more direction—well, the marker was clearly just a tickler, just a tease. As usual, the historical

marker gave just enough information to engage the interest of someone already interested but no guidance as to what to do next to pursue this interest. As usual, the historical marker left me feeling somewhat conflicted and unfulfilled. Maybe a bit like Shelley’s traveler from an antique land who, after stumbling upon Ozymandias’ ancient historical marker, looked around in vain for the grand “works” referred to on the stone pedestal, but instead found that: “Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.” Like most of the other states, North Carolina’s historical marker program is long established.

As detailed in the recently published Ninth Edition of the Guide to North Carolina Highway Historical Markers (published in 2001 by the State Division of Archives and History, edited by Michael Hill) North Carolina’s first historical marker went up on January 10, 1936, in Granville County, telling us, in seventeen words, about one John Penn, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, who lived “3 miles northeast” of the marker. Sixty-seven years later, there are now 1,434 historical markers scattered across our state, each supposedly marking a spot “where history happened,” as the Guide tells us.

Each of our one hundred counties has at least one historical marker with Wake County having the most—seventy-two. But in reality the history that really happened, at least for many of the historical markers, happened at a spot physically distant from the historical marker—sometimes a matter of miles. For instance the Great Indian Trading Path has ten historical markers spread across the state but none are actually on the Path and all simply conclude that the Path “passed nearby.” According to the Guide, a person or event gets a historical marker only after being adjudged of “statewide historical significance” by the Highway Historical Marker Advisory Committee—members of this ten-person committee are usually history professors appointed by the secretary of the Department of Cultural Resources.

The Committee also approves the twenty or so words that summarize the significance of the person or event that appears on each marker. The Committee’s guidelines state that the inscriptions on the markers shall include only straightforward, undisputed historical facts—not that one could do much editorializing in the twenty or twenty-five words that will fit on the historical marker’s few available lines of text. In any event, the guidelines also state that “[w]ords such as ‘great,’ ‘outstanding,’ ‘important,’ will not be included in marker inscriptions.” The markers are never placed on the Interstate Highways but are generally found on the right of way of the state’s secondary roads.

The Guide tells us that to increase their chances of being read by motorists as they speed by, markers are often located “at a turn-off or at an intersection where traffic slows.” Maybe so, but many is the time I’ve been unable to read the entire marker’s text before the sign flashes past—and this at speeds well below the speed limit. North Carolina’s legislators are not indifferent to the factual accuracy of these historical markers. A special statute provides for a procedure for a citizen to challenge either the erroneous placement of a marker or erroneous information contained in the marker’s inscription.

But then again, a number of markers purport to track Hernando de Soto’s trek through North Carolina in 1540, despite no general agreement among the experts as to de Soto’s actual path. And anyway, how can anyone prove that the de Soto historical markers of Jackson, Macon, Cherokee and Clay counties are erroneously located when they only proclaim that de Soto’s expedition “passed near here.” Of course, I only wish I knew enough of Flora Mac’s interlude in North Carolina to know whether or not she indeed lived for a spell “a few miles north” of the historical marker on that lonely stretch of Highway 731.

No, the Highway Historical Marker Advisory Committee probably doesn’t lose many of these challenges to its markers’ placement or accuracy. And just because it’s interesting, you should know that the relevant legislation does restrict use of these historical markers to only those expressly approved by the Committee … but if you surf the Net—looking for key words like “historical marker”—you can find the following: “Get your own State Historical Marker to place in your yard or home. Looks just like the real thing but in place of a Historical Event, a hilarious, make no sense saying is displayed. Make your house a hilarious historical site from your state. $40.00 each.” The site gives an example for the state of Utah—the marker reads: “On May 10, 1869, East met West as the last spike was driven, completing the Union Pacific Railroad.

Many years later, the last nail was driven, completing this building.” Boom, bada, boom!

But, okay, despite its limitations, the historical marker program does serve a noble purpose, at least in theory. Undoubtedly many North Carolina travelers are not going to take the time to read the WPA Guide to the Old North State, Daniel Barefoot’s touring guide of North Carolina’s Revolutionary War sites and Clint Johnson’s guide of the Civil War sites, or William Powell’s histories of North Carolina. For those busy travelers, their knowledge and appreciation of the people, places and events that have shaped North Carolina may be limited to the parts of these historical markers that they are able to read (assuming they make the effort in the first place) as they speed on their hurried traveler’s way.

And that, by itself, may be worth the program. When they see in Craven County the marker for “Bayard v. Singleton,” a famous North Carolina Supreme Court case, or in Henderson County the marker for “Wolfe’s Angel,” the marble statue that inspired the novel Look Homeward, Angel, or in Green County the marker for “Nooherooka,” a Tuscaroran Fort where the decisive battle of the Tuscaroran War was fought, or in Durham County the marker for the “Bull City Blues,” a tribute to bluesmen Blind Boy Fuller and Gary Davis, maybe some of those in their automobiles are momentarily transfixed by thoughts of these significant but long disappeared people and events.

And even if it is only momentary, that brief transcendence of their actual, present trip to the beach, the mountains, Carowinds, or even a state historic site … well, that transcendence must be a good thing. And, to be honest, the same applies to me as well. I’ve seen all the “Stoneman’s Raid,” “Cornwallis,” “Juan Pardo,” and “Regulator” markers, so often that I rarely bother to read the text as I drive by anymore—but then, when I least expect it, on a lonely road in an unexplored county I stumble on a marker for Flora MacDonald, and, involuntarily, I pause, both physically and mentally, and am transported, at least part of the way, back in time.

And I imagine Flora Mac languishing in the oppressive summer heat of the Carolina Piedmont in a modest home on the banks of a small sluggish creek, and dreaming of the cool, rocky coast of Scotland’s Isle of Skye and the bonnie prince, awkwardly disguised as her servant girl, “Betty Burke,” as they approach the British patrols bent on their discovery and capture.