Hargrove Cemetery and Hibernia Campground

The Hargrove family cemetery, located on the Hibernia campground, offers a particularly compelling story about the historical development of the region and the state. Nestled among the woods that once formed part of the Hargrove family estate, the cemetery provides many clues about the people who once inhabited these lands.

Spanning the border of Virginia and North Carolina and covering over 50,000 acres of land, Kerr Lake Reservoir transformed the Roanoke River Basin with the construction of the John H. Kerr Dam in 1952 by the Army Corps of Engineers. Originally planned and designed to provide flood control and hydroelectric power, the reservoir also serves as a regional tourism destination that offers outdoor recreational activities such as fishing, boating, and camping. Although still owned and managed by the Army Corps of Engineers, a patchwork of state and county agencies regulate the recreational uses of Kerr Lake. On the North Carolina side, the reservoir falls within the boundaries of the Kerr Lake State Recreation Area, which manages access to the lake and the surrounding forest lands in partnership with local county governments. Among the counties in North Carolina that border the lake, Vance County possesses the largest area of shoreline and hosts many of the guests who visit the park’s recreational areas and campgrounds. While much of this recreational activity along the shoreline has also transformed the surrounding environment, traces of the historical contours and uses of the land remain visible in the landscape.

Despite the extensive man-made changes to the natural environment, the historical traces that are still visible within the landscape nevertheless preserve some memory of earlier inhabitants and their uses of the local area. Among these inhabitants, the colonial settlers who displaced indigenous populations left visible traces of their use of the land across several generations and historical periods. Notably, located on the Hibernia peninsula, one of the five major recreational areas within Vance County, a small family cemetery still stands on lands once owned by the Hargrove family and their descendants. Located about two hundred yards from the existing shoreline, the Hargrove family cemetery conveys many details about the history of the Hargrove family while it also serves as a material source of evidence connected to broader themes, sources, and aspects of local and regional history. 

Reflecting the changing patterns of land use, several of these primary sources also include information about the social and economic aspects of the inhabitants who previously lived and worked on this historical landscape. In addition to census and probate records, the Hargrove family papers, which include letters, wills and written accounts, provide significant details about the social and economic aspects of life on the Hargrove family estate. While much of the material included in these sources consists of local facts related to the Hargrove’s family history, they also provide evidence of the expansion of market society in the region. One particularly early source, John Hargrove’s 1793 will, includes an itemized inventory that provides extensive details about life on the Hargrove estate while it also comprises evidence of market society and how it shaped land use patterns.[2] Replete with detailed descriptions of the personal items indicative of market activity, it also documents the sources of labor that contributed to the transformation of this landscape. Included in the inventory, besides the mention of implements characteristic of market society, such as cotton looms, another entry mentions the enslaved individuals who lived on and worked the land forming the Hargrove estate.

Although typically identified with the economic development of northern regions of the country, the market revolution arguably, had an even greater effect on the society, landscape, and environment of the southern regions of the nation. Indicative of the powerful effects that market society had on the region and locale, these sources of evidence also illustrate the centrality of slavery to the transformation of the South’s historical landscape. Stimulated by the growing demand for regional products such as cotton and tobacco, market society thus transformed practically every aspect of the southern economy and environment. Historians who have examined the effects that the market revolution has had on the south and its environment have noted its links with the historical rise of the plantocracy and the decline of the yeomanry. For instance, Harry Watson has argued that the enormous commercial demand for these products disrupted traditional patterns of land use, access to rivers and streams, as well the common rights attached to them. Underscoring these effects, Watson remarks, “For the most part, however, North Carolina yeoman found that relations with their more privileged neighbors were increasingly mediated through the institutions of the market.”[3] The market revolution which had thus empowered the southern plantocracy, also had profound and lasting effects on the regional economy and society as well as the natural environment.

While patterns of land use changed as a result of the market revolution, the expansion of commercial farming in the region transformed the natural environment as well as the political landscape. Tobacco, one of the staple crops of the market revolution in the south and a keystone of the regional economy, also played a central role in the historical development and political formation of the area. Directly related to the quality of its soil, the expansion of commercial tobacco farming in Vance County was also a product of the emerging agricultural industries that arose and flourished in the region following the Civil War. Among these industries, fertilizer companies played a key role in promoting the cultivation of tobacco for commercial markets, producing pamphlets and manuals that were equal parts almanac and advertisement. One such document, which combines advice from local tobacco growers as well as their endorsements of a locally produced fertilizer, promised to increase yields by as much as fifty percent.[4] Although such claims were exaggerated, the use of commercial fertilizers not only increased yields, but their use also had direct as well as indirect effects on the natural and political landscapes of Vance County.

With the increased generation of wealth in the region linked to the commercialized production of tobacco, new political configurations also emerged that directly contributed to the formation of Vance County in 1881. Closely tied to the politics of reconstruction, members of the local plantocracy, such as Colonel T.L. Hargrove, actively recruited voters among the enfranchised African-American population.[5] Despite his support for the defeated Confederacy, after the war, Colonel Hargrove had switched political affiliation by joining the Republican party and was elected to local and statewide offices with the support of many African-American voters. Elected as the state’s Attorney General in 1873, T.L. Hargrove’s political career depended, in part, on the support of the African-American voters who inhabited the area of Granville County that eventually became Vance County. However, the growing power of Granville’s Republican party provoked a backlash among Democratic party leaders, including the Governor, Colonel Zebulon Baird Vance. Re-elected Governor in 1876, he brokered a compromise in the state legislature to preserve Granville County's Democratic majority, which resulted in the formation of Vance County. And although the act that established the boundaries of Vance County transformed North Carolina’s political landscape, traces of earlier history and landscape remain visible along the shores of Kerr Lake.             

1. US Army Corps of Engineers. John H. Kerr History, Wilmington District . Accessed May 3rd 2021. https://www.saw.usace.army.mil/Locations/District-Lakes-and-Dams/John-H-Kerr-1/History/.
2. Hargrove, John H. . John H. Hargrove's Will, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. August 1st 1992. Accessed May 3rd 2021. https://library.unc.edu/wilson/shc/.
3. Watson, Harry. Sutter, Paul & Manganiello, Christopher, eds. Environmental History and the American South, a reader. Athens, Georgia. The University of Georgia Press, 2009.
4. Hunter, J. B. . Useful Information Concerning Yellow Tobacco, and Other Crops, as Told by Fifty of the Most Successful Farmers of Granville County, N. C., 1880:, Documenting the American South. Accessed May 3rd 2021. https://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/hunter/hunter.html.
5. Peace, Samuel Thomas. Vance County, North Carolina "Zeb's Black Baby", A Short History. Durham, North Carolina. The Seeman Printery Incorporated, 1955.