Private citizen makes bid for Northampton’s Confederate statue

By Ted Shockley

Northampton County has received an offer from a private citizen to reinstall its Confederate soldier statue elsewhere, Supervisor Betsy Mapp said Tuesday night.

She did not name interested party.

She also said the town of Eastville has “begun to look at a spot, maybe out by the highway” on which to place the statue, which has stood on the courthouse green since 1913.

But there has been no decision on what to do with the tall, slender monument, which the Northampton Board of Supervisors voted to remove Jan. 12, or when to do it.

And Mapp qualified her public statements about the monument, saying, “Don’t take anything I’ve said tonight as gospel.”

Eastville Mayor Jim Sturgis said Wednesday that the town is interested in the monument from an educational perspective — “not glorifying, but remembering,” he said.

“I don’t think anybody living wants to glorify this in any shape or form,” he said. “I think it’s a neat idea to have the opportunity to learn from prior history.”

Sturgis has spoken to former Dr. Art Carter, a former county supervisor who advocated placing a Union soldier, in the likeness of an African-American man, next to the Confederate solder. It would be part of a memorial with the names and races of local Civil War soldiers.

Sturgis said Eastville does not have the discretionary money for the project. Mapp said she “led him to believe the county would pay to take it down” but not to reinstall it.

Supervisor Oliver Bennett groaned audibly during the meeting when Mapp suggested the statue could be placed along the highway, and said he would vote against funding such a move.

.