in the 1890s, the Colonial Dames, a
civic group dedicated to the upkeep
of historic sites, cleaned St. Philip’s
Church and the cemetery for services
and ceremonies honoring colonial and
Confederate veterans and dead. From time
to time, Civil War Veterans would visit
the fort. Other than those occasional visits,
Brunswick Town and Fort Anderson were
abandoned.
In 1948, a map of Brunswick Town,
drawn by C. J. Sautier in 1769, was discovered
in a British museum. It caught
“The flag that altered American history.”
The battle flag of Fort Anderson is now on display in the Brunswick Town/Fort Anderson visitor center.
Photography by Allison Breiner Potter.
the attention of archaeologist Dr. E.
Lawrence Lee, a history professor at
The Citadel, who became interested in
Brunswick Town and began to push for
preservation and archaeological excavations
of the site.
Lee got his wish in 1951 when the
Episcopal Diocese of Eastern North
Carolina and J. Lawrence Sprunt, owner
of Orton Plantation, donated to the
State of North Carolina the land consisting
of Fort Anderson, Brunswick
Town and St. Philip’s Church. In 1955,
the Brunswick Town State Historic
Site was established under the North
Carolina Department of Archives and
History. Dr. Lee began archaeological
explorations in 1958, and Dr. Stanley
South joined him soon thereafter.
Archaeological explorations ended in
1968, a year after the Visitor Center
opened.
No further archaeological work was
done on the site until 2007, when plans
were underway to install an Americans
with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliant
walkway around the site. From 2007 to
the ADA walkway’s completion in 2009,
archaeological investigations included
ground-penetrating radar of the cemetery
and one of the gun emplacements, a
thorough investigation by Marine Corps
Explosive Ordnance Disposal teams
36
WBM march 2011
and intense excavation of the walkway
site itself. More archaeological digs are
planned starting in May 2011.
In 1995, the site hosted its first Civil
War living history event. Now, every
February, they have a Civil War program
open to the public. They held their
first Heritage Days program in 1996.
Heritage Days is a weeklong program
for all Brunswick County 4th graders,
with interpretive and interactive stations
showing various aspects of colonial life.
The staff is working on adding a second
week for 8th graders, focused
on the Civil War, but are
waiting for approval from
the Board of Education.
Like the living history event
in February, Heritage Days
is open to the public, but
only on the last day.
The tale of Brunswick
Town and Fort Anderson
doesn’t end there, though,
and it only gets better. on the morning of
February 19, 1865,
as the Confederate
troops fled, the battle flag
for Fort Anderson fell out
of a pack or off the back
of a wagon. The next day,
a Federal soldier from the
140th Indiana Infantry found
it and passed it along to
his commanding officer,
Colonel Thomas Brady. Col.
Brady kept the flag and,
in March, presented it to
Oliver Morton, governor of
Indiana, in a ceremony in
Washington, D.C.
The ceremony, held at the National
Hotel, was well attended, and President
Lincoln canceled his plans that day to take
part. Unbeknownst to Lincoln, his change
in plans foiled a kidnapping plot by one
John Wilkes Booth and, some believe,
sealed his fate.
Booth had spent the morning planning
a kidnapping and lay in wait for an
ambush along the route to Lincoln’s can-