When Ben A. Watford and Earl Mills recently went to Eastern Carolina University to get duplicates of some artifacts from a slave cemetery in James City, they got much more than they asked for.
Watford, who is co-chair of the James City Historical Society with Mills, said college researchers offered them an entire collection of artifacts taken from the site during a 1979 archeological dig.
The two men were ecstatic and have brought home about half of what Watford said is upwards of 1,000 pieces taken near the cemetery site next to a runway at Coastal Regional Airport.
In addition to the cemetery, the site, now under the oversight of the James City Historical Society, Inc, houses the Crockett-Miller Slave Quarters, a single large monument commemorating all of those buried there and an out house complete with a Sears catalogue.
