Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.
Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.
Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
Accessing as Spider: The system has identified your IP as being a spider. IP Address: 18.206.76.45 -- Domain: Amazon Technologies
I love well-behaved spiders! They are, in fact, how most people find my site. Unfortunately, my network has a limited bandwidth and pictures take up bandwidth. Spiders ask for lots and lots of pages and chew up lots and lots of bandwidth which slows things down considerably for regular folk. To counter this, you'll see all the text on the page but the images are being suppressed. Also, some system options like merges are being blocked for you.
Note: Permission is NOT granted for spiders, robots, etc to use the site for AI-generation purposes. I'm sure you're thrilled by your ability to make revenue from my work but there's nothing in that for my human users or for me.
If you are in fact human, please email me at guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can check if your designation was made in error. Given your number of hits, that's unlikely but what the hell.
Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]
Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
BETHEL_050926_13.JPG: This is an interesting stone. The part that's most easily read is the front which is just a self-congratulatory message by the people who put up the stone: "This stone, placed here by the courtesy of Virginia, is erected by authority of the State of North Carolina. June 10, 1905. E.J. Hale, W E. Kyle, John H. Thorpe, W.B. Taylor, R.H. Ricks, Commissioners."
What's it a stone for? That's on the top of the stone but you'll miss it: "On this spot June 10, 1861 fell Henry Lawson Wyatt, Private Company A, 1st North Carolina Regiment." Who's he? He's the first Confederate soldier killed in the Civil War. He was born in Richmond in 1842. He accompanied his father to live in North Carolina in 1856. When North Carolina seceded, its young men volunteered for the slaughter. Henry enlisted on April 18, 1861. Its colonel was David H. Hill
BETHEL_050926_22.JPG: Much of the battlefield is covered by this dam
BETHEL_050926_59.JPG: The church that was here during the battle -- the Big Bethel Church -- was from a congregation that had moved here from Hampton in 1842. The church was destroyed during the war.
.The cemetery here contains bodies of individuals who were members of the Big Bethel Baptist Church congregation who died between the construction of the fourth Big Bethel Church in 1876 and its closure in 1926.
BETHEL_050926_64.JPG: The tall obelisk commemorating the Battle of Big Bethel, which took place on June 10, 1861, was erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1905. Most of the battle took place within a half-mile radius of the third Bethel Church. The battle was the first significant [land] battle of the Civil War and the first Confederate victory. The third Bethel Church location is now submerged, and most of the battlefield is submerged or developed.
Wikipedia Description: Battle of Big Bethel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Battle of Big Bethel, also known as the Battle of Bethel Church or Great Bethel, took place on June 10, 1861, in Tabb and Hampton, Virginia, as part of the blockade of Chesapeake Bay during the American Civil War. It was arguably the first Civil War land battle in the Eastern Theater, and the first organized land battle of the entire war.
Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, based at Fort Monroe, sent converging columns from Hampton and Newport News against advanced Confederate outposts at Little and Big Bethel. The Confederates abandoned Little Bethel and fell back to their entrenchments behind Brick Kiln Creek, a tributary of Back Creek, near Big Bethel Church. The Federals, under immediate command of Brig. Gen. Ebenezer Pierce, pursued, attacked frontally along the road, and were repulsed. Crossing downstream, the 5th New York Volunteer Infantry attempted to turn the Confederate left flank, but were also repulsed. Novelist Theodore Winthrop, on the staff of Gen. Pierce, was killed. The disorganized Union forces retired, returning to Hampton and Newport News. The Confederates suffered 1 killed, 7 wounded.
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.)
I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!