The Gate City Marathon #2: Open Spaces

Welcome back!! Next, we are ging to continue our marathon with open spaces or one big open space: Battleground Park (Guilford Courthouse Park). This is the only really big space we came to on that fateful day. Anyways, this place was placed here to symbolize THE major turning point for the American Revolution, according to history and Greensboro. This place represents the unit of Gen. Nathaniel Greene and his battle with Gen. Cornwallis in that specific area. Greene lost the battle, but found out that Cornwallis lost a severe amount of troops and lots of ammunition. Then, he surrendered at Yorktown. Now, as we have seen before, towns like to make populated areas around historical landmarks. Our mystery to solve today is why the people of Greensboro did not make a towny area in this park.

My first (and strongest) reason is that there are many graves among this area. There are two remarkable graves in this area. First, there are two people buried here who signed the Declaration of Independence and took residence in North Carolina. These two people represented Greensboro's part in freedom and democracy. Also, there is a monument that marks the graves of three American soldiers killed in the battle of Guilford Courthouse. Now, why would people build anything populated-related over graves? They will not. The people of Greensboro were a Protestant style group. They were a very superstitious group of people who believed in God as their Savior and ghosts and the damned as evil. Now, there's an old superstition where if people build over a grave of someone, they disturb the spirits of the dead buried there. Now, does that sound bad to you or not? Also, the people buried here had too much respect to just be built over so why do it?

Next, we have our second reason. This land has national appeal instead of just a state appeal to being a landmark. This photo below shows a monument of the soldiers who died.........from Maryland! If Maryland has claimed a monument here, they must have some sort of value of respect for this place. If we built over that, we are just trodding all over another state's respect. That's not too good.

Finally, we have a nameplate of one of the presidents of the Guilford Battle Ground Company. This group loved the history of this area and wanted to preserve it despite the economy gained from new buildings and shops. Look at the name on the plate. Yes, it is a Morehead. Joseph Morehead took over as president of the company once the first president, Schenck, died. He was around for the christening of the park as a park and he made sure of it. Now, if you remeber from the Blandwood mansion, the Moreheads were a powerful family. If a Morehead wanted something, they were pretty sure that it was going to happen. Therefore, the area was going to be a park. End of story on that. Well, moving on to #3: Residential Areas!!