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plunged. When he came up drenched and sputtering, he saw everyone laughing, including a black slave girl. Furious at being laughed at by a black woman, he drew his pistol and pointed at her, with a curse. Only intervention by the young white ladies and plantation master prevented the angry Yankee from ending Caroline Terry’s life then.
One of the relics that James Russell cherishes from his great grandmother is a Colt revolver of the type carried by Union cavalry troopers. Caroline Terry picked up this pistol on a battlefield when she and other local slaves were pressed into service to bury the dead soldiers after a fight. Russell believes she found the handgun on the battlefield of Brandy Station, near Culpeper, where the largest cavalry battle of the Civil War occurred on June 9, 1863. She hid the pistol for decades and passed it on to her great-grandson.
Russell tells these and other tales in his book, which is a blend of recorded history, oral history, family legend and Russell’s own style of dramatizing events as would be done in historical fiction. It includes numerous photographs, both historical and contemporary, of people and places in Rappahannock County that are featured in the book. It also includes a chapter on Russell’s memories of growing up in Sperryville in the 1920s and 1930s, when he attended a one-room school for colored children. His memories span the days from his most memorable meeting with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to his nearbrush with death in World War II.
The title of the book is taken from a phrase used by the slaves, who were not permitted to go “beyond the rim,” meaning the boundaries of the plantation. The slaves yearned to go “beyond the rim” and speculated what life would be like out there in the
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