The 1795 Federal-style Southampton County Courthouse stood at this site, and after the defeat of Nat Turner's insurrection in 1831, the trials of Turner and many of his followers were held there. The 1795 courthouse was replaced in 1834 by an austere brick temple-form building with a pedimented gable, simple cornice, and lunette window, and a portico added in 1926 gave it a provincial Greek Revival look; the courthouse was expanded in 2022. In 1831, Virginia governor John Floyd wanted the normal judicial process followed for captured insurrectionists and sought to avoid widespread vigilante justice after the revolt was suppressed. A Court of Oyer and Terminer was therefore convened, a type of special court created by the Virginia General Assembly in 1692 that eliminated an enslaved person's right to a jury trial, and in the county it had jurisdiction only in capital cases over bondsmen. Between August 31 and November 21, 1831, captured alleged insurrectionists were arraigned there on charges of conspiring to rebel and making insurrection. Of the 53 enslaved people arraigned, 18 were executed, 21 were discharged, and 12 were transported into slavery elsewhere. Five free persons of color were arrested; the cases against Arnold Artes and Isham Turner were dismissed, while Thomas Hathcock, Berry Newsum, and Exum Artist were bound over for trial at the next session of the Superior Court, where only Newsum was convicted and then executed on May 11, 1832.