Supporters of the Bennett Place State Historic Site are offering a $500 scholarship to rising high-school seniors in North Carolina.

Two essays form the major part of the application process: one on the students' personal interest in Bennett Place and the other on how to improve the site and its image as a historic landmark.

Bennett Place, off U.S. 70 in western Durham, is site of the largest Confederate surrender of the Civil War. Occurring two weeks after Appomattox, it involved 80,000 Rebel troops and ended the conflict in the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida.

April 8 is deadline for application postmarks. Presentation will be made April 15, during the site's week-long observance of the surrender's 145th anniversary.

Offered for the first time this year, the scholarship honors the late William Vatavuk of Durham, a president of the Bennett Place Support Fund Inc. in the 1980s and 90s and author of a guidebook to the site, "Dawn of Peace."

For information on the Vatavuk scholarship, contact Bennett Place State Historic Site: 919/383-4345 or bennett@ncdcr.gov.