In case you missed it, Paul Sherrod and the Jack and Cassie Sherrod homestead were featured on WRAL’s Tar Heel Traveler recently!
Photo courtesy of wral.com.
Signal Boost: Preserving Historic Cemeteries Workshop, Columbia, S.C.
Private Jasper L. Smith, stationed at Camp Shanks.
In the 1920 census of Toisnot township, Wilson County: farmer Charlie Smith, 28; wife Carry, 22; and children Ruth, 4, Millie, 3, and Jasper, 11 months.
In the 1930 census of Taylor township, Wilson County: Charlie Smith, 43; wife Carrie, 31; and children Ruth, 14, Midred, 13, Jasper, 11, Jessie G., 9, Virginia, 8, May E., 6, Willie J., 3, and William H., 2.
In 1940, Jasper Lee Smith registered for the World War II draft in Wilson. Per his registration card, he was born 22 April 1918 in Wilson County; lived at Route 1, Wilson; his contact was mother Carrie Smith; and he worked for J.A. Watson.
Image courtesy of Veterans of World War II Wilson County, spiral-bound volume, Wilson County Public Library.
D.C. Suggs in Asheville.
The Comet (Johnson City, Tenn.), 17 November 1887.
Of what “college” in Asheville was Daniel C. Suggs president? In January 1888, he began teaching at the newly opened Beaumont Street School. Asheville’s first public city school for African-American children. Why would he leave the presidency of a college to teach fourth and fifth graders?
…
Asheville Citizen-Times, 16 May 1888.
The most likely candidates were the Allen School, a Methodist-affiliated school that opened about 1885, and Beaumont Academy, a Buncombe County school that opened in February 1886 and closed at the end of 1887. Neither was a “college” by any stretch of the imagination,
Signal Boost: The Importance of Telling African American Stories through Genealogy and DNA
What if the missing pieces of your family’s story are already waiting in an undiscovered document or your DNA?
In this upcoming episode of the African American Untold Stories Podcast, our Center for Family History (CFH) team sits down with acclaimed authors Melvin Collier, Michael Willis, Kathy Marshall, and Orice Jenkins. They will discuss how genealogy and DNA testing transform family research into powerful published narratives—from books and stage plays to documentaries and digital media.
If you value reclaiming family legacies and bringing hidden history to light, this will be a essential space to join in on the conversation. Tune in online Saturday, August 15, for the CFH podcast episode “The Importance of Telling African American Stories Through Genealogy and DNA.”
In this episode, you’ll learn:
– How to use DNA testing to uncover African American ancestry
– Ways to turn genealogical research into compelling stories
– Tools for writing or digitally publishing your family history
– Why reclaiming Black stories is essential for future generations
Your family’s legacy deserves to be told – not just discovered and not shared. Join the conversation and start writing your family’s story today.
This is an ONLINE podcast episode, as part of CFH’s African American Untold Stories Podcast.
🔗 [Link to Untold African American Stories CFH Podcast Playlist]
T/5 Gradis Hines, in England.
In the 1940 census of Woodington township, Lenoir County, N.C.: farmer Joe Hines, 39, farmer; wife Leona, 31; and children Gradis, 18, Bernice, 17, Joseph, 14, Edward, 13, Leora, 4, Jasper, 3, and an infant, 4 months. The family had lived in Wilson in 1935.
In 1945, Gradis Hines registered again for the draft. He reported that he was born 15 September 1920 in Wilson; lived at 812 East Green Street, Wilson; his contact was his father Joe Hines at the same address; and he was “just discharged from Army.”
Image courtesy of Veterans of World War II Wilson County, spiral-bound volume, Wilson County Public Library.
Four Minute Men.
Wilson Daily Times, 12 June 1918.
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- Globe Theatre
- S.H. Vick — Samuel H. Vick.
- Rev. H.B. Taylor — Halley B. Taylor.
The funeral of Bertha Ayers.
News and Observer (Raleigh, N.C.), 20 August 1930.
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Members of the Ayers family were among a handful of families in the Lucama area who transitioned from black to white racial classification in the early 1900s. Bertha Ayers‘ grandfather Jesse Ayers was described as colored as late as 1914, and her aunt Harriet Ayers‘ had been prosecuted for marrying a white man in 1895. By 1920, however, this set of Ayerses had gained acceptance within the white community.
White girls wanted at the cigarette factory.
Daily News (Wilson, N.C.), 20 September 1900.
Tobacco processing work was divided by race and gender. Tobacco factories employed black men and women as redrying hands and stemmers, low-paying, hot, dusty jobs. Relatively cleaner manufacturing jobs, such as in cigarette factories, were reserved for white “girls.”
619 East Green Street, revisited.
Here is 619 East Green Street, the Charlie Thomas house, in the 1980s when photographed for the National Register application for East Wilson. The small attached cinderblock building, Bea’s Flower Shop, was demolished a few years later.
I photographed the house in 2017 when I first featured it in this series. The photo below, taken in October 2025, shows the toll of eight more years.
Two months later, I photographed 619 again.
I do not begrudge a renovation that returns a decaying house to livable condition, and I understand the hard choices that must be made when updating and making efficient a house more than 100 years old, but I am saddened by the loss of architectural detail here. The original bracketed, turned porch posts replaced by plain four-by-fours are a particular loss, as are the reduced-size windows.