Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 23 March 1940.
With the destruction by fire of Elm City’s black high school in 1940, the education of local children slammed to a halt. Amanda Mitchell Cameron was in the eighth grade at the time. She recalls that, rather than delay their high school studies, two of her older siblings carpooled to Wilson with a neighborhood boy to attend Darden High School. Most children, however, stayed home until the newly built school opened in 1941.
I’m back in Wilson. My first stop is always Rest Haven to pay respects to my father. From there, Vick Cemetery is literally just around the corner.
I placed flowers on the grave of the Unknown Ancestor and made a prayer of thanks.
I turned to get back in my car and nearly stepped on this bit of marble.
It appeared to be a piece of the marble “box” that was once surrounded the Unknown Ancestor’s grave. I placed it inside the orange cones guarding the site.
There was also this a few feet away. It’s hard to see in this low-contrast image, but it’s comprised of shards of granite imbedded in concrete and is a little over a foot long. It appears to be a section of grave border, or maybe even a headstone base. I’ll alert the City in the morning.
Whew. This GPR survey can’t happen soon enough.
Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, March 2026.
Fourteen year-old Wright Mitchell, a free boy of color, was apprenticed to serve John A. Lane until age 21. Lane had married Sarah Applewhite in 1852 and likely lived in the Stantonsburg area.
Minute Docket, Wilson County Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions, October Term 1858, Wilson Court Dockets 1855-1868, http://www.ancestry.com
John H. Aiken died 20 July 1914 in Wilson. He operated a livery stable at 125 South Goldsboro Street. Livery stables were the essential equivalent of parking lots and car rental offices, offering boarding, feeding, and care of privately owned horses and rental of horses, carriages, and buggies. Aiken’s wife Georgia Crockett Aiken served as administrator of his estate before resigning on 27 August 1914 and joining Aiken’s heirs — children Quince Aiken, William Aiken, Samuel Aiken, Nannie Eperson, John McDaniel, Gollie Aiken, Levi Aiken, Lizzie Aiken, and Alice Aiken — to request the appointment of W.R. Bryan.
Georgia Aiken’s inventory and final account, filed 29 August 1914, offers a detailed look at a successful black-owned business in pre-World War I Wilson. The inventory reveals a large, though heavily mortgaged, stock in trade — 13 horses, 14 buggies, 5 closed carriages, 2 single surries, and 4 wagons of various types. (There’s also a fifty-dollar debt to Aiken owed by veterinarian Elijah L. Reid.)
Receipts show that Aiken did a healthy business renting out his conveyances. In the last 15 days of July, Georgia Aiken collected almost $190.00 “for teams and buggies,” averaging $12.65 a day [$413.38 in today’s dollars].
Georgia Aiken also took in payments from Briggs Hotel and Wilson Hardware Company, both white-owned businesses, for boarding the companies’ horses.
Most of Aiken’s disbursements were wage payments to laborers William Best, Henry Best, Edward Mooring, William Selby, George Lane, and Dave McPhail. J.Y. Buchanan received four payments for shoeing horses; Hackney Brothers and C. Mack Wells were paid for hack repairs; A.J. Ford was paid for repairing a harness; and Thomas & Barnes for an unspecified repair.
Aiken paid bills from Carolina Telephone Company, Barnes-Graves Grocery Company, and J. & D. Oettinger. She paid two feed bills from C. Woodard Company and made seven payments to Quinn-McGowan Furniture Company, likely for the costs of her husband’s funeral. She also paid stable rent to S.M. Richardson and unspecified rent to S.H. Vick, as well as miscellaneous fees related to probate. Interestingly, Georgia Aiken paid $79.39 — quite a large sum — to T.S. Beatty of the Knights of Gideon lodge. What was this for?
Wilson [County, North Carolina] Property Settlement Records 1905-1923, http://www.familysearch.org.
Jacob Rentfrow lived in the Black Creek area, in what was then Wayne County, North Carolina. Kedar Rountree, who had obtained a fifty-acre land grant in 1801, lived in the same area.
Rentfrow died in 1815. At Rentfrow’s estate sale on 2 January 1816, Rountree bought Jack, the sole enslaved person listed among Rentfrow’s assets.
North Carolina Land Grant Files 1693-1960, http://www.ancestry.com; North Carolina Wills and Probate Records 1665-1998, http://www.ancestry.com.
Wilson Daily Times, 7 January 1921.
The unidentified Judge Harrison was a popular speaker in Wilson, having delivered the first commencement address for graduates of the Wilson Normal and Industrial Institute two years earlier. That speech was notably conservative, and it’s no wonder the Times‘ editor approved.
Wilson Daily Times, 20 March 1930.
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Turner and Mattie Hinnant Stokes lost their house at 530 East Nash Street after defaulting on their mortgage early during the Great Depression.
I watched tonight’s city council meeting live on Vimeo and cheered all the way through.
First, let me give a deep bow and thunderous hand-clap to all — brown, black, white — who spoke in defense of Councilmember Eduardo Herrera-Picasso and the city’s immigrant community. I applaud your brave insistence that the City respectfully address the concerns of all its residents and that your neighbors understand that Wilson belongs to all of us.
And — Council unanimously passed the Vick Cemetery proposal. The resulting first order of business is the ground-penetrating radar of the right-of-way we have been demanding for years. Results of that survey will shape our next steps.
I could not get to Wilson this week, so I asked Castonoble Hooks to read brief remarks on my behalf during the public comment period. He followed with his own trenchant remarks (that I accidentally interrupted.) Thank you, Cass.
University of Pennsylvania-trained physician Lewis J. Dortch of Stantonsburg died in October 1854, leaving an estate that included nearly three dozen enslaved people. We examined here the disruption created by movement of these people into short-term hires in Stantonsburg and over the county line in Nahunta district, Wayne County.
In fact, W.T. Dortch, the Goldsboro lawyer appointed to administer his brother’s estate, placed multiple rounds of advertisements for the “sale of Negroes” as far away as the Wilmington Journal.
Receipt for ads placed in 1855 in Goldsboro newspapers the North Carolina Telegraph and the Tribune.
Receipt for 1859 ad in the Wilmington Journal.
I have not been able to find digital copies of the newspapers in which these notices were published.
Estate of L.J. Dortch, Probate Estate Case Files 1854-1959, Wilson County, N.C., http://www.familysearch.org.