605 East Green Street.

The two hundred-third in a series of posts highlighting buildings in East Wilson Historic District, a national historic district located in Wilson, North Carolina. As originally approved, the district encompasses 858 contributing buildings and two contributing structures in a historically African-American section of Wilson. (A significant number have since been lost.) The district was developed between about 1890 to 1940 and includes notable examples of Queen Anne, Bungalow/American Craftsman, and Shotgun-style architecture. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.

As described in the nomination form for the East Wilson Historic District: “ca. 1908; 1 story; William Hargrove house; triple-A house with bracketed, chamfered porch posts and cut-out balustrade; asphalt shingled; Hargrove was a blacksmith.”

Originally numbered 606, the Hargrove house is second only to the Samuel H. and Annie M. Vick house in longevity on the block.

In the 1908 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Hargrove Wm blksmith 206 S Goldsboro h 606 E Green

In the 1910 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 606 Green, blacksmith William Hargrove, 43; wife Louvenia, 40; daughters Bessie, 17, and Willie L., 13; and boarder John Howard, 18.

In the 1912 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Hargrove Wm blksmith h 606 E Green

In the 1920 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 606 East Green, Luvenia Hargrove, 40, widow, and daughter Willie, 20, public school teacher.

In the 1930 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 605 East Green, Luvenia Hargrove, 60, widow, and daughter Willie, 29, public school teacher.

In the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 605 East Green, owned and valued at $1000, Louvenia Hargrove, 74, widow; son-in-law McDuffie Smith, 42, shoeshine parlor operator; and daughter Willie, 48, teacher.

In 1942, McDuffie Smith registered for the World War II draft in Wilson County. Per his registration card, he was born 12 July 1899 in Durham, N.C.; lived at 605 East Green; his contact was Luvenia Hargrove, 605 East Green; and he was self-employed.

In the 1950 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 605 East Green, shoeshine parlor manager McDuffie Smith, 51; wife Willie H., 53, city grammar school teacher; and mother-in-law Luvenia Hargrove, 80, widow.

Luevenia Hargrove died 22 February 1958 in Wilson at her home at 605 East Green. Per her death certificate, she was born 27 February 1869 in Edgecombe County to Joshua Bulluck and Harriet Hines and was buried in Bulluck cemetery, Edgecombe County. Informant was Mrs. Willie Smith, 605 East Green.

McDuffie Smith of 605 East Green died 17 July 1971. Willie Hargrove Smith died 12 years later. Her nephew, William Hines Macklin, remained at 605 East Green.

Wilson Daily Times, 4 May 1983.

William H. Macklin died 13 March 1991 in Wilson.

On 7 November 1994, the Wilson Daily Times published a list of boarded-up houses that included 605 East Green, described as needing “minor repairs.”

The house was renovated and remains occupied today.

N.87-12-354-359, William Hargrove House, 605 E. Green Street, East Wilson Historic District, Wilson, Wilson County, Survey and National Register Branch, State Historic Preservation Office.

Call Gabe Bowden for a city hack.

The Daily News (Wilson, N.C.), 20 September 1900.

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In the 1870 census of Lower Conetoe township, Edgecombe County, N.C.:  Gaib Bowden, 23, Daniel Wiggins, 25, Albert Lovett, 19, Orphan Knight, 23, and Richard Suggs, 19, farm laborers.

On 18 April 1875, Gabriel Bowden, 26, married Anne Ruff, 24, in Wilson.

In the 1880 census of Wilson, Wilson County: Sarah Jackson, 21; brother-in-law Gabriel Bowden, 40, brother-in-law, laborer; sister Anna, 32, cook; nephews Columbus, 11, house servant, and James, 9; son B.F. Jackson, 6; mother Vinus Ruff, 52; and boarder Whitehurst Wiswould, 64, laborer.

Gabel Bowden died 17 January 1911 in Wilson. Per his death certificate, he was 71 years old; was born in Edgecombe County; was a widower; lived at 410 Green Street; worked as a common laborer; and was buried in Wilson [probably, Oakdale Cemetery.]

Convicting White Caps.

As late as 1897, black men could still sit on Wilson County juries hearing cases charges brought against white men.

In State vs. Pharaoh Rowe, James Montgomery, J.V. Lamm, and John Bone, the jury included James J. Jones, Louis Townsend, Lee Moore, and Scott Johnson.

On 9 February 1897, the jury found the defendants guilty. They were White Caps, members of extralegal vigilante groups that targeted not only black people, but white people who flouted moral standards or otherwise defied the group norms.  Just months before this trial, Pharoah Rowe had been shot in the stomach when a band of his confederates sought to tear down the fence of a white Lucama man’s fence who had opposed a road project.

Wilson Advance, 11 February 1897.

In June 1896, a man who had been initiated into the White Caps by defendant James Montgomery testified that he had been told the group “was a good thing for the country, in that it saved expenses by attending to those who made themselves obnoxious to the community” and that “their signs were a peculiar whistling and the passing of the hand across the face.”

Montgomery’s good word notwithstanding, these vigilantes were looked down upon by Wilson County’s white elite, and the White Cap era seems to have been short-lived.

“They’re all working that way down there.”

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Wilson Daily Times, 1 March 1939.

It took me a minute to figure the alleged fraud out.

Southern Tobacco Company required its stemmers to process 25 pounds of tobacco per day. If they struggled to make quota, the company told them to bring in someone to help. (Southern President James I. Miller denied knowing anything, of course. Southern was an affiliate of J.I. Miller Tobacco Company and shared its South Tarboro Street facility.) The “buddy” was not officially employed by Southern, but worked under the actual employee’s name and Social Security number and got a cut of the employee’s pay. Everybody did it, workers insisted. The problem came when the buddies filed for unemployment benefits, claiming they had earned no wages. Moses Hodge had not reported that Theodore Bell had given him half of his paycheck, and the hammer dropped.

Five people were charged and found guilty of defrauding the Unemployment Compensation Commission.

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  • Mose Hodge — in the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 315 Finch, owned and valued at $600, tobacco company stemmer Moses Hodge, 27; wife Macy, 20, tobacco company stemmer; children Loula, 7, and Connie Lee, 2; and mother Lula, 71. In 1940, Moses Jack Hodge registered for the World War II draft in Wilson County. Per his registration card, he was born 22 October 1912 in Durham, N.C.; his contact was wife Macy Thompson Hodge; he lived at 315 Finch Street; and he worked for Farmers Oil Company, Barnes Street.
  • William Henry Thomas — in 1940, William Henry Thomas registered for the World War II draft in Wilson County. Per his registration card, he was born 21 August 1918 in Wilson; lived at 524 South Lodge Street; his contact was wife Margaret Obery Thomas; and he worked for Export Tobacco Company.
  • Burley Ford — in the 1930 census of Black Creek township, Wilson County: farmer Burley Ford, 27, and wife Mary, 28.
  • Lela Hines — in the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 208 South Vick, owned and valued at $1000, Raiford McPhail, 75, janitor at Fidelity building, widower; lodger Robert Sherdon, 50, carpenter; and lodger Lela Hines, 45, laundress at laundry.
  • Emma Crosland
  • Theodore Bell 
  • William “Tweet” Ellis
  • Cleo Barber — in the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 6-8 Daniel, rented for $7/month, Sam Clarke, 32, electrician at “town department”; Cleo Barber, 29, lodger, tobacco factory hanger; and “lodger’s son” Maskar Barber, 13.

Lane Street Project: O’Neal Cemetery, Hampton, Georgia.

Though I will always be of Wilson, I have lived in Atlanta nearly all of my adult life. It is very much “home” for me, too, and is a bottomless well of African-American culture and history that often informs the way I process research and work related to Black Wide-Awake and Lane Street Project.

I’ve begun visiting metro Atlanta’s historic African-American burial grounds. How have they weathered exploding population growth, shifting demographics, outmigration, land loss, and other pressures? The ninth in a series — O’Neal African Methodist Episcopal Church Cemetery in Hampton, Georgia.

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During all the time I’ve been in Atlanta, I’ve never been to Atlanta Motor Speedway. Getting to O’Neal required that I skirt the racetrack’s hulking oval on an access road that dead-ended into Lower Woolsey Road. Flaggers controlled that intersection, the first glimpse of the massive construction project that has the cemetery in a chokehold. Traffic was being funneled through a single lane that crept past the site of what will be yet another enormous data center in Henry County.

After a half-mile or so, I spotted O’Neal A.M.E. just inside the tree edge. The church was founded during the early Reconstruction years by freedmen, but this building — or its shell, anyway — may date somewhat later. I’m not a student of African-American vernacular building practices, but it appears to be constructed primarily of a cement stucco over an irregular wall built from chunks of quartz and other fieldstone. There is also evidence of bricks used to form lintels over the windows and to outline a faux arch over the front entrance. Without doubt, O’Neal was built with the congregation’s collective labor, using materials ready to hand.

O’Neal A.M.E. Church, front elevation. A few charred bits of wood found in a rear addition to the main structure suggest a devastating fire. 

Through the front window looking back toward the nave. There are no internal structures remaining.

The interior of the church.

The front portico, sealed with modern cinderblock.

Were the parallel lines visible at the top of this image made by a notched trowel?

A chunk of quartz encased in mortar in an exterior wall.

Across the road: what I came for. I scrambled up a five-foot embankment to gain the forest floor. Ahead of me, the remaining headstones of O’Neal church cemetery leaned and listed. The oldest marked grave dates to 1871; the last to the 1950s.

Most of the headstones I saw were professionally made and impressive. O’Neal clearly was a congregation with prosperous families.

Thomas A. Fortson’s monument.

“Prof. Thomas A. Fortson A.M. Ph.D. Was Born Jan. 1, 1854 And Died May 13, 1901. He Was Charitable.” Georgia native Fortson is listed as a teacher in the 1900 census of Nashville, Tennessee. He taught at Walden University, formerly known as Central Tennessee College, which housed Meharry Medical College.

Rows of head and foot stones.

Ceasar Fortson Mảr. 29, 1830 June 30, 1900 Gone, But Not Forgotten. Fortson appears in the 1900 census of nearby Woolsey district, Spalding County.

William G. Alexander. Aug. 11, 1902 May 17, 1909 A little time on earth he spent. Till God for him His angel sent. (In the background, you can just see the orange safety fencing separating O’Neal cemetery from the data center construction site, which wraps around it on three sides.)

A broken vault cover.

Y’all know I love a vernacular headstone. There’s a cross carved into the top section; then 1925 in the middle; then OLLIE, a pierced heart, BORN OCT. 3 1900, [illegible]. 

An ornamental wire fence outlining a family plot.

Fieldstone markers.

Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, July 2026.

Map of the Town of Wilson, 1928.

Here’s a closer look at East Wilson. The streets north of Vance, except Lipscomb, were white residential, as were Railroad Street and Pettigrew Street (not labeled) south of Nash.

Town limits ran just behind Darden (then Wilson Colored) High School at roughly today’s Blakewood Street; south roughly along today’s Wainwright Street to Nash Street (at Freeman Round House Museum); then at a diagonal across Finch, Lane, New Bern Streets, etc.

Note School Street (named for the Colored Graded School), which became Elvie Street.

Just west of the railroad were a working-class white neighborhood centered along Factory Street (which no longer exists) and a working-class black neighborhood, Happy Hills, centered at Banks and Lodge.

Town of Wilson (1928), Maps, Wilson County Records, North Carolina State Archives.

Get to know your people; or, it’s reunion season.

Effenus Henderson (left) is an internationally known human resources and diversity thought leader. Wade J. Henderson (right) is, among other things, former president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. About 15 years ago, the two met at a National Urban League conference.

“You’re from North Carolina?,” asked Wade. “My father was from Wilson.”

“You need to talk to Lisa,” said Effenus.

Wade did. And in 2016, there we all were — in Dudley, North Carolina, birthplace of our grandparents, at the Henderson Family Reunion.

Wade’s grandfather Jesse “Jack” Henderson and my great-grandmother Bessie Lee Henderson were siblings. Jack came to Wilson around 1908, and my grandmother Hattie Henderson Ricks, Bessie’s orphaned daughter, arrived a few years later. Wade’s father Dempsey Lee Henderson was born in Wilson in 1927, and my father Rederick C. Henderson in 1934.

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Is your Wilson County-based family having a reunion this summer? I’d love to feature it here — and add your reunion flyer or program to my collection!

Photo in collection of Lisa Y. Henderson, 2016.

Haywood Sauls and wife Betsey Sauls vs. Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Company.

In May 1911, Betsey Sauls took the extraordinary step of suing Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Company for serious injuries she suffered at Black Creek depot. The law firm of James H. Pou and William A. Finch, well-known in the state for their high-profile civil and criminal litigation, filed on her behalf (and her husband Haywood Sauls‘, as was required by law for married women at the time.)

In a nutshell, on 3 May 1909, Betsey Sauls bought a train ticket to travel from Wilson to Black Creek. The train overshot the depot at Black Creek, but announced “All off for Black Creek!” as usual. As Sauls attempted to disembark, she fell from the train and was injured.

Pou and Finch asserted that by stopping beyond the usual location, Sauls was forced to step down from an excessive height and near a side track with sharp, exposed sills (the long, heavy timbers used as a foundation for crossties.) As Sauls stepped down, the train suddenly began to move backward, throwing Sauls to the ground.

Pou and Finch further asserted that A.C.L.R.R. had failed to provide a stepstool customarily provided for older passengers faced with a higher-than-usual descent.

Sauls was 65 to 70 years old, was “corpulent,” and not used to train travel. The knee injuries she sustained were serious, painful, and — she believed — permanent. She had difficulty walking and sleeping, could not work, and was forced to use a stick or crutch. She also had back and hip pain.

Sauls was now “an invalid and sufferer” of both physical and mental anguish. She could not visit family, friends, or church and had incurred considerable expense for medical treatment.

Sauls sought $5000 in damages.

In a brief, spare decision, the judge G.S. Ferguson awarded Sauls $500 (roughly $17,000 in 2026 dollars.)

Civil Action Papers, Wilson County (N.C.) Court Records (1909), http://www.familysearch.org.

600 East Green Street, re-re-revisited.

The J.D. and Eleanor Reid house has been in distress for decades, as shown in these photos taken for the East Wilson Historic District nomination process.

N.87-12-269-271, Judge D. Reid House, 600 E. Green Street, East Wilson Historic District, Wilson, Wilson County, Survey and National Register Branch, State Historic Preservation Office.