The first in a series — Pennsylvania death certificates for Wilson County natives:

• James I. Allen, Philadelphia

James I. Allen appears in the 1880 census of Wilson, Wilson County, with parents West and Harriet Allen; siblings Boston, Susan, Cornelius, John, Lettice and Effie Allen; and grandmother Harriet Allen.

1880 census, Wilson, Wilson County.

In 1894, James Allen and Clara Brown, below, were married by a Missionary Baptist minister in Wilson.

• Clara Brown Allen, Philadelphia

• William Anderson, Philadelphia

• James Artis, Whitesboro, New Jersey

Per Wikipedia, “Whitesboro [New Jersey] was founded about 1901 by the Equitable Industrial Association, which had prominent black American investors including Paul Laurence Dunbar, the educator Booker T. Washington and George Henry White, the leading investor and namesake. He was an attorney who had moved to Philadelphia after serving as the last black Republican congressman representing North Carolina’s 2nd congressional district. White and his fellow entrepreneurs wanted to create a self-reliant community for blacks, without the discrimination faced the southern states. Shares in the planned community were sold to African Americans from North and South Carolina and Virginia.” Samuel H. Vick was an investor in Whitesboro.

• Warren Barnes, Johnston, Cambria County

This is possibly the five year-old Warren Barnes listed in the household of Peter, 32, and Lizzie Barnes, 34, in the 1880 census of Stantonsburg township, Wilson County.