Month: May 2016

Elm City’s Negro community, pt. 3.

Cecil Lloyd Spellman was a professor of rural education at Florida A&M in Tallahassee and former Wilson County Negro agricultural extension agent. In 1947, he published “Elm City, A Negro Community in Action,” a monograph intended to employ sociology to “interpret the Negro in his actual day to day activities and interrelationships with members of his own and other races.”

Early in the work, on page 11, Spellman included this hand-drawn map of the Elm City community and its neighborhoods.

ELm City neighborhood

Below, the same community via Google Maps. Topographically, little has changed in 70 years. The major roads lacing the area — all two-lane except U.S. Highway 301 — remain in place, though now all are paved. The railroad still slices north to south. The small communities marked by one-room schools have largely dissipated in all but name, however.

Google Elm City

Williams Lumber Company’s Negroes.

“In 1914, D. C. Williams, Jr., then 24 years of age, borrowed a hundred and fifty dollars from his mother. Together with a little money he had saved, he purchased a pair of mules and a small portable sawmill which he loaded in one boxcar along with a few bales of hay and two Negro men who had been with the family for a number of years. His intention was to go further south, but when the train arrived in Elm City the mules had eaten about all their hay and the two Negro men were getting restless. He had been watching the timber in the Roanoke River Valley as he rode along. It was a nice balmy day when the train arrived in Elm City and stopped for water. There was not much there, only the station and a little store, but he decided to stop and investigate the timber possibilities. He had the conduc­tor set off his car from which he unloaded the mules and tied them to a tree, he then proceeded to set up a temporary camp. There was a man nearby unloading cross ties. He asked him where his mill was and was told it was out of town just about a half a mile. He asked to ride out to the mill with the man and arriving there he purchased a few slabs and some cull lumber, which they loaded onto the wagon with another load of ties. Back in town he made arrangements with a family living near­by, that owned a little land, to build a temporary shelter for his Negroes. Williams arranged to stay overnight with the family.

“The next day with the help of a cross tie and lumber buyer interested in additional supplies, for fifty dollars he bought a small tract of timber near town for which he paid the cash. While he didn’t really have the finan­cial backing to back up his boast, he told everybody that whatever he bought he would pay cash for it. From that time on, he was known as “Cash” Williams. He set his mill up on the side track, where for fifty dollars he bought an old boiler from a mill that had previously been there. There was some new agricultural activity in the vicinity of Elm City which made it possible to sell most of his lumber locally at a good price and for cash. Within a few months he sent for his mother and father to come and help him, which they did. Within three years war was eminent and the demand for lumber ex­ceeded his ability to produce.

“In 1918 when he sent for his father’s brother, the mill had been enlarged considerably. By 1920 this aggressive outfit had a large steam circular mill in Wilson, North Carolina, and a similar mill in Rocky Mount, North Car­olina. “Cash” Williams’ brother, W. G. Williams, who came down from Delaware, was manager of the Rocky Mount mill and his uncle was manager of the Wilson mill. D. C. Williams, Sr., continued operating the Elm City Mill.”

From History of Williams Lumber Company of North Carolina (“Cypress Specialists”).

General Order 135.

On 14 November 1863, General John Schofield, commander of the Department of Missouri, issued General Order 135 authorizing provost marshals in the department to recruit and enlist black soldiers to serve the Union as U.S. Colored Troops. The Ancestry.com database United States Descriptive Lists of Colored Volunteer Army Soldiers, 1864, contains enlistment and muster rolls for colored troops who enlisted in Kentucky.

There is one entry, for Henry Jones, lists a Wilson County birthplace. Jones was 25 years old and had worked as a laborer (i.e. enslaved fieldhand). He enlisted on 29 May 1865  at Piketon, Kentucky, in 1st Lt. George C. Clapp’s Company E, 121st United States Colored Infantry. Jones was 5’9 1/2″ with dark eyes, hair and skin. And “name of owner of a slave”: Jefferson Higginbotham.

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Higginbotham is not a Wilson County name. Jefferson Higginbotham may have been the Thos. J. Higginbotham, 21, listed in the 1860 census of Verona, Boone County, Kentucky, in the household of Abram Wellman. If so, he was fighting for the Confederacy even as his former chattel joined up with the Union Army. In any case, it is likely that Henry Jones ended up in Kentucky after being sold away from his birthplace in Wilson. (Had he been a runaway, he would have reported a Wilson County owner.)

4-H Club scholarship.

From www.learnnc.org:

cornfield

In July of 1940, Levi Simmons, an African American student of the Menchew 4-H Club of Wilson County, was awarded the 4-H Club scholarship to North Carolina A&T. This black and white photograph shows Simmons standing in front of an acre of ripe corn, one of seven projects conducted that year. In the photograph, he is standing with his left hand on a cornstalk, which towers over him. His right hand holds a thick manila envelope.

Green ‘N’ Growing Collection (The History of Home Demonstration and 4-H Youth Development in North Carolina), Special Collections, North Carolina State University Libraries.

——

In the 1940 census of Black Creek township, Wilson County: farmer Junius Simmons, 44, wife Clara, 39, and their children Levi, 21, Joseph, 20, Frank, 15, Julia, 10, Edward, 9, Lettie, 5, and Thomas, 1. Though this census records the birthplaces of all the Simmonses as North Carolina, the 1930 census lists South Carolina for the parents and older children, including Levi. Junius’ death certificate lists Clarendon County, South Carolina, as his birthplace.

LEARN NC, a program of the UNC School of Education, finds the most innovative and successful practices in K-12 education and makes them available to the teachers and students of North Carolina – and the world.

 

Rev. Foster flays white Methodism.

Rev. Richard A.G. Foster, a native of Whiteville, North Carolina, did not stay long at Wilson’s Saint John A.M.E. Zion, but he certainly made his mark there and elsewhere.

PC 11 5 1938

Pittsburgh Courier, 5 November 1938.

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Pittsburgh Courier, 21 January 1939.

PC 5 13 1939

Pittsburgh Courier, 13 May 1939.

NYA 10 19 1940

New York Age, 19 October 1940.

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Telegram from Negro Ministers of New Haven to W.E.B. DuBois, 21 April 1945; W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries.

Pitt Cour 8 22 1964

Pittsburgh Courier, 22 August 1964.

(For more about The Men of Tomorrow, see here.)

Tartt’s negroes, part 2.

Thirty-five years after his death, Jonathan Tartt‘s sons and grandsons, which included a bewildering number of Jonathans, Jameses and Elnathans, joined the stream of whites flooding into lands wrested from the Choctaw under the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. Several settled in and around Sumter County in far southwestern Alabama.

James B. Tartt, son of Jonathan’s son Elnathan Tartt, was an early arrival. A notice he placed in the 26 September 1828 edition of the Raleigh Register signaled his intent to file a claim for a lost hundred dollar note that Thomas E. Tartt had mailed to him at Stantonsburg the year before. By time he posted the ad, however, James had joined Thomas in Lagrange, Alabama. Within a few years, as the Choctaw were pushed out, he shifted across the state to Sumter County.

In October 1832, this ad appeared in North Carolina Free Press:

NC free press 10 2 1832

North Carolina Free Press, 2 October 1832.

Had Adam actually made it more than 700 miles back to Edgecombe County from Sumter? Or had he missed the boat, so to speak, by running away to avoid joining the coffle headed deep South? I do not know if Adam was ever returned to James B. Tartt.

James Tartt did not relinquish all his Edgecombe County possessions immediately, and here is an 1837 advertisement for the sale of 1400 acres he owned at the fork of Toisnot and White Oak Swamps in what is now Wilson County.

Tarboro' Press 10 28 1837

Tarboro Press, 28 October 1837.

By the 1840s, however, he and his children were well established in Sumter County. In the personal letter below, “old man” James B. Tartt’s son Elnathan wrote home to relatives — the envelope is addressed to “Edwin or Washington Barnes,” Stantonsburgh, Edgecombe County NC. He chatted a little about his sisters, but was primarily occupied with another runaway, Calvin, who had absconded on the way from North Carolina to Alabama:

Sumitvill Ala February 3rd 1848

Dear Cousins

I arrived home about three weeks ago and found my folks verry well, we had a verry pleasant trip. No axident hapened at all, the girls was verry much pleased with their trip, I left Elizabeth in Mobile to go to school. I was in Mobile three days. Mr. Stewarts & Pratts famileys wer all verry well.

I have noght bought any place for the old man yet and I doant recon I shall this spring, as it is verry late, and the people have calculated to make a nother crop and will not sell at any thing reasonable, I shall rent a place for him to make a corn crop, he says if he can get him a small place to work his preasant force on he is willing to give the Ballance of his money to his children, the old man don think of any thing but marring thats all his talk, says he is determine to have him a wife. Margret is at my house, going to scool. I receivd a letter from Arch the other day informing me that Calvin had run away. He left the night after they passed Raleigh. I have not heard from them since they left Pittsborough No Carolina but I am looking for them every day. I want you to manage to get Calvin in, some how, make out that you have bought him, or that you are otherwise to sell him and make a shamm sale of him to some one. I think we had better sell him if we can get a fair price, as it will cost a great deal to get him hir even if we could get holt of him. The old man is willing to sell him but I want him to come out hir if it will not cost to much if you can manager to get holt of him put him in jail and let me know it. Or if you know of any person coming out that will bring him I will pay them well. If any person is coming out by the rail road, he would not be but verry little troble — try and see what you can get for him and let me know what the prospects to get holt of him or sell him. Write to me and let me have your opinion what way I had best proceed about him, one relation are all well nothing moor but Rema[ining] yours  /s/ Elnathan Tartt

Give my respects to your family write to me and let me know all the nuse since I lelft, I settle all my buisness befor I left

——

“Arch” was Elnathan’s brother Archelaus B. Tartt.  Margaret and Elizabeth were their sisters. (Elizabeth returned to Wilson, married John Thomas Barnes, and is buried in Maplewood cemetery. Her sisters Penninah Tartt Eason and Margaret B. Tartt also went back to North Carolina.) The family appears in 1850 census of Sumter County in two side-by-side households. At #227: farmer James Tartt, 58, with children Edwin, 20, Elizabeth, 18, Margaret, 14, Paninah, 29, and Arch B., 23, all born in North Carolina. At #228, clerk Elnathan Tartt, 24, wife Mary, 27, and Alabama-born son John, 6, plus 8 year-old Louisa Randolph.

Apparently, one of the many schemes Elnathan mused about worked, and Calvin was returned to the fold. Seven months after Elnathan’s letter, James B. Tartt recorded a deed of gift in Sumter County in which he — in keeping with Elnathan’s hopes — transferred his wealth to his children. On 11 September 1848, “in consideration of the natural love and affection I have for my children” Elnathan Tartt, Enos Tartt, Martha Tartt Adams, Penninah Tartt, Archelaus Tartt, Edwin Tartt, Elizabeth Tartt, Margaret Tartt and Jonathan Tartt, James B. Tartt named his brother Thomas M. Tartt trustee and made the following transfers and distributions: (1) notes, drafts, checks, etc., totaling about $11000, (2) “the following negro slaves one negro named Gray about 26 years old and dark yellow complexion, a negro slave Calvin black and about 27 years old, Warren of dark yellow complexion and about 24 years of age, Sarah a negro woman about 50 years old, a negro girl Mary about 18 years old of yellow complexion, Lizzy black and about 11 years old, Peter, a child, black and about 2 years old and Rose the child of Mary about 1 year old,” (3) mules and wagons, and (4) moneys to secure for himself “a comfortable home and liberal living” and educations and comfortable livings until marriage for his daughters (with Penninah’s portion reduced because she had already been given a nine year-old enslaved girl, Julia). The document also contained provisions for the distribution of any property that remained at James’ death.

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The Tartts enumerated in Alabama’s 1855 state census. James B. Tartt, having given them away, is listed with no slaves. His older sons Enos and Elnathan owned a total of 33 men and women, and his brother Thomas M. Tartt held another 17 in trust.

The first post-Emancipation federal census, counted in 1870, lists 13 North Carolina-born African-Americans named Tartt in Sumter County. Their names and approximate birth years: Hilyard (1795), David (1805), Jessy (1805), Belfer (1810), Burwell (1810), Bettie (1815), Cherry (1816), Howell (1820), Hager (1825), Chaney (1835), Hugh (1810), Zarah (1820) … and Cal (1830).

Many, many thanks to a James B. Tartt descendant for sharing a copy of Elnathan Tartt’s letter. Privately held documents like this are an invaluable resource for African-American researchers.

The 28th arrest.

23 May 1887. A man and a woman, both African-American, argue near the railroad crossing at Vance Street in Wilson. Shots ring out. The woman, Mittie Strickland, falls to the ground, fatally struck. The man, said to be Caesar Wooten, flees.

Within weeks, the governor of North Carolina offers a $200 reward for Wooten’s capture.

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Raleigh News & Observer, 2 June 1887.

In response, toothy dark-skinned men all across North Carolina and Virginia are hauled into police stations.

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Greensboro Morning News, 10 June 1887.

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Wilson Advance, 30 June 1887.

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Wilmington Morning Star, 26 July 1887.

By August, at least eight men have been falsely identified and arrested as Wooten.

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Raleigh Weekly State Chronicle, 4 August 1887.

And then … nothing. For four years. Until:

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Wilson Advance, 30 April 1891.

The final tally: 27 false arrests before Wooten was captured in Atlanta.

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Wilson Advance, 21 May 1891.

And, finally, a conviction:

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Raleigh State Chronicle, 8 November 1891.

——

Wooten Strickland

Map of Wilson, 1882. The tiny red X at the railroad marks the approximate spot of Mittie Strickland’s murder.

[Sidenote: Wooten was appointed top-notch legal defense in that time and place. Frederick A. Woodard (1854-1915) was elected to the United States Congress two years after Wooten’s trial. Sidney A. Woodard was his brother and law partner. Avowed white supremacist Charles B. Aycock was appointed United States Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina in 1893 and elected governor in 1901.]

Free people of color, 1860: Saratoga district.

Free people of color enumerated in Wilson County’s first federal census, taken in 1860.

Saratoga district

#805. Jane Artis, 14, black, in the household of 28 year-old white farmer J.J. Lane.

#817. Henry Mitchell, 24, black, carpenter; Martha Mitchell, 18, mulatto; Olive Mitchell, 25, black; Mary Mitchell, 1, black; and Jesse Mitchell, 60, black, farm laborer. Henry owned $200 real property and $30 personal property.

#851. Eliza Sampson, 30, mulatto, cook, living with two white men, Streeter Dilda, 25, and Benj’n Baker, 20, both grog shop workers. Eliza reported $100 real property and $34 personal property.

#919. William, 15, Patrick, 14, Margaret, 13, Lou, 12, Balum, 11, and Eliza Hall, 45, all mulatto, in the household of James B. Peacock, 25.

#921. Samuel Hall, 13, mulatto, in the household of white farm laborer Noah Walker.

#940. Wyatt Lynch, 38, plasterer and brickmason, with wife Caroline, 23, and daughter Frances, 3. Wyatt reported owning $50 in personal property.

#942. Brickmason Etheldred Caraway, 29, black, with wife Susan, 25, and children Bunyan, 5, and Joseph, 3, all black. [This family’s last name actually was Carroll.] Etheldred reported $30 personal estate.

#954. James Jones, 51, day laborer, in the household of white merchant John Williamson, 41.

#959. Teamster Richard Simpson, 27, mulatto; wife Mariah, 19, mulatto, cook; and son John, 1 month, mulatto.

The Sauls sisters meet an alligator.

The November 2001 issue of Trees, the publication of the Wilson County Genealogical Society, ran a piece from Hugh B. Johnston’s files about Jane Sauls, her daughters and their encounter with an alligator on their farm. The Saulses likely lived just inside the Wayne County line, but they and their families were part of the nearby Stantonsburg community. William Woodard Sr., with whom Jane was apprenticed as a child, and Calvin Woodard Jr., whom her daughter Mary nursed, lived near White Oak Swamp in Wilson County.

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Jane Lane Sauls was born circa 1842 in the Bullhead area of northwest Greene County, which borders Wilson County. She was one of several children of Sylvania Artis, a free woman of color, and her husband Guy Lane, an enslaved man, but is not found in the 1850 or 1860 censuses.

In the 1870 census of Nahunta township, Wayne County, farm laborer John Sauls, 35, wife Jane, 27, and children Mary, 3, and Silvany, 1, are listed with Trecinda Barnes, 20, Jane Barnes, 7, and Edwin Barnes, 1. No marriage record for Jane and John has been located, and their relationship to the Barneses is unknown.

The 1880 census of Nahunta township, Wayne County, shows farmer John Sauls, 45, wife Jane, 36, daughters Mary, 12, Silvany, 9, Anner, 7, and Lucy, 6, plus Jane’s sister [niece?] Fanny Lane, 14.

The 1900 census of Nahunta township, Wayne County, shows John Sauls, wife Jane, daughters Mary and Sylvania Sauls, and “grandchildren” Louvenia, Henry and John Lane. [In fact, these children were probably niece and nephews.]

The 1910 census of Nahunta township, Wayne County, shows John Sauls, 76, wife Jane, 56, Mary, 38, Sylvany, 36, Anna, 33, and Snobe, 10, plus niece Louvenia Lane, 23, and boarder Freeman Swinson, 14. Anna reported that she was divorced; “Snobe” — John B. Sauls, alias Snow B. Nobles — was her son. Freeman Swinson was the son of Jane’s sister Mariah Artis Swinson.

The 1920 census of Nahunta township, Wayne County, shows Anna Sauls, 45, widowed, sharing a household with her sisters Sylvania, 46, and Mary, 49, widowed mother Jane, 76, and cousin Levenia Sauls, 28.

Jane Lane Sauls died 16 Dec 1928 in Stantonsburg township, Wilson County, of paralysis due to hypertension and cerebral hemorrhage.  Her death certificate reported that she was born in 1842 in Greene County NC to Guy Lane and Sylvania Artis, both of Greene County, and she was the widow of John Sauls. She was buried 17 December 1928 at Union Grove cemetery in Wayne County by C.E. Artis of Wilson NC.  (Columbus E. Artis was her cousin.)  The informant for her certificate was Anna Sauls, Route 6 Box 94, Stantonsburg.

Anna Sauls died 20 December 1950 in Stantonsburg township, Wayne County, of cerebral hemorrhage. Her death certificate reports that she was a widow and was born 1 January 1878 in Wayne County to John Sauls and Jane Lane. She was buried 23 December 1950 at Union Grove cemetery. The informant was Louvenia Sauls, Route 2 Box 300, Stantonsburg.

Sylvania Sauls died 23 October 1957 in Stantonsburg township, Wilson County, of cerebral hemorrhage.  Her death certificate reports that she was about 87 years old and was born in Wayne County to John Sauls and Jane Lane. She was buried 28 October 1957 in Union Grove cemetery.  The informant was Louvenia Sauls.

Mary Sauls died 29 December 1960 in Fremont township, Wayne County, of cerebral hemorrhage. Her death certificate reports that she was born 3 September 1861 in Wayne County to Johnnie Sauls and Jane Lane. (And thus was 4 years old when assigned to look after Calvin Woodard Jr.) Mary was buried 3 January 1961 at Union Grove cemetery.  The informant was Anna Ray, Route 2 Box 143, Fremont.