This image of First Missionary Baptist Church (later Jackson Chapel First Missionary Baptist Church) was taken by an unknown photographer circa 1920.
Below, detail of the original entry facing Pender Street. A girl in a hat stands near the cornerstone and what appears to be a street sign at the corner of Nash and Pender Streets. Today, this entrance is seldom if ever used and features a solid set of steps lined with wrought-iron railings leading down to a landing, then turning left toward Church Street.
The close-up below reveals that the boy and man (or perhaps man and taller man) at far right of the image are standing next to their bicycles, which may have purchased cattycorner across the street at C.L. Darden‘s bicycle shop.)
Photograph courtesy of the Monk Moore Collection, digitized at digitalnc.org.
City directories offer fine-grained looks at a city’s residents at short intervals. The 1922 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., directory reveals the types of work available to African-Americans during the booming tobacco era. This post is the fourteenth in an alphabetical series listing all “colored” directory entries for whom an occupation was listed. The address is the resident’s home, unless a business address is noted.
“The chancellor of Fayetteville State University, T.J. Bryan, came to town Aug. 5 to honor as trailblazers eight women who graduated from the school in the 1940s, when it was known as Fayetteville State Teachers College.”
The honorees:
Amanda Mitchell Cameron, ’48
Class salutatorian, Frederick Douglass High School, Elm City; retired from teaching in 1987; member of two alumni boards and prolific fundraiser for FSU with husband; member of National Educators Association and NAACP; church clerk, William Chapel Baptist Church.
Josephine Farmer Edwards, ’45
Graduate of Nash County Training School; Master of Education, Pennsylvania State University; 38-year teaching career in Wilson and Nash Counties; owner and operator of Edwards Funeral Home; taught at Wilson Technical Community Center; member, Wilson County Commissioner; NAACP Life Member; member, Ladies Auxiliary, American Legion Post 17; member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority and Links, Inc.
Graduate of Coulter Memorial Academy, Cheraw, S.C.; Bachelor’s in Elementary Education; played on two-time state champion basketball team at FSU; taught and coached at Charles H. Darden High School and C.L. Coon Junior High School; elder, Calvary Presbyterian Church; member, Ladies Auxiliary, American Legion Post 17.
Graduate of Williston High School, Wilmington, N.C.; Bachelor’s in Elementary Education; Master of Education, Pennsylvania State University; taught at Sallie Barbour, Elvie Street and Wells Elementary School; also taught at Wilson Technical Community Center and ADAPT outreach center; member, Jackson Chapel First Missionary Baptist Church; recipient, Distinguished Service Award, Wilson Human Relations Commission; volunteers at Wilson Crisis Center and other organizations; board, Freeman Round House Museum; member, Book and Garden Club, NAACP, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Ladies Auxiliary of American Legion Post 17.
Graduate of Wilson Colored High School [Darden High School]; completed two-year program at State Teachers College Fayetteville and later bachelor’s in education; master’s degree in early childhood education, Columbia University; taught at one-room school in Nash County in 1930s and ’40s, then Vick and Hearne Elementary Schools; member, Saint John A.M.E. Zion Church; member, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.
Alice Marie Shaw Stevens, ’46
Grew up in western Wilson County; attended Rocky Branch School; graduate of Richard B. Harrison High School in Johnston County at age 15; graduated FSU with honors; master’s degree in education, N.C. State A.&T. University; started teaching in two and three-room schools, then Springfield and Lee Woodard Schools; member of Rocky Branch United Church of Christ since age 10; member, Order of Eastern Star.
Graduate of Darden High School; education degree from FSU; married career soldier; worked with Wilson Board of Elections; volunteers with Opportunities Industrialization Center.
Artelya Whitley Williams, ’49
Graduate of Mary Potter School in Oxford, N.C., and beauty school in New Jersey; bachelor’s degree from FSU and master’s degree from New York University; served in U.S. Army and Air Force; taught at Lucama Elementary and Spaulding and Spring Hope schools in Nash County.
Say Their Names: Preserving Wilson N.C.’s Slave Pasts reveals the array of documentary evidence available to African-American families searching for their ancestors and all interested in broadening their understanding of Wilson County history.
Say Their Names is on display through the end of the year at Imagination Station — which is reopening September 8!
Imagination Station, which is also (and chiefly) an awesome children’s science museum, is located at 224 Nash Street E, Wilson. Its telephone number is (252) 291-5113. Please support local museums and local history!
Photographs by Janelle Booth Clevinger, Special to Wilson Daily Times, 1 March 2020.
The occupation and industry columns in federal population schedules sometimes yield unusual results, even in an era in which most African-Americans in Wilson worked as farm laborers, tobacco factory hands, or domestic workers.
In the 1930 census, 22 year-old Alfonso Ward gave his occupation as:
I have not been able to find any additional information on Ward’s career as a roadshow comedian, though he likely played chitlin’ circuit venues.
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In the 1920 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 122 East Street, laborer John Ward, 28; wife Addie, 27; and children Alfonsa, 13, Edgar, 8, Oritta, 5, Thelma, 2 months, and Jos[illegible], 3.
In the 1930 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 112 East Street, rented at $12/month, widow Addie Ward, 37, and children Alfonso, 22, Edgear, 17, Othena, 16, Jasper, 14, and Thelma, 10.
In the 1930 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Ward Alfonso (c) hlpr r 112 East
In 1940, Alfonso Ward registered for the World War II draft in Kings County, New York. Per his draft card, he was born 1 May 1908 in Wilson, N.C.; lived at 3040 B 7th Street, [Brooklyn], Kings County; his contact was friend Flossie Barrington, 614 Ocean View Avenue; and he worked for Louis Super, 419 B[righton] B[each] Avenue, Kings County. Ward’s address was amended to 413 Bri[ghton] Beach Ave. on 15 February 1943. [Per his signature, Ward spelled his first name “Alfonza.”]
Apropos of Rountree, Odd Fellows and Vick cemeteries, please see this article in National Geographic magazine on growing efforts to preserve African-American burial sites, including proposed legislation to establish within the National Park Service the African American Burial Grounds Network.
I happened upon this Notice signed by Columbus E. Artis, one of the principals of the undertaking firm Artis, Flanagan & Batts, in the Wilson Daily Times. Who was Oliver Marable? What was his “case”? What were the “false reports being circulated”?
Wilson Daily Times, 14 December 1925.
Here is Marable’s death certificate:
Filled out largely in C.E. Artis’ bold, readily recognizable hand, it states that Marable died 4 December 1925 in Spring Hill township; was about 55 years old; was married to Bettie Marable; resided at 717 Manchester Street; was born in Henderson, N.C., to Grand and Cornelia Marable. In a different script, Marable’s cause of death: “fracture of base of skull accidentally incurred in a cave-in of earth.”
Or was it accidental at all?
An inquest held into Marable’s death revealed a bizarre set of facts. On a Friday evening, Marable, who lived on Roberson Street in East Wilson, was miles away in Springhill township digging with a dozen other men for “buried treasure.” Later that night, Marable’s battered body was taken to C.E. Artis and his business partner Walter E. Flanagan, who were preparing to bury him when the police intervened.
When Artis and Flanagan could not produce a death certificate, the police halted the funeral and contacted the coroner, who went with several county officials to the dig site. Dissatisfied with the accounts of witnesses as to what had happened to Marable, the coroner ordered an inquest. A jury traveled out to Tobe Hinnant‘s farm in Old Fields [Springhill?] township, where they found a “huge hole” in a field near a creek bank.
The witnesses, who had been digging the hole with Marable, testified that he had been killed when the hole’s sidewalls caved in, but the jury found foul play involved.
The physician who conducted a post mortem of Marable’s body concluded he likely met his death from a skull fracture, but had also suffered a broken arm, collar bone, and femur and contusions of the back, neck and face.
The police arrested seven people in connection with Marable’s death. Tom Boykin, conjure doctor Richard Pitts and Amos Batts [who was both Marable’s brother-in-law and the third business partner of C.E. Artis] were held without bond; William Edwards, McKinley Edwards, Tobe Hinnant, and John Hinnant bonded out. The story these witnesses told: conjure man Pitts showed up in Hinnant’s neighborhood, claiming that there was buried treasure nearby. Hinnant said he had often dreamed of such a thing, and Pitts said he could locate it. Hinnant pointed out the X in his dreams, and Pitts performed a divination with mineral oil. Though it is not clear how the rest of the treasure hunters were assembled, digging commenced. When the tip of a seven-foot augur embedded itself in a wooden object, the treasure was found. Marable died during the attempt to dig it out. The jury viewed the stuck augur, several shovels, and some sounding rods, as well as a length of white cord festooned about the perimeter to keep out the “haints” lingering in a nearby cemetery in use during slavery. (The jury concluded the augur was more likely stuck in a coffin lid than a treasure chest.) On a side note, investigators also found a large hole, filled in, in Marable’s back yard on Roberson Street, evidence of an earlier search.
Wilson Daily Times, 9 December 1925.
The next day, Raleigh’s News and Observer reported that the jury had adjourned without a verdict, but with a recommendation that Pitts be held pending investigation by a lunacy commission. (Per the Times the same day, Pitts “in his many trips and ‘treasure hunts’ in and around Wilson county had poisoned the minds of many of the negro inhabitants in regards to buried treasure and hidden pots of gold. In many cases sections of the county Pitts has ‘engineered’ treasure hunts, receiving pay for his ‘knowledge’ while honest negroes work in good faith at the task of uncovering the treasure which is never found.”) Everyone else was released. The jury had gone back to the site to find that it had been tampered with. The augur and divining rods were gone, and someone had thrown four feet of dirt into the hole. Several convicts were put to work to shovel out the dirt, but Marable’s pick could not be found. Amos Batts had testified that he did not know about the digging until Marable had died, but when told that Marable had his hand on the money when the pit collapsed, joined the enterprise. (Presumably by agreeing to bury Marable without reporting the death or issuing a death certificate.) Someone named Lee Pearce testified, but no details as to what.
Five days later, the matter was dropped. Most of the 20 witnesses had testified to hearsay, Tobe Hinnant’s six-year-old swore he had never accused his father of killing Marable, and county officials gave ambiguous testimony about whether they had seen blood in the pit. The jury was hopelessly confused. Hinnant was freed, leaving only Pitts in jail, presumably for his chicanery.
——
Oliver Marable
In the 1908 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Marable Oliver (c) lab 501 Lucas al
In the 1912 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Marable Oliver (c) lab Robinson nr Stantonsburg rd
In the 1916 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Marable Oliver (c) lab 501 Robinson
In the 1920 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 501 Robinson Street, Oliver Marable, 56, oil mill laborer; wife Betie, 48; and daughter Hattie, 7; plus brother-in-law John Batts, 52, oil mill laborer.
Tobe Hinnant
Amos Batts
Richard Pitts
Tom Boykin
William Edwards and McKinley Edwards — in the 1930 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 609 South Railroad Street, rented for $16/month, farm laborer William Edwards, 52; wife Lillie, 49; son McKinly, 28, worker at Hackney Body Company; McKinley’s wife Maggie, 25, farmworkers; and his son Bernard, 6.
This copy of a photograph is said to show O. Nestus Freeman‘s workmen building Our Redeemer Lutheran Church on West Vance Street, Wilson. Does it though?
Freeman came out of retirement to direct the stonework at Our Redeemer, which was completed after World War II. The photo above is undated, but appears to date from earlier in the twentieth century. Moreover, this crew is clearly building an addition to a pre-existing church.
Here’s a photo of Our Redeemer published at the church’s 25th anniversary at the Vance and Rountree Streets site. (The building itself was not completed until after 1941.) This does not appear to be the same church as the one above. The men above are laying brick, not stone. The buttresses between the windows below do not appear in the image above. And the windows themselves are much taller in the image above. The church’s raised stone rake is also missing from the gable end above.
Wilson Daily Times, 7 May 1966.
On 1 September 2001, the Daily Times featured a long piece contributed by Robert B. Lineberger, whose father was pastor at Our Redeemer in the early 1940s. In pertinent part, here is Lineberger’s recollection:
“Oliver Nestus Freeman was the stone mason for the church. The stone was delivered to the lot in 1942. It was supposed to be 4 inches thick, and the supplier brought half to it from the quarry at Roleville [Rolesville, in Wake County, N.C.] and dumped it on the lot when no one was there. It was 8 inches thick. When the quarry realized its mistake, they said Dad could have it at half price if he would accept it where it was.
“He asked what he could do with it that thick. They indicated it could be split just like a cake of ice … except you would use a sledge hammer with a pointed side to it instead of an ice pick. Tap it on one side, roll it, tap it on the second side, roll it, tap it on the third side, roll it … and when you tap it on the fourth side, it would split in half. That meant the church got the stone for 25 percent of the original price!
…
“[My father] acted as general contractor for the church. During the early war years contractors and builders were doing all the work they could at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base and Camp Lejeune. He hired Mr. Freeman, who came out of retirement to build the church.
“Mr. Freeman then lived in a stone house off of East Nash …. I mixed mortar for him and placed the stones at his directions on the scaffold on which he worked. He chose each stone for a particular place as he worked. I worked with him for a long time during the summer and after school of the year the church was built.
“Mr. Freeman was a fine man, and I learned a lot about stone masonry, mixing mortar and life from him. …”
Lineberger provided some photographs of construction, including these:
Wilson Daily Times, 1 September 2001.
These images further strengthen my belief that the first photograph depicts Freeman’s crew working on some church other than Our Redeemer.
Any thoughts?
Our Redeemer Lutheran today.
Top photo courtesy of Freeman Round House and Museum, Wilson, N.C., digitized at Images of North Carolina,digitalnc.org; bottom photo by Lisa Y. Henderson.
