Month: January 2022

Lane Street Project: thank you.

Lane Street Project lived in my head and in this blog until I asked for help and received it in abundance. I am effusive in my praise of and gratitude towards all who have lent hearts and hands to this project, but I have not always been at ease in spotlights or with accepting compliments comfortably. Thus, my agonizing about sharing the Facebook post below. Lane Street Project has bestowed many gifts, however, not the least of which is clarity of purpose. As we enter Season II of the Odd Fellows clean-up, I am grateful for recognition and encouragement from all who have committed time, labor, money, and other support to our mission.

So — my most sincere thanks to Castonoble Hooks and the Senior Force, the backbone of Season II! And thanks to Chris Facey for this shot of me standing in a thicket of wisteria, clutching my great-grandmother’s headstone on the first anniversary of its discovery!

P.S. I found Rachel Barnes Taylor‘s headstone face down in a stack of about twenty grave markers. One of this season’s goals is to cut away the wisteria and privet around this pile so that we can begin to probe under the soil’s surface for additional stones. There are so many ways to help us achieve our goals — come out and cut vines, bring coffee, send money [CashApp $blackwideawake], share our flyers! Thank you!

The auction of Harry, Violet, Eliza and child, Ben, Dan, and Edy.

Per court order, on 25 December 1856, Gatsey T. Stanton, administratrix of the estate of her husband Washington M. Stanton, registered the outcome of her auction of seven enslaved people — Harry, Violet, Eliza and child, Ben, Dan, and Edy. The Stantons’ son George W. Stanton was the highest bidder, offering $800 for Harry; $350 for Violet; $875 for Eliza and her child; and $182 for Ben (who was either very young, or very old, or disabled.) G.W. Stanton received a credit of $112 for taking Dan and Edy, who were likely past their working years. This transaction was recorded in Deed Book 1, page 174, Wilson County Register of Deeds office.

The same day, G.W. Stanton sold the same lot of enslaved people back to his mother for what he had paid — $2095.

Deed Book 1, page 259, Wilson County Register of Deeds Office. 

Know all men by these presents that I, G.W. Stanton for & in consideration of the sum of two thousand & ninety five Dollars the receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged have given granted bargained & sold & doth by these presents give grant bargain & sell unto Gatsey Stanton Negroes Harry, Violet, Eliza & child, Ben, Dan & Edy to have & to hold unto the said Gatsey Stanton her executors administrators & assigns in fee simple forever.

In testament whereof the said G.W. Stanton doth set his hand & seal this the 25th day of December 1856.    G.W. Stanton {seal}

Notwithstanding his status as a slaveowner, George W. Stanton was a staunch Unionist and in 1868 delivered an incendiary address to the state legislature that some claimed incited freedmen murder and burn the property of white people. (More of this later.)  In 1871, Stanton filed a claim with the Southern Claims Commission for reimbursement for property seized by the Union Army. One of the witnesses on his behalf was 48 year-old Harry Stanton of Greene County, N.C. — surely the Harry noted above. To read Harry Stanton’s detailed testimony, see here. (George W. Stanton’s claim was disallowed. The Commission acknowledged his Union sympathies, but determined that his service as a justice of the peace and in the Home Guard — even if done to avoid active military duty — disqualified him as a loyalist.)

Report of the condition of the Commercial Bank.

In January 1926, officers of the Commercial Bank of Wilson filed a year-end financial report.

Wilson Daily Times, 11 January 1926.

1007 Washington Street, revisited.

We first examined the locally unusual gambrel-front house at 1007 Washington Street here. Built for William Hines as investment property, the house’s early tenants included Howard M. and E. Courtney Plummer Fitts and Oscar and Nora Reid. When I passed the house recently, the front door stood open, and I took a peek inside. 

The front door opens into a vestibule. A staircase rises at immediate left, reaches a landing and turns toward the second floor. I did not venture upstairs. A door into a front room lay to the right, and the door visible below led to a series of at least two directly connected rooms. 

The linoleum covering the floor of the entry way may be original to the house. 

In the front room, an original brick mantel and fireplace surround.

Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, January 2022.

Cornerstones, no. 7.
  • Saint Paul Church of Christ, 4133 Frank Price Church Road

St. Paul Church of Christ Founded 1930 Elder J.H. Artis Rebuilt 1984 The Greater St. Paul Bishop C.L. Barnes Deacons J.A. Barnes, B. Edwards, L.R. Roberson, L. Rogers, J.l Newsome, E.D. Jones, F. Smith, E.M Edmundson Sect., Bishop C.L. Barnes Pastor

Note that there is another Saint Paul Church of Christ, founded in 1905, on Lake Wilson Road near Elm City. The church above is known as Saint Paul Church of Christ, Black Creek, which seems to denote its former location.

Photo by Lisa Y. Henderson, January 2022.

The sale of Sarah, age six.

Deed book 1, page 129, Wilson County Register of Deeds Office.

On 28 January 1856, William T. Bradberry and wife Nancy M. Bradberry of Putnam County, Indiana, appointed William K. Lane of Wayne County, North Carolina, their agent to sell “a certain negro slave now in the possession of Amos Horne of the County of Wilson.” For $450, Lane sold Mrs. Edith Horne that “certain negro slave,” a little girl named Sarah, aged six.

William Bradberry was a Wayne County, North Carolina, native, who migrated to Indiana in the early 1850s. His wife Nancy Horn Bradberry was likely a relative of Edith Horn’s husband’s family. Edith Horn was the widow of Hardy Horn; Amos Horn was their son. (Hardy Horn died circa 1841. His death wrenched apart the 15 people he had held in slavery. More about his estate later.) The Horns lived in the Black Creek area on land that was in Wayne County until Wilson County was established in 1855. The 1860 Wilson County slave schedule shows Edith Horn of Black Creek township with 13 enslaved people living in three houses — women and girls aged 50, 33, 30, 14, 8, and 2, and men and boys aged 55, 24, 21, 13, 13, 7, and 4.

Anonymous grave moved to Rest Haven Cemetery.

In January 1974, to make way for a road project — likely the construction of Firestone Parkway — the North Carolina State Highway Commission contracted with a private company to move an unnamed African-American cemetery from Rosebud Church Road to Rest Haven Cemetery. 

The cemetery contained one anonymous grave.

That grave was relocated to a plot adjacent to Bertha T. Pope (1908-1952).

Documents from Grave Removal volume, Wilson County Register of Deeds Office.

206 North East Street.

The one hundred-forty-sixth 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, this building is: “ca. 1930; 1 story; shotgun with engaged porch; bungalow-type pmts; shingled gable; fine example of the type.”

These blue and white enameled house numbers were once ubiquitous in East Wilson. 

As a shotgun house, this dwelling has no interior halls; one room opens directly into the next. The view through the front door shows that the original tongue-and-groove ceiling survives, as does the wooden mantel and surround around the gas fireplace.

A second mantel and surround in the adjoining room. Plaster has begun to flake away from the walls in sections, revealing the laths behind it.

——

In the 1928 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Parker Harkless (c; Sarah) firemn h 206 N East

In the 1930 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Evans Thomas (c; Cora) h 206 N East; also Evans Sidney (c) h 206 N East

In the 1930 census of Wilson, Wilson County: paying $13/month rent, oil mill laborer Thomas Evans, 32; wife Cora, 39, tobacco factory laborer; and son Sidney, 7.

In the 1941 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Kendall Charles (c; Margt) janitor h 206 N East

In the 1947 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Kendall Charles (c) jan ACC h 206 N East

Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, January 2022.

Lane Street Project: the Senior Force at work.

Jerome De Perlinghi’s Eyes on Main Street has enriched Wilson not only via its astonishing yearly public exhibition of world-renowned photographers, but with its artist residency program. In October, New York City native Chris Facey brought his Leica to Wilson’s streets. He found Black Wide-Awake and reached out to me to get his bearings; I immediately connected him with Castonoble Hooks.

In the short time since, Facey has become an honorary member of the Hooks family. Though his residency lasted only a month, he returns regularly to Wilson and has made to Lane Street Project the profound gift of his documentary eye. Yesterday, Facey was at Odd Fellows Cemetery as the Senior Force — Castonoble Hooks, his brother William Hooks, and R. Briggs Sherwood — put in work.

Thank you, Chris Facey! 

All photos courtesy of Christopher Facey, who reserves all rights to their use.

 

The removal of graves from Jones-Hill-Coleman cemetery.

Though the Grave Removals volume in the Wilson County Register of Deeds Office did not include a Removal of Graves Certificate for Julia Boyette Bailey and those buried near her, it did contain this file for the 1995 disinterment and reinterment of graves from the Jones-Hill-Coleman cemetery.

The graves in this large graveyard — on Old Raleigh Road in Oldfields township –were moved to two cemeteries, the nearby Eva Coleman cemetery and Rest Haven cemetery in Wilson. 

The Jones-Hill-Coleman cemetery had six rows of twelve to sixteen graves, but the identities of the bodies buried in most were unknown. 

Fifty bodies were reinterred in a cemetery on Eva Coleman’s property on Old Raleigh Road just west of Interstate 95.

Ten were re-laid to rest in Rest Haven.