Month: January 2022

A card of thanks to many friends.

Wilson Daily Times, 8 January 1946.

——

On 17 March 1905, Bert Wells, 55, of Toisnot township, son of Jolly Hagans and Caroline Wells, married Sarah Parker, 30, of Taylor township, daughter of Elbert and Grace Parker, in Wilson.

On 7 October 1908, D.S. Farmer, 46, of Wilson, applied for a license to marry Janie Lewis, 35, of Wilson.

In the 1910 census of Taylor township, Wilson County: farmer Dock S. Farmer, 52; wife Janie, 26; children Ella, 20, Emma, 18, Walter, 14, and Geneva, 12; and hired woman Sarah Wells, 32.

In the 1920 census of Taylor township, Wilson County: farmer Doc Farmer, 68; wife Janie, 30; son Walter, 25; and laborer Sarah Parker, 46.

In the 1925 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Farmer Dock S (c) farmer h 1109 E Nash

In the 1930 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 1109 East Nash Street, James L. [Jannie L.?] Farmer, 38, widow, tobacco factory laborer, and Sarah Wells, 50, widow, tobacco factory stemmer.

In the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 1109 East Nash Street, Jannie Farmer, 48, widow, laborer for Southern Tobacco Factory, and Sarah Wells, 70, widow.

Sarah P. Wells died 28 Dember 1945 in Wilson. Per her death certificate, she was born 12 May 1870 in Nash County, parents’ names not known; was the widow of Burt Wells; resided at 1109 East Nash; and was buried at William Chapel Church cemetery. Jannie Lee Farmer was informant.

U.N.C. archivists and Congressman Butterfield preserve history.

Three or four years ago, during a visit home, I got a call from Congressman G.K. Butterfield Jr. to come by his former office on East Nash Street. There, he opened doors to several rooms filled with neat, labeled stacks of documents and photographs and rows of boxes — his astonishing archives.

I was excited to learn yesterday that Congressman Butterfield has donated his trove of personal and professional papers to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s University Library. This material documents not only his long political and civil rights life, but the history of his family and of Wilson’s African-American community as well.

Throughout his life as civil rights activist, lawyer, judge and legislator, U.S. Rep. G.K. Butterfield has always been interested in history. He’s also a self-described “novice archivist” who has accumulated — and carefully labeled — boxes of materials from each chapter of his life.

“I’ve always been history-minded,” Butterfield said. “I’ve accumulated boxes, and I’ve labeled each box.” The result is a wide-ranging collection of papers and photographs from his family in Wilson, North Carolina, and his own career.

Butterfield has donated the collection to the University Libraries at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They will become part of the Southern Historical Collection at the Wilson Special Collections Library.

“I’m 74 years old, approaching 75 years old, and I know it’s time for me to release this valuable trove of information to somebody who can appreciate it, who can preserve it and share it,” Butterfield said.

Butterfield has represented North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District for nearly two decades and is a past chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. He announced on Nov. 18 that he will retire from Congress at the end of the current term.

“We’re honored to welcome Congressman Butterfield’s materials to Wilson Library,” said Chaitra Powell, curator of the Southern Historical Collection. “Students, faculty and researchers will benefit greatly from his carefully kept memories of an encyclopedic life.”

Butterfield’s father, G.K. Butterfield Sr., emigrated from Bermuda in 1917, at age 17; later volunteered to serve the United States in World War I as a non-citizen; and then graduated from Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Meharry Medical College School of Dentistry in Nashville, Tennessee. He practiced dentistry in Wilson, North Carolina for 50 years; helped found many organizations including the Wilson branch of the NAACP, Men’s Civic Club, and the Old North State Dental Society; and was the first Black person elected to the Wilson City Council.

Butterfield’s mother, Addie Davis, was a native of Wilson County who met Butterfield Sr. while she attended high school, also at Shaw. She was a classroom teacher for 48 years.

Butterfield grew up watching his parents advocate for voting rights for African Americans. In high school and college, he helped lead civil rights protests.

After earning his undergraduate and law degrees at North Carolina Central University and serving in the U.S. Army, Butterfield returned to Wilson to open a law practice with his friend Milton F. “Toby” Fitch Jr. and later with James A. Wynn Jr. In the 1980s, Butterfield litigated voting rights cases as cooperating counsel with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. He was elected superior court judge in November 1988. In 2001, North Carolina Governor Mike Easley appointed Butterfield to the Supreme Court of North Carolina. Then, in 2004, he was elected to Congress to represent the first congressional district.

Butterfield began taking his own photographs and collecting memorabilia during congressional business, including diplomatic trips abroad. “I’m known in Congress as the photographer, particularly in the Congressional Black Caucus,” he said. “I’ve taken over 20,000 pictures. After all of these years, I just had a whole mountain of information.”

Butterfield’s years in Washington allowed him to witness the historic presidency of Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president. His collection of memorabilia from Obama’s presidency is unique, Powell said.

“Butterfield had the idea to get President Obama’s autograph whenever they were together at important events, including State of the Union addresses, and funerals of important figures such as the Rev. Clementa Pinckney,” said Powell. “It may be too early to examine President Obama’s legacy, but G.K. Butterfield chose to document it, taking his own photographs and collecting materials. It’s fascinating to see this perspective on a historic presidency, all eight years of it.”

Butterfield’s materials add to the already-rich collections at Wilson Library, said Nicholas Graham, University archivist.

“The material that Rep. Butterfield is donating includes the history of Wilson, North Carolina, especially the evolution of Wilson’s Black community,” Graham said. “He has materials from his legal career where he worked on important voting rights cases in North Carolina.”

Butterfield’s materials will join other congressional papers collected at Wilson Library, Graham continued. “Documenting and preserving North Carolina and national politics is an area of focus for our collection. Congressman Butterfield’s materials lend a distinctive viewpoint, a distinctive perspective. I think that they’ll find a research community and students and faculty who are eager to dive into them from Day One.”

Butterfield said he is pleased to know that his collection will be well taken care of and will be made available to anyone who might benefit from it. His physical and digital assets will contribute to the African American Family Documentation Initiative at the Southern Historical Collection and will complement oral traditions in the community.

“History in the African American community is very rich, but it needs to be preserved,” he said. “Those of us who possess these nuggets of history will be silenced one day, and unless we pass it along, and in an appropriate medium, it will be forever lost. We won’t be able to preserve all of them, but we can certainly preserve as many as we can capture.”

President of Shaw University visits Wilson.

Wilson Daily Times, 22 January 1932.

William Stuart Nelson spoke at First Baptist and Calvary Presbyterian churches in January 1932.

——

  • Rev. J.T. Douglas
  • Ministerial Alliance — an organization formed of African-American ministers to address social issues and provide fellowship opportunities among Wilson clergy.

Clipping courtesy of J. Robert Boykin III.

William Hines and Willie C. Reid merge barber shops.

In January 1932, William Hines announced the merger of his barber shop with Willie C. Reid‘s Wilson Barber Shop. The new business would occupy the space Reid had held at 130 South Goldsboro Street. (The address is the southernmost storefront of the Hackney Building at 124-130 South Goldsboro and is adjacent to today’s Eyes on Main Street gallery.)

Wilson Daily Times, 16 January 1932.

Hines’ former location at 113 South Tarboro was to close at the end of the month, and he announced an immediate reduction in service prices. (A Boncilla massage, by the way, involved a mud mask with Boncilla-brand “clasmic clay” and was touted to resolve wrinkles, lines, blackheads, enlarged pores, and oily skin.

Wilson Daily Times, 18 January 1932.

  • Willie C. Reid

In the 1910 census of Black Creek township, Wilson County: farmer Jesse Reid, 59; wife Sallie, 53; and children Emmar J., 27, Barnes, 24, Willie, 22, Browdy, 19, Lonely, 17, Effie, 13, and Earle, 10.

In the 1910 census of Black Creek township, Wilson County: farmer Jesse Reid, 59; wife Sallie, 53; and children Emmar J., 27, Barnes, 24, Willie, 22, Browdy, 19, Lonely, 17, Effie, 13, and Earle, 10.

In 1917, Willie C. Reid registered for the World War I draft in Duplin County, North Carolina. Per his registration card, he was born 28 April 1886 in Fremont, N.C.; lived in Warsaw, N.C.; and worked as a barber for John A. Gaston, Warsaw, N.C. [Gaston was a Wilson County native.]

In the 1920 census of Wilson township, Wilson County: at 407 Vick Street, widow Sallie Reid, 64; sons Willie, 30, barber, Boydie, 20, tailor, and Lonely, 25, tailor, daughter-in-law Mary, 24, schoolteacher, granddaughter Hilter, 3 months, and daughters Effie, 23, and widow Emma E., 35.

On 27 October 1920, Willie Columbus Reid, 31, of Wilson, son of Jesse and Sallie Reid, married Mary E. Galley, 25, of Wilmington, daughter of James J. and Lena E. Galley, at Saint Stephen’s A.M.E. Church in Wilmington, N.C.

In the 1922 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Reid William (c) barber The Mayflower h 304 N Vick

In the 1928 and 1930 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Reid Wm C (c; Mary) barber 130 S Goldsboro h 304 N Vick

In the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 304 Vick, rented for $14/month, Willie C. Reid, 54, native of Fremont, N.C.; wife Mary E., 46, county school teacher and native of Wilmington, N.C.; and children William M., 16, and Helen E., 18.

Willie Columbus Reid died 26 January 1969 in Wilson. Per his death certificate, he was born 28 April 1886 to Jessie Reid and Sallie [maiden name not known]; was married to Mary E. Reid; lived at 1106 Atlantic Street; and had worked as a barber.

Clippings courtesy of J. Robert Boykin III.

Lane Street Project: cemetery records request update, no. 7: burials at Vick Cemetery.

I submitted my most recent public records request to the Wilson Cemetery Commission on 16 December 2021. In pertinent part, it read:

The response was quick. At this time, the Cemetery Commission has no record of any burials made in Vick Cemetery and cannot identify the reference to 37 burials made between 1949 and 1955. Further, the Cemetery Commission has no record of a 1990 report.

Strickland Chapel buys a lot.

Deed book 81, page 259, Wilson County Register of Deeds Office.

On 18 May 1908, for $125.00, Dianah Rountree sold E.S. Koonce, Washington Cox, and Wash Little, the trustees of the “ole original Freewill Baptist church of Wilson” (also known as Strickland Chapel) a parcel of land on the southwest side of Manchester Street at Suggs Street extension adjacent to Rountree and Daniel Vick‘s property. 

Strickland Chapel? A church at the corner of Manchester and Suggs? I have never heard of the church, and the location is now occupied by a concrete-block duplex built in the 1950s. 

The intersection is beyond the bounds of the 1908 and 1913 Sanborn fire insurance map, but on the 1922 map the building appears and is marked as an A.M.E. Zion church. 

I found a reference in 1929 to a Presbyterian church known as Strickland Chapel, but it was a white congregation and does not appear to be related to the church above. 

——

  • E.S. Koonce — in the 1908 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Koontz Ellis farmer b 506 Grace
  • Washington Cox —  in the 1908 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Cox Washington lab h 545 Stantonsburg
  • Wash Little — in the 1908 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Little Washington lab h 600 Stemmery

The Jacksons’ resting place.

The Clarence Best-carved double headstone of Benjamin and Annie F. Jackson stands over their graves in Rest Haven Cemetery.

——

In the 1900 census of New Bern, Craven County, N.C.: baker Edward Jackson, 58; wife Sophia, 46; sons Benjamin, 10, and George, 7; and nephew Hallie Taylor, 20.

In the 1900 census of Wilson, Wilson County: wagon driver John W. Farmer, 37; wife Edmonia, 33; and children George, 13, Paul, 12, Annie, 9, Mary, 7, and Fannie, 5.

In the 1910 census of New Bern, Craven County, N.C.: baker Edward Jackson, 56; wife Sophia, 54; and children Ida J., 37, seamstress — dressmaking; Benjamin, 21, butcher at meat market; George, 19, delivery boy for retail dry goods store; and Garfield, 22.

In the 1910 census of Wilson, Wilson County: express wagon driver John Farmer, 48; wife Edmonia, 41, a laundress; and children George, 23, factory laborer; Paul, 19, hotel servant; Annie, 18; Mary, 16; Fannie, 14; Arthur, 8; Melton, 6; and William, 4.

On 21 August 1917, Ben H. Jackson, 28, of Wilson, son of Ed and Sophia Jackson of New Bern, married Annie Lee Farmer, 26, of Wilson, daughter of John Wash and Edmonia Farmer, at the residence of the bride’s father. Walter Maynor applied for the license, and Presbyterian minister H.B. Taylor performed the ceremony in the presence of Emily M. Daniels, Cornelia E. Maynor, and S.B. Thomas. [Note that the officiant, Halley B. Taylor, was Benjamin Jackson’s first cousin and had lived with the Jackson family in New Bern at the time of the 1900 census.]

In the 1920 census of Wilson, Wilson County: on Vick Street, barber Ben Jackson, 30, and wife Annie, 28.

In the 1922 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Jackson Benjamin H barber W M Hines h 721 e Green

In the 1925 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Jackson Benj H (c) barber h 721 e Green

In the 1925 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Jackson Annie (c) cook h 721 e Green

In the 1928 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Jackson Benj H (c; Annie) barber Wm Hines h 1212 Washington

In the 1930 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 1212 Washington Street, owned and valued at $1500, barber Benjiman Jackson, 39; wife Annie, 38; and daughter Devaria, 4.

In the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 1212 Washington Street, paying $10/month in rent, Robert Shaw, 30, presser at Moore’s Cleaners; wife Bertha, 25; and roomer Ben Jackson, 50, barber. [What happened here? Where was Annie Jackson? If Ben Jackson was a roomer, who actually owned the house at 1212? I suspect this is an enumerator error.]

Benjamin Harrison Jackson died 24 October 1951 in Mercy Hospital, Wilson. Per his death certificate, he was born 9 November 1890 in New Bern, N.C., to Edward Jackson and Sophie [maiden name unknown]; lived at 1212 E. Washington Street; and worked as a barber.

Annie Farmer Jackson died 8 February 1983 in New York.

Photograph by Lisa Y. Henderson, December 2021.

The stabbing death of Archie McLean.

The initial reporting of Archie McLean‘s terrible death, in addition to being breathlessly gory, tries and convicts his assailant, “a negro from South Carolina” named Bennett Bethea or Bennett McCarroll or Bennett McNeal. Also, note the third paragraph, in which Officer John Walston fired at a man he “thought” was Bethea/McCarroll/McNeal and instead shot a white woman bystander in the thigh. The reporter laconically noted the target “happened to be the wrong negro,” and Mrs. Davis was all right.

Wilson Daily Times, 29 September 1919.

Benny McNeal (as his name turned out to be) remained on the lam for more than two months before surrendering. He claimed self-defense, and witnesses at the inquest backed him up. After fleeing the scene, McNeal had stopped at his mother’s house, then headed south, finding work on a Hoke County farm.

Wilson Daily Times, 10 December 1919.

The grand jury agreed that McNeal had acted in self-defense and refused to indict him. Witnesses testified that McLean had come at McNeal with a piece of scantling (a small section of sawn timber) studded with twenty-penny (four-inch) nails, and McNeal had lashed out with a trench knife that penetrated McLean’s heart.

Wilson Daily Times, 16 December 1919.

——

In 1917, Arch McLean registered for the World War I draft in Wilson County. Per his registration card, he was born March 1895 in Raleigh, N.C.; lived at 509 Stantonsburg Street; worked as a laborer at W.L. Russell Box Company; and was single. He signed his card with an X.

Archie McClain died 28 September 1919 in Wilson. Per his death certificate, he was  born in February 1894 in Wake County, N.C., to John Beckwith and Vicy Jones; was single; lived on Stantonsburg Street; and worked as a wagon driver for a  L.&M. [Liggett & Meyers] tobacco factory. Bessie McClain was informant.

“Stabed to Death by a man”

 

The Locuses sell a lot to Taylor’s Chapel.

Deed book 86, page 97, Wilson County Register of Deeds Office.

On 14 December 1909, John and Delphia Taylor Locus(t) conveyed an 1800 square foot parcel to Willis Ellis, Joe Eatman, and Phoebe Rountree, trustees of Taylor’s Chapel Christ’s Disciples Church. The land was on “the north side of the path leading from the Nash Road to the old home place of Ira Howard, deceased” and was adjacent to land owned by John Locus and Ruffin Watson (“the James Howard tract”).

The land was to “be used for a church in the name of the Christ’s Disciples Church,” and to return to John Locust and his heirs after such use ended. 

[There is a Taylor’s Chapel Pentecostal Holiness in Nashville, N.C., today. I do not believe it is a related church.]

——

  • Willis Ellis — in the 1900 census of Taylor township, Wilson County: farmer Mary Ellis, 34, and children Willis, 12, Walter, 9, William, 8, Henry, 5, and Lou, 4.
  • Joe Eatman
  • Phoebe Rountree — in the 1900 census of Taylor township, Wilson County: widow Phebee Rountree, 59, farmer, and children Richard, 19, Warren, 17, Ardenia, 15, and Martha, 12. 
  • Ira Howard — in the 1900 census of Taylor township, Wilson County: farmer Ira Howard, 45; wife Harett, 44, and son William, 18.
  • James Howard– in the 1900 census of Taylor township, Wilson County: next door to Ira Howard, farmer James Howard, 20, and wife Cisco, 20.

The re-emergence of the Ku Klux Klan.

On 21 December 1920, Dr. Frank S. Hargrave penned a letter to the editor of the Wilson Daily Times expressing quiet alarm about anonymous invitations sent to white men to become members of “the most powerful secret organization in America,” the Ku Klux Klan.

Wilson Daily Times, 22 December 1920.

Though not framed as a direct response, the Times published a tepid editorial a week later in which it cautioned against the rise of secret societies comprising the “worst,” not the “best” men in the county. “We just throw this out as food for thought, for we believe we know some of the gentlemen who are members of the Ku Klux Klan, and we believe also that they would not have joined if they had for one moment suspected that they had a single member in the fraternity with brains so small and intelligence so little” as to have written J.D. Gold an unspecified note — perhaps the invitation to which Dr. Hargrave referred?

Wilson Daily Times, 31 December 1920.

As we now know, Gold gave the “best men” of Wilson too much credit. By the end of the decade, the Klan held its regular meetings in the white Odd Fellows Hall upstairs at 208 South Goldsboro Street, along with all of the other white-only benevolent and fraternal organizations except the Masons.