Month: July 2022

Efird’s, there on Nash Street.

This ad in a 1934 Wilson Chamber of Commerce brochure depicts a building readily recognizable today in Wilson in its place across Nash Street from Imagination Station. Efird’s was a longtime downtown department store, and my grandmother Hattie Henderson Ricks spoke of shopping there as a child:

” … then, too, I had a pair of shoes, laced up, way up here, and the children said they was a grown person’s shoes. And Mama made me wear them. But they all teased me ‘bout them shoes, and I told Mama they hurt my feet. And she said, ‘Well, why didn’t you say something ‘bout ‘em? We could have got a larger pair when I bought ‘em.’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t know what size I wear.’  I said, ‘You let me try them on, but they didn’t hurt my feet then. But when I kept ‘em on a while, they started stinging,’ and they was too narrow or too short, one. I don’t know which it was now. But anyhow, Mama was gon make me wear ‘em, ’cause you wanted some new shoes, and I bought you some, whether you want to or not.’ I said, ‘I didn’t pick ‘em out, you picked ‘em out. They was on the table, and you had me try ‘em on.’

“The grown-up person shoes.” 

“The store was Efird’s, Efird’s, or whatever it is, there on Nash Street. They had a store, one of them where they had a little section for shoes in the back part, and they had a little seat there where you go to try on shoes. It was a white store, and they’d make you put on stockings – they had socks down there for you to put on, to put the shoes on. And you couldn’t put your ‘dirty’ feet in ‘em, and you see some people, look like everybody else done took the shoe off their feet. You can’t get the shoe on if you don’t have the sock on. That’s the way they’d sell it. Like that.

“For clothes, most of the time, they go by the age and the heighth, and they put it up to you, and they measure it like that and those kind of things. You didn’t try it on.”

Adapted from interviews of Hattie Henderson Ricks by Lisa Y. Henderson, 1994-1998, all rights reserved; detail of photo of Hattie H. Ricks and Mamie Henderson Jacobs in possession of Lisa Y. Henderson.

The obituary of Roscoe Woodard, nonagenarian.

Wilson Daily Times, 18 March 2022.

In the 1930 census of Eureka township, Wayne County, North Carolina:  farm laborer Marcelius Woodard, 36; wife Adlonia, 26; children Adrew, 6, Roscoe, 5, Dover L., 3, and Kelvin, 1; Leslie Malone, 30, farm laborer; and Nannie Hastings, 48, widow, farm laborer.

In the 1940 census of Faison township, Duplin County, North Carolina: farmer Marcellus Woodard, 46; wife Adlonia, 35; and children Andrew, 17, Rosker, 15, Donie, 13, Calvin, 11, Roosevelt, 9, Mary, 7, Margree, 4, and Jessie James, 5 months.

Roscoe Woodard registered for the World War II draft in 1943 in Wilson County. 

On 26 January 1948, Roscoe Woodard, 22, of Route 1, Walstonburg, son of Marcellus Woodard and Adalone Fields Woodard, married Flora Bell Evans, 18, of Route 1, Wilson, daughter of Robert Evans and Ruby Edwards Evans, in Wilson County. 

Dew attends Boys State.

Wilson Daily Times, 12 June 1948.

Billy Dew attended the “colored encampment” of Boys State in 1948.

Here’s William Lyman Dew‘s senior portrait in the 1949 edition of Darden High School’s Trojan yearbook.

William Dew was born 28 October 1931 in Wilson to Irma I. Dew and Edwin Cooke. He joined the United States Air Force in 1951 and, when he married Martha Lucretia Reid of Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1957, was working as an assistant air traffic controller with the Civil Aeronautics Administration at Stapleton Air Field, Denver, Colorado. Dew died in Denver in 1987 and is buried in Rest Haven Cemetery, Wilson.

United States Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007, http://www.ancestry.com; Pittsburgh Courier, 3 August 1957, page 15; clipping courtesy of J. Robert Boykin III.

613 Viola Street.

The one hundred-seventy-fourth 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. 1913; 1 story; cross-gable house; aluminum sided and modernized.”

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In the 1928 and 1930 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directories: Stone Mary (c) cook h 613 Viola

In the 1930 census of Wilson, Wilson County: rented for $12/month, widow Mary Stone, 50, cook.

In the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 613 Viola, rented for $8/month, widow Lizzie Jones, 77; daughter Jesse Lee, 54; daughter, Lela, 24, household servant; and grandson Floyd L. Stancil, 14.

In the 1941 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directories: Nelson Albert (c; Bessie; 3) hlpr City Light Water & Gas Dept h 613 Viola

In the 1947 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directories: Wise Lillie (c) dom h 613 Viola

Photo by Lisa Y. Henderson, June 2020.

Drowned boy shows up?

What in the world happened here?

These articles appear back-to-back in the same issue of the Daily Times, and I have not yet found further information to clear up the confusion.

An eight year-old boy named James Applewhite had been missing a week when 13 year-old Raymond Sheppard confessed to police that he had pushed the younger boy into Toisnot Creek, where he had drowned. The very next day, James Applewhite showed up the police department claiming that he had gotten lost on his way home from school — a doubtful claim in 1940s Wilson — and wound up on a farm between Lucama and the Dixie Inn. Police had begun to drain “the lake in Maplewood cemetery” [what lake? Toisnot reservoir? It’s a half-mile north of Maplewood]* when Wiley Barnes‘ wife brought him into town, having just heard about a missing boy. He had appeared at her family’s farm, she said, and had asked for work. To compound the confusion, Raymond Sheppard and other boys claimed this was not the boy who had drowned, though that boy was also named Applewhite.

An article by John G. Thomas, often the Times‘ local-color writer, but here somewhere between straight reporter and editorialist, immediately followed the one above. The focus of the piece leaps from place to place, but these asserted facts emerge: Raymond Sheppard threw rocks at two boys trying to save Applewhite, hindering their efforts; the police rounded up eight boys and parked them in jail while investigating; the year before, Sheppard and two other boys had been charged with beating a white man, who later died of his injuries, for thirty cents’ gain; two of the boys, John Sowers, 15, and Andrew Jackson, 13, had admitted to burning down a Black man’s store and throwing a railroad spike through a truck windshield; Sheppard, Sowers, and Jackson were free because there was no place to hold them (a situation remedied on the spot); Jesse Lee Barnes, 9, Paul Mitchell, 12, Mitchell Hargrove, 13, Roy Lee Barnes, 14, and James Hall, 15, were also arrested; William Roberts, apparently owner of the burned store, pleaded with county commissioners for more police protection in East Wilson; they punted him to the Board of Aldermen.

Wilson Daily Times, 3 April 1945.

*Update: Toisnot Reservoir didn’t exist in 1945, but there was a small pond in Maplewood Cemetery that has since been filled in. Thanks, Matthew Langston!

Vacation Bible school at Calvary Presbyterian.

Wilson Daily Times, 24 June 1929.

Samuel H. Vick, who helped establish Calvary Presbyterian Church, was an early proponent of the Sunday School movement. In 1929, two hundred children enrolled in classes taught by ten teachers and looked forward to “a dramatic recital by a blind girl, and several Biblical dramatizations by the students.”

[Sidenote: For a summer or two circa 1970, when its new edifice was under construction, Calvary held its Vacation Bible School on the first floor of Mercy Hospital, which had closed in 1964. My cousin and closest friends were church members; I tagged along. My  recollections are fleeting — singing “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore,” crafts with popsicle sticks and marbles, recess on the front lawn, and an unfortunate accident in which the scab was ripped from my smallpox vaccination scar.]

Clipping courtesy of J. Robert Boykin III.

The pitmasters of Dixie Inn.

From “Facts … About Wilson North Carolina: The City of Beautiful Trees,” a 1934 publication of the Wilson Chamber of Commerce.

The Dixie Inn opened in 1930 just south of Wilson and quickly established itself as the go-to spot for nights out, civic group meetings, company banquets, and rehearsal dinners. Its painted roof proclaimed its specialties, barbecue and oysters. Like every restaurant of its time and place, Dixie Inn was strictly segregated — at least, in terms of its dining tables. The Inn’s cooks and wait staff were Black, as were their so-called “pitboys,” the men who produced the barbecue for which the Inn was renowned. The photo above shows several African-American men shoveling charcoal under a long row of halved hogs and others tending to the fire that produced the coals while a boy in a cap looks on.

 

The obituary of Ardelia Nunn.

Wilson Daily Times, 27 June 1947.

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In the 1880 census of Clayton, Johnston County: Essex Blake, ; wife Clara, ; children Della, Robert, Sallie, Benjamin, James, Halsey, Antney, Timothy, Ardelia, and Jerry, 5; and granddaughter Narcissie, 6.

In the 1900 census of Raleigh, Wake County, North Carolina: minister of the gospel Essex Blake, 70; wife Nancy, 59; daughter Ardelia, 26, trained nurse; and Ellen Ransom, 60, seamstress.

In the 1910 census of Raleigh, Wake County: Ardelia Blake, 35, sick nurse, and “sleepers” Joanna Taylor, 42, and Harriett Davis, 65, both children’s nurses.

In the 1930 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Nunn Ardelia (c) 1100 E Nash

In the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: Sallie Barbour, 85, widow, and lodgers Ordelia Nunn, 66, and James Pettiford, 47, barber at Hines barbershop.

Sallie Minnie Barbour died 22 April 1942 at her home at 1100 East Nash Street, Wilson. Per her death certificate, she was 71 years old; was born in Wake County to Essex Blake and Clara Hodge; was a widow; and was a schoolteacher. Ardelia Nunn, 1100 East Nash, was informant.

Ardelia executed a will on 24 June 1946 in the presence of D.C. Yancey and C.E. Artis. Nine months later, she signed a codicil adding provision. The first provision bequeathed to Wesley Rogers her house at 1100 East Nash Street provided he care for her if she became disabled. Second, she bequeathed $100 to her sister Ordie J. Jones. Third, to her cousin Maud Hobbs, her interest in a house at 306 South Street, Raleigh, that had been willed to her and her sister Sallie Barbour. Per the codicil, Nunn bequeathed various sums of money to Maud Hobbs, Rebecca Farmer, and Vernecia Moore.

Ardelia Nunn died 25 June 1947 at Mercy Hospital. Per her death certificate, she was 70 years old; was born in Wake County, N.C., to Essex Blake and Clara Hodges; was a widow; lived at 608 North Carroll Street; and was buried in the Masonic Cemetery. Informant was Caroline Dismond, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Clipping courtesy of J. Robert Boykin III; Ardelia Nunn Will, North Carolina Wills and Probate Records 1665-1998, ancestry.com.

501 East Barnes Street.

This building does not lie within East Wilson Historic District, nor was it ever occupied by African-American residents. I include it, however, because it lies east of the tracks, has housed  Black-owned and/or -operated businesses for decades, and has an unexpected hidden history.

The 1988 nomination form for Wilson Central Business-Tobacco Warehouse District described J. and F. Service Center at 501 East Barnes Street thus: “Although extensively altered, the core of this structure, a rectangular frame dwelling under a low hip roof, dates from the late 1880s according to the Sanborn Insurance Maps. In the mid 1890s a smokehouse was added at the east corner; the pleasant gable roofed structure has returning boxed eaves and a standing seam roof. About 1940 Reuben A. Wilder added a small, three-bay-by-two-bay frame store onto the west (along South Pettigrew Street) and converted the property into the Wilder Grocery and Cafe. It currently houses an auto repair business and a large sliding garage door has been added to the Barnes Street elevation of the original dwelling.”

A ride past the location today offers no hint of its origins. A modern Google Maps aerial view, however, clearly reveals the original house at the heart of what is now 501 Car Wash.

Image courtesy of Google Maps.


This detail from the 1897 Sanborn fire insurance map of Wilson shows that the original dwelling, described as a boarding house, was oriented toward Pettigrew Street.

As late as the late 1940s, several houses stood between Wilder Grocery at 501 East Barnes and Wilson Chapel Free Will Baptist Church. All had white occupants. Across the street, but further east toward what is now called Pender Street, five houses sheltered African-American families. By about 1950, all the houses in the 500 block of East Barnes had been demolished.

Photo by Lisa Y. Henderson, May 2022.

Sheppard arrested for murder; witnesses held, too.

Wilson Daily Times, 14 June 1926.

Howard and Catherine Hamilton were arrested and jailed as witnesses to John Henry Sheppard‘s alleged murder of his wife. Will Lewis, who shot up several cars, trying to chase down Sheppard, was arrested, too.

On 29 August 1926, Raleigh’s News and Observer identified the victim as Lillie Mae Ward in an article detailing the eleven murder cases on Wilson County Superior Court’s docket. On 7 September 1926, the N&O followed up to report that a judge had convicted Sheppard and sentenced him to five years in prison.