Month: September 2022

State vs. Daniel Sharp Jr.

In August 1911, a justice of the peace charged Daniel Sharp Jr. with assault with a deadly weapon for an alleged attack upon Louis Hagans. The charge was based on eyewitness testimony by Rufus Edmundson and Charlie Dawes. Per Edmundson, Sharp shot a pistol at Hagans at New Hope Church. (This, presumably, was New Hope Missionary Baptist Church, located then as now on N.C. Highway 58 just north of Wilson.)

  • Daniel Sharp Jr.
  • Louis Hagans — there were several Louis (or Lewis) Hagans in Wilson County around this time, and it’s not clear which this was.
  • Rufus Edmundson
  • Charlie Dawes

Criminal Action Papers, 1911, Wilson County Records, North Carolina State Archives.

Hagans reports on the Republican delegation.

Farmer & Mechanic (Raleigh, N.C.), 2 September 1902. 

It’s not entirely clear, but this report seems to claim that Jack Sharp, a former Wilson County resident, boarded a train to unseat the county’s representatives on their way to the state Republican convention and to appoint a new set. William S. Hagans, the Wayne County native who provided the report, was African-American, and my guess is that the original delegates contained Black members.

The Missionary Home Employment Office is open for business.

Wilson Daily Times, 8 October 1917.

The Missionary Home Employment Office served as a staffing agency for white employers seeking African-American employees, with a likely focus on domestic help. Chairman of the Board G.W. Barnes was none other than George W. “Picture-taking” Barnes, and his photography studio address also housed the new business. Treasurer H. Hill was probably Henrietta Hill.

Neither Rev. A.A.I. Davis nor Jessie B. McLauchlin appear in the 1916 city directory of Wilson, but we’ve met Rev. Davis before. He was the peripatetic Baptist preacher behind a series of “old people’s homes” that opened in eastern North Carolina circa 1917 to 1920, including one in Wilson that operated briefly at 310 Lodge Street.

A year later, an ad in a Raleigh newspaper shed a little light on who might have constituted the Missionary Home Employment Office’s labor pool — the old people, “fallen girls,” and orphans that found themselves in the Missionary Home. Oliver N. Freeman had replaced Jessie B. McLauchlin in this dubious enterprise. 

News and Observer (Raleigh, N.C.), 8 September 1918.

C.R. Cannon rents furniture.

On 26 September 1903, just eight months after Charles R. and Stattie E. Cannon mortgaged their Viola Street property, Charles Cannon rented an unusual amount of furniture from G.S. Tucker & Co., a Nash Street business.

The 1900 census of Wilson, reveals that Charlie Cannon, 26, was a barber living with wife Stattie, 24; son Charlie Jr., 1; and mother Nancy, 70, widow. His venture in operating his own barbershop was short-lived, as n the 1910 census of Wilson, Wilson County, census Chas. Cannon, 35 is described as a barber in “white shop.” His household included wife Statie, 34; children Chas., 11, Ruth, 9, and Statie Benton, 13.

That “white shop” was not white-owned. Rather, Levi H. Jones‘ barbers served a white-only clientele.

Wilson Daily Times, 1 November 1910.