On an earlier research trip over to the Edgecombe County Courthouse in Tarboro, I happened upon Saint Luke Episcopal’s small cemetery on the edge of town. Today, I was more deliberate in my search for a cemetery that, until fairly recently, contained rare wooden grave markers:
After a little backing and forthing along West Wilson Street, I found Saint Paul A.M.E. Zion’s cemetery. (It is not adjacent to the church, which was destroyed in flooding in 1999 and rebuilt up the road.) Not to put too fine a point on it, the cemetery is in terrible shape. Though I know of no direct links to Wilson County for anyone buried there, y’all know how I feel about these spaces, and I stepped out to look around and pay respects.
The cemetery was founded in 1892. I did not find any wooden markers, but a number of fine century-plus year-old headstones still stand, including a beautiful marker for Odd Fellow P.L. Baskerville (the detail in that broken rose!); one for Louise Cherry Cheatham, first wife of United States Congressman Henry P. Cheatham; Viola Smith’s pristine anchor-and-ivy; and a fantastically engraved cement Hall family marker.
Add Saint Paul’s to the list of critically endangered historic African-American cemeteries in eastern North Carolina. If anyone is aware of efforts to reclaim it, please let me know.
Preston (or Presley) Lewis Baskerville was a Republican party stalwart, who, like Samuel H. Vick, enjoyed Congressman George H. White‘s patronage. His work as a painter and decorator earned him a feature in A.B. Caldwell’s History of the American Negro and His Institutions, North Carolina Edition (1921). (Alongside Wilsonians like Vick, Dr. William A. Mitchner, Rev. A.L.E. Weeks, D.C. Suggs, and others.)
That stylized tree? Fern? In cement. My mind is unceasingly blown by the artistry of hand-cut/curved/poured grave markers.
Viola Smith’s headstone is a fine example of this style.
Yuccas, traditional plant grave markers.
Photo of wooden marker courtesy of Knight and Auld, African American Heritage Guide: Tarboro, Rocky Mount, Edgecombe County (2013); other photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, December 2023.
Wow; I love your articles but TARBORO mentions are especially exciting for me as I was born there. My connection to WIlson County is my grandfather, Isham HILLIARD, born 1892. His parents, Israel & Elizabeth, moved to Tarboro when he was 5.
I used to attend the old St. Paul’s as a little girl and a lot of my family still attends St. Luke’s. Next time I’m in Tarboro, I’ll have to check out St. Paul’s cemetery.
Thank you for visiting!
Have a Very Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa and Best Wishes for the New Year!!!
Thank YOU, Barbara — not only for reading, but for commenting! I love to know when my posts “hit.” Do you have photos of Isham Hilliard or his parents? I’d love to feature them. I suspect that many left the eastern half of Wilson County for Tarboro, but so far I’ve found little evidence.
Best wishes for a beautiful Christmas, a nourishing Kwanzaa, and a Happy New Year!
So sorry; just seeing your reply.
I have a photo of Isham Hilliard. The back of the photo states it was taken in California; I’m guessing 1940s. BUT I don’t see how to attach it to this message… 🙁
Wow! Please email it to blackwideawake at gmail dot com. Thanks for sharing!
Hello Lisa, I was doing some research and came across your information. I have taken a recent interest in restoring the St. Paul AME Zion Cemetery. I have put a hold on it since they are doing construction on Wilson St. Once they are done, I will go back with plans on restoring the cemetery. Based on what mother has told me there are about four church cemeteries in that area. I am vested in restoring St Paul Cemetery because of our family buried in that cemetery. As Barbara mention the Hilliard’s have been members of both St. Luke and St. Paul as to date my aunt is the oldest member of St. Paul.
All the best to you, Tamyra! Hoping your efforts will be well-supported by private and public partners.
(Tony Jones) I came across this story while researching more information about St.Pauls Baptist Church in Tarboro my Grandmother was a member since moving to Tarboro in the mid. 30s from a family farm, her husband’s family owned since the creation of the Freedom Hill area where freed slaves settled in the mid. 1800s after following Union Soilders to that area and how white’s settled and created their own segregated🤨 community known as Tarboro! A line was drawn using the Tar river to keep the freed black Americans on the other side of the river in which those black Americans called Freedom Hill and today known as the town of Princeville in which is the very first incorporated black town in America! It was founded in the mid 1800s year’s before the black town in Florida has been falsely depicted as the first incorporated black town founded in America! This false untrue part of history is still being touted by Florida and that black township ancestors today unfairly! Sadly it took Hurricane Hugo in the 90s that flooded the town to bring this fact to national news to America that’s undeniable and yet the Town in Florida still wants to hold on to that false information they were obviously given without any fact’s or proof until the real truth came out that Freedom Hill, where the actual sign and date still exists and stand’s today at the edge of the bridge between Tarboro and Princeville, that crosses the river and served as the line and bridge of Segregation! Black Americans in Freedom Hill built Tarboro and it’s economy by crossing over that bridge every day to work to build this white Town in Tobacco and Cotton Gin’s and pick cotton and tobacco on white farm’s for pay this time and not forced free labor anymore! Black women working as maids and nanny’s well into the 70s, although by that time black’s from Freedom Hill were allowed to settle in a small area that still exists segregated 🤨 known as east Tarboro and just on the one side of Main St in a very small blocked off Area that’s basically boxed in! I remember visiting my grandmother’s house, my mother and her family moved into from the farm in the mid.30s when blacks were allowed to move into that specific only area of Tarboro they called the black folk’s section 🤨! This was the early 60s I whould visit as a child with my mother from Washington DC! It was like night and day for me seeing such a difference of how people, especially black people lived! The streets were not paved and were made of dirt only in the black folks section 🤨! One of the reasons why Freedom Hill became the very first black incorporated town in America many don’t know is because of one reason only and that’s because when all the land was surveyed along with Tarboro before it’s founding was the fact that specific area was known and found to be a flood area and marked down to definitely flood at least every 100 years or before! That’s the only reason why blacks were allowed to buy the land or else, white’s whould have stolen that also and like the rest of America especially after Reconstruction when black owned land was just taken from them🤨! This is what created the wealth gap that exists today, because black’s still continue to create America’s wealth by building on properties they didn’t own and cultivating the land itself through farming Tobacco that Tarboro mainly prospered from producing and then cotton! Freedom Hill is one town that survived Reconstruction and blacks owned their homes and land and businesses! Baker st. and the street St. Paul’s border’s and certain radius and along Elm and Bradley Ave. is the longtime segregated area that black’s first moved across the river to live in that specific designated area, known as the black folks section 🤨! My Grandmother owned the biggest and most modernized home on Baker st. It was surrounded by home’s that use to exist in that area that were what I whould call slave cabin’s that actually still existed in Tarboro in the 60s was crazy! My Grandmother stood out because she looked and could pass for white and those around her seemed to treat her that way and I felt as if living back in time as if the white masters in the big house and surround by all the Slaves in the shack’s beyond her massive fence that surrounded her house and extra land attached she bought for her to garden on! I always loved my visits and the friendly and respectful people and neighbors, yet looking back I see the bigger picture of the racism and segregation that existed in Tarboro for the 60s and watched it continue until my mother moved back there after retirement and broke the segregation barrier by being the first black to move into and buy a house in what was called the white folks section 🤨! A big beautiful brick rambler right on Maine St. in 1986! Still the town of Tarboro being segregated until 1986 is very sad! I remember the colonial movie theater was segregated of black people could only sit upstairs in the balcony seat’s in the 70s and I never realized it going as a kid and just thought we were sitting up there because it was more fun and we could throw popcorn on the head’s of those below that I never even paid attention being from a modern day city that there were only whites down there 😂! I never felt bad about throwing that popcorn now! What bothers me is although the town is no longer segregated and black’s own homes in even the most prestigious area’s as many black people especially that may have root’s there have moved back like my mother did in the 80s after retirement! There are house’s with built in swimming pools in a beautiful area that most don’t even know exists unless you know the Area very well and where this hidden gem exists because you can’t see it from any road 😁! Many unless original townfolk don’t know or may pay attention now that when Baker St. that I will forever call Baker St. because of my Grandmother’s and family history there and still there because the house is still owned by my family, was renamed Martin Luther King Dr. in the early 2000s like what became a common occurrence in every black community only across America 🤔! If you notice today driving down that street that once it crosses at panola it stops being MLK on the White side of Baker st and is still named Baker St. because white people who live on Baker st. didn’t want to live on a street named after a black man 🤔🤨! Such blatant racism that exists there today as a reminder of a racist history that took Tarboro decades to be dragged into the real world is very sad to see everytime I drive pass! This story and Subject was on the old grave yard even I had no idea of being in that area I know well and can only assume it’s there because of the close proximity of the bridge and courthouse area where some elite black families had home’s and one of my family members! But don’t take away from the real Historical black graveyard built in Freedom Hill and now known as Princeville! It was and still is called the black graveyard! The first freed Slaves who settled in Freedom Hill are buried there and all of the areas black ancestors are buried there! Because black families bought family plots it’s a privately owned graveyard because the land is passed down and owned by any surving family members! Some black family members are still being buried there today in family plots that were purchased over 75 year’s ago and more like in my Grandmother’s family plots my family owns! Take a ride out there if you like exploring and looking at very old tombstone’s from the past you will be surprised of the many well made monument’s and statue’s and even large slate granite slabs that are so old they have sunken into the earth! My great grandparents are buried there also saying born just after slavery in 1860s like you will see on many tombstone’s! I will end with this also I feel sad fact is the Town itself may not be Segregated anymore, but the graveyards still are!! A new graveyard for black people was built in the late 80s.or early 90s I witnessed and located at the very end of MLK and of course built in the historical black folks section of the part of Tarboro I know now why they were allowed to move into that part of Tarboro back then is because when Princeville flood’s, so does that particular part of Tarboro and how black people living in that area lost their homes just like in Princeville during Hugo in the 90s! Newly built black graveyard and only place blacks are buried at today was also flooded and caskets came up out the ground and families like one of my family members had to be reburied after the flood! Those two black graveyards and the fact that graveyards are still segregated is a bigger story for you to comment on or be concerned about it’s Historical purposes in the areas black community! Not a few grave’s a few blacks.were buried with wooden marker’s or not, because they could have been buried in that area for several reasons of the surroundings. That’s an area where people were buried everywhere and even backyards in those times! That specific area is actually haunted with ghost’s of the founding of both town’s and busy crossing and all the old buildings and White Churches with graves out back of white’s only 🤨! The courthouse area is so old and courthouse itself that it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up because of all the spirit’s of the past in that area!
Tony, thanks for telling YOURstory from your own knowledge and experiences. HIStory is tainted. We have to own our own stories.
The WHOLE Truth=The Whole Story.
can anyone tell me about the Briley/Stewart families in Tarboro? My mother and her three siblings lived there in the early 50s and were taken by the state – she would tell me stories about sleeping in the graveyard bc their parents abandoned them and they were scared to stay in the house alone – not sure which graveyard or where their house was – she described it as having a walkway through the middle and people lived on one side and the children were on the other – but these kids would run the streets during the day and hide in the graveyard at night – is there anyone around that remembers these children?