On 15 July 1897, Charles and Leah Hargrove Battle sold Jerusha Peace Woodard a lot in Wilson for fifty dollars. The transaction piqued my interest because sales of East Wilson property from African-Americans to white people were unusual during that time. By the 1890s, the east side of the tracks, south of Crowell Street, was developing into a solidly Black residential area as white landowners divided up farms and other large parcels and moved to west of downtown. (See, for example, Anthony Nadal’s estate, Rountree place, and the Singletary subdivision.)

Deed book 45, page 125, Wilson County Register of Deeds, Wilson.

I do not know the precise location of this irregularly-shaped lot, but, for what they’re worth, the metes and bounds offer context clues:

• “John Boykins line, near Pender Street”
• “132 feet to the line of the lot of the Masonic Lodge (colored)”
• “then down the line of the Charles Darden lot”
• “to Henry Rountree‘s line”
• “to the line of Clarissa Taylor“

In 1897, Pender Street did not extend south of Nash Street. (Below Nash, it was Stantonsburg Street, then Road.) The Masonic lodge is at the corner of Smith and Pender Streets. At the time, it shared a property line with the lot on which Charles H. Darden’s house stood. This would seem to establish one lot line.

In 1908, Clarissa Taylor Kearney lived a block away from the Masonic lodge at 531 Church Street, but it’s not clear where she was in 1897. Similarly, in 1908, John Boykin lived on Viola Street, near Vick, and Henry Rountree lived on Stantonsburg Road near the city limits, i.e. on the other side of Nash. None of this is very helpful. Sanborn maps do not cover Pender Street until 1908, so no aid from that corner.