News and Record (Greensboro, N.C.), 5 November 1917.
We’ve seen that Samuel H. Vick was an early and enthusiastic car collector, but who knew this early and enthusiastic? In 1919, the North Carolina Secretary of State’s office reported five cars registered to Vick — a Chandler, a Reo, two Hudsons, and a Cadillac. Two years earlier, however, he had lost an astounding 20 cars in a garage fire behind his commercial property on East Nash Street.
The 1913 Sanborn fire insurance map of Wilson shows a wooden structure behind the brick Odd Fellows building, which housed the Globe Theatre, and adjacent to the rear of the Hotel Union. It hardly seems large enough to have housed 20 vehicles, but may have been expanded between 1913 and the 1917 fire.
On this map, it appears that Smith St. was earlier called Zion Alley.
My maternal great grandparents, Catherine and Sam Clark, who attended St. John A.M. E. Zion Church, had a house on this street with a garage for their horse and buggy.
Yes! That was the original name! It was changed to Smith to honor O.L.W. Smith, the minister to Liberia who served as pastor of St. John.