Month: March 2025

The Clarks get their land back.

Deed book 153, page 448, Wilson County Register of Deeds Office, Wilson.

On 13 September 1924, for a nominal sum, Lula Whitehurst conveyed the seven parcels of the Harry Clark farm to the Clark heirs. Whitehurst, a young white woman, worked as a stenographer for attorney Frederick D. Swindell. The 1921 plat map of the Clark farm is titled “Map Showing Division of Land Near Wilson Owned By the Heirs of Harry Clark.” How did the Clarks lose their inheritance? How did Whitehurst get it, and why did she essentially give it back? Harry Clark’s estate records could yield clues, but I have not found the file digitized.

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  • Harry Jenkins of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, plat number 3 of the Harry Clark farm, measuring nine acres;
  • Ella M. Hinton of Addor, North Carolina, plat number 4 of the Harry Clark farm, measuring six acres;
  • Maggie F. Golding of Alamo, Georgia, plat number 1 of the Harry Clark farm, measuring three and 1/10 acres; also, a house and lot in Beaufort, North Carolina at 623 Fifth Street, formerly owned by Henrietta V. Clark;
  • Thomas G. Clark of Jamaica, New York, plat number 2 of the Harry Clark farm, measuring nine acres;
  • William H. Clark of Birmingham, Alabama, plat number 5 of the Harry Clark farm, measuring eight acres;
  • John H. Clark of Wilson, plat number 6 of the Harry Clark farm, measuring eight acres; and
  • Augustus S. Clark of Cordele, Georgia, plat number 7 of the Harry Clark farm, measuring eight acres.

Alonzo R. Phillips marries in Connecticut.

The Newtown (Conn.) Bee, 12 June 1903.

The Newtown (Conn.) Bee, 8 January 1904.

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In the 1880 census of Tarboro, Edgecombe County, N.C.: minister H.C. Philips, 37, wife Emma, 34, and children Louisa, 12, Hood, 9, Walton, 6, and Cornelius, 3.

In the 1900 census of Wilson, Wilson County: Emma Phillips, 53, and sons Alonzo, 17, and William, 16.

Alonzo R. Phillips and James H. Bynum were freshmen classmates at Lincoln University. Bynum graduated in 1906; Phillips dropped out before their junior year. Catalogue of Lincoln University, Academical Year 1902-1903 (Philadelphia: 1903.)

In the 1912 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Phillips Alonzo (c) painter h608 E Green

In 1918, Alonzo Robert Phillips registered for the World War I draft in Franklin County, N.C. Per his registration card, he was born 1 July 1882; lived in Franklinton, Franklin County; worked as a farmer and teacher for Freedman’s Board [Presbyterian Board of Missions for Freedmen], Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and his nearest relative was Mrs. Alonzo R. Phillips.

In the 1920 census of Franklinton, Franklin County, N.C.: A.R. Phillips, 37, teacher at Albion Academy; wife Sallie, 37; and children Kenneth, 15, janitor at Albion Academy, Robt., 14, Ethel, 12, Sarah, 9, Julia, 8, Henry C., 5, Ruth, 2, and Oliver Q., 3 months.

Alonzo R. Phillips died 26 July 1924 in Franklinton, Franklin County. Per his death certificate, he was 42 years old; was married; was born in New Bern, N.C., to Henry C. Phillips and Elizabeth Phillips; and was a schoolteacher. He was buried in “Fr.Col.Cem.”

Elsie Knight, dressmaker.

After Daniel Vick‘s death in 1908, Samuel H. Vick took over the care of his nieces Annie and Nettie Jones, whose mother Nettie Vick Jones had been murdered eleven years earlier. Among the items he reported paying for out of Daniel Vick’s estate were dresses for the girls made by “Elsie K,” or Elsie Knight. The Vicks certainly had choices when it came to selecting dressmakers, which suggests Knight was an exceptional talent. (Or perhaps an exceptional value.)

On 26 December 1898, Charles Knight, 21, married Elsie McCullows, 21, in Wilson. Baptist minister W.T.H. Woodard performed the ceremony in the presence of Annie Jackson, Lizzie McCullers, and Florence Whitfield.

In the 1900 census of Wilson, Wilson County: day laborer Charles Knight, 24; wife Elsie, 26; daughter Emma, 7 months; and boarders Weldon Standfield, 24, day laborer, and wife Martha, 23.

In the 1910 census of Wilson, Wilson County: barber Charles Knight, 35; wife Elsie, 37; children Charles, 8, and Frank, 6; and boarders Ethel Coleman, 23, and Sarah Jackson, 28, both teachers.

Charles Henry Knight registered for the World War I draft in 1918. Per his registration card, he was born 12 February 1875; lived at 115 Pender Street; was a self-employed barber at 533 East Nash Street; his nearest relative was Elsie Knight; and he had “rheumatism very badly cannot walk well.”

In the 1920 census of Wilson, Wilson County: barber Charlie Knight, 45; wife Elsie, 47; and son Frank, 16, auto shop laborer.

In the 1922 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory:

Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory (1925).

Elsie Knight died 20 January 1930 in Wilson. Per her death certificate, she was 58 years old; was born in Johnston County, N.C., to Willis McCullers and Emma Sanders; was the widow of Charles Knight; lived at 511 Vance Street; and was buried in Wilson [likely, Vick Cemetery.] Andrew McCullers was informant.

More on the trial of Caesar Wooten.

Wilson Advance, 12 November 1891.

I posted here about the death of Mittie Strickland and the years-long search for her killer, Caesar Wooten. This account of the trial reveals a new detail — the jury included two African-American men, Ishmael Wilder and Daniel Vick.

The Rountrees attend a party.

Asbury Park Press, 25 September 1913.

We learned in Wilson County native William Rountree‘s obituary that he was a long-time Sunday School superintendent at Mount Pisgah Baptist Church in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Here, Rountree, his wife Fannie Best Rountree, the Misses Rountree (probably daughters Viola, Ethel, and Virginia Rountree), and son William Rountree Jr. attended a going-away party for Anna Jones. Jones was on her way to Princess Anne College, which is now University of Maryland Eastern Shore.

Plantation House Series: Lewis Rountree house. [Updated.]

I thought this antebellum house was built by a Woodard, but according to a state GIS map, it’s “Roundtree house (A. Cozart house).”

What does that mean? Where did I get Woodard from?

I first saw this house from the windows of my elementary school bus as it rumbled east from my neighborhood, Bel Air Forest, to pick up Robin, a boy who lived a mile down the highway. The road curved, then split, with NC-58 headed southeast to Stantonsburg and 264 more easterly to Saratoga. The two-story house sat in plain view on the north side of 264, up a dirt track. I can’t recall if the house was occupied then, but judging by its condition when I took these photographs circa 1991, I think not. In, as I recall, the late 1990s, the intersection was reconfigured, but the house stood until the early 2000s.

Detail from map of Wilson County at HPOWEB 2.0, nc.maps.arcgis.com. 

I did a little poking in deeds. Long story short, S.H. Cozart bought a bundle of parcels, including this one, from Graham Woodard in 1941. Graham Woodard had inherited the property as the only child of Fannie Rountree Woodard, who died in 1894. Fannie Woodard, whose husband Frederick A. Woodard we have met, had inherited it from her father Moses Rountree, the wealthy 19th-century Wilson merchant.

Wilson Advance, 30 November 1883.

Per the Nomination Form for the Moses Rountree House, built about 1869 in town, Rountree “was born in 1822 on the family plantation several miles east of the present city of Wilson on what is now Route 264.”

Detail of a 1894 survey map found in the Moses Rountree estate file showing two lots inherited by Graham Woodard. As the aerial image below shows, the main landscape features remain the same — Toisnot Swamp and its small tributary, a forked road. A tiny square marked “House” is the house in question.

No longer looking for a Woodard property, I went back to Kate Ohno’s Wilson County’s Architectural Heritage and voila — the Rountree House, believed to have been built  about 1830 by Moses Rountree’s father Lewis Rountree. (Lewis Rountree enslaved Hilliard Ellis and Warren Rountree, among a few dozen others. Moses Rountree also was a slaveowner, acknowledging three adults and one infant in the 1860 slave schedule.)

Per Kate Ohno, the Rountree House.

But wait. The house depicted in the book is not the house I photographed, though both were two-story structures built during the antebellum period. The most immediately noticeable difference is that the house above has a hipped roof and hip-roof porch, and Ohno’s house has a gable roof and shed-roof porch. But there are other inconsistencies — the number of chimneys, the number of porch posts and second-story windows, the ashlar skirting.

I’m back to square one.

Aerial image (via Google Maps) of Rountree-Woodard-Cozart property. Toisnot Swamp runs at bottom right. Its Mill Branch (2) is visible as a line of trees and a dammed pond. The approximate location of the house is (1).

Estate of Moses Rountree (1884), North Carolina Wills and Probate Records 1665-1998, http://www.ancestry.com.

[UPDATE, 16 March 2025: A course correction and comment on the fallibility of memory. Yesterday, I shared this post with members of Wilson County Historical Association in hopes that someone could help unravel the mystery. Among others, Cliff Darden responded and shared his own childhood recollection of the gable-roof Rountree house.  I began to wonder if I were conflating two distinct memories — seeing this house from my school bus window in the mid-1970s and photographing a house in the early 1990s. Though I was not sure the data would go back far enough, I checked Google Maps’ Streetview for images of the site. Voila — here’s the January 2008 view:

The resolution is terrible, but that’s clearly the gable-roof Rountree house. The house had disappeared by time the next image was made in 2012 (and the barn several years later.)

Where, then, did I take the photographs above? I lived in New York City at the time, and on visits home would ramble the backroads of Wilson and Wayne and Edgecombe and Nash Counties, photographing abandoned farmsteads with a Canon AE-1. I’m looking for my contact sheets and will update this post again if I’m able to pinpoint the location. I am reminded of the value of interrogating my own memories and am grateful for the time taken by others to share theirs.]