“The Museum of Durham History, in partnership with the Friends of Geer Cemetery, is proud to present Unearthing Stories of Geer Cemetery: Using Archaeology to Reclaim, Restore, and Respect Sacred Space. This powerful exhibit explores how archaeological discoveries at Geer Cemetery have uncovered long-forgotten artifacts, shedding light on the lives of those buried there and the community’s ongoing efforts to preserve their memory.”
Goals.
Deed book 111, page 489, Wilson County Register of Deeds, Wilson.
This 1912 deed is interesting primarily for the light it sheds on part of the area that would become East Wilson, including changes in street names. Hattie B. Young bought a parcel east of the Atlantic Coast Line Rail Road (previously the Wilmington & Weldon Rail Road) diagonally across from the A.C.L. freight depot beginning at a lane or street (Barnes Street) to the county road known as Barefoot road (the Stantonsburg road) on the east side of the Railroad street (Pettigrew Street). The lot was three-quarters of an acre, had formerly been the “old residence lot” of the late Orren Jones, and now contained six tenant houses.
Wilson Daily Times, 9 April 1930.
Jones Hill Primitive Baptist Church anchored a community that included Jones Hill School. The church’s cemetery is now separated from the church by Interstate 95. The current building is heavily modified, but retains what appears to be an early 20th-century structure at its core.
I have been able to find little information about Jones Hill’s founding or early years, but by the early 1950s, the church was a member of Union Primitive Baptist Association.
Photo by Lisa Y. Henderson, March 2025.
We have seen Jack Williamson as a blacksmith in Wilson in the late 1800s. However, prior to establishing his business in town, he was a sharecropper. The contract below sets out in detail Williamson’s arrangement with white farmer Jacob H. Barnes to work a farm Barnes owned on Hominy Swamp.
The contract’s terms (which read like a set-up for failure):
Barnes and Williamson signed the contract on 2 February 1875, with Frank W. Barnes as witness.
Deed book 10, page 215-216, Wilson County Register of Deeds, Wilson.
Jackson (Miss.) Advocate, 9 March 1946.
Javotte Sutton Greene was born in Wilson, but her family lived there only briefly, and she grew up in Durham, North Carolina.
More about “Striver’s Row” from the 2 March 1946 edition of The Ohio State News:
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Per the U.S. Social Security Applications and Claims Index 1936-2007, Javotte Sutton Greene was born 6 January 1922 in Wilson, North Carolina, to Ezekiel Sutton and Allensia M. McKinnon. She died 4 November 1998.
Over the course of two days in October 1982, Jim Peppler took nearly 300 photographs in Wilson on behalf of the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund. Peppler was on hand to document the fight by African-American citizens to secure representation on the Wilson County Board of Commissioners in Robert D. Haskins et al. v. The County of Wilson, North Carolina, et al. Though his photos were taken decades after the period covered in Black Wide-Awake, several of his streetscapes would have been more familiar to a Wilsonian of 1945 than of 2025, and I share them here.
This block is nearly unrecognizable now. The three-story building at right is the Odd Fellows building, built in 1894 by Samuel H. Vick.
This unpaved lane — in 1982! — is most likely Gay Street. Can anyone confirm?
All the houses on the west side of Ash Street are long gone. Though vacant, most of the houses on the east remain. The shrubbery, however, has disappeared. The sign midway down the block marked the site of Calvary Holy Church (at 118 Ash Street, a building now housing Antioch Outreach Church Ministries.)
This and related images are mislabeled “Ash Street” in the collection. Instead, they are scenes of Church Street, which runs for only one block, parallel to Nash Street. Only three houses remain on the street, all now abandoned.
Church Street today, per Google Maps Streetview.
Top: plaintiffs Jasper E. Williams, Roy Atkinson, Milton F. Fitch Sr., Roland Edwards, and Rev. Talmage A. Watkins. Bottom: attorney G.K. Butterfield Jr., lead plaintiff Robert D. Haskins, attorney Milton F. “Toby” Fitch Jr.
Peppler, Jim, “Photographs of plaintiffs and cooperating attorneys for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) who participated in the legal case Haskins v. County of Wilson in Wilson, North Carolina,” 1982-10-09/1982-10-10, Alabama Department of Archives and History, http://digital.archives.alabama.gov/cdm/ref/collection/photo/id/37888.
This rare postcard is the only known full image of the Commercial Bank of Wilson, founded by Samuel H. Vick and others in April 1921.
Detail from the 1922 Sanborn insurance maps of Wilson, N.C., showing Commercial Bank at the corner of South Pettigrew and East Nash Streets.
Hat tip to Keith Boykin.
