I’ve written several times of Nina F. Hardy, the Wayne County cousin who came to Wilson around the same time as Jesse and Sarah Henderson Jacobs. In a way, she was returning home, as her grandmother Catherine Boseman Aldridge likely was born just below Elm City in what was then Edgecombe County.

Many years ago, I connected with J.M.B., the great-grandson of Jefferson Farrior, the man for whom Aunt Nina worked for decades as a cook and nursemaid. He shared dozens of photos of Aunt Nina at work at the Farriors’ enormous house on Woodard Circle and even a crazy quilt Aunt Nina made shortly after his mother was born in 1945.

Last week, J.M.B. sent another gift — four cancelled checks made out to Nina Hardy by his grandmother Annie Blades Spitzer, who was in turn the granddaughter of Jefferson Davis Farrior and Annie Applewhite Farrior. Annie Farrior died in Wilson in 1956, and it’s likely that Nina Hardy’s employment with the family ended around that time. For several years, however, Annie Spitzer, who lived in Elizabeth City, N.C., carried on a Christmas tradition of sending Hardy a sizeable Christmas gift. The ten-dollar checks sent in 1955 and 1956 were each equivalent to about $115 in today’s dollars. The twenty-five-dollar checks sent in 1959 and 1960 were each equivalent to a little over $270. 

Per the 1930 census, Nina Hardy could neither read nor write. The 1940 census reported that she had had no schooling. The endorsements on the backs of her checks are in four different handwritings, suggesting that a trusted person signed on her behalf.

The endorsement on the back of the 21 December 1959 check is in a handwriting I readily recognize as that of my grandmother, Hattie Henderson Ricks, who was Nina’s second cousin, once removed. That check was cashed at Branch Banking & Trust, but two others went to pay down grocery and dairy bills.