1910s

Carolina Telephone & Telegraph comes to Elm City.

In September 1915, Carolina Telephone & Telegraph Company obtained utility easements from property owners in Toisnot township, including G.A. Gaston and J.R. Rosser.

Deed Book 106, page 41, Wilson County Register of Deeds Office.

Deed Book 106, page 42, Wilson County Register of Deeds Office.

The Vicks sell four lots to S.E. Clark.

Deed Book 76, page 298, Wilson County Register of Deeds Office.

On 31 January 1916, for $1000, Samuel H. and Annie M. Vick sold Sue Elma Clark, an unmarried white woman, three lots and part of a fourth in Winona subdivision. Clark likely bought the property as an investment and, per the 1922 Sanborn fire insurance maps of Wilson, it does not appear that she built on the lots for several years, if ever.

Trinity Burial Society celebrates its anniversary.

Wilson Daily Times, 15 May 1945.

Burial societies are mutual aid organizations that provide funeral expenses and support for members, funded by voluntary subscriptions. Membership in a burial society, with small dues often paid weekly, ensured affordable, dignified burials, especially for families whose incomes were stretched. 

Trinity A.M.E. Zion‘s burial society was founded in 1918, when Vick Cemetery was the primary African-American burial ground in Wilson.

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Nellie Woodard visits her late husband’s parents in Wilson.

Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 25 August 1917.

Nellie V. Woodard’s late husband was William H. Woodard, son of Jack and Fannie Simms Woodard, a cleaning and pressing club owner who had died 26 February 1917. He was about 35 years old.

A few weeks later, Nellie Woodard placed a notice thanking friends for their kindnesses during her husband’s illness and her bereavement.

Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 17 March 1917.

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In the 1880 census of Black Creek township, Wilson County: farmer Jack Woodard, 35; wife Fannie, 32; and children John, 12, Julia, 7, Cynthia, 6, Albert, 5, and Aaron, 2.

In the 1900 census of Black Creek township: farmer Jackson Woodard, 56, wife Fannie, 53, children Daisy, 30, Aaron, 18, Harry, 19, Augustus, 17, Steven, 16, Mary, 11, and Harriet, 8, and grandchildren Eddie, 5, Bessie, 3, and Frank, 6 months.

Virginian Pilot (Norfolk, Va.), 13 October 1910. 

Virginian Pilot (Norfolk, Va.), 2 November 1910. 

Norfolk (Va.) City Directory (1918).

Gala day for County School Commencement!

Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 21 April 1917.

Can you imagine? Each spring, hundreds and hundreds of county school children gathered at the Colored Graded School to launch a parade through the streets of downtown Wilson, led by a brass marching band. (The article says 2000 children marched in 1917. There were only about 20 county schools, none larger than three rooms. That is a thirst for knowledge.) The children’s manual arts exhibits were displayed on the school grounds and in the auditorium an array of dignitaries (including “three white ladies from New York” and Dr. Frank S. Hargrave) graced the stage. Speaker after speaker delivered messages in the Booker T. Washington mode — work hard, be patriotic, know your place. J.D. Reid, principal of the Graded School and supervisor of the black county schools, was recognized for having spearheaded a prodigious fundraising drive, money that likely represented the community’s monetary contribution to the four Rosenwald Schools built in Wilson County in 1917 and ’18 — Williamson, Rocky Branch, Kirby’s, and Lucama. (Just shy of a year later, Reid and Charles L. Coon were embroiled in the disgraceful events that led to a boycott of the Graded School, but let’s stay present….)

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  • Rev. Perry — Rev. Robert N. Perry, pastor of Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church
  • Mr. Vick — Samuel H. Vick, former Graded School principal and extraordinary businessman and political leader

The 108th anniversary of the school boycott.

Today marks the 108th anniversary of the resignation of 11 African-American teachers in Wilson, North Carolina, in rebuke of their “high-handed” black principal and the white school superintendent who slapped one of them. In their wake, black parents pulled their children out of the public school en masse and established a private alternative in a building owned by a prominent black businessman.  Financed with 25¢-a-week tuition payments and elaborate student musical performances, the Independent School operated for nearly ten years. The school boycott, sparked by African-American women standing at the very intersection of perceived powerless in the Jim Crow South, was an astonishing act of prolonged resistance that unified Wilson’s black toilers and strivers.

The only known photograph of the Wilson Normal Collegiate & Industrial Institute. 

The school boycott is largely forgotten in Wilson, and its heroes go unsung. In their honor, today, and every April 9 henceforth, I publish links to Black Wide-Awake posts chronicling the walk-out and its aftermath. Please re-read and share and speak the names of Mary C. Euell and the revolutionary teachers of the Colored Graded School.

we-tender-our-resignation-and-east-wilson-followed

the-heroic-teachers-of-principal-reids-school

The teachers.

a-continuation-of-the-bad-feelings

what-happened-when-white-perverts-threatened-to-slap-colored-school-teachers

604-606-east-vance-street

mary-euell-and-dr-du-bois

minutes-of-the-school-board

attack-on-prof-j-d-reid

lucas-delivers-retribution

lynching-going-on-and-there-are-men-trying-to-stand-in-with-the-white-folks

photos-of-the-colored-graded-and-independent-schools

new-school-open

the-program

a-big-occasion-in-the-history-of-the-race-in-this-city

womens-history-month-celebrating-the-teachers-of-the-wilson-normal-industrial-school

the-roots-of-mary-c-euell

respectful-petition-seeks-reids-removal

lucas-testifies-that-he-accomplished-his-purpose

there-has-been-an-astonishing-occurrence-in-wilson

no-armistice-in-sight

the-independent-school-thrives

the-incorporation-of-the-w-n-c-i-institute

normal-school-teachers

And here, my Zoom lecture, “Wilson Normal and Industrial Institute: A Community Response to Injustice,” delivered in February 2022.

An account of the estate of John H. Aiken, livery operator.

John H. Aiken died 20 July 1914 in Wilson. He operated a livery stable at 125 South Goldsboro Street. Livery stables were the essential equivalent of parking lots and car rental offices, offering boarding, feeding, and care of privately owned horses and rental of horses, carriages, and buggies. Aiken’s wife Georgia Crockett Aiken served as administrator of his estate before resigning on 27 August 1914 and joining Aiken’s heirs — children Quince Aiken, William Aiken, Samuel Aiken, Nannie Eperson, John McDaniel, Gollie Aiken, Levi Aiken, Lizzie Aiken, and Alice Aiken — to request the appointment of W.R. Bryan.

Georgia Aiken’s inventory and final account, filed 29 August 1914, offers a detailed look at a successful black-owned business in pre-World War I Wilson. The inventory reveals a large, though heavily mortgaged, stock in trade — 13 horses, 14 buggies, 5 closed carriages, 2 single surries, and 4 wagons of various types. (There’s also a fifty-dollar debt to Aiken owed by veterinarian Elijah L. Reid.)

Receipts show that Aiken did a healthy business renting out his conveyances. In the last 15 days of July, Georgia Aiken collected almost $190.00 “for teams and buggies,” averaging $12.65 a day [$413.38 in today’s dollars].

Georgia Aiken also took in payments from Briggs Hotel and Wilson Hardware Company, both white-owned businesses, for boarding the companies’ horses.

Most of Aiken’s disbursements were wage payments to laborers William Best, Henry Best, Edward Mooring, William Selby, George Lane, and Dave McPhail. J.Y. Buchanan received four payments for shoeing horses; Hackney Brothers and C. Mack Wells were paid for hack repairs; A.J. Ford was paid for repairing a harness; and Thomas & Barnes for an unspecified repair.

Aiken paid bills from Carolina Telephone Company, Barnes-Graves Grocery Company, and J. & D. Oettinger. She paid two feed bills from C. Woodard Company and made seven payments to Quinn-McGowan Furniture Company, likely for the costs of her husband’s funeral. She also paid stable rent to S.M. Richardson and unspecified rent to S.H. Vick, as well as miscellaneous fees related to probate. Interestingly, Georgia Aiken paid $79.39 — quite a large sum — to T.S. Beatty of the Knights of Gideon lodge. What was this for?

Wilson [County, North Carolina] Property Settlement Records 1905-1923, http://www.familysearch.org.