Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 21 May 1949.
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Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 24 March 1917.
I have not been able to identify the person whose body Camillus L. Darden transported back to Wilson — by train? by automobile? — in March 1917.
From the Samuel H. Vick family’s archives, two receipts for payments made by patriarch Daniel Vick. The first reflects taxes he paid for 1883 “Graded School — Colored” in the amount of $5.52.
The second is a receipt for payment of $12.14 to Alpheus P. Branch, merchant, banker, and founder of Branch Banking & Trust (now Truist.)
Thank you for sharing, Vicki M. Cowan!
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.
News and Observer (Raleigh, N.C.), 16 July 1925.
Garage owner James Edward Smith died of complications resulting from an automobile accident in March 1925. His widow Annie B. Smith, as administrator, sold two of his buses at public auction in August of that year. Alex Obey later bought the garage.
The Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 13 January 1934.
In January 1934, Anna Snipes, co-owner of the Biltmore Hotel, sent in a column detailing holiday happenings, the sick and shut-in, comings and goings, and the hotel’s guestbook. A holiday highlight: the party the Four Star Girls Club — teenagers Edna G. Taylor, Lucy D. Artis, Annie F. Crawford, and Robnette Boyd — held at the hotel with Laddie Springs entertaining.
Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 7 September 1940.
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Wilson Daily Times, 24 December 1930.
Located in the block of Nash Street just east of the railroad tracks, the Lincoln was a white-owned theatre with a black customer base.
Wilson Daily Times, 29 November 1944.
Erudite agricultural extension agent Cecil L. Spellman not only editorialized about the Scottsboro boys in the Norfolk Journal and Guide, he spoke of the case during his weekly program on Wilson’s WGTM radio station. He was immediately dropped.
His was not the only African-American programming impacted by “radical revisions” in station policy. The Laddie Springs Orchestra (who were they??) had been booted from the main studio to Studio B, a space so small that a quartet would have felt squeezed. The orchestra cut ties “rather than suffer further indignities.” Handel’s Chorus, Hartford Bess‘ widely acclaimed singing group, was directed to limit their vocal offerings to “old spirituals.” No classical pieces or solo numbers. Chorus president Jack Sherrod announced they would leave the station, too, as they preferred variety.
In response, businessmen Daniel McKeithan, William F. Potts, Spellman, and Sherrod made plans for a 15-week half-hour weekly show to start in September. (On WGTM??? How would that work? Did it work?)
Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 14 August 1937.