cotton

John Bullock leases forty acres.

Deed Book 19, page 377.

John Bullock entered into a five-year agreement with Sallie Felton to rent a forty-acre farm in Wilson County. On 1 January 1882, Bullock agreed to pay Felton one thousand pounds of “the first picking of lint cotton” each year and to keep the farm in good condition.

Wilson County Register of Deeds of Office, Wilson County.

Pink Reid borrows from F.S.A.

Pink Reid borrowed $585 from the Farm Security Administration on 10 January 1942. To guarantee his loan, he pledged two mules, a Poland China brood sow, and a milch cow, as well as  his farm equipment.

Deed Book 275, page 303, Wilson County Register of Deeds, Wilson.

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In the 1940 census of Wilson township, Wilson County: farmer Pink Reid, 58; wife Matilda, 57; and son Allen T., 20. All were living in Wayne County five years earlier. 

In the 1950 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 1003 Stantonsburg Street, Pinkey Reid, 68, yard cleaner; son Horace Reid, 32, butler; nephew Randolph Braswell, 26, bricklayer, and his wife Sarah, 25; and wife Matilda Reid, 67, nurse maid.

Pinkney Reid died 30 November 1961 at his residence at 504 North Vick Street, Wilson. Per his death certificate, he was born 25 July 1881 in Wayne County to William Reid and Bettie Wilson; was married to Matilda Reid; was a farmer; and was buried at Turner Swamp cemetery, Wayne County.

Sunny South. Cotton Picking.

It’s hard to read, but “Wilson N C” is written in the cotton plants just below the four women and five children. The reverse of the postcard is labeled “Foust’s Ground Floor Studio, Wilson, N.C.” and carries a Wilson postmark with a partially illegible date — MAR 10 190_.”

Copy courtesy of J. Robert Boykin III.

Jack Williamson signs up for sharecropping.

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 would provide the land and a house on it, rent-free.
  • Williamson would “plant and properly cultivate” 30 acres of cotton on land designated by Barnes.
  • Williamson would plant additional acreage “with the force he employs” in corn and cotton, at Barnes’ designation.
  • Williamson would plant “seed oats” on 15 acres “on the left side of the path leading from his house to Hominy Swamp,” then cut and store it.
  • Williamson would plant peas on all the uplands planted in corn.
  • Williamson would store all crops harvested.
  • Williamson would furnish, feed, and pay all labor [this likely meant Williamson would put his family to work, with — or without — pay.]
  • Williamson would furnish the feed for his team of work animals; compost all the land planted in cotton; furnish all farming utensils; furnish any guano that “Barnes shall consider most advisable to use”; would clean out all the ditches; and would repair all fences.
  • Barnes would own all the cotton seed Williamson produced.
  • Williamson’s two-thirds of the crop would remain in Barnes’ control until Williamson repaid all advances made in provisions, fertilizer, money, etc.
  • Barnes had sold Williamson one bay horse mule and one cart for $135, which, while in Williamson’s possession, would remain Barnes’ property until paid for.

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.

Winners of the cotton contest.

The calendar in this photograph dates it to January 1949. It depicts ten men — four African-American — standing in what appears to be the lobby or a wide hallway of an office building. One man is accepting a document, perhaps a check, from another. I don’t have any other context for the image and don’t know the identity of any of the men.

[Update, 25 May 2023: John Hackney provided the essential clue — the man at far right is his grandfather Tom Bridgers. With that information, I was able to find an article in the 8 January 1949 issue of the Daily Times. At the Wilson Chamber of Commerce’s farm aware program, on behalf of Kiwanis Club, Bridgers presented awards to winners in the “cotton contest” — W.P. Proctor of Stantonsburg; John Farmer, Rufus Brewer, and Charlie Batts of Elm City; Tom Morris, E.G. Lindsey, Hardy Hooks, Henry Trevathan, James Faison, and Joe Hester of Wilson. The photo above, taken by a Chamber photographer, did not run with the article. I’ve amended the title of this post. further update: the photo ran in a reprint of the article on 11 January 1949.]

Photo courtesy of J. Robert Boykin III.

Picking cotton near Elm City.

This remarkable postcard image is undated, but likely was taken in the first decade or so of the twentieth century.

Typed along its right edge: “Elm City, N.C. ‘Cotton Picking’.”

The handwritten message: “I don’t know that you ever saw a cotton field at ‘picking time’ This is taken 1/2 mile from town just as they are getting ready to begin work ‘after dinner’.”

I honor the lives and memory of our cotton-picking ancestors.

Image courtesy of Keith Boykin. Thank you!

Wilson County Gin Company.

A cotton gin in operation is a deafeningly noisy, dusty, and dangerous spectacle. And yet, for two decades, Wilson County Gin Company’s gin roared into action every fall within feet of two Baptist churches, Darden and Sons funeral home, a row of stores, and duplex housing near the corner of East Barnes and Stantonsburg (now Pender) Streets. 

Detail from 1930 Sanborn fire insurance map.

The gin was built in 1919 and competed with another across Barnes Street in the enormous Farmers Cotton Oil Mill complex. (That gin was older and, in successive buildings, operated into the 1960s.) Wilson County Gin operated into the 1930s;  Faulkner Neon took over the site in 1945. At the right angle, a “ghost sign” can be seen above Faulkner Neon’s lettering: WILSON COUNTY GIN.

Nomination form, Wilson Central Business-Tobacco Warehouse Historic District; Photo by Lisa Y. Henderson, February 2023.