Family

The roots of many Wilson County Artises, no. 2: Artis Town.

A mash-up of few old posts from my personal genealogy blog, http://www.scuffalong.com.  Artis Town was not an incorporated place; rather, it was a neighborhood in which an extended family of free people of color had lived in the antebellum period, and in which one, Daniel Artis, had had bought 120 acres in 1853 upon which to settle his large family. Not all modern Artis descendants in Wilson County are linked to Artis Town, but many are, including me. Documents and DNA evidence strongly suggest that Daniel Artis was the brother of my great-great-great-great-grandmother Vicey Artis Williams.

I checked first at the Court House. I had a hazy memory of a dusty, yellowed pull-down map hanging on a wall in the Register of Deeds office outlining Greene County townships in, perhaps, the 1950s. Most county roads were then unpaved, and the map bore witness to many now-abandoned crossroads and hamlets, including “Artis Town.” But the map was gone, cast aside in a reshuffling of office space that relegated Greene County’s Register of Deeds to the basement. The two ladies on duty — blue-permed and powder-fresh — interrupted their gossip (“He’s good as gold, but when he’s mad, he’ll … he’ll CATCH”) to help, gamely pulling two or three crumbling maps from storage, but none was what I sought. “Try EMS!,” one finally suggested, “They know all the roads.”

In the dim front office of a low brick building on the northern edge of Snow Hill, I explained myself: “I’m looking for a place in the road called Artis Town. There used to be a sign. Like, a green one with white letters. And it was somewhere off Speights Bridge Road, or maybe Lane Road, but I hunted up and down this morning and couldn’t find it.” The good old boys were puzzled. “Artis Town … Artis Town …” “Well, naw, I never heard of … Mike! You know where Artis Town is?” “Artis Town. Artis Town ….” An older man walked through the door and was put to the test. “Well, I think … hmmm. Hey. Call Donald. If he don’t know, don’t nobody.” … “Hey, Pam, is Donald — wait, you’re from out that way. Do you know where Artis Town is? … Okay … okay … okay. Donald? Yeah, Artis Town. … Okay … mm-hmm … that’s what Pam said. Okay, thankee.” And sure enough, it was in a bend of Lane Road, off Speights Bridge, and there had been a sign, and it was gone.

But I asked my mother about it, too, because she taught in Greene County for two years when she first came to North Carolina, and I thought maybe she’d heard of it. Her school had been in Walstonburg and probably drew students from Speights Bridge, and … “Let me look at my gazetteer.” She has the old version from the 1980s, which, of course, I pitched once I bought the shiny new one. And I’m regretting that surely, for Artis Town is marked quite clearly on her map, and I could have saved myself some gas and tire rubber had I consulted it. (Though I would have missed out on the helpful hospitality of the fine people of Snow Hill.)

This is what happens when you throw things away. You get new maps, shiny and updated, with all the latest roads. And all the old place names gone. My mother has the 1993 edition of DeLorme Mapping’s North Carolina Atlas & Gazetteer, and there is Artis Town.

I dug my old laptop out of storage today. It took a bit of searching, but finally: photos I took in December 2004 when I was wandering the roads of Greene County with no real purpose other than a penchant for what William Least Heat-Moon calls “blue highways.” Almost ten years would pass before I’d connect Artis Town with my own Artises. The ancestors, though, are patient.

I haven’t seen it for myself, but I understand that a new Artis Town sign was placed a few years ago.

[Update, 6 February 2023: Here’s the new sign.]

Photograph of sign by Lisa Y. Henderson, 23 December 2004.

Tragedy befalls the Haskins family.

We read here of the electrocution death of John Haskins by a downed live wire. This brief article reveals that his seriously ill sister died the same day, and their father two weeks later.

News and Observer (Raleigh, N.C.), 9 April 1915.

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In the 1900 census of Wilson, Wilson County: farm laborer Damp Haskins; wife Hester, 43; and children Dora, 24, Martha, 19, Lossie, 18, Robert, 16, William, 15, James, 13, Lesley, 10, John, 9, Norma, 7, Earnest, 4, and Damp, 1.

John Haskins died 7 April 1915 in Wilson township. Per his death certificate, he was 20 years old; married; had no occupation; and was the son of Damp Haskins and Steller Sharp. William Haskins was informant.

Dora Thomas Haskins [Haskins Thomas?] died 7 April 1915 in Wilson township. Per her death certificate, she was 42 years old; a widow; a cook; and was the daughter of Damp Haskins and Stettie Sharp. William Haskins was informant.

Damp Haskins died 22 April 1915 in Wilson [and not of tuberculosis, but of inanition (exhaustion caused by lack of nourishment) due to hemiplegia (paralysis on one side of the body). Per his death certificate, he was 64 years old; was married; was born to Charles Haskins and an unknown mother; and had been a farmer. William Haskins was informant.

Reunions, no. 2.

I don’t often get to see my high school friends, and I can’t recall the last time we gathered in numbers. Last June, however, we came together to celebrate Thelma Braswell Forbes and lift up her daughter, Dawn Forbes Murphy. I have known all of these folks since at least elementary school (or in the case of Thomas Lofton Jr., since birth), but only recently discovered that two are actually my cousins.

Felicia Wilkes Curry (in the gray teeshirt) and I share common ancestry in the Artises of Artis Town, Greene County, N.C., and we’re just two of many of that early 19th century family to wind up in Wilson. (Now that I’m thinking about it, an Artis Town post is probably warranted here at Black Wide-Awake. Stay tuned.) 

Kimberly Bynum Deans (yellow shirt), via her great-grandfather James W. Cooper, is descended from my great-great-great-grandfather Adam T. Artis’ brother Richard Artis, which means she has Artis Town roots and is Felicia’s cousin, too. 

Among the most rewarding aspects of researching for Black Wide-Awake are discovering, uncovering, and recovering lost family connections, both my own and others’. I was particularly excited to piece together the Taylor family puzzle, which linked three of my childhood friends (and possibly me to one of them, Gregory Wilkins, via an Eatmon ancestor). Wilson County is small enough that it’s not surprising that many of us share distant common roots, but finding out just who those long-lost cousins are is always a delight. 

Studio shots, no. 209: Joseph and Nettie Peacock Shaw.

Joseph and Nettie Peacock Shaw, not long after they married in 1916.

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In the 1900 census of Springhill township, Wilson County: Spencer Shaw, 40, wife Tabitha, 41, and children George A., 17, James R., 11, Hattie, 9, Joeseph G., 6, Seth T., 5, and Albert S., 2.

In the 1900 census of Crossroads township, Wilson County: Nathan(?) Peacock, 18, farmer; siblings Merroe, 21, James P., 20, Amos H., 15, Georg A., 7, and Nettie, 5; and grandmother Celia Thompson, 80, widow.

In the 1910 census of Springhill township, Wilson County: on Wilson and Raleigh Branch Road, Spencer Shaw, 51, wife Bitha, 49, and children James R., 21, Joseph G., 16, Seth T.,14, Albert S., 11, Merlin S., 9, Willie H., 7, and Alice M., 5.

In the 1910 census of Springhill township, Wilson County: farmer James G. Pate, 39; wife Heterow, 33; children Albert, 13, Daisy P., 9, Mamie L., 7, Alvester, 5, Purvis, 3, General G., 2, and Grant, 9 months; sisters-in-law Nellie Peacock, 20, and Nettie Peacock, 15; and “uncle-in-law” [surely, as to James Pate, wife’s nephew] James L. Peacock, 6.

On 2 January 1916, Joe Grocer Shaw, 22, of Springhill township, Wilson County, married Nettie Peacock, 22, of Springhill township, Wilson County. J.R. Shaw, S.T. Shaw, and C.M. Hinnant were witnesses.

Thomas Cozie Shaw died 17 November 1916 in Springhill township, Wilson County. Per his death certificate, he was born 29 February 1916 in Wilson County to J. Grocer Shaw and Nettie Peacock and was buried at Barnes Graveyard.

In 1917, Joseph Grocer Shaw registered for the World War I draft in Wilson County. Per his registration card, he was born 9 July 1893 on Route 1, Kenly, North Carolina; lived at Route 3, Kenly; was a farmer for himself; and had a wife and one child.

In the 1920 census of Springhill township, Wilson County: farmer Grocie Shaw, 26; wife Nettie, 26; and children Rosa, 2, and Grover C., 1.

In the 1930 census of Springhill township, Wilson County: farmer Grover Shaw, 36; wife Nettie, 36; and children Rosa M., 12, Grover M., 11, William S., 9, Ruith, 7, Arthar, 2, and Neoma, 11 months.

In the 1940 census of Springhill township, Wilson County: farmer Grover Shaw, 36; wife Nettie, 36; and children Grover, 21, William, 19, Ruth, 17, Auther, 12, Noamia, 11, Ester, 8, and Katie, 6.

In 1940, Grover T. Shaw registered for the World War II draft in Wilson County. Per his registration card, he was born 15 November 1918 in Wilson County; lived at R.F.D. 3, Kenly, Wilson County; his contact was mother Nettie Peacock Shaw; and he worked for Stephen R. Watson.

Joseph G. Shaw died 25 May 1940 and is buried in Rocky Branch Christian Church cemetery.

Nettie Shaw Kent died 20 February 1969 in Lucama, Wilson County. Per her death certificate, she was born 22 August 1893 in Wilson County to Henry Peacock and Courtner Thompson; was married to James Kent; and was buried in Rocky Branch cemetery. Ruth Bynum was informant.

Photo courtesy of LeRoy Barnes.

Rest in power, Fred Valentine.

My chosen family lost yet another patriarch in the closing days of 2022. Fred L. Valentine Sr. passed away in Washington, D.C., on December 26, surrounded by family. An outfielder for the Washington Senators and Baltimore Orioles, “Uncle Fred” spent a stand-out summer with the Wilson Tobs in 1958, where he met his future wife, Helena Smith, and demanded desegregation of the whites-only section of Fleming Stadium after the “colored section” collapsed under an overflow crowd of African-American fans.

The Valentines became close friends of my parents and, as I wrote here, their children were “play cousins” of my sister and me. I honor Fred Valentine’s memory, and send love to his beloved wife, daughters, son, and grandson.

Fred Valentine as a Tob. Photo detail courtesy of North Carolina Baseball Museum, Wilson.

Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque.

In May 2019, Dr. Joseph H. Ward‘s granddaughter and great-granddaughter, both born and reared in the Midwest, came home to Wilson. Zella Palmer FaceTimed me as she and her mother Alice Roberts Palmer stood outside David G.W. Ward‘s house near Stantonsburg, the house in which Joseph Ward’s mother Mittie Ward and grandmother Sarah Ward toiled while enslaved. D.G.W. Ward was the father of at least three of Sarah Ward’s children, including Mittie. Joseph Ward’s father, Napoleon Hagans, who lived not far away in Wayne County, was my great-great-grandmother’s brother, and thus Cousin Alice and Zella are my people. I was so grateful to be able to share, even if remotely, the tangle of emotions the Palmers felt as they stood on ancestral ground. But who knew there was more to come for Zella in Wilson?

This week, Zella announced that the cookbook she wrote with Wilson’s own barbecue pitmaster extraordinaire Ed Mitchell and his son Ryan Mitchell is now available for pre-order on Amazon, with a publication date of June 2023! Zella is chair of Dillard University’s Ray Charles Program in African-American Material Culture in New Orleans and passionately committed to preserving Black foodways. Who better to capture the family stories and recipes of my father’s old friend Ed Mitchell? And who better than I to provide source material and to introduce the world to Black Wilson at the book’s opening?

My gratitude goes to Ed Mitchell, who has long stood in the gap for the preservation of eastern North Carolina food culture (and respect and recognition for its practitioners and purveyors); to Ryan Mitchell, whose True Made Foods embodies the spirit of sankofa; and to my cousin Zella Palmer, who drew me into this project and showed love and grace when I missed deadlines as I struggled to find words during my father’s illness.

“In his first cookbook, … Ed explores the tradition of whole-hog barbeque that has made him famous. It’s a method passed down through generations over the course of 125 years and hearkens back even further than that, to his ancestors who were plantation sharecroppers and, before that, enslaved. Ed is one of the few remaining pitmasters to keep this barbeque tradition alive, and in Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque, he will share his methods for the first time and fill in the unwritten chapters of the rich and complex history of North Carolina whole-hog barbeque.”

Y’all — get your orders in!

Schoolhouse “I do.”

Well into the twentieth century, African-American couples married overwhelmingly at an office of a justice of the peace or the home of a relative. However, on 21 March 1906, as carefully noted a Wilson County marriage register, William Sutton and Laura Williams tied the knot at Wilson’s Colored Graded School. Free Will Baptist minister John Steward performed the ceremony, and Charles Best, Charley Dawson, Minnie Sutton, and Henry Garnett.

Studio shots, no. 203: Evangeline Dancy Barnes.

Evangeline Dancy Barnes (1919-1993).

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In the 1920 census of Contentnea Neck township, Lenoir County, North Carolina: farm laborer John C. Dancy, 24; wife Penny E., 19; and daughter Enlishel V., 2 months.

On 9 May 1924, John Allen Dancy, age 18 months, died in Ormonds township, Greene County. Per his death certificate, he was born to John Dancy of Ayden, N.C., and Pennie Mills of Pitt County, and was buried in Mills cemetery, Pitt County.

In the 1930 census of Township 9, Craven County, North Carolina: farmer Johnie C. Dancy, 34; wife Pennie, 29; and children Evangeline, 10, Lovie, 8, R.J., 5, and Aribell, 1.

In the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: John Dancy, 44, city of Wilson laborer; wife Pennie, 39, tobacco factory laborer; and children Evangline, 20, tobacco factory laborer, Lovie, 18, R.J., 15, Olie, 11, Mildred, 8, and Leo, 5.

In the 1950 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 1319 East Nash Street, Frank R. Barnes, 35, worked in tobacco factory blending room, and wife Evangeline, 30, tobacco factory sweeper.

Photo courtesy of Angelo A. Barnes.