Isaac Dew published this notice in the Daily Times seeking information on the whereabouts of his 23 year-old son Willie Dew, whom he described as “insane.”
Wilson Daily Times, 6 July 1897.
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In the 1880 census of Crossroads township, Wilson County: farmer Isaac Dew, 30; wife Esther, 24; children Annie, 12, Willie, 9, Tobias, 8, Martha, 4, Lesie, 3, and Laura, 2; plus farmer Burden Barnes, 28, and his wife Delphina, 19, who were white.
Willie Dew is not listed in his parents’ household in 1900.
Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), 2 July 1910.
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Possibly, in the 1900 census of Wilson township, Wilson County: Clarisea Lewis, 43, widow, farmer; and children Emma, 18,, 15, Gertrude, 12, Whit, 10, George, 8, Mattie, 6, and Hattie, 3.
In the 1910 census of Connecticut State Prison, Wethersfield town, Hartford County, Connecticut: Edward Lewis, 25, prisoner, born in N.C., does not work; “This man is insane.”
The Government Hospital for the Insane was later known as Saint Elizabeths Hospital.
Wilson Daily Times, 24 June 1913.
Mental illness was often criminalized in the early twentieth century and, Eastern North Carolina Insane Asylum notwithstanding, treatment options were few.
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In the 1910 census of Wilson, Wilson County: house servant Annie Cole, 25, and lodger Lue Merritt, 30, odd jobs laborer, shared a household.
Wilson Daily Times, 14 June 1917.
The State Board of Health’s Moving Picture Car visited the Colored Graded School on the evening of 7 June 1917. It’s not clear what the “entertainments” constituted.
At last, the official dedications of four historical markers installed in Wilson in 2020-21.
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“Colored Citizens” published a note to mark the end of the second year of the Wilson Normal and Industrial Institute. Wilson Daily Times, 1 June 1920.
Clipping courtesy of J. Robert Boykin III.
Wilson Daily Times, 1 April 1920.
A fuller story of Alma Farmer‘s attempted suicide:
Wilson Daily Times, 16 November 1921.
I have not found a death certificate (or indeed anything at all) for Alma Farmer; she may have survived her terrible injuries.
Wilson Daily Times, 21 April 1924.
Clipping courtesy of J. Robert Boykin III.
Wilson Daily Times, 3 November 1925.
I have not been able to determine (a) who Emma Moore was, (b) who her sister was, (c) how it was possible that she had been reported dead for months, or (d) how she fared.
Unlike this benefit in 1930, the program below was aimed at an African-American audience.
Wilson Daily Times, 3 December 1946.
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