Houses

B.W.A. Historical Marker Series, no. 34: Sears house.

In this series, which will post on occasional Wednesdays, I populate the landscape of Wilson County with imaginary “historical markers” commemorating people, places, and events significant to African-American history or culture.

We been here.

SEARS HOUSE

Mail-order kit house sold by Sears, Roebuck & Co. from 1908 to 1940. This house, built about 1934, is the only known Sears house in East Wilson. The Barrington model was two stories, with six rooms and one bathroom and shingle siding.

Photo by Lisa Y. Henderson, October 2025.

The Coleman farmstead.

Mattie Barnes Robinson recently led me on a tour of her extended family’s current and former lands on Airport Boulevard. Mrs. Robinson attended Barnes School, which was just down the road and across the street from the farmstead on which she grew up. The house is gone, but traces remain on the land.

This tumbled chimney is all that remains of the house.

Remnants of the outbuildings. The pecan was already a mature tree during Mrs. Robinson’s childhood.

The well.

The pump in front of the Barnes School site.

Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, October 2025.

Simms family sued for nonpayment.

Sometime prior to February 1897, Frank I. Finch contracted with Abbie Simms, Joe Simms, and Lee Simms to make repairs on “a house upon their lot in or near the town of Wilson N.C. adjoining the lands of the colored cemetery lot G.W. Suggs and others ….” Finch claimed he completed the work, but the Simmses refused to pay. Finch placed a lien on the property and filed suit claiming $210 in damages, plus interest.

Finch won, and a judge entered a judgment against the Simmses. The county sheriff auctioned off the property on 7 January 1898; Sidney A. Woodard, who had represented the Simmses in the matter, had the winning bid.

——

  • Abbie Simms

On 24 April 1894, Abbie McMannon conveyed to Lee Simms and his heirs “one lot or parcel near the Town of Wilson, Wilson County and State of North Carolina, adjoining the lands of Geo. Washington Suggs, Abbie McMannon, and others and bounded as follows: Beginning at a ditch near the Colored Cemetery on the old Barefoot road and … containing 1/5 of an acre more or less …” S.A. Smith witnessed McMannon’s execution of the deed. Deed book 36, page 141, Wilson County Register of Deeds, Wilson.

  • Joe Simms

On 25 December 1889, James Caraway, 50, married Rosa Simms, 17, in Wilson township, Wilson County. Minister Crocket Best performed the ceremony in the presence of Henry Peacock, Joe Simms, and Abbie Simms.

  • Lee Simms

On 12 August 1886, Lee Simms, 26, of Wilson County, son of David and Aby Simms, married Mary Harris, 16, of Wilson County, daughter of Sely Harris, in Wilson County.

On 1 June 1894, Lee and Mary Simms mortgaged the property above to secure a $86.32 loan from James W. McCowan. (The money was for materials to build a house on the lot.)

In the 1900 census of Wilson, Wilson County: on Wainwright Street, brickmason Lee Simes, 35; wife Marry, 30, washing;  and daughters Bessie, 13, tobacco stemmer, and Maggie, 9.

In the 1910 census of Wilson township, Wilson County: on Saratoga Road, Lee Sims, 44; wife Mary, 40, laundress; and daughter Maggie, 18.

In the 1916 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Simms Lee (c) bricklyr h 813 E Nash

In the 1920 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 648 Wainwright, brickmason Lee Sims, 56; wife Mary, 47; daughter Maggie Williams, 25, and son-in-law Sam Williams, 26, presser at pressing club.

In the 1930 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 410 Hadley, brickmason Lee Sims, 66, bricklayer; wife Mary, 60, laundress; and adopted son Clarence Woodard, 6.

Robert Lee Sims died 10 October 1939 in Wilson. Per his death certificate, he was born 9 April 1864 in Wilson, N.C., to David Simms and Abbie Gay; lived at 205 North Vick; was married to Mary Sims; and was buried in Wilson [probably, Vick Cemetery.] Bessie Woodard was informant.

Civil Action Papers, Wilson County, N.C., Court Records 1895-1896, http://www.familysearch.org

Taylor and Gilliam Alleys.

I’ve long been curious about the trio of little houses behind the Mary Jane Taylor Sutzer house in the 500 block of East Nash Street. In an interview a few months ago, Samuel C. Lathan mentioned them:

Lathan: … And Rev. [Russell B.] Taylor had an orchard.

Henderson: Oh, okay.

Lathan: Back there where those houses at down Nash Street.

Henderson: Okay. Back behind?

Lathan: Yeah, it was an orchard back there. …

Not long after, I noticed a little notation in a margin of the 1940 census of Wilson. Listed adjacent to the Taylor household were the three households of  … Taylor’s Alley.

Here they are yesterday morning:

Per description in the nomination form for Wilson Central Business-Tobacco Warehouse Historic District, Sutzer purchased the house on the left from Alfred Robinson prior to building her own house in 1915. The two dwellings on the right are described as “small, four-bay by one-bay, two-room bungaloid houses.”

A little further west on the 500 block of East Nash, the census records another alley, Gilliam’s, with a duplex.

The 1930 Sanborn fire insurance map of Wilson reveals Gilliam’s Alley as the tiny space running from Nash Street between Dr. Matthew S. Gilliam‘s medical office and the Orange Hotel. (Of the buildings shown below, only the Orange still stands.)

Photo by Lisa Y. Henderson, October 2025.

Before Pender Crossing.

This week, the Wilson Times reported “Residents are already moving in at Pender Crossing, a 48-unit affordable apartment community on the site of the former Pender Street Park. A grand opening event with a ribbon-cutting was held Tuesday morning.

“Pender Crossing is a 2.13-acre development owned and managed by Woda Cooper Companies. A new city park is being built on the same block and will open soon.”

Pender Crossing stands on Pender Street between Gay and Stemmery Streets. This area was on the edge of Wilson’s earliest industrial district, close to Little Richmond, which sprang up in the shadow of Richmond Maury Tobacco Factory. Later, Southern Cotton Oil Mill,  Farmers Cotton Oil Mill, and Wilson County Gin Company added clangor and pungency to the air of the neighborhood.

Moore Street once was the western edge of a trapezoid formed by Stantonsburg (now Pender), Stemmery, and Robeson (now Gay) Streets, separating a residential block from the Southern Oil Mill complex. (The enormous cotton seed house built on the site about 1945 — it replaced a smaller one — was dismantled and moved to a location north of the city in 2018.)

Wilson Daily Times, 11 February 1930.

By 1930, per a Sanborn fire insurance map, the block contained a bottling plant, a wood yard, three stores, four shotgun houses, and two larger dwellings facing Stantonsburg/Pender Street.

Wilson Daily Times, 20 October 1930.

One house fronted on Moore, and a set of mirror-image L-shaped houses stood on Stemmery. The easternmost of the twins was the last dwelling in the block, having been demolished after 2019.

The twin houses and the old cotton seed house in June 2012, per Google Street View.

A glance at Wilson.

Though this newspaper article issued a few years after Black Wide-Awake’s coverage, I could not resist its images of East Wilson.

The Afro-American (Baltimore, Md.), 21 February 1953.

Below, the 500 block of East Nash Street, Wilson’s former Black commercial center. The three-story building at right is the Odd Fellows Building, built by Samuel H. Vick in 1894. Beside it, we see the verandas of the Biltmore Hotel (earlier known as the Union and the Whitley), Wilson’s only Green Book hotel. On the left, we see the hedges that fronted several residences that once lined that side of the street.

Below, Yancey’s Drug Store, which stood at 563 East Nash.

Other buildings shown include Mercy Hospital, the then-brand-new Elvie Street School; Jackson Chapel First Baptist Church; the home of Daniel and Bertha Carroll, which still stands on Lincoln Street; and a taxi and driver of United Cab Company.