Houses

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.

410 Hadley Street.

This house stands just outside the bounds of East Wilson Historic District. However, the streets southeast of present-day Hines Street, including Hadley Street, have been an African-American residential area since platted in the early twentieth century.

 

The hip-roofed house at 410 Hadley Street was built before 1922, when this Sanborn fire insurance map was drawn.

In the 1928 and 1930 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directories: Simms Lee (c; Mary L) brklyr h 410 Hadley

In the 1930 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 410 Hadley, owned and valued at $1300, Lee Simms, 66, bricklayer; wife Mary L., 60, laundress; and adopted son Clarence Woodard, 6.

In the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 410 [Hadley], Charlie Best, 42; wife Adeva, 41; and her children Bertha, 18, Gladys, 15, Rudolph, 13, and Eddie, 3.

In the 1941 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Best Chas (c; Addie; 3) lab h 410 Hadley

In 1944, Charlie Best registered for the World War II draft in Wilson County. Per his registration card, he was born 12 April 1898 in Piney Grove township, Sampson County, N.C.; he lived at 410 Hadley Street; his contact was brother Howard Best, Bowden, Duplin County, N.C.; and he worked for Contentnea Guano Company. A note on the reverse: “mashed big toe on left foot; very plain to see.”

In the 1950 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 410 [Hadley], Charlie Best, 52, fertilizer plant machine operator; wife Addie E., 51; and grandson Eddie, 14.

Photo by Lisa Y. Henderson, July 2025.

500 Hadley Street.

This empty lot is just outside the bounds of East Wilson Historic District. However, the streets southeast of present-day Hines Street, including Hadley Street, have been an African-American residential area since platted in the early twentieth century.

A large two-story house once stood at 500 Hadley Street, at the corner of Rountree Street. According to Herman McNeil, who grew up there in the 1940s, the church across the street owned the house. The church, though sometimes called Weeks Chapel for Rev. Alfred L.E. Weeks, was formally named Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church. During the pastorship of Rev. Charles T. Jones, which began in 1938, its name was changed to Ebenezer Missionary Baptist.

Per deed descriptions, the lot is on the southwest corner of Hadley Street and Bardin Avenue [now Rountree Avenue] and part of lots 5, 6, and 7 of Block #14 of the plat of the “Singletary Land.”

In History of the American Negro and His Institutions, North Carolina Edition, published in 1921, A.B. Caldwell noted that Rev. Weeks arrived in Wilson in 1915 (actually, 1914) and, by time of his writing,  had “firmly established the Tabernacle Baptist Church and built a home.” That home, I suspect, was the two-story house at 500 Hadley.

In the 1920 census of Wilson, Wilson township, Wilson County: on Hadley Street, Alfred Weeks, 44, a church minister; wife Annie, 44; daughter Marie, 14, and sister Bessie, 26.

In the 1922 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory:

The 1922 Sanborn fire insurance map of Wilson shows a two-story house with a wrap-around porch at 500 Hadley.

Detail from 1922 Sanborn fire insurance map of Wilson, N.C.

On 27 December 1922, William Gay, 52, son of Charlie and Emma Gay, married Gertrude Magette, 45, daughter of Jerry and Lucy Magette, in Wilson. Missionary Baptist minster A.L.E. Weeks performed the ceremony in the presence of J.A. Parker, 211 East Spruce Street; Mary L. Moore, 314 South Stantonsburg Street; and Annie E. Weeks, 500 Hadley Street.

In the 1925 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Weeks Alfred L E Rev, pastor Tabernacle Baptist Church h 500 Hadley

In the 1928 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Williams Frank W (c; Emma) cement fnshr h 500 Hadley

In the 1930 city directory, the house is shown as vacant.

Detail from 1930 Sanborn fire insurance map of Wilson, N.C.

By 1939, the house was in the hands of Dailey Realty Company, which offered it for sale for $3000.

In 1940, Mathew McNeil Jr. registered for the World War II draft in Wilson County. Per his registration card, he was born 17 January 1919 in Saint Paul, N.C.; his contact was Ola Bell McNeil, wife [sic; she was his mother]; he lived at 500 Hadley Street, Wilson; and worked at the Atlanta Coastline Station.

In the 1941 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory, at 500 Hadley: Esther McNeil, maid; Mathew McNeil, laborer at City Light Plant; Mathew McNeil Jr., laborer; and Olabelle McNeil (with five children), maid.

Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 20 January 1947.

In the 1947 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory, at 500 Hadley: Christine McNeil, nurse; David McNeil, laborer for Town of Wilson; and Mathew McNeil, fireman with City of Wilson, and wife Olabell.

In the 1950 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 500 Hadley, Mathew McNeil Jr., 31, proprietor, truck for hire; wife Lucy, 28; children Theron, 5, Leatrice, 2, and Jannie, newborn; mother Ola Bell, 52, widow; siblings Beatrice, 22, Rebecca, 19, David, 17, Herman, 16, Joseph, 12, and Romain, 10; nephews Carl W. Hamilton, 4, and Tyrone McNeil, 4.

The house at 500 Hadley Street caught fire just after Thanksgiving in 1984. It was badly damaged and subsequently torn down.

Wilson Daily Times, 29 November 1984.

The streets of East Wilson.

Over the course of two days in October 1982, Jim Peppler took nearly 300 photographs in Wilson on behalf of the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund. Peppler was on hand to document the fight by African-American citizens to secure representation on the Wilson County Board of Commissioners in Robert D. Haskins et al. v. The County of Wilson, North Carolina, et al. Though his photos were taken decades after the period covered in Black Wide-Awake, several of his streetscapes would have been more familiar to a Wilsonian of 1945 than of 2025, and I share them here.

  • the 500 block of East Nash Street, looking west

This block is nearly unrecognizable now. The three-story building at right is the Odd Fellows building, built in 1894 by Samuel H. Vick.

  • A street off Maury Street, looking toward the railroad

This unpaved lane — in 1982! — is most likely Gay Street. Can anyone confirm?

  • Ash Street, looking toward Darden Alley

All the houses on the west side of Ash Street are long gone. Though vacant, most of the houses on the east remain. The shrubbery, however, has disappeared. The sign midway down the block marked the site of Calvary Holy Church (at 118 Ash Street, a building now housing Antioch Outreach Church Ministries.)

This and related images are mislabeled “Ash Street” in the collection. Instead, they are scenes of Church Street, which runs for only one block, parallel to Nash Street. Only three houses remain on the street, all now abandoned.

Church Street today, per Google Maps Streetview.

Top: plaintiffs Jasper E. Williams, Roy Atkinson, Milton F. Fitch Sr., Roland Edwards, and Rev. Talmage A. Watkins. Bottom: attorney G.K. Butterfield Jr., lead plaintiff Robert D. Haskins, attorney Milton F. “Toby” Fitch Jr.

Peppler, Jim, “Photographs of plaintiffs and cooperating attorneys for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) who participated in the legal case Haskins v. County of Wilson in Wilson, North Carolina,” 1982-10-09/1982-10-10, Alabama Department of Archives and History, http://digital.archives.alabama.gov/cdm/ref/collection/photo/id/37888.