Houses

The Rountree plantation house? [Updated.]

I thought this antebellum house was built by a Woodard, but according to a state GIS map, it’s “Roundtree house (A. Cozart house).”

What does that mean? Where did I get Woodard from?

I first saw this house from the windows of my elementary school bus as it rumbled east from my neighborhood, Bel Air Forest, to pick up Robin, a boy who lived a mile down the highway. The road curved, then split, with NC-58 headed southeast to Stantonsburg and 264 more easterly to Saratoga. The two-story house sat in plain view on the north side of 264, up a dirt track. I can’t recall if the house was occupied then, but judging by its condition when I took these photographs circa 1991, I think not. In, as I recall, the late 1990s, the intersection was reconfigured, but the house stood until the early 2000s.

Detail from map of Wilson County at HPOWEB 2.0, nc.maps.arcgis.com. 

I did a little poking in deeds. Long story short, S.H. Cozart bought a bundle of parcels, including this one, from Graham Woodard in 1941. Graham Woodard had inherited the property as the only child of Fannie Rountree Woodard, who died in 1894. Fannie Woodard, whose husband Frederick A. Woodard we have met, had inherited it from her father Moses Rountree, the wealthy 19th-century Wilson merchant.

Wilson Advance, 30 November 1883.

Per the Nomination Form for the Moses Rountree House, built about 1869 in town, Rountree “was born in 1822 on the family plantation several miles east of the present city of Wilson on what is now Route 264.”

Detail of a 1894 survey map found in the Moses Rountree estate file showing two lots inherited by Graham Woodard. As the aerial image below shows, the main landscape features remain the same — Toisnot Swamp and its small tributary, a forked road. A tiny square marked “House” is the house in question.

No longer looking for a Woodard property, I went back to Kate Ohno’s Wilson County’s Architectural Heritage and voila — the Rountree House, believed to have been built  about 1830 by Moses Rountree’s father Lewis Rountree. (Lewis Rountree enslaved Hilliard Ellis and Warren Rountree, among a few dozen others. Moses Rountree also was a slaveowner, acknowledging three adults and one infant in the 1860 slave schedule.)

Per Kate Ohno, the Rountree House.

But wait. The house depicted in the book is not the house I photographed, though both were two-story structures built during the antebellum period. The most immediately noticeable difference is that the house above has a hipped roof and hip-roof porch, and Ohno’s house has a gable roof and shed-roof porch. But there are other inconsistencies — the number of chimneys, the number of porch posts and second-story windows, the ashlar skirting.

I’m back to square one.

Aerial image (via Google Maps) of Rountree-Woodard-Cozart property. Toisnot Swamp runs at bottom right. Its Mill Branch (2) is visible as a line of trees and a dammed pond. The approximate location of the house is (1).

Estate of Moses Rountree (1884), North Carolina Wills and Probate Records 1665-1998, http://www.ancestry.com.

[UPDATE, 16 March 2025: A course correction and comment on the fallibility of memory. Yesterday, I shared this post with members of Wilson County Historical Association in hopes that someone could help unravel the mystery. Among others, Cliff Darden responded and shared his own childhood recollection of the gable-roof Rountree house.  I began to wonder if I were conflating two distinct memories — seeing this house from my school bus window in the mid-1970s and photographing a house in the early 1990s. Though I was not sure the data would go back far enough, I checked Google Maps’ Streetview for images of the site. Voila — here’s the January 2008 view:

The resolution is terrible, but that’s clearly the gable-roof Rountree house. The house had disappeared by time the next image was made in 2012 (and the barn several years later.)

Where, then, did I take the photographs above? I lived in New York City at the time, and on visits home would ramble the backroads of Wilson and Wayne and Edgecombe and Nash Counties, photographing abandoned farmsteads with a Canon AE-1. I’m looking for my contact sheets and will update this post again if I’m able to pinpoint the location. I am reminded of the value of interrogating my own memories and am grateful for the time taken by others to share theirs.]

What was the Independent School building before it was the Independent School?

I was asked a question that stumped me during one of my talks last week. “What was the building that housed the Independent School before it was a school?”

I recalled vaguely that Samuel H. Vick had purchased the building from famed brick maker Silas Lucas Jr., but not much more. Maybe something about the Methodist Church?

I found a deed quickly. On 24 October 1904, S.H. Vick paid Silas and Charity Lucas $1650 for a lot on Vance Street adjacent to property Vick already owned, “it being the same lot on which is situate a nineteen room house.” 

Deed book 68, page 227, Wilson County Register of Deeds Office, Wilson, N.C.

In the 1913 Sanborn fire insurance maps of Wilson, the building is labeled “Tenements”:

I can’t find the reference that I seem to recall about the building’s original use and will need to do some additional deed digging to find Lucas’ purchase. (By the way: Lucas was renowned as a brick maker. Not only are his reclaimed original bricks still sought after for renovation projects, the name “Silas Lucas” is now generically used to describe any soft, pinkish brick.)

542 East Nash Street.

This house is not within the bounds of East Wilson Historic District. Rather, it lies within Wilson’s Central Business-Tobacco Warehouse District. Demolition, lot consolidation, and in-fill building have resulted in shifting addresses for this house. Now 542 East Nash Street, it was once 549, then 540, and briefly 545. It and the adjacent house are the last of several residences that once lined this stretch of the south side of Nash Street.

Annie Peacock Mitchell bought the lot on which the house stands from Rev. Owen L.W. Smith on 23 December 1907. (See Deed Book 69, page 529, Wilson County Register of Deeds Office.)

On 21 March 1914, Annie Mitchell sold the lot to her daughters Sallie Ann Mitchell and Eva May Mitchell subject to a lifetime right to live in the house her son Floyd Mitchell built. 

Deed book 97, page 552, Wilson County Register of Deeds Office.

In 1918, Albert Mitchell registered for the World War I draft in Wilson; was born 15 January 1878; lived at 549 Nash Street; worked as a laborer for Imperial Tobacco Company; and his nearest relative was mother Annie Mitchell.

In 1918, Floyd Alfonso Mitchell registered for the World War I draft in Wilson; was born 2 March 1884; lived at 549 East Nash; worked as a carpenter; and his nearest relative was mother Annie Mitchell, same address.

In 1918, Lee Arnold Mitchell registered for the World War I draft in New York, New York; was born 16 May 1886; lived at 108 West 131st Street; worked as a waiter for N.Y.N.H. & H.R.R.; and his nearest relative was mother Annie Mitchell, 545 East Nash Street, Wilson.

In the 1920 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 549 Nash Street, widow Annie Mitchell, 71,  children Sallie, 46, Eddie, 44, Albert, 42, Eva, 36, and Floyd, 34, niece Severana [Severine], 18, and nephew Lester, 16.

Eva Mitchell Haywood died 1 October 1925 in Wilson; was about 40 years old; was born in Wayne County, N.C., to Edward Mitchell and Ann Peacock; lived at 540 East Nash Street; was the widow of Lucien Haywood; was a dressmaker; and was buried in Rountree Cemetery.

Sallie Ann Mitchell died 29 March 1926 in Wilson; was about 54 years old; was born in Wayne County to Edward James Mitchell and Ann Mitchell; was single; lived at 540 East Nash; and was buried in Rountree Cemetery.

In the 1930 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 540 East Nash, Albert Mitchell, 52, tobacco factory mechanic, brother Flody [sic], 47, house carpenter, and two roomers.

Albert Mitchell died 9 July 1938 at Mercy Hospital in Wilson; was born about 1878 in Wayne County to Edward Mitchell of Wayne County and Anna Peacock of Wilson County; was the widower of Cora Mitchell; worked as a laborer for Imperial Tobacco Company; and resided at 540 East Nash Street, Wilson.

In the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 540 East Nash, Floyd Mitchell, 56, and eight lodgers.

Floyd Alfonzo Mitchell died 18 January 1944 at his home at 540 East Nash Street, Wilson; was born 2 March 1884 in Wayne County to Edward Mitchell and Annie Barnes; worked as a carpenter; and was single.

In the 1947 Wilson, N.C., city directory: Richardson Bessie (c) 540 E Nash

London Woodard’s bed.

Elder London Woodard‘s estate file contains this glimpse of the creature comforts he enjoyed, however briefly. On 4 October 1870, just over a month before he died, Woodard bought an eight-dollar mattress from R.R. Cotten & Company. He paid five dollars cash on November 5, and his executor paid off the bill the following January.

Wilson, North Carolina, Probate Estate Files 1854-1959, http://www.familysearch.org.

Signal Boost: The History of Boyette Slave and School House.

Beth Nevarez of Beth Nevarez Historical Consulting passed along some information about Boyette Slave and School House she knew the Black Wide-Awake audience would be interested in. I couldn’t find a flyer for the event, so I made one.

From Kenly Area Historical Society’s Facebook event post:
“The Boyette Slave and School House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 and is the only representative from the Kenly area. The small one-room cabin has a distinctive mud and stick chimney and is only one of two such buildings left in the state. The cabin was built on land that George Boyett bought from the State of North Carolina in 1797. How has the cabin lasted this long? How old is it? Who built it? How was it built? How has it changed over time? Who lived there? Vann Stancil, a descendant of George Boyett, will take a multi-disciplinary approach to addressing these questions and share primary records and images as he discusses the Boyette Slave and School House.
“Join us for this historical presentation on Sunday, February 2, at 3:00 pm at Kenly Scout Center at 410 E. 1st Street, Kenly. Questions or for more information call 919-284-3591.”

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia user DanTD, uploaded to Wikipedia 16 December 2021.