Wilson Daily Times, 27 May 1947.
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Rev. Frank Moore and his wife, Ara Moore, regularly ministered to residents of the Wilson County home, which was located near the intersection of present-day Ward Boulevard and Goldsboro Street.
Frank Hilliard is listed in the 1940 census of Wilson as one of 46 lodgers at the home, 19 of whom were African-American.
The Savannah Tribune, 19 February 1906.
Among Daniel C. Suggs‘ many investments was Savannah’s Union Savings and Loan Company.
I resisted podcasts for an unreasonably long time, as I better absorb information by reading rather than hearing. A few years ago though, when my father’s illness necessitated more frequent seven-hour drives between Wilson and Atlanta, I got with the times with the help of Victoria Lamos’ Archive Atlanta. (Which is — for my money — the gold standard in local history podcasts.)
A recent episode about Blandtown, a historic African-American community in what is now Atlanta, encapsulated everything there is to love about Archive Atlanta and made me wish I had the time, resources, and know-how to produce a Black Wide-Awake podcast. Maybe in time….
Anyway, nothing to do with Wilson, but I highly recommend this “weekly history podcast about the people, places, and events that shaped the city of Atlanta.” Find it wherever you listed to podcasts.
In 1989, the Atlanta Journal and Constitution published an in-depth piece celebrating Wilson native Augustus S. Clark, his wife Anna W. Clark, and the life-changing school they founded in Cordele, Georgia, in 1902.
I visited Gillespie Institute in the summer of 2021 and wrote about it here.
Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 12 March 1989.
Three years ago, I asked, “Where was Barnes Church?” Today, I have an answer.
Founded just after slavery, Barnes Church was one of the earliest African-American churches in Wilson County. Its simple double-doored, gable-front building is believed to have been erected shortly after the church’s establishment.
Barnes Church circa 1960s.
My father’s classmate L. Paul Sherrod Jr. asked me to explore the little spit of woods that I knew had once been the site of the church, but in which I’d not found any traces of the nineteenth-century building. My earlier looks had been in summer, though, when I could barely get a glimpse inside the woodline.
We entered via an old driveway over the ditch and immediately spotted this stack. I was puzzled at first, as this is obviously newer brick. A walk-around, however, revealed old brick piers, the corners of a building came into view, and this broken stack may have been a later addition that vented a wood stove. Curled trips of tin roofing lay rusting underfoot.
And then I spotted this. Barnes Church burned down after it was vacated. Here was a charred length of sill beam — with a four-inch, square-cut nail.
The nail. It was not hand-wrought, but cut from a sheet, as indicating by only two sides tapering. The head would have been added by hand. The earliest machine-cut nails of this type date to about 1840.
A brick from one of the piers. It is unmarked, but probably made locally.
This sill beam, from the north side of the building, is charred but unbroken.
A section still resting on a pier.
The pollen, y’all.
Paul and Barbara Sherrod, my guides. We’ve met Mr. Sherrod here and here and here.
It’s heard to visualize, but I’m standing in front the church’s site, perhaps seven feet from its front wall.
Barnes Primitive Baptist Church did not own its building or the land on which it stood. When the landowner refused to allow the congregation to upgrade the building, members of the Sherrod family donated land for a new church a few miles south, just across the Wayne County line on Watery Branch Road. The “new” church is now occupied by Now Faith Missionary Baptist Church.
Wilmington Morning Star, 30 October 1886.
Wilson County’s calls for a high school for African-American children went unanswered for nearly 40 more years.
If you’ve been down Bishop L.N. Forbes Street in the last few months, you will have noticed the gravel laid alongside the Lane Park ballfields under fluttering pennants and, occasionally, mass staging of heavy equipment at the site. Last night, I submitted the letter below to Councilmember Gillettia Morgan, requesting information about this development; about potential utility work by Piedmont Natural Gas on B.L.N.F.; and, of course, the mysterious designation of Vick and Odd Fellows Cemeteries as “vacant” on future land use maps.
If you head down to City Hall in the next twenty minutes, perhaps you can ask Morgan these questions in person. Let me know.
The Spring Hope Enterprise, 27 February 2024.
I’ve sung the praises of Iredell County Public Library and its commitment to Green Street Cemetery and was thrilled to be asked to speak about my family’s connections to that historic burial ground.
I was overjoyed — see how I’m grinning?– to see my 91 year-old cousin Natalie Renwick Marsh (who always so fly!) and her eldest daughter Angela Miller. Nat’s mother and my grandmother were sisters, born and raised in Statesville.
I got to Statesville early enough to visit Green Street Cemetery for the first time in nearly a decade. Fewer than ten percent of the 1800+ graves in the cemetery are marked with headstones.
But my great-great-grandfather John Walker Colvert (1851-1921) and his wife Adeline Hampton Colvert (1864-1940) have a fine gray marble double headstone flanked by concrete planters.
A few feet away, a small monument at the grave of their daughter Selma Eugina Colvert, who died in a house fire.
The broken headstone of siblings Lena and Raymond Tomlin was uncovered after radar detected it just below the soil’s surface. They were my great-grandfather Lon W. Colvert’s maternal half-siblings. I knew of Lena, but this is sole record of Raymond’s short life.
Eugene Stockton was my great-grandfather’s paternal half-sister Ida Mae Colvert Stockton’s second husband.
Dillard Stockton was her first husband (and Eugene’s half-brother.) He was killed in a sewer cave-in two years after they married.
After ground-penetrating radar pinpointed the locations of graves, volunteers turned out en masse to mark each unmarked grave with a steel disk. As explained: “The marker consists of a ten inch (10”) bolt with a three and a half inch (3.5”) disk at the top. Once installed, it will lay flush with the earth allowing maintenance to continue as usual with no disruption or damage to the markers. In time, when the ground cover grows over the markers, they will still be identifiable with a metal detector, similar to markers used by land surveyors. They are easy to install by pushing the bolt into the ground by hand or using rubber mallets.” What an idea. (Looking at you, City of Wilson.)
Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, February 2024.
We first visited Mitchell School here. Mitchell was not a Rosenwald School. Rather, it was built the county school board on land donated by James G. Mitchell, a prosperous African-American farmer who lived west of Elm City.
When I first photographed Mitchell School in 2020, it was crowded on every side by pine saplings and catbrier. I recently got word that the lot had been cleared of overgrowth, exposing the school and the motley collection of trailers that surround it. The school is in amazing condition given its age and disuse. Though one of the two entrances was open, I could not access the interior because of a collapsed stoop. The property is said to have a new owner, and I hope he or she is aware of the building’s legacy.
The school has a double entrance. The westernmost is boarded up. The easternmost, below, is open, but not easily accessible. Note the solid, standing-seam roof.
The interior, as far as I could peer in. It’s junk-filled, but dry. (I don’t think this was a “little red schoolhouse,” by the way. It appears that only the area within the entry alcove was painted.)
From the west, looking east.
Mitchell School was converted to a dwelling after its closure, but seems not to have been occupied for many years. A house trailer stands directly in front of the building at a distance of perhaps twenty feet.
The eastern elevation.
Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, February 2024.