Institutions

Wilson’s remarkable hospital.

On 22 February 1914, the Wilmington Morning Star published this detailed account of the establishment of the Wilson Hospital and Tubercular Hospital, which eventually became Mercy Hospital. Originally envisioned with a farm, countryside cottages, and a nurses’ home, only the administrative building was built. Nonetheless, Dr. Frank S. Hargrave‘s vision was “remarkable” indeed, and the hospital served the community for 50 years. (I was born there, in fact, just before it closed.)

[Sidenote: Hospital co-founder J.D. Reid was principal of the Colored Graded School and advisory board member Charles L. Coon was school superintendent. That Samuel H. Vick broke with them just four years later to side with teachers and parents in the 1918 school boycott is all the more astonishing.]

B.W.A. Historical Marker Series, no. 8: Odd Fellows Cemetery.

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

We been here.

ODD FELLOWS CEMETERY

Est. ca. 1908 by Samuel H. Vick for families of Wilson County’s African-American Odd Fellows fraternal lodges. Burial site of many leading business men and women and skilled craftsmen. Active to early 1950s.

 

Frederick Douglass school souvenir bricks available.

Historic Frederick Douglass High School is coming down to make way for a state-of-the-art facility. Thousands of bricks from the old building will be available as keepsakes Monday, June 10.

Wilson Daily Times, 7 June 2024.

Here’s Barnhill’s fantastic documentary about Frederick Douglass School.

Noble Grand Vick celebrates with Boston Lodge.

Like his father Daniel Vick and brother Samuel H. Vick, Ernest L. Vick was an active Odd Fellow, serving as Noble Grand when Boston Lodge celebrated its 26th anniversary in 1909.

Boston Globe, 19 February 1909.

Note of thanks from the County Home.

Wilson Daily Times, 27 May 1947.

——

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.

Podcast recommendation, no. 2: Archive Atlanta.

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 listen to podcasts.

An oasis in the land of Jim Crow.

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.

Barnes Primitive Baptist Church, found.

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.