Maps

The division of the Nannie Kirby Richardson property.

In 1973, William Kirby‘s widow Nannie Shaw Kirby Richardson divided their land among their heirs — Roxanna Kirby Exum, Hobbie Lee Kirby, William Henry Kirby, Willie Kilmer Williams, Sarah Kirby Wiggs, Nettie Kirby Forsythe, Queen Kirby Newsome, and Harvey Isaac Kirby. Each received two lots, e.g. 2 and 2-A. The Kirby family cemetery is represented by the small rectangle at the top of lot 4. Much of the land remains in the hands of Kirby descendants.

Plat Book 13, pages 38-39, Wilson County Register of Deeds Office, Wilson.

The purchase of land for Elvie Street School, part 1.

We saw this 1923 plat map of Daniel C. Suggs‘ property here.

Plat Book 1, page 215.

The plat map below shows that most of Suggs’ property was purchased by W.E. Batts. In 1925, a Durham auction house prepared a new plat for the Batts property.

Plat Book 3, page 17.

Here’s a present-day view of the area. New Street kept its name, but a truncated Hines Street is now Blount Street at its west end, and Elvie School Drive at its east. This map makes clear that the south end of the old Oakdale Cemetery (“colored cemetery” on both plats) lay under the circular driveway and front law of Elvie Street School [later M.M. Daniels Learning Center.] Its graves (or some of them, anyway) were moved to Rest Haven in 1941.

In 1946, to assemble land on which to build a replacement for the Sallie Barbour School, the Board of Trustees of Wilson City Schools began to buy up parcels in the property, also known as Suggs Heights and adjacent lots, including these:

  • on 26 May 1946, from Leon Powell and wife Carrie Powell — lots 12, 13, 14, and part of 11 [Deed Book 335, page 291]
  • on 12 April 1947, from W.E. Batts Jr. and wife Mildred C. Batts — block B, lots 5, 6, 15, 16, 29-36; Block C, lots 33-60; and Block E, lots 25-34 [Deed Book 333, page 256]
  • on 12 June 1947, from Sam Dixon and Evelyn F. Dixon (who had bought the lots from Hubert and Viola McPhail) — lot 14 and half of lot 13 [Deed Book 337, page 12]
  • on 8 July 1947, from Robert Lee Melton and wife Birt Melton — lot 11 and 6 1/4 feet of lot 12 of block E, facing Elmer [Elvie] Street, which had been conveyed to the Meltons by Lula Wynn on 28 February 1945 per Deed Book 295, page 461 [Deed Book 337, page 291]
  • on 25 July 1947, from Frank Norman and wife Elizabeth Norman — lot 13 and part of lot 12 of block E, conveyed by Wynn per Deed Book 295, page 465 [Deed Book 337, page 370]
  • on 28 July 1947, from Maggie Stokes and husband Turner Stokes — lots 9 and 10 of block E, purchased by the Stokeses on 20 January 1933 per Deed Book 202, page 465 [Deed Book 337, page 370]

Cemeteries, no. 38: the Joshua Barnes’ tenant cemetery.

I first mused about the cemetery on the old Joshua Barnes plantation here. As shown in this detail from the plat, the burial ground was in Lot 11 of the farm’s subdivision, a triangle of land between what are now London Church Road and Corbett Avenue. Was this where black tenants and laborers on Barnes’ farm buried, well into the 20th century? Did it start as a cemetery for the many dozens of people Barnes enslaved?

Last week, I stumbled upon a 1964 plat map of the former Lot 11, then named Raeford Rountree farm, which outlines the cemetery in greater detail and records its size as .73 acres.

This deed description comes from a 1983 quitclaim deed from Landmark Development Company of Wilson to a trustee for Living Faith Ministries, Inc. It makes clear that this cemetery was recognized for what it was.

Here’s a current aerial view of the property from Wilson County’s GIS website. I’ve encircled the rough location of the cemetery, which lies a short distance south of Impact Church.

There’s no sign of the cemetery now. (At least not from the road.)

Photograph by Lisa Y. Henderson, February 2026.

The Barneses sell property to the School Board.

Plat Book 4, page 51.

On 30 September 1946, Dr. B.O. Barnes and his wife Flossie H. Barnes sold the Board of Trustees of Wilson City Schools a tract bordered by North Reid Street, East Vance Street, an unopened section of North Vick Street, and an unopened section of Crowell Street. Deed Book 326, page 43.

As the Google Maps aerial below shows, the property is adjacent to land on which the former Vick Elementary School sits. (Vick had opened ten years earlier.) Ultimately, however, much of it was sold to developers who built a row of houses in the 800 block of East Vance Street.

Lane Street Project: the power pole easement revisited.

Y’all remember back in August 2023 when I requested information from the City concerning the placement of power poles in Vick and Rountree Cemeteries? Via Gabriel Du Sablon, an attorney in the office of City attorney James P. Cauley III, the City responded on 22 September 2023, and I call your attention to this declaration:

Funny, because look what I just found on the Wilson County Register of Deeds website — an easement deed, dated 4 August 1997, from trustees of Rountree Missionary Baptist Church to the City of Wilson. (And prepared by James P. Cauley III.)

Via this document, Rountree Church granted the City permission to “construct, install, inspect, operate, repair and maintain one or more lines and appurtenant facilities for the transmission of electricity …” on part of its land.

Including the right to install power poles (and alter or substitute them “from time to time ….”

The power pole in Rountree Cemetery, October 2025.

The easement began on Rountree’s western property line at the property line of Odd Fellows Cemetery, on the south side of Lane Street; ran the width of the property to a canal (Sandy Creek); then back 41 feet; then back across the cemetery; then back to the beginning, containing about .25 acre.

May I remind you that the entire southern portion of Rountree Cemetery comprises only one acre. 

For reasons that I cannot imagine, Rountree Church ceded a quarter of the main part of its old cemetery to the City. Worse, the City of Wilson plotted a power line corridor that demanded it. In 1997.

Page 3 of the easement continues the rights and privileges granted to the City by the easement.

The church gained no parallel rights, but can convey the land and easement. Nowhere in the easement is there an acknowledgment that this land is a cemetery.

And then there’s this attached plat map. It’s a little hard to make out, so I’ll zoom in on the pertinent part below.

Deed Book 1636, page 377, Wilson County Register of Deeds.

So, turned sideways, with Martin Luther King Parkway offscreen to the right, what we have is Lane Street (now Bishop L.N. Forbes) in red. (Note the narrowing as it passes the cemeteries.) In blue, Sandy Creek, which was channelized late in the 19th century as best I can tell. Yellow marks the boundary between Rountree and Odd Fellows Cemeteries. (I’d always believed it to be at the ditch shown left of the boundary, but the ditch is wholly in Odd Fellows.) The two halves of Rountree Cemetery are clearly shown. The top half is where the backhoe was roving late last year. The shaded area is the City of Wilson’s utility easement.

I repeat. There’s no mention that the City was securing a utility easement in a cemetery.

But maybe the City didn’t know, right? Here’s the pole again.

In the foreground, perhaps twenty feet away, is a pile of broken headstones, mostly belonging to an Ellis family. Another ten or fifteen feet further, the double-sided headstone of Daniel and Lottie Marlow, who died in 1918 and 1916. In 1997, when this pole was installed, the area was clear of brushy undergrowth, and these markers would have been plainly visible.

There’s no parallel easement recorded for Vick Cemetery. By 1997, the City had already confessed to owning the property and had recently cleared it of overgrowth and headstones, perhaps for this very purpose. And no recorded easement for Odd Fellows, which does not have a pole, but is crossed by the same power lines. In fact, graves in Odd Fellows were damaged just a few years later by heavy machinery brought into the cemetery for a line repair.

The repair sleeve on the middle line above Odd Fellows Cemetery. 

This is nasty work, folks.

Help for the road to the Negro cemetery.

In the aftermath of complaints by “prominent Negroes of the city” about the impassable condition of roads leading to Vick Cemetery, City Manager W.M. Wiggins appealed to the Wilson County Board of Commissioners to request the state highway commission to make “the road to the local negro cemetery” a state highway. The “town and state” had made some improvements to try to make the road passable in winter, and Wiggins believed the state would take over if asked.

…

Wilson Daily Times, 26 November 1937.

When I first posted about the complaints, I concluded that the road in question was what we now know as Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway/US Highway 264. I’m now revising my thoughts.

The eastward extension of Nash Street past town limits was already a paved state road by 1937 as shown on this 1936 Wilson County road map.

US 264 and NC Highway 58 were already 264 and 58. But there’s a tiny spur, a little dashed set of parallel lines, that represents the road that turned off 264 at Rountree Missionary Baptist Church and ran several hundred feet back to three cemeteries. This — now the eastern end of Bishop L.N. Forbes Street — was the muddy road to the Negro cemetery. It’s not clear whether City Manager Wiggins’ appeal was immediately successful, but a 1968 N.C.D.O.T. map labels this as S.R. (“state road”) 1546.

Is Bishop L.N. Forbes Street still a state road?

The roots of many Wilson County Artises, no. 7: Celia Artis.

Before Wilson County was founded in 1855, the area around Black Creek was part of Wayne County. Celia Artis, a free woman of color, is listed as a head of household in the 1840 census of Black Creek district of Wayne County. Though it’s not certain that she lived in what is now Wilson County, her listing in proximity to white planters Stephen Woodard and Bunyan Barnes, who definitely lived in Wilson County territory, suggests so.

1840 federal census of Wayne County, North Carolina.

Celia’s family and Adam T. Artis’ family were among several sets of Artises living in or adjacent to northeastern Wayne County in the antebellum era, and members both intermarried and otherwise interacted with each other regularly. At least eight sets of Celia Artis’ descendants were living in Wilson County by the early 1900s, so I include a summary of her life here.

Celia Artis was born just before 1800, probably in northeastern Wayne County or what is now southern Wilson County. Nothing is known of her parentage or early life. She gave birth to at least six children and married an enslaved man called Simon Pig, who was the father of some or all of them.

In 1823, she gave control over her oldest children to two white neighbors, brothers (or father and son) Elias and Jesse Coleman, in a dangerously worded deed that exceeded the scope of typical apprenticeship indentures:

This indenture this 16th day of August 1823 between Celia Artis of the County of Wayne and state of North Carolina of the one part, and Elias and Jesse Coleman of the other part (witnesseth) that I the said Celia Artis have for an in consideration of having four of my children raised in a becoming [illegible], by these presence indenture the said four children (to viz) Eliza, Ceatha, Zilpha, and Simon Artis to the said Elias and Jesse Coleman to be their own right and property until the said four children arives at the age of twenty one years old and I do by virtue of these presents give and grant all my right and power over said children the above term of time, unto the said Elias and Jesse Coleman their heirs and assigns, until the above-named children arives to the aforementioned etc., and I do further give unto the said Elias and Jesse Coleman all power of recovering from any person or persons all my right to said children — the [illegible] of time whatsoever in whereof I the said Celia Artis have hereunto set my hand and seal the day and year above written,    Celia X Artis.

Despite the “own right and property” language, Celia did not exactly sell her children, but what drove her to this extreme measure? Celia was not legally married and, as a result, her children were subject to involuntary apprenticeship until age 21. This strongly worded deed records her determination to guard her children from uncertain fates by placing them under the control of men she trusted, rather than those selected by a court. Despite the deed’s verbiage, it is possible that the children continued to live with their mother during their indenture. Certainly, Celia, unlike many free women of color, had the wherewithal to care for them, as evidenced by her purchase of 10 acres in Wayne County from Spias Ward in 1833. Wayne County deeds further show purchases of 124 acres and 24 acres from William Thompson in 1850 and 1855.

By 1840, Celia Artis was head of a household of eight free people of color in Black Creek district, Wayne County, comprising one woman aged 36-54 [Celia]; three girls aged 10-23 [Eliza, Leatha, Zilpha]; one girl under 10 [unknown]; two boys aged 10-23 [Calvin and Simon]; and one boy under 10 [Thomas].

In the 1850 census, she was enumerated on the North Side of the Neuse, Wayne County, as a 50 year-old with children Eliza, 34, Zilpha, 28, Thomas, 15, and Calvin, 20, plus 6 year-old Lumiser, who was Eliza’s daughter. Celia is credited with owning $600 of real property (deeds for most of which went unrecorded), and the agricultural schedule for that year details her wealth:

  • Celia Artis.  50 improved acres, 700 unimproved acres, value $600. Implements valued at $25. 2 horses. 1 ass or mule. 1 ox. 21 other cattle. 40 sheep. 500 swine. 500 bushels of Indian corn. 100 lbs. of rice. 2 lbs. of tobacco. 100 lbs. of wool. 100 bushels of peas and beans. 200 bushels of sweet potatoes.

Celia Artis also appears in the 1850 Wayne County slave schedule, which records her ownership of her husband:

1850 slave schedule of Wayne County, North Carolina.

In 1860, surprisingly, the census taker named that husband, Simon Pig Artis, as the head of household. However, if he’d been freed formally, there’s no record of it. Simon is also listed as the 70 year-old owner of $800 of real property and $430 of personal property — all undoubtedly purchased by Celia. Their household included son Thomas, daughter Zilpha, and granddaughters Lumizah, 17, and Penninah, 11.

1860 federal census of Wayne County, North Carolina.

A 1863 Confederate field map shows “C. Artis” just off the roads that are now NC-222 and Watery Branch Church Road.

The family’s cemetery remains on that land, as seen in the Google Street View below. A Primitive Baptist church, Diggs Chapel, and an early African-American school, Diggs School, once stood nearby.

Neither Celia nor Simon appears in the 1870 census. However, it seems likely that Celia was alive for at least a few more years, as her estate was not opened until 1879. It was surprisingly small, suggesting that she had distributed most her land and valuables (or otherwise lost them) before her death. Son Thomas is listed as the sole heir to her $200 estate.

Known Wilson County descendants of Celia Artis (and the child from whom they descend) include Edgar H. Diggs and children (Eliza); Rommie Diggs Sr. and descendants (Eliza); Sallie Artis Shackleford and descendants (Eliza); brothers Kemmy A. Sherrod and O. Royal Sherrod (Eliza); Rommie Newsome (Eliza); siblings Beulah Artis Exum Best, Francis Artis Edmundson, and Adam H. Artis (Eliza); Daisy Baker Hobbs (Leatha Ann); and Haywood W. Baker and descendants (including son John H.W. Baker) (Leatha Ann).

“Map of a part of eastern North Carolina from a map in progress compiled from surveys and reconnaissances” (1863), Jeremy Francis Gilmer Papers #276, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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.