Medicine

Iredell County Chronicles, no. 9.

Statesville Landmark, 7 June 1932.

Statesville Daily Record, 20 April 1934.

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In the 1880 census of Salisbury, Rowan County: tanner Robert Lord, 48; wife Rosetta, 40; and children Robert, 19, tobacco factory worker, Nora, 15, Irene, 12, Alonzo, 8, and Elizabeth, 21.

In the 1900 census of Statesville, Iredell County: on Garfield Street, Alonzo Lord, 28, physician; wife Lula, 24; and sister Nora B., 31.

Alonzo Richardson Lord was born 26 April 1904 in Cabarrus County, N.C., to Lula Hart and Alonzo David Lord.

In the 1930 census of Statesville, Iredell County: A. Loid, 54, physician, and wife Lula, 52.

In the 1930 census of Charlotte, Mecklenburg County, N.C.: Alonzo Hart, 25, teacher, lodger in the household of W.F.G. Moore.

Alonzo D. Lord died 15 April 1934 in Statesville, Iredell County. Per his death certificate, he was born 24 October 1874 in Salisbury to Robert and Rosetta Lord; was married to Lula Lord; and was a physician.

In the 1938 Hill’s Rocky Mount, N.C., city directory: Lord Alonzo R (c) prin Booker T Washington Sch h 232 Atlantic av

In the 1940 census of Statesville, Iredell County: on Adams Road, Lula Lord, 63, widow, and Henrietta Thomas, 49, widow, private nurse.

In the 1940 census of Rocky Mount, Edgecombe County, N.C.: Alonzo Hart, 35, principal and teacher, lodger in the household of Marion Hood, 35.

In 1942, Alonzo Richardson Lord registered for the World War II draft in Edgecombe County. Per his registration card, he was born 26 April 1904 in Concord, N.C.; lived 232 Atlantic Avenue, Rocky Mount, N.C.; his contact was Lula H. Lord; and he worked for Rocky Mount City Schools at Booker T. Washington High School.

On 1 October 1943, Alonzo R. Lord, 39, of Statesville, N.C., son of Alonzo and Lula Hart, married Mae McKoy, 36, of Mebane, N.C., daughter of David and Alice Murray, in Wilson. Dr. B.O. Barnes applied for the license, and Presbyterian minister J.W. Barnette performed the ceremony. [Per Beverly A. Henderson, Dr. Barnes and Alonzo Lord were close friends from their college days at Johnson C. Smith University.]

The 1962 Elizabeth City State College Catalogue lists A.R. Lord as principal and M.M. Lord as a teacher at Fourth Street Elementary School, Plymouth, N.C.

Alonzo R. Lord died 3 June 1986 in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Alonzo R. Lord, Bertha Hart, a Murphy (first name not known), Minnie McNeely, Ardeanur Smith, Statesville, N.C., mid-1920s. 

Photo in collection of Lisa Y. Henderson.

Thus ends the week. Who will pick up the blogging mantle to create a one-place study chronicling  the lives and history of Iredell County African-Americans?

Dr. C.T. Battle Scholarship.
The Rho Delta Lambda Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., based in Anderson, South Carolina, sponsors a scholarship for high school students named in honor of Cr. Charles Tecumseh Battle Jr. Dr. Battle’s father, Charles T. Battle Sr., was a blacksmith and industrial arts teacher born in Wilson in 1888.

Allen is getting along nicely.

Wilson Daily Times, 3 June 1937.

Allen died two days later of complications from her surgery.

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In the 1900 census of Stewarts Creek township, Harnett County, N.C.: farmer Ed Armstrong, 29; wife Mary, 25; and six daughters Josephine, 12, Ella, 9, Mary, 6, Rachel, 5, Ola, 3, and Julia, 1.

In the 1910 census of Duke township, Harnett County: farmer Ed Armstrong, 45; wife Cornelia, 45; and children Ellie, 19, Mamie, 17, Rachael, 15, Viola, 14, Julia, 12, Maggie, 10, Ernest, 8, and James, 6.

In the 1928 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Allen James B (c; Rachel) rest 217 S Goldsboro h 900 Atlanta [217 S. Goldsboro is the site of today’s Worrell’s Seafood.]

On 26 November 1929, Rachel Armstrong, 36, of Harnett County, daughter of Eddie Armstrong and Lelia Smith, married James Bland Allen, 45, divorced, of Craven County, N.C., son of Wyatt Allen and Eliza Hicks, in Greensville County, Virginia.

In the 1930 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 900 Atlantic Street, cafe proprietor Jim Allen, 45; wife Rachel, 32, private nurse; children Elouise, 10, and Fred, 8; and these lodgers — farm laborer Floyd Baker, 26; cook Gertrude Kannary, 27; and Katherine, 10, Martha, 7, and Elouise Baker, 1.

Rachel Allen died 5 June 1937 at Mercy Hospital, Wilson. Per her death certificate, she was born about 1897 in Dunn, N.C., to Edward and Cornelius [sic] Armstrong; was married to James Allen; lived at 405 East Green Street; and worked as a midwife and hospital nurse. Informant was Maggie Armstrong, Durham, N.C.

Boxcar.

News and Observer (Raleigh, N.C.), 8 June 1913.

Joe Saunders was arrested for shooting Charles Coley at a house at 114 Wiggins Street. Wilson Hospital and Tubercular Home (later known as Mercy) did not open until 1914. Other hospitals in town would not admit African-Americans, so Coley was carried to a boxcar to die or recuperate.

 

The case of caries of the tibia.

In 1828, the North American Medical and Surgical Journal published an account of Stantonsburg doctor Josiah R. Horn’s treatment of an undiagnosed bone disease in an enslaved man’s leg. The man is unnamed, and his suffering is unspeakable, despite Dr. Horn’s best efforts. Ultimately, his leg was amputated at the thigh, and he recovered.

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Dr. Ward challenged Jim Crow.

Indiana History Blog published Nicole Poletika’s detailed look at Dr. Joseph H. Ward‘s role in challenging segregation as the head of Tuskegee, Alabama’s Veterans Hospital No. 91 in the 1920s and ’30s.

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Dr. Ward is on the front row, center (next to the nurse) in this 1933 photograph of Veterans Hospital staff.  Photo courtesy of VA History Highlights, “First African American Hospital Director in VA History,” U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

For more on Dr. Ward, who was born in Wilson about 1869, see here and here and here and here and here.

[Sidenote: Dr. Ward was not born to “impoverished parents” per the article, though it is possible that he himself gave this gloss on his early life. Rather, his father was Napoleon Hagans, a prosperous freeborn farmer in nearby Wayne County, and his mother was Mittie Ward, a young freedwoman whose family moved into town after Emancipation from the plantation of Dr. David G.W. Ward near Stantonsburg.]

Hat tip to Zella Palmer for pointing me to this article. She is Dr. Ward’s great-granddaughter, and they are my cousins.

Doctors in the house.

Again, for a town whose population did not hit 10,000 until 1920 (of which only half were black), Wilson produced an astounding number of African-American physicians in the last decades of the nineteenth century and first few of the twentieth century. To the ranks of Drs. Joseph Henry Ward, Charles Hudson Bynum, William Henry Bryant, John Wesley Darden, James Thomas Suggs, Walter Theodore Darden, James Alexander Battle, James Arthur Cotton, John Clemon Williamson and Rolland Tyson Winstead, add four grandsons of Della Hines Barnes — Drs. Boisey O. Barnes, William C. Hines, Walter D. Hines and Clifton R. Hines.

African-American physicians who practiced in Wilson prior to World War II, but were born elsewhere, included: George W. Williams, Frank Settle Hargrave, William Arthur Mitchner, Michael Edmund Dubissette, William H. Atkinson Jr., Thomas Clinton Tinsley, Matthew Stanley Gilliam Sr., and Joseph Franklin Cowan.

Native-born dentists from this period, none of whom practiced in Wilson, included Paul L. Jackson, Christopher L. Taylor and James D. Reid, while William H. Phillips, Lee C. Jones and George K. Butterfield Sr. settled in the community from elsewhere.

Simms’ Blue Book and National Negro Business & Professional Directory (1923).