Oral History

Haywood Sauls passes century mark?

Winston-Salem (N.C.) Sentinel, 15 October 1923.

Claims of ages of one hundred or more raise my eyebrow. They are unreliable enough to warrant cross-checking with other sources.

Tracing Haywood Sauls proved an unexpected challenge. Available records reveal more than one man named Haywood Sauls in the area.

Lee H. Sauls claimed Haywood was born 17 February 1821 according to family records. (Do those records still exist???) Lee Sauls’ grandfather Etheldred Sauls (1801-1859) lived in the Nahunta area of northeastern Wayne County, but had close ties just across the county line in Black Creek township. Etheldred Sauls executed a will and died in 1859. The will named 19 enslaved people, including Haywood, whose age was not listed. Haywood was allotted to Etheldred’s son Lawrence J. Sauls for the benefit of daughter Elizabeth Sauls Becton.

On 29 August 1866, formerly enslaved Haywood Sauls and Fannie Newsome registered their four-year cohabitation in Wayne County, North Carolina. Another Haywood Sauls registered a 40-year cohabitation with Lidia Sherrard in the same county on 2 September 1866.

In 1868, James P. Hooks, son of Solomon and Sarah Hooks, married Mariah Sauls, daughter of Hawood and Silvey Sauls, in Wayne County. James P. Hooks changed his name to Patrick Sherrod by the 1870 census. He, Mariah, and a child lived next door to “Howard,” 80, and Lindy Sauls, 65, in Goldsboro, Wayne County, that year. I believe Howard and Lindy are the Haywood and Lidia who married in September 1866. By 1880, Howard/Haywood apparently was deceased, but Sidney Sauls is listed with Patrick and Maria Sherrod. Celia Williams may have been another of this Haywood. She died 20 November 1913 in Township #13, Edgecombe County. Per her death certificate, she was born 20 November 1851 in Wayne County to Hawood Sauls and Sidney Sherod. This Haywood Sauls does not appear to be the man referred to in the article.

In 1874, Haywood Sauls and his wife Fannie were named among the heirs of his father-in-law Elijah Cox.

In the 1880 census of Wilson township, Wilson County: wagon driver Haywood Sauls, 46, and wife Fannie, 56.

Fannie apparently died 1880-1890 and, on 12 April 1890, Haywood Sauls and Lishia Yelverton were married in Wayne County.

Lishia died soon after and, on 23 May 1893, Haywood Sauls, 50, of Black Creek township, and Bettie Saunders, 45, were married at Haywood Sauls’ residence in Black Creek.

In the 1900 census of Fremont, Nahunta township, Wayne County: farmer Haywood Sauls, 66; wife Bettie, 53; and daughter Delber, 15.

In the 1910 census of Black Creek township, Wilson County: farmer Haywood Sauls, 74, and wife Betsey, 60.

In May 1912, Betsey Sauls executed a will leaving her property to her husband Haywood Sauls and son Frank Sanders. [Betsey Sauls had received a significant settlement in a tort suit a few years prior. More about this later.]

Bettie/Betsey Sauls died within months, and her husband quickly remarried. On 5 September 1912, Haywood Sauls, 77, of Wayne County, married Frances Davis, 40, of Wayne County, in Fremont, Nahunta township, Wayne County.

In the 1920 census of Buck Swamp township, Wayne County, N.C.: farmer Marcellus Sauls, 53; wife Fannie, 46; and father Haywood, 83, widower. [Marcellus Sauls died 19 December 1937 in Cross Roads township, Wilson County. Per his death certificate, he was 70 years old

Over the next few years, a few human-interest articles appeared in North Carolina newspapers noting Haywood Sauls’ great age and revealing his penchant for baseball and the Tobs. One mentions Sauls selling photographs of himself at the 1923 Wilson County fair. (Do any survive??)

News and Observer (Raleigh, N.C.), 11 October 1923.

Wilson Mirror, 21 October 1924.

News and Observer (Raleigh, N.C.), 27 April 1925. 

Greensboro (N.C.) Daily News, 29 April 1925.

Heywood Sauls died 8 January 1927 in the Wilson County Home, Wilson township, Wilson County. Per his death certificate, he was 101 years old; was a widower; and was buried in Wilson County.

Sauls’ death certificate places his birth in 1825, a few years after the February 1821 claim. However, census and marriage records indicate a birth year between 1834 and 1843, averaging 1836. This would have made Haywood Sauls actually about 90 when he died in early 1927, still an extraordinary age for a man who’d grown to adulthood in slavery.

Remembering my father today.

Four years. It seems simultaneously as if he’s been gone forever and just left yesterday. A couple of weeks ago, I was going through a file and found a note I’d scribbled about my dad:

All of us had to be somewhere. The whole family. And we couldn’t be late, so it dismayed me. I was the first one in the shower, and the water was rising around my ankles, and I thought, “Damn.” I heard my mother in the hallway, asking — water was backing up in her bathroom, too.

Let me back up. I was not really first in the shower. My father was. Hours ago. Long before the rest of us even turned over good, and he was out the house, in the yard, probably raking. Breathing the air before everybody else breathed it, as he liked to say.

I was concerned by what’s happening with the drain, but I soldiered on because I was shampooed to the hilt, and when I finally rinsed everything out of all this hair, I cut the water and heard: the plumber.

Before I could even step on the bathmat, the plumber was at the house, with a crew, waiting. The main drain pipe was clogged, but they made quick work of that and were gone. Thirty minutes, tops, from crisis to resolution. Even my mother, who had seen much of this kind of thing over decades of marriage, was amazed: “Red, where’d you find that plumber so quick?” (And on a Saturday.)

“Wait,” he said. “I’m your husband. I ain’t no joke.”

And then: “I can get stuff done. That’s why you married me, girl!”

(A few hours later, when she remarked on the house being a little humid, he said, “You want me to get somebody to get the muggy out, too?,” and they both laughed.)

If you knew my father, you know he had a saying for every circumstance. This fell under:

“You gotta get up. You get up, you can get something done. And you gotta know somebody. I know folk. I been here all my life….”

Rederick Caswell Henderson was born in Wilson, and he died in Wilson, four years ago today. I miss my father bone-deep, but the day seldom passes that I don’t grin ear to ear and give a nod of thanks as one of his aphorisms pops into my head. Rest in power, Daddy.

Fire halts school year.

Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 23 March 1940.

With the destruction by fire of Elm City’s black high school in 1940, the education of local children slammed to a halt. Amanda Mitchell Cameron was in the eighth grade at the time. She recalls that, rather than delay their high school studies, two of her older siblings carpooled to Wilson with a neighborhood boy to attend Darden High School. Most children, however, stayed home until the newly built school opened in 1941.

Figuring this family tree thing out.

Lane Street Project has enriched my life in many ways, among them introduction to wonderful people I would not otherwise have gotten to know. Portia Newman is one. Though we are both graduates of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and, it turns out, both among the unnumbered thousands of Adam T. Artis‘ descendants, more than two decades separate our paths through Wilson. Nonetheless, we share an unshakeable sense of family and place and a deep commitment to paying forward our gratitude for both. I was not surprised, then, to see this morning that Portia was giving us gifts on her birthday.

Here, in four parts and a dope video, are Portia Newman’s reflections on the importance of documenting family history and her plan for doing so. All of us can be, must be, preservationists. Save your stories.

And, here, listen to Portia’s grandfather, Donald Lee Woodard Sr. talk about his life in the Red Hill area near Stantonsburg. “You just got to live your life. By being 98*, I have seen a lot and been through a lot.” (Be sure to watch to the very end!)

Happy birthday, Portia!

Samuel H. Vick overcame odds.

Wilson Daily Times, 24 February 2003.

This Black History Month piece offers a few nuggets for further research on Samuel H. Vick:

  • “His father … had three brothers, all having different last names depending on the white families to whom they belonged.” [Who were Daniel Vick’s brothers?]
  • newspaper articles reported that, on Vick’s first day as postmaster, “[g]un-toting black citizens lined the streets to serve as bodyguards because he had received so many threats” [Wowww.]
  • “The Independent School continued to operate until 1923 when the local school system opened the Wilson Colored High School ….” [Other sources estimated a ten-year run, but this makes sense.]

Giving thanks.

I am grateful for so much this year and am mindful to deliver my appreciation in real time. An extra special thanks is warranted, however, for  20 women and men, aged 83 to 100, who shared with me their time and memories of their Wilson County childhoods. I spoke with seven of my father’s Darden High School classmates; with attendees of at least seven different Rosenwald schools; with folks who stayed in Wilson their entire lives and others who joined the Great Migration out. I recorded their stories and returned transcripts for them to linger over and share with their families. I jotted notes on fascinating tidbits to research further, some of which have already made it into Black Wide-Awake.

I still have a long list of people I’d love to interview, and hope you’ll refer any elders who might want to talk. As importantly, I encourage you to capture your family’s history. Holiday gatherings are the perfect time to pull out your phone and start recording, whether video or audio. Ask. And listen.

Sallie Coleman Bynum remembers.

Wilson Daily Times, 24 February 1994.

What a testimony!

——

  • Sallie Coleman Bynum

In the 1910 census of Oldfields township, Wilson County: Henry Coleman, 38, farmer; wife Mary J., 28; and children Stella, 13, Willie, 8, Josiah, 7, William, 5, Mattie J., 4, and Sallie, 2.

In the 1920 census of Oldfields township, Wilson County: on Old Wilson and Raleigh Road, farmer Henry Coleman, 50; wife Mary Jane, 40; and children Stella, 22, Willie, 19, Joesire, 17, William H., 16, Mattie J., 13, Sallie, 12, Bell, 10, Stephen, 8, Wiley, 7, and Eva, 1.

In the 1930 census of Oldfields township, Wilson County: farmer Henery D. Coleman, 58; wife Mary J., 52; children Bill, 18, Stephen, 17, Willey, 15, Mattie, 22, Sallie, 20, Eva, 13, Guyes E., 9, Gurtice, 5; and grandson Ollie L., 10 months.

Sallie Coleman Bynum died 6 December 1994 in Wilson.

Lamm’s School stood on Lamm Road just north of present-day U.S. 64. The school was built in 1923 as Wilson County consolidated one- and two-room schools for white children into modern masonry buildings. The building was recently demolished to make way for a Chick Fil A.

  • Sugar Hill — An African-American neighborhood just west of Sims’ town limits.

Images of Historic Wilson County N.C., Images of North Carolina, lib.digitalnc.org.