Slavery

Hired from Franklin County, no. 3.

Slaveowners needing additional labor sometimes looked beyond the borders of Wilson County for supply. J.J. Williams, William M. Gay, B.G. Albritton, and C.L. Vines,  agreed to pay T.T. Clifton $675 for twelve months’ hire, beginning on or before 1 January 1861, of enslaved men Wesley, Ned, and William. The men were to be returned to Clifton in Louisburg, Franklin County, the following Christmas Day 1861, barring “unavoidable accident.”

A cryptic post script at the bottom of the note appears to read: “hire of 1 boy off say $225”

What was going on with these leases? Only one of the slaveholders can be placed in Wilson County — what kind of work was this cabal engaged in?

  • T.T. Clifton — in the 1860 slave schedule of Franklin County, N.C., T[homas]. T. Clifton is listed with 24 enslaved people.
  • J.J. Williams
  • W.M. Gay — in the 1860 slave schedule of Wilson township, Wilson County, William M. Gay is listed with ten enslaved people.
  • B.G. Albritton — in the 1860 slave schedule of Pitt County, N.C., B.G. Albritton is listed with 19 enslaved people.
  • C.L. Vines — in the 1860 slave schedule of Edgecombe County, N.C., C[harles]. L. Vines is listed with 14 enslaved people.

Slave Hire-1861, Records of Slaves and Free People of Color, Miscellaneous Records, Wilson County Records, North Carolina State Archives.

Hired from Franklin County, no. 2.

Slaveowners needing additional labor sometimes looked beyond the borders of Wilson County for supply. J.J. Williams, J.W. Davis, William M. Gay, and T.C. Davis agreed to pay J. Dent $675 for twelve months’ hire, beginning on or before 1 January 1861, of enslaved men Gilbert, Plyant, and Seneca. The men were to receive the “usual amount clothing” provided to hired slaves and were to be returned to Dent in Louisburg, Franklin County, the following Christmas Day 1861, barring “unavoidable accident.”

Why was Franklin County the go-to spot to pick up extra labor? To what work did these groups of white Wilson County men set the men they leased?

——

  • J. Dent
  • J.J. Williams
  • J.W. Davis — in the 1860 slave schedule of Wilson County, Wilson, J[oseph] W. Davis is listed with two 14 year-old enslaved girls. Davis was a merchant.
  • W.M. Gay — in the 1860 slave schedule of Wilson township, Wilson County, William M. Gay is listed with ten enslaved people of his own, as well as 11 people held in trust for an unnamed minor. Gay is listed in the federal census that year as a merchant with a $16,000 personal estate, largely comprised of enslaved people. Sixteen year-old B.J. Tyson, who lived in his houshold, claimed $12,000 in personal property and likely was the minor noted above.
  • T.C. Davis — in the 1860 slave schedule of Wilson County, Wilson, Thomas C. Davis is listed with four enslaved people, the oldest a 23 year-old man. The census schedule discloses that Davis was the county clerk of court, and his household included a 6 year-old free girl of color, Sarah Locus.

Slave Hire-1861, Records of Slaves and Free People of Color, Miscellaneous Records, Wilson County Records, North Carolina State Archives.

The Colored Democratic Club.

Daily National Intelligencer, 21 September 1868.

Neither Joseph F. Johnson nor Buck Powell — who eschewed the counsel of carpetbagging “creatures” to “take their stand along with their white neighbors and friends” — are not found in Wilson County records. Presumably, the Colored Democratic Club failed to gain traction among their black neighbors and friends, and the two took their talents elsewhere.

Powell may have been the Buck Powell, 23, barber, listed in the 1870 census of Wilmington, New Hanover County, North Carolina. I have no hints for Johnson.

The last wills and testaments of Joseph Barnes (1824) and Sallie Whitehead Barnes (1833).

Joseph Barnes (1770-1824) and Sarah “Sallie” Whitehead Barnes (1770-1833) lived in far southwest Edgecombe County, an area that is now Wilson County.

Joseph Barnes made out his will in May 1824. Among his bequests, he gave his wife Sarah Barnes three enslaved people — Luke, Bob, and Rachel.

He also gave his daughter Nancy Barnes an enslaved girl named Forten and a boy named Frank; his daughter Penney Barnes, a girl named Hannah and a boy named Toby; his daughter Celia Barnes, a girl named Rose and a boy named Isaac; his daughter Treecey Barnes, a girl named Clark and a boy named Reddick; his daughter Temperance Barnes, a girl named Dinah and a boy named Jacob; and his daughter Martha Barnes, a daughter Milley and a boy David.

There was also this complicated provision:

As best I can decipher, Barnes was directing that Peter and Dick and some livestock be sold and the money divided among all but his youngest children. After that, it gets more confusing. The clear part: wife Sallie is to receive a life estate in “two negros Jack and Jude,” as well as three “hors craturs” (??), five cows and calves, a brandy still, cider casks, plantation tools, and furniture. All this property was to be sold at her death, and the proceeds divided among all his children except James and Dempsey.

——

Sallie Whitehead Barnes executed her will in December 1833.

Among other items, Sallie Barnes left her daughter Theresa Barnes Farmer two enslaved men, Ben and Bob, and her daughter Martha Barnes Bullock, enslaved people Luke and Rachel. (Luke and Rachel, whom Sallie Barnes had inherited from her husband, remained together. Were they a couple?)

And then, this curious bequest to son-in-law Isaac Farmer:

“I leave Isaac in [lieu] of Jack that I sold which was lent to me my life time to dispose of as they would with Jack had he not been sold.” My best interpretation: Joseph Barnes had bequeathed Sallie Barnes a life estate in an enslaved man named Jack. However, Sallie had sold Jack and had to provide an equivalent substitute for him in the form of Isaac.

I cannot with certainty trace forward any of these enslaved men and women.

Will of Joseph Barnes (1822), Will of Sallie Barnes (1833), North Carolina, U.S. Wills and Probate Records, 1665-1998, http://www.ancestry.com.

A second look at five generations.

I’ve obtained a clearer copy of the photograph posted here depicting five generations of women who lived on the lands of and worked for Edwin Barnes or his heirs near Evansdale.

Wilson Daily Times, 20 April 1950.

Unfortunately — and surprisingly — I’m still not able to identify the women with certainty.

Many thanks to J. Robert Boykin III for the clipping.

Recommended reading, no. 19: Stantonsburg Fort.

Philip Fort did not live in Wilson County, but his daughter Hannah Forte Artis and her husband Walter S. Artis owned property in and around Stantonsburg, and that’s enough of a hook for me.

Stantonsburg Fort: Phillip Fort and the 135th Regiment of the U.S. Colored Troops, a children’s book, is a fictionalized account of the life of Phillip Fort, an enslaved man who joined the Union Army during the Civil War. Fort was born in far northeast Wayne County, near Eureka. (An area that now has a Stantonsburg zip code.) It is not the book I would write (but, then, I haven’t written a book, have I?), but it is an appealing introduction for young people to the role of the U.S. Colored Troops and an intriguing example of what can be done to bring historical material to a broader audience.

The Edwin Barnes cemetery.

We’ve spoken here and here and here of the plantation of Dr. Edwin Barnes, whose house sat near the intersection of modern Old Stantonsburg Road and Fairfield Dairy Road near those of his brother William Barnes and relative Wiley Simms. (Gen. Joshua Barnes was another brother.)

Edwin Barnes’ house was destroyed by fire in 2005. The sole trace of his tenure on the land is a small family cemetery tucked a few hundred feet from the home site under an enormous, lush boxwood. Here are buried Edwin Barnes, who died in 1885 at age 69; his wife Elizabeth Simms Barnes (1824-1875); and about a dozen assorted relatives.

But where are buried the dozens and dozens of men and women who worked Elias Barnes’ fields?  We know the locations of just one or two slave cemeteries in Wilson County. Unmarked or impermanently marked, these sites are forgotten and largely untraceable — plowed under or overgrown in the decades since the last burial.

Wherever the dead may rest, we honor and pledge to preserve their memory.

The cemetery rattles with dried stalks of dog fennel.

Edwin Barnes’ marble stele. The cemetery on this early spring day was weedy and unkempt, but shows signs of at least fitful cleaning.

Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, March 2024.

The Peacock-Applewhite-Yelverton house, again.

A sign hanging at the driveway entrance reads Maywood Manor, Est. 1850, and the large, four-columned portico plays into stereotypes of plantation Big House. In fact, per Stantonsburg Historical Society’s A History of Stantonsburg Circa 1780 to 1980 (1981), though slaveholder James Peacock built this house on the northwestern outskirts of Stantonsburg about 1860, the fancy entrance was not added until 1914. Here’s the house with its original exterior. (Also — “Maywood Manor”???)

Photo by Lisa Y. Henderson, March 2024.

Whereas.

To mark Wilson’s 175th birthday on January 29, 2024, the City’s Facebook page featured posts about the Mayor’s birthday proclamation; the Wilmington & Weldon Railroad; Wilson Energy; Wilson Fire/Rescue Services; Greenlight; and Buckhorn Reservoir. As with its Martin Luther King Jr. Day announcement — which was all about closures, said nothing about the man himself, and closed with a cheery “if you have the day off, take advantage of this long weekend and enjoy your well-deserved break!” — the City missed opportunities for inclusion in its write-ups about its honorees. At a minimum — especially during Black History Month — Ben Mincey and the Red Hots should have gotten a nod in the FRS post.

Let’s look a little closer at the proclamation though.  The “whereas” is accurate, but I can’t see Wyatt Moye’s name without thinking of his other legacy, one that resonates in the blood of African-Americans from Wilson County to Louisiana.

So:

WHEREAS, Wyatt Moye was a slave trader who moved surplus enslaved people in coffles from North Carolina to the deepest South, and

WHEREAS, his business, which ripped men and women from their families and communities forever, made the incorporator of the Town of Wilson wildly wealthy.

There. Fixed it.