Travel

Cornet player Worsley visits Suffolk.

Suffolk News-Herald, 17 May 1940.

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  • James Worsley

In the 1910 census of Tarboro, Edgecombe County, N.C.: on Saint James Street, Albert Worsly, 39; wife Maggie, 34; and children Lavinia, 15, George, 13, Johnny, 9, James, 6, Maud, 4, and Willis, 3.

In the 1930 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 900 Mercer Street, owned and valued at $2000, James Worsley, 26, musician; wife Mabey, 26, laundry; son Frank, 12; and mother-in-law Martha Melton, 56, widow.

In the 1930 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory:

In the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 900 Mercer Street, owned and valued at $1000, widow Marie Melton, 71; daughter Madie M. Worsley, 45, “in service”; grandson Frank Barnes, 25, scrap room overseer in tobacco factory; granddaughter Jewel Worsley, 8; nephew Jim Barnes, 39, gardener assistant; roomer Percy Farrell, 37, rolls hogsheads in redrying plant; grandson James Williams, 30, stick boy in redrying plant; and son-in-law James Worsley, 37, trumpet player in dance band.

In the 1950 census of Goldsboro, Wayne County: at 704 Crawford Street, James Worsley, 46, and Lillian Worsley, 27, were two of four minstrel show entertainers lodging in the household of Ransom Corbett.

James Albert Worsley Jr. died 17 August 1953 in Tarboro, Edgecombe County, N.C. Per his death certificate, he was born 16 December 1904 in Edgecombe County to Albert Worsley and Maggie Caine; was divorced; lived at 404 Wagner Street, Tarboro; was a musician; and was buried in Wilson Cemetery, Princeville, N.C.

Vick family and friends take a roadtrip.

The Afro-American (Baltimore, Md.), 25 September 1926.

Samuel H. Vick, his daughter Doris Vick, and Vick’s cousin (whom he informally adopted) Bessie Parker Hargrave drove from North Carolina “North” (probably to New Jersey) with Presbyterian minister and educator Clarence Dillard and Eliza Bass, whom I have not identified further.

Mary McRae visits Laurinburg Institute.

New York Age, 28 August 1926.

“The campus” was Laurinburg Normal and Industrial Institute, which jazz pioneer Dizzy Gillespie attended in the mid-1930s. Founded in 1904, Laurinburg Institute is now a preparatory school.

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Perhaps, in the 1925 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: McRae Mary (c) h Powell cor Finch

Visitors to Cape May.

In August 1925, the Pittsburgh Courier posted a long list of recent guests at Cape May, New Jersey’s Hotel Dale, which included:

Pittsburgh Courier, 15 August 1925.

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  • Hotel Dale

Image of postcard courtesy of Hope Gaines, “A Place to Stay,” Cape May magazine, June 2018.

Prof. Suggs visits Dr. Ward.

The Freeman (Indianapolis, Ind.), 8 September 1900.

We know very little about Joseph H. Ward‘s early life in Wilson, but we know he maintained ties with his hometown and kept up with contemporaries like Daniel C. Suggs. At the time of this visit, Suggs was a professor and administrator at Georgia State Industrial College for Colored Youth (the precursor to Savannah State University) in Savannah.

The Odd Fellows convene.

Two brief blurbs in August 1892 announce an Odd Fellows convention in Wilson. Samuel H. Vick delivered a welcome address, and the keynote address was held at Wilson’s Opera House. Delegates arrived in town on special excursion trains run for the event.

Wilson Mirror, 3 August 1892.

The old A.C.L. depot.

We’ve seen here the Atlantic Coast Line passenger depot, built in 1924, at which hundreds of African-American Wilsonians embarked for their new lives during the Great Migration. The O.V. Foust photograph above depicts the depot that preceded it. A dray sits out front awaiting luggage or freight; there was no platform.

Photo courtesy of J. Robert Boykin III’s Historic Wilson in Vintage Postcards (2003).