Wilson Times, 30 July 1918.
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In the 1910 census of Black Creek township, Wilson County: Henry Dudley, 55; wife Fannie, 34; and children Maggie, 24, William L., 20, Rosa, 18, William H., 15, Jacob A., 13, Naoma, 11, Leroy, 8, Dorena, 5, and Bessie M., 2.
In the 1920 census of Black Creek township, Wilson County: Henry Dudley, 63; wife Fannie, 43; and children Leroy, 17, Darlena, 15, Bessie, 11, Franny B., 9, and Ernest, 6.
Daily News (Wilson, N.C.), 20 September 1900.
Minstrel shows were sure-fire crowdpleasers for white audiences well into the twentieth century. Al. G. Field’s Big Minstrels’ national touring company brought forty minstrel stars to town, including Welby & Pearl, America’s Fin de Siecle Exponents of Refined Negro Comedy — who were not decidedly not Negro.
The Daily News (Wilson, N.C.), 20 September 1900.
As late as 1897, black men could still sit on Wilson County juries hearing cases charges brought against white men.
In State vs. Pharaoh Rowe, James Montgomery, J.V. Lamm, and John Bone, the jury included James J. Jones, Louis Townsend, Lee Moore, and Scott Johnson.
On 9 February 1897, the jury found the defendants guilty. They were White Caps, members of extralegal vigilante groups that targeted not only black people, but white people who flouted moral standards or otherwise defied the group norms. Just months before this trial, Pharoah Rowe had been shot in the stomach when a band of his confederates sought to tear down the fence of a white Lucama man’s fence who had opposed a road project.
Wilson Advance, 11 February 1897.
In June 1896, a man who had been initiated into the White Caps by defendant James Montgomery testified that he had been told the group “was a good thing for the country, in that it saved expenses by attending to those who made themselves obnoxious to the community” and that “their signs were a peculiar whistling and the passing of the hand across the face.”
Montgomery’s good word notwithstanding, these vigilantes were looked down upon by Wilson County’s white elite, and the White Cap era seems to have been short-lived.
On 27 September 1913, for $350, Wilson Insurance & Realty Company sold Columbus E. Artis a lot at the corner of Vick and Nash Streets, known as Lot 8 of Block A of the Rountree Tract. The address of this property is now 103 North Vick Street.
Deed Book 97, page 242, Wilson County Register of Deeds Office, Wilson.
Effenus Henderson (left) is an internationally known human resources and diversity thought leader. Wade J. Henderson (right) is, among other things, former president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. About 15 years ago, the two met at a National Urban League conference.
“You’re from North Carolina?,” asked Wade. “My father was from Wilson.”
“You need to talk to Lisa,” said Effenus.
Wade did. And in 2016, there we all were — in Dudley, North Carolina, birthplace of our grandparents, at the Henderson Family Reunion.
Wade’s grandfather Jesse “Jack” Henderson and my great-grandmother Bessie Lee Henderson were siblings. Jack came to Wilson around 1908, and my grandmother Hattie Henderson Ricks, Bessie’s orphaned daughter, arrived a few years later. Wade’s father Dempsey Lee Henderson was born in Wilson in 1927, and my father Rederick C. Henderson in 1934.
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Is your Wilson County-based family having a reunion this summer? I’d love to feature it here — and add your reunion flyer or program to my collection!
Photo in collection of Lisa Y. Henderson, 2016.
In May 1911, Betsey Sauls took the extraordinary step of suing Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Company for serious injuries she suffered at Black Creek depot. The law firm of James H. Pou and William A. Finch, well-known in the state for their high-profile civil and criminal litigation, filed on her behalf (and her husband Haywood Sauls‘, as was required by law for married women at the time.)
In a nutshell, on 3 May 1909, Betsey Sauls bought a train ticket to travel from Wilson to Black Creek. The train overshot the depot at Black Creek, but announced “All off for Black Creek!” as usual. As Sauls attempted to disembark, she fell from the train and was injured.
Pou and Finch asserted that by stopping beyond the usual location, Sauls was forced to step down from an excessive height and near a side track with sharp, exposed sills (the long, heavy timbers used as a foundation for crossties.) As Sauls stepped down, the train suddenly began to move backward, throwing Sauls to the ground.
Pou and Finch further asserted that A.C.L.R.R. had failed to provide a stepstool customarily provided for older passengers faced with a higher-than-usual descent.
Sauls was 65 to 70 years old, was “corpulent,” and not used to train travel. The knee injuries she sustained were serious, painful, and — she believed — permanent. She had difficulty walking and sleeping, could not work, and was forced to use a stick or crutch. She also had back and hip pain.
Sauls was now “an invalid and sufferer” of both physical and mental anguish. She could not visit family, friends, or church and had incurred considerable expense for medical treatment.
Sauls sought $5000 in damages.
In a brief, spare decision, the judge G.S. Ferguson awarded Sauls $500 (roughly $17,000 in 2026 dollars.)
Civil Action Papers, Wilson County (N.C.) Court Records (1909), http://www.familysearch.org.
Greensboro Daily News, 17 May 1939.
The “Wilson County negro” was a nine year-old boy.
Ned Kent was born 1 January 1930 in Wilson County to Isiah Kent and Clyde Pettieford; lived at Route 1, Wilson; and was a student. He was taken to Woodard-Herring Hospital, where he was pronounced dead of a fractured skull.
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.
Wilson Daily Times, 6 March 1940.
Elm City’s first black high school was damaged beyond saving in a fire in early 1940. County school authorities quickly made plans to replace the building using Works Progress Administration funds. As to the question of the 334 “schoolless” students, no decision was ever made, and children whose families could not arrange to transfer them elsewhere sat out until the new facility — Frederick Douglass High School — opened in 1941.