The Daily Journal (Wilmington, N.C.), 16 September 1876.
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Wait. What?
Who was Mary Carrow? Who was Charles Smith? And what (and where) was the Black Creek Male and Female Institute “for colored boys and girls”???
I have found only two Mary Carrows in Wilson County during the time period — a mother and daughter, both white, listed in the 1880 census of the Town of Wilson. The daughter, Mary Estelle Carrow, wasn’t born until in 1879. Her mother Mary Dew Carrow, born about 1853, was married to John B. Carrow, a grocer and barkeep.
However, in the 1880 census of Goldsboro, Wayne County, there is a Mary Carrow, 52, white, “teaching.” This Mary Carrow operated a private primary school in Goldsboro in the late 1870s and was a much-loved teacher at Goldsboro’s graded school from 1881 until her death in 1899.
Goldsboro Argus, 28 August 1879.
This Mary Carrow was not a “young colored lady,” and I have not yet found anyone who could be the one hired to teach in Black Creek.
Charles Smith, formerly principal of Wilson Academy, was born about 1855, and married Virginia Barnes (or Winstead), sister of Braswell R. Winstead. Smith gave his occupation as minister in the 1880 when his brother-in-law, who lived in his household, was a teacher.
Wilson Advance, 10 September 1880.
In the 1870 census of Town of Wilson, Wilson County: farm laborer William Smith, 27; wife Temperance, 31; son Charles, 20, farm laborer; and Nancy Brown, 51.
On 28 August 1874, Charles Smith, 22, married Jennie Barnes, 17, in Wilson County.
In the 1880 census of Wilson, Wilson County: on Pettigrew Street, minister Charles Smith, 26; wife Virginia, 22; and children Arminta, 7, John T., 3, and Charles H., 1; and brother-in-law Braswell Winstead, 20, teaching school.
Charles H. Smith went on to become a prominent A.M.E. Zion minister. B.R. Winstead remained in Wilson all his life as a close associate of Samuel H. Vick.
Most mysterious is Black Creek Male and Female Institute, about which I have found nothing at all.
