Public meeting on future Pender Street Park and Center.

This public notice appeared on the City of Wilson’s website, http://www.wilsonnc.org, on 10 March 2024. Pender Street Park lies within historic East Wilson and was once the site of housing for workers employed in nearby tobacco factories and cotton oil mills. The City recently announced plans to develop affordable housing near the park.

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Please join us for a public meeting to discuss future plans for Pender Street Park and Center. City staff and the project team will present options for the new park and center and solicit feedback from the public on potential designs. 

WHEN: Thursday, March 14, 2024, at 6 p.m.

WHERE: 300 Pender Street, Wilson, NC 27893

Last year the city announced plans for Pender Crossing, a new affordable housing project near the site of Pender Street Park. The multifamily property will include 48 apartments with a mix of 1-, 2-, and 3-bedroom units and will have onsite parking, a community building, and other amenities. The apartments will be priced to be affordable by people who work in the surrounding area. 

The city will build a new park and center in the area. This public meeting will provide additional details on the park relocation and site layout, as well as review the amenities proposed for the new center. These amenities include a basketball court, playground, open space, a walking path, shelter, and meeting space. During the meeting, the team will share potential park and center designs and provide ways for the public to provide input. 

This is a great opportunity to have your voice heard in the planning phase of this exciting new development!

Hat tip to R. Briggs Sherwood for alerting B.W.A. to this notice.  

Lightner works for Darden.

My recent examination of World War I draft registration cards from Wilson County is yielding pleasant surprises. For example, I had no idea that South Carolina native Lawrence T. Lightner, brother of prominent Raleigh builder and funeral director Calvin E. Lightner and founder of Goldsboro’s Lightner Funeral Home had lived in Wilson and worked for Charles H. Darden. He seems not to have stayed long, for by the 1920 census L.T. Lightner is listed as an undertaker in Goldsboro.

Darden and Son funeral home’s address was 610 East Nash Street. 615 was a small shotgun house across the street that the business, or Darden himself, may have owned.

Barnes and Campbell united in matrimony.

Wilson Mirror, 11 April 1894.

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In the 1880 census of Wilson township, Wilson County: farmer Sydnor Campbell, 48; wife America, 40; and children York, 16, Thomas, 12, Pennina, 7, Rueben, 5, Nelly, 3, Lawrence,  2, and Nancy, 1.

In the 1880 census of Gardners township, Wilson County: farmer Peter Barnes, 34; wife Emly, 30; and children Mathew, 13, Bolden, 11, John, 6, Mary E., 5, Cofield, 2, and Emly, 1 month.

On 7 April 1894, John T. Barnes, 20, of Wilson County, son of Peter and Emma Barnes, married Nellie Campbell, 19, daughter of Sidney and America Campbell, at the register’s office in Wilson, North Carolina.

On 13 December 1928, William Ellis, 70, of Wilson, son of Bob Ellis and Caroline [maiden name not listed], married Nellie Baker, 65, of Wilson, daughter of Sidney and Emmaline Campbell, at the bride’s residence in Wilson.

In the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 201 West Walnut, Nellie Ellis, 66, stemming machine worker at redrying plant; husband William Ellis, 71; roomer Julia Powell, 82, widow; nephew’s daughter Lizzie Sharpe, 35.

Nellie Baker Ellis died 12 October 1960 at her home at 201 West Walnut Street, Wilson. Per her death certificate, she was born 18 April 1883 in Wilson County to Sidney Campbell and Mikie Farmer; was widowed; and was retired.

Where we worked: Hackney Wagon Company/Hackney Brothers.

Hackney Wagon Company (and related Hackney Brothers Company, and later iterations) manufactured thousands upon thousands of wagons, buggies, drays (and later truck bodies) during its 140+ year existence in Wilson. Hackney employed innumerable African-American men over its long existence, and this running list can capture only a fraction.

Illustration from an early twentieth-century catalog. Hackney Brothers Body Company Prints; Images of Historic Wilson, N.C.; Images of North Carolina, http://www.digitalnc.org.

  • Cleveland Adams, wheelwright, 1918
  • Charley R. and Carnel Barnes [twins?], laborers, 1917
  • Dock Barnes, laborer, 1917
  • Henry Barnes, laborer, 1917
  • John Allen Barnes Jr., laborer, 1918
  • John Allen Barnes Sr., laborer, 1918
  • John H. Barnes, laborer, 1918
  • Julius Barnes, laborer, 1930
  • Lemon Barnes, laborer, 1918
  • Renzo Barnes, blacksmith, 1918
  • Tobe Barnes, machine operator, 1918
  • Wade Barnes, laborer, 1920
  • Walter N. Barnes, laborer, 1917
  • William S. Barnes, laborer, 1918
  • Burrell B. Barron, mechanic, 1918
  • Ed Battle, painter, 1917
  • Frank B. Battle, laborer, 1918
  • William Batts, laborer, 1918
  • William A. Batts, laborer, 1918
  • Charlie H. Bell, laborer, 1918
  • Bennie Bethea, wagon factory laborer, 1920
  • Junius Best, mechanic, 1918
  • Charlie H. Boone, laborer, 1918
  • Albert L. Boswell, mechanic, 1918
  • Zeb A. Brewer, mechanic, 1918
  • Arthur Brodie, machine operator, 1918
  • Henry Bryant, laborer, 1917; 1920
  • Arthur Cobb, laborer, 1917
  • Howard Cousar, laborer, 1917
  • Lindsay Covington, mechanic in iron department, 1918
  • Will Covington, laborer, 1918
  • William Darring, laborer, 1917
  • Ross Dew, laborer, 1917
  • Robert Dickens, laborer, 1918
  • William O. Dixson, laborer, 1918
  • William Dudley, drayman for buggy factory, 1917
  • Benjamin Earl, 1918
  • Robert Ellis, machine operator, 1918
  • Windsor Ellis, laborer, 1918
  • George W. Farmer, machine operator, 1918
  • Jesse Farmer, blacksmith, 1917
  • Jesse Falkland, tire setter, 1917
  • Fred Faulkland, laborer, 1917
  • Joseph R. Falkland, wood worker, 1917
  • Will Faulkland, laborer, 1918
  • Walter Faulkland, laborer, 1918
  • Walter M. Foster, fireman, 1910
  • Bennie E. Fuller, “cleaning brick,” 1917
  • Denis Fox, laborer, 1917
  • Walter Garner, laborer, 1918
  • Earnest Gibbs, blacksmith, 1917
  • John G. Graham, laborer, 1917
  • Richard Green, laborer, 1918
  • Charlie I. Ham, laborer, 1918
  • Charlie Harris, laborer, 1917
  • Ed Herring, laborer, 1918
  • Allen Hines, laborer, 1918
  • Hardy Hinnant, laborer, 1917
  • Jona Hogan, laborer, 1918

  • William Howard, laborer, 1920

  • William J. Howell, laborer, 1930
  • Barney Huggins, wagon factory laborer, 1920
  • Will Hunter, laborer, 1918
  • Allen Jackson, fireman, 1917
  • Jesse James, wagon factory laborer, 1920
  • Amos Johnson, laborer, 1917
  • Charley Johnson, laborer, 1917
  • Walter A. Johnson, laborer, 1917
  • Willard Johnson, laborer, 1918
  • William V. Johnson, laborer, 1917
  • Sankey Jones, laborer, 1918
  • Colonel Joyner, wagon factory laborer, 1920
  • Thomas King, laborer, 1918
  • Lewis Knight, sawmill worker, killed in accident at sawmill, 1920
  • Jarrette J. Langley, blacksmith, 1918
  • Dempsey Lassiter, blacksmith, 1918
  • Jesse C. Lassiter, laborer, 1917
  • Ed Lucas, killed by falling timber, 1910
  • Alexander McCrae, laborer, 1918
  • William F. McDowell, laborer, 1918
  • William J. McLane, laborer, 1918
  • Minor McLaughlin, laborer, 1918
  • Arthur Moore, laborer, 1917
  • John L. Moore, “works on buggies,” 1918
  • Arch Morrison, laborer, 1918
  • Buck Parker, laborer, 1917
  • Jesse Parker, laborer, 1917
  • Samuel Perry, 1915-1945
  • Braxton Purdie, laborer, 1917
  • Dock Royall, buggy factory laborer, 1920; mechanic, 1938
  • Fraun Sharp, laborer, 1918
  • Ben Smith, fireman, 1918
  • Willie Smith, laborer, 1918
  • Joshua Speight, logging, 1918
  • James D. Stallings, blacksmith, 1918
  • Lucian Studaway, painter, injured in a fire, 1918
  • Willie Sutton, laborer, 1918
  • Henry Tate, laborer, 1918
  • Davis Taylor, laborer, 1917
  • James H. Tinsley, laborer, 1917
  • Dan Umphrey, laborer, 1918
  • Shelton Thompson, laborer, 1917
  • John Ward, drayman, 1918
  • Merriman E. Watkins, laborer, 1917
  • Robert Wilkins, laborer, 1918
  • Washington Wilkins, blacksmith, 1917
  • Arthur Williams, wood worker, 1917
  • Joseph Williams, wagon maker, 1917
  • Roston Williams, fireman, 1917
  • Walter Williams, laborer, 1917
  • Jesse Williamson, machine operator, 1918
  • Will Woodard, laborer, 1918
  • Simeon Wooten, mechanic, 1918

Lane Street Project: a choice.

Atlas Obscura recently posted an article about restoration efforts at a “long-lost” African-American cemetery in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The story is numbingly familiar, of course, though each of these cemeteries followed a unique path from prime to nadir to rediscovery. Toward the end of the piece, in which we learn that historians at Middle Tennessee State University are spearheading the effort to reclaim Pleasant Garden — there’s this refreshing bit:

The city is interested in restoring it, too. As we have seen in Statesville, North Carolina, there’s nothing that inherently prevents a city from investing in the reclamation of privately owned (or abandoned) cemeteries. The City of Wilson’s representatives have held up their hands against involvement with Odd Fellows Cemetery, citing a “slippery slope” argument. In other words, if they do for Odd Fellows, they’ll have to do for all old private cemeteries in the city whose owners are absent or unknown. Wilson has made a choice.

Actually, there are only a handful of private cemeteries within Wilson’s city limits. The two most prominent, other than the LSP graveyards, are the Winstead family cemetery surrounded by the parking lot of the old Parkwood Mall and the tiny cemetery at Pine and Kenan Streets that the City paid good money to have surveyed via ground-penetrating radar back in 2019. (I blogged about the latter, but apparently accidentally deleted the post a couple of months ago.) However, none of the others holds the historical significance of Odd Fellows. Founded by Samuel H. Vick, Wilson’s most prominent 19th/early 20th century African-American for accomplished African-American men and women locked out of burial in bucolic, segregated Maplewood, Odd Fellows deserves the recognition and sustained care that only the City can provide.

Thank you for sending me this link, Debbie Price Gouldin!

Historic Black Business Series, no. 12: Lemon Taborn’s barbershop.

The 500 block of East Nash Street is justly remembered as the 20th century epicenter of Wilson’s African-American-owned businesses. However, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Black entrepreneurs and tradespeople also operated across the tracks. As Wilson’s downtown experiences a resurgence, let’s rediscover and celebrate these pioneering men and women.

Check in each Sunday for the latest in the Historic Black Business Series!

Lemon Taborn (later spelled Tabron) was born free about 1834 in Nash County, North Carolina, to Celia Taborn. He moved to the town of Wilson before 1860 and soon established a barbershop — the earliest known Black-owned business in Wilson.

E.B. Mayo noted Taborn’s shop into his 1872 map of Wilson on Tarboro Street just north of Vance Street. Taborn owned a large parcel of land in this block. (The house above was built after the family sold the lot.)

The Wilson Advance, 24 September 1880.

His barbershop also is drawn into the 1882 map of the city.

Taborn died in 1893, and his wife Edmonia Barnes Taborn and daughter Carrie Taborn continued his business until his sons Joshua, Jacob Astor, and Thomas Henry Taborn established Tabron Brothers Barbershop.

Photo by Lisa Y. Henderson, February 2024.

The obituary of Gray Reid.

Wilson Daily Times, 13 March 1950.

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In the 1910 census of Otter Creek township, Edgecombe County: farmer Amos Read, 64; lodger Gray Read, 57, and children Gray, 18, Eligh, 15, Margrett, 13, and John, 13.

On 11 February 1915, Gray Reed Jr., 23, of Gardners township, son of Gray and Lucy Reed, married Mary Hagans, 18, of Gardners township, daughter of James and Hannah Hagans, in Wilson County. Primitive Baptist minister Ruffin Hyman performed the ceremony.

In 1917, Gray Reid registered for the World War I draft in Wilson County. Per his registration card, he was born July 1891 in Edgecombe County, N.C.; and had an injured leg.

In the 1940 census of Burgaw, Pender County, North Carolina: Gray Reid, 48, formerly of Edgecombe County, N.C., inmate at North Carolina State Prison Camp.

Gray Reid died 11 March 19 1950 at Mercy Hospital, Wilson. Per his death certificate, he was born 22 November 1891 in Edgecombe County to Gray Reid and Lucy Joyner; lived at Route 3, Wilson; was a widower; and worked as a laborer. Elijah Reid, 300 South East Street, was informant.