Lane Street Project: calling all faith leaders.

Take the first step with us on the journey to restoring Vick Cemetery to  recognition in the community as a sacred space.

A team of faith leaders is working with Lane Street Project for the Reconsecration of Vick Cemetery. Though we cannot touch every blade of grass in Vick, we want to cover as much of its ground as we can. For this, we need more faith leaders — of every denomination, creed, or color — to walk this walk with us. Your role will be simple, but powerful.

A great moral wrong has been done in the neglect of Vick Cemetery and the stripping of its graves of all identifying markers. Faith leaders, if you believe in dignity after death and the sanctity of human remains, please join other men and women of the cloth in anointing the sacred ground of Vick Cemetery. All, please encourage your pastor, your imam, your rabbi to participate. And please come on the morning of August 5 to honor our mothers and fathers and to bear witness.

For more information, please contact Lisa Y. Henderson at lanestreetproject@gmail.com no later than July 27. Thank you.

Where did they go?: an Arkansas birth certificate.

——

I have not identified this Samuel Jones in Wilson County. (He was not Samuel Jones, son of Duke and Emily Jones.)

On 10 February 1918, Sam Jones, 47, of Badgett township, Pulaski County, Arkansas, married Bertha Martin, 28, of Badgett township, Pulaski County, Arkansas, in Pulaski County.

In the 1920 census of Little Rock, Pulaski County, Arkansas: city laborer Sam Jones, 48; wife Bertha, 30; daughter Annie May, 8 months; and stepson Edwin Martin, 8. Sam Jones was born in North Carolina; his wife and children in Arkansas.

Bertha Jones died 21 November 1925 in Gray township, Pulaski County, Arkansas. Per her death certificate, she was born 17 May 1899 in Pulaski County to [unnamed] Houston and Mary Houston; was married to Sam Jones; lived on Jacksonville, Arkansas; and was buried in Johnson Cemetery.

In the 1930 census of Eatman township, Pulaski County, Arkansas: farmer Sam Jones, 57, and daughters Annie M., 10, and Sammie L., 6.

Lane Street Project: Sam Vick’s purchase of the lot.

As we know, in 1913, Samuel H. Vick sold the Town of Wilson the 7.84 acres that became Vick Cemetery. As the deed below shows, Vick had purchased this land in February 1908 from banker Franklin W. Barnes and his wife Matilda Bynum Barnes. 

Deed book 81, page 196, Wilson County Register of Deeds Office.

Notice that Vick’s purchase is described as about 10 acres adjoining the Rountree Church lot. In other words, Vick bought a large lot that he later subdivided. At an unknown date, he granted the two or so acres adjoining Rountree Cemetery to Hannibal Lodge, Odd Fellows, for use as its cemetery and conveyed the rest to the City for Vick Cemetery in 1913. The Odd Fellows never filed a deed for their cemetery (if the property were ever formally conveyed), but we now have a tighter window — between 1908 and 1913 — for the date of its establishment.

So, if Odd Fellows Cemetery was not established until some time after 1908, why do some of its grave markers show death dates before that time? Recall Wilson’s first Black public cemetery, Oakdale. Sam Vick was an ardent Odd Fellow. It may be that after the cemetery opened, he had the graves of his mother, father, and daughter Viola moved from Oakdale and reinterred in a new family plot. Chief Ben Mincey may also have done the same for his father and brother. 

Confederates and colored water.

I’ve talked about Wilson County’s courthouse monument before. There’s renewed pressure to remove it, but its apologists claim it’s not a Confederate monument at all. Rather, they say, it commemorates veterans of all wars. 

I’ll let y0u be the judge. 

Does the deceptively simple motif below seem familiar? It’s a Saint Andrew’s cross, a notable element of Confederate national and battle flags.

It’s engraved an astounding TEN TIMES around the monument, including the two locations below. (The rough indentation on the front of the plinth? It’s where the word COLORED was gouged out in the early 1960s. There was a water fountain where that little pyramid now sits. Isn’t that reason enough to get this thing out of the public eye?)

Two more. And so on.

The monument went up on Veterans Day 1926, paid for by the John W. Dunham Chapter of United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Thomas Hadley Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. It’s on public property, steps away from the county courthouse, a building symbolizing the power and authority of local government. 

Recent North Carolina law makes retiring these relics difficult — but not impossible. I urge Wilson County Commissioners to find a way. 

Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, July 2023.

Lane Street Project: why we need a survey map, pt. 3.

Friday, July 14. 12:15 P.M.

Well, this didn’t take long. This is the survey flag at the rear western corner of Vick Cemetery. I looked around for an iron pin, but didn’t see one.

The westernmost section of the back border. New South Associates did not GPR-survey this strip, but the adjacent ground shows grave anomalies.

There was heavy rain in the morning, and water was still standing in the shadow of trees standing at the cemetery’s edge adjacent to the path of Piedmont Natural Gas’ pipeline.

The mosquitoes.

I don’t know what to make of this mess of pink flags. An arrow points to the old iron pipe that once marked the corner. A foot away, the recent surveyor stuck a wooden stake. Is that stake the actual corner? Or is the corner the other wooden stake three feet rear right? And why are the fence and pine saplings festooned?

WE DEMAND A SURVEY MAP.

Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, July 2023.

Lane Street Project: in memory of Victoria Allen (1893-1940).

I’ve spoken of the database I am developing of likely burials in Vick, Odd Fellows, and Rountree Cemeteries. My spreadsheet draws upon death certificates, obituaries, and other sources — most distressingly imprecise. The term “Rountree Cemetery” on these documents may refer to Vick, Odd Fellows, or Rountree. Some documents broadly refer only to burial in Wilson. However, in the absence of official burial records for any of the cemeteries, we make do.

This series honors the men, women, and children who never had grave markers, or whose stones have been lost or stolen or destroyed. Graves believed to be in Vick Cemetery, which the City of Wilson stripped of remaining markers in 1996, will be identified with a Vick Cemetery logo.

——

Victoria Allen died 19 March 1940 in Wilson. Per her death certificate, she was 47 years old; was born in Wayne County, N.C., to Isom Sutton and Exie Rountree; worked as a laborer; was a widow; lived at 406 Bruton; and was buried in Wilson [most likely, Vick Cemetery.] Effie Wilkins, 617 West Hines Street, was informant.

Lane Street Project: July 20 city council meeting, public comment talking points.

Mayor Carlton Stevens recently indicated that Vick Cemetery would be on the agenda at the next city council meeting. Wilson doesn’t post agendas in advance (the most recent are for April 2023) and doesn’t post minutes at all (which is par for the general lack of transparency this government holds as a core value.)

Anyway, the next meeting is Thursday, July 20, at 7:00 P.M. on the third floor of City Hall, 112 Goldsboro Street East. (The entrance is at the side of the building.)

If you believe the City is mishandling Vick Cemetery, please let them know. As long as they can convince themselves it’s only me and Castonoble Hooks howling into the wind, they’ll keep their backs turned.

Here are the rules:

Please feel free to speak your heart and mind, but if you are interested, here are a few talking points that come to mind:

  • Transparency and accountability. To date, there have been none. Neither council, the Mayor, nor other city officials have sought to engage the descendant community and allies or have otherwise communicated the City’s intentions.
  • The fence. The fence is a non-starter right now. It is clear that graves lie across Vick’s modern property lines. Placing a fence inside the power poles (and on top of graves) is not an option. And, obviously, a fence outside the power poles is impossible, too. Also, there are better, less intrusive ways to protect Vick from dumping and car tricks.
  • The survey map. Why won’t the City order a survey map of Vick? Here’s why we need one. And once we get it, it should be filed with Wilson County Register of Deeds.
  • The graves. What are the plans for marking the graves? What is to be done about graves that lie in the current right-of-way (primarily between the power poles and the ditch)? Exhume them, DNA-test the remains, reinter in Rest Haven? Sponsor DNA testing for potential descendants interesting in trying to identify the deceased?
  • The GPR survey. (a) New South Associates should return to Vick to survey the unsurveyed areas at the edges of the cemetery. (b) Why did the City sit on the survey report until April 2023 when it was received in October 2022? Did city council avail itself of New South Associates’ offer to meet to explain the survey results? Why not? Only two council members attended the May 11 public forum about the report. Where were the other five?
  • The power poles. These poles are inside Vick Cemetery. And are standing in and among graves. How did this happen? What can be done about it? Should the power lines be re-routed? Will council initiate a cost inquiry and/or feasibility study?
  • The headstones. The City ordered Vick’s headstones removed in 1996. Where are they now? If the City doesn’t have them, what happened to them? We demand an independent investigation.
  • The law. State statue makes it unlawful to:
    (1) Open, disturb, destroy, remove, vandalize or desecrate any casket or other repository of any human remains, by any means including plowing under, tearing up, covering over or otherwise obliterating or removing any grave or any portion thereof.
    (2) Take away, disturb, vandalize, destroy, tamper with, or deface any tombstone, headstone, monument, grave marker, grave ornamentation, or grave artifacts erected or placed within any cemetery to designate the place where human remains are interred or to preserve and perpetuate the memory and the name of any person. This subdivision shall not apply to the ordinary maintenance and care of a cemetery.
    What is the City doing to insure it does not further violate this statute?
  • Funding. Is the City seeking grant funding for Vick?
  • Expertise. With whom is the City talking about how to move forward at Vick? [They certainly aren’t talking to me.] With whom is the City consulting? If no one, why not? Has the City sought the assistance of the State Archaeology Office? Is it reaching out to cities that have addressed similar situations, like Rocky Mount, Statesville, or Elizabeth City?

Lane Street Project: Vick Cemetery in the rain.

Wilson got more than an inch of rain this morning. Here’s what I found at Vick Cemetery as the rain was tapering off.

Saturated ground, standing water, run-off rushing through a cut in the ditch bank (that has been reinforced with riprap), New South’s orange stubs marking gravesites in the middle of this mess.