Edmundson

No. 1489.

“I ran away & came to Newbern during war,” he said.

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Solomon Edmundson was born in Greene County about 1846 and reared in Wilson County. At the time he applied for an account at the New Bern branch of the Freedmen’s Bank, he was working as a waiting man for George W. Nason at the post office. He had not seen his father Gerry since the war ended and was not sure whether he used the surname Edmundson or Lane. It is not clear where Solomon’s mother and siblings lived. However Solomon himself appears in the 1870, 1880 and 1900 censuses of New Bern, Craven County. In 1870, he was a 23 year-old hostler sharing a dwelling with Alexander Sears, 48, a white postal clerk. In 1880, he lived alone and worked as a bill poster. In 1900, he remained alone, working as a bill poster and carpet layer.

Freedmen’s Bank Records, 1865-1871 [database on-line], http://www.ancestry.com. 

Wright Edmundson plantation.

The Edmundson-Woodard House is a historic plantation home located near Stantonsburg, Wilson County, North Carolina. The house is a two-story, three-bay, single-pile, L-plan, Federal-style frame dwelling. It has a two-story wing added in the mid-19th century, side gable roof, exterior end chimneys, and hipped-roof porch with flared columns. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.

Wright Edmundson built the house about 1830 on 1400 acres of land between Toisnot Swamp and Contentnea Creek. He owned another 1600 acres north of Black Creek and was one of the wealthiest planters in the area. The Nomination Form for the property notes that Edmundson reported owning $98,600 in personal property in the 1860 census, but glosses over the form of the bulk of that wealth — slaves. The slave schedule that year is more plain — Edmundson owned 62 men and women housed in 12 cabins.

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Edmundson-Woodard House, 1980. Photo attached to nomination form.

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Wright Edmundson’s land today.