Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 23 March 1940.
With the destruction by fire of Elm City’s black high school in 1940, the education of local children slammed to a halt. Amanda Mitchell Cameron was in the eighth grade at the time. She recalls that, rather than delay their high school studies, two of her older siblings carpooled to Wilson with a neighborhood boy to attend Darden High School. Most children, however, stayed home until the newly built school opened in 1941.
Wilson Daily Times, 1 September 1932.
Firemen allowed a grass fire at “a negro cemetery” to “burn over” the field. Alarm boxes at two locations on Stantonsburg Street indicate that the cemetery was Oakdale, which the Town of Wilson had abandoned in favor of Vick almost two decades earlier.
Wilson Daily Times, 2 December 1932.
The Lincoln, a white-owned movie theatre serving black patrons, did not reopen after the fire. Its owner auctioned off his movie equipment, organ, and other fixtures, and the building was soon advertised for rent. In my youth, it was home to the Midtown Lounge. It now houses Whole Truth Church of God in Christ.
Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 31 March 1934.
Evansdale Colored School was built with Rosenwald funds.
Fire tore through downtown Wilson in May 1897 after Briggs and Flemmings’ prize house went up in flames. The first edifice of Saint Mark’s Episcopal church was among the casualties.
Wilson Times, 14 May 1897.
Richmond Times-Dispatch, 11 October 1910.
More about the fire that destroyed seven of Samuel H. Vick‘s rental houses.
Wilson Daily Times, 22 April 1948.
News and Record (Greensboro, N.C.), 5 November 1917.
We’ve seen that Samuel H. Vick was an early and enthusiastic car collector, but who knew this early and enthusiastic? In 1919, the North Carolina Secretary of State’s office reported five cars registered to Vick — a Chandler, a Reo, two Hudsons, and a Cadillac. Two years earlier, however, he had lost an astounding 20 cars in a garage fire behind his commercial property on East Nash Street.
The 1913 Sanborn fire insurance map of Wilson shows a wooden structure behind the brick Odd Fellows building, which housed the Globe Theatre, and adjacent to the rear of the Hotel Union. It hardly seems large enough to have housed 20 vehicles, but may have been expanded between 1913 and the 1917 fire.
