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.
We have discussed here, here and here the small Crossroads community of interrelated mixed-race families who moved back and forth across the color line in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. David Rowe, perhaps born Rose, was part of this community.
On 26 February 1848, David Row married Exey Sasser in Johnston County. Sasser was white, the daughter of Josiah and Sally Beard Sasser.
In the 1850 census of District 9, Johnston County, N.C.: farmer David Roe, 30; wife Axey, 25; Treasey Horne, 70; Sally Sasser, 50; and Ruffin Roe, 1. All were described as white.
In the 1860 census of Kirbys district, Wilson County: farmer David Rose, 36; wife Axey, 34; son Ruffin, 10; Theophilus, 13 [no relationship designated]; and Sallie Sasser, 67. Sallie Sasser and Theophilus Rose were white; the others mulatto.
In the 1870 census of Crossroads township, Wilson County: farmer David Rose, 50; wife Exile, 43; son Ruffin, 18; and Sallie Sasser, 75.
In the 1880 census of Crossroads township, Wilson County: farmer David Rowe, 55, and wife Exeline, 54; also William Woodard, 50; wife Eliza, 50; and children John, 27, Clarkie Ann, 19, Calvin, 17, Montiville, 16, Claudius, 12, and Louisa, 8. The Rowes were described as mulatto; the Woodards as white.
David Rowe made out his will on 23 January 1896. To his “beloved wife Axie Rowe,” he left life interests in one-third of all his land, including his residence and outhouses, and his personal property and money. To daughter-in-law Talitha Rowe, he left a life interest in “4 acres of land on east side of the lane, including the residence of Ruffin Haywood Rowe Sr.” To Sarah, daughter of Talitha Rowe: one-fifth of his personal estate. All remaining property was to be divided among his four grandsons, James William Rowe, David J. Rowe, John Hardy Rowe, and Ruffin Haywood Rowe Jr. Rowe named James Newsome both his executor and the guardian of his minor grandsons and signed his will with an X.
In the 1900 census of Crossroads township, Wilson County: widow Exie Rowe, 70; grandsons David J., 23, James W., 25, John H., 21, and Ruffin H., 19; [grand]daughter-in-law Prytha [Piety], 20; grandson Albert M., 8 months; [grand]daughter-in-law Alice, 18; and daughter-in-law Litha, 46, divorced [from Ruffin H. Rose Sr.]
The final account of David Rowe’s personal property, dated 1 June 1905, reveals that his widow purchased the entire lot, mostly on credit.
Will of David Rowe (1896), North Carolina, U.S. Wills and Probate Records, 1665-1998, http://www.ancestry.com.
A year after inheriting, Hardy Lassiter Jr. sold the 57-acre parcel he received in the division of his father Hardy Lassiter Sr.‘s estate.
Deed Book 1, page 25, Wilson County Register of Deeds Office, Wilson.
This indenture made the 19th day of May AD 1855 between Hardy Lassiter of the first part & William L. Farmer of the second part — all of the county Wilson State of North Carolina witnesses that for and in consideration of the sum of one hundred and twenty five Dollars, the receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged the said Hardy Lassiter has given, granted bargained sold & conveyed & by these presents does give, grant, bargain, Sell & convey unto the Said Wm. L. Farmer his heirs & assigns a certain tract or parcel of land lying in the county of Wilson, adjoining the lands of Nathan Rountree, Washington Ruffin & others, containing fifty seven & a half acres more or less, the land being that drawn by the Said Hardy Lassiter in the division of his Fathers estate to have & to hold the said land unto the said William L. Farmer his heirs & assigns. And the said Hardy Lassiter does hereby covenant & agree himself, his heirs, executors & administrators to forever warrant & defend the title hereby conveyed to the Said William L. Farmer his heirs & assigns forever
In testimony whereof we hereunto set our own hands & seas this the day & date above written Hardy (X) Lassiter Witness B.E. Farmer
In the 1880 census of Taylor township, Wilson County, N.C.: farmer Ichabud Powell, 32; wife Mary A., 32; and children Beedy A., 9, Pheny, 7, John, 5, James W., 4, Henry G., 3, and Mary A.E., 11 months.
In the 1900 census of Jackson township, Nash County, N.C.: Ichabod Powell, 50, farmer; wife Mary A., 50; children Mary A., 20, Martha, 18, Joseph, 16, Margarett, 14, Geneva, 12, Billie P., 11, Dempsey H., 9, and Paul J., 6; and nephew Henry Lassiter, 28.
Mary Ann Powell died 5 April 1921 in Jackson township, Nash County. Per her death certificate, she was 74 years old; was born in Wilson County to Silas Lassiter and Orpie Lassiter of Wilson County; was the widow of Ickibuck Powell; and was buried in Powell graveyard, Nash County.
Many thanks to Levolyre Farmer Pitt for sharing this photo of her great-grandparents.
There are levels of terribleness to this report of the sale of nine enslaved people at a Wayne County, N.C., auction.
The nine people sold were the grown or nearly grown children of an enslaved woman and a free man of color, plus four grandchildren of that couple. They were purchased by enslavers in three different counties, including Dr. Lewis J. Dortch, who lived in Stantonsburg, in what is now Wilson County but was then Edgecombe. I have not been able to discover the names of the woman and children Dr. Dortch bought.
Adam Winn was born about 1805 into a large free family of color, most likely in Duplin County, North Carolina. He was a prosperous farmer who was also a slaveowner — with devastating consequences. Wynn, who never legally married, took two white women and an enslaved African-American woman as common-law wives. His children by the former were free, but his children by the latter were, like their mother, enslaved. He lived openly with his children and, in the 1850 census of North Division, Duplin County, Adam Winn, 45, is listed with William, 13, Marshal, 11, John, 9, Woodard, 7, and Woodley Winn, 5, as well as Moses Simmons, 18. The Winn boys were his sons and, despite their census appearance, were not free.
Adam Winn was land-rich, but cash-poor, and mortgaged his property heavily. In April 1849, for example, he borrowed money from a neighbor named Benjamin Oliver and put up enslaved people Bethana, Martha, and Oliver as security, along with 133 acres of land. In the early 1850s, his financial affairs crashed down around his head, and he lost not only the nine people whose sale was reported above, but several others. Winn had mortgaged six enslaved people to secure debt to Furnifold Jernigan (who purchased a 22 year-old man at the sale above) and, after Jernigan’s death, Winn’s fight to regain them reached the North Carolina Supreme Court in William K. Lane v. Jane Bennett et al., 56 N.C. 371 (1858).
By valid will, Furnifold Jernigan had made several provisions for the disposal of his slaves. To his wife Jane Jernigan (who later married Thomas Bennett), he left 13 people, including Bill Winn, John Winn, Simpson, and Anne. To his daughter Mary Anne Kelly, he left eight people, including Olive. He also provided for the liberation of “negroes, Dave, Tom, Morris, Lila and Mary” and their transport to a free state and directed that ten additional enslaved people be sold. John A. Green and William K. Lane were named executors.
Before Jernigan’s legacies were distributed, Adam Winn filed suit to recover John Winn, Bill Winn, Simpson, Anne, Olive, and Dave, claiming that (1) he had mortgaged the slaves to Jernigan to secure payment of money Jernigan loaned him, and (2) he had a judgment attesting that he had repaid the money, and the slaves had been reconveyed to him.
The executors filed a “bill” with the court seeking guidance on the will’s provisions. Jane Bennett and Mary Anne Kelly claimed the full value of the slaves bequeathed to them or, in the alternative, the amount paid by Winn to redeem them. The court found that each was entitled to the amount of the redemption. (And Dave, having been redeemed by Winn and returned to slavery, lost the freedom Jernigan intended for him.)
[Do not mistake Jernigan for a benevolent man. In 1834, Furnifold Jernigan and David Cole were charged in Wayne County Superior Court with taking Kilby O’Quinn, a free boy of color, from Wayne to Bladen County for “their own use.” In 1837, Jernigan was indicted for selling Betsy Dinkins, the free “colored” daughter of a white woman. In the three years between, Jernigan and at least four co-defendants appeared on the Wayne County docket ten times on charges of selling free negroes, but never vent to trial. Despite Jernigan’s notoriety (he had fourteen other unrelated court appearances in the same period,) the state’s solicitor in the Dinkins case was compelled to complain to the judge that “the defendant by the influence of several men of standing … has … so many of the Court yard, in his favor, that it would be a mere mockery to enter upon this trial in Wayne.” The case was ordered removed to Greene County, but never appeared on the docket there. In 1850, Jernigan, still living in Wayne County, owned $5000 in farmland and 43 slaves.]
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In the 1850 census of Edgecombe County, N.C.: Dr. L.J. Dortch, 32, physician, and L.H. Moye, 32.
In the 1850 slave schedule of Edgecombe County, L.J. Dortch is listed with 8 enslaved people — women and girls aged 35, 32, 29, 11, and 1 month, and boys aged 11, 6, and 4.
Lewis Jackson Dortch died 28 October 1854 in Stantonsburg. More about him later.
Deed Book 21, page 215, Duplin County Register of Deeds; Minutes of the Superior Court of Wayne County, Spring Term, 1834, and Minutes of the Superior Court of Wayne County, Spring Term, 1837, Records of Wayne County, North Carolina State Archives; State Docket, Superior Court of Wayne County, vol. 1,1834-1843, Records of Wayne County, NCSA;Petition from Edward Banly to Superior Court, April 6, 1837, Box 4, Records Concerning Slaves and Free Persons of Color, Records of Wayne County, NCSA.
(Josephus Daniels was editor of the Advance at the time, so it’s no surprise he thought it paramount to note that Hagans faithfully voted the white supremacist Democratic ticket. He tells us nothing of Hagans’ family, his occupation, his history — but we know this.)
Wilson Advance, 30 July 1880.
The Advance‘s follow-up was devoted almost exclusively to the exculpation of J. Frank Eatmon, primarily via inferences from the testimony of Hagans’ “old, half-idiotic” unnamed wife, who had been severely beaten the night her husband was killed.
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In the 1860 census of Nahunta township, Wayne County: Mordecai Hagans, 23, farm laborer, living alone.
In the 1870 census of Upper Town Creek township, Edgecombe County: farm laborer Mordecai Hagans, 37, and wife Cherry, 45.
In the 1880 census of Oldfields township, Wilson County: laborer Mordicia Hagins, about 50, and wife Cherry, about 45. [They are listed immediately after the households of J. Frank Eatmon and Pearson Eatmon’s mother Aquilla Eatmon and likely lived on the property of one or the other.]
I have not found him in records, but Joseph Boone was likely a member of the small extended Boone family of free people of color who migrated into Nash County from adjoining counties to the north. After allegedly killing Uriah Ricks, he fled to Wilson, where he hopped a train south, most likely on the Wilmington & Weldon Railroad. Note Boone’s description — “about one-fourth free negro, but generally passes for white.” Race was more fluid in nineteenth-century North Carolina than we credit.
Did you know Wilson was the site of a Confederate hospital?
Its remnants stand at the corner of Lee and Goldsboro Streets.
In 1954, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources’ North Carolina Highway Historical Marker Program installed a marker near the original site of the hospital, and the agency’s website features the startling essay below.
“The Confederacy organized its Medical Department late in 1861 and within months, in April of 1862, the North Carolina General Military Hospital No. 2 was established in Wilson in what had once been the Wilson Female Seminary. Dr. Solomon Sampson Satchwell, who had graduated from Wake Forest College and studied medicine at New York University before serving as a military surgeon with the Twenty-fifth North Carolina Infantry, was appointed Surgeon-in-Charge. In the 1864 Confederate States Medical and Surgical Journal the Wilson hospital was listed as one of twenty-one principal hospitals in North Carolina. It served those wounded in fighting along the coast.
“The hospital made Wilson known outside of the state of North Carolina. Employing thirty-five to forty people, it also boosted the local economy. Most nurses and orderlies were unskilled soldiers; however, at least seven local women were known to have worked at the hospital as matrons. Their duties included food preparation and cleaning. The Atlantic Coast Line Railroad that ran through Wilson provided the military hospital with supplies, including ice and turpentine, used to treat fevers.
“Fighting never broke out in Wilson, but, on July 20, 1863, ‘an immense armament of negroes and Yankees’ advanced on Wilson. Reportedly, a group of invalids from the hospital and local militia defended Wilson by destroying the bridge over the Toisnot Swamp to halt the invaders. All of those who died at the hospital were buried in a mass grave. The hospital closed at the end of the war. When Wilson created a town cemetery, they were re-interred there with a Confederate monument erected over the site. Wilson Female Seminary reopened in the former hospital and received a charter as Wilson Collegiate Institute in 1872.”
The interpretive signboard in front of the building, erected by the North Carolina Civil War Trails program (and badly in need of a good wash), reads:
“This is the only known surviving portion of one of Wilson’s earliest school buildings, the Wilson Female Academy, which also served as a Confederate hospital during the war. Wilson’s location on the Wilmington & Weldon Railroad, the principal north-south line that was linked to Virginia in Weldon by the Petersburg Railroad, made the town a good site for a hospital after the war began. On April 1, 1862, Confederate authorities seized the building for use as a general military hospital.
“Dr. Solomon S. Satchwell, the surgeon in charge, turned the forty classrooms and other rooms into wards and treated hundreds of patients there. The frame, two-story building had a two-hundred-foot-long facade and a large one-story rear addition. It also had dozens of large windows, essential for summer ventilation.
“Soldiers who died there of wounds or disease were buried near the academy grounds. In 1894, they were reinterred under a burial mound in Maplewood Cemetery two blocks north of here. The Confederate monument on top of the mound was dedicated on May 10, 1902.
“Edmund G. Lind, a British architect who emigrated to New York in 1855 and subsequently practiced in Maryland, North Carolina, and Georgia, designed the Italianate-style school building. It was completed in 1859 about two blocks south of here. After the war, the former female academy and hospital served as Wilson Collegiate Institute from 1872 until it closed in 1898, when the building was separated into housing units. This section, part of the school’s rear addition, was moved here in 2005 and rehabilitated.”
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Typically, the historical marker essay makes no mention of the men and women performing the hospital’s essential grunt work. Enslaved men and women toiled as nurses, cooks, and laundresses, and the reports Dr. Satchwell was required to file regularly reveal their names.
Daniel, Samuel, Benjamin, Edy, Annie, Sarah, William, Francis, Flora, Eli, Jerry, Matilda, Harmon, Hoyt, Martha, Dorcas, Laura, Mary, Oliver, Alvana, Alfred, George, America, Isabella, Harriet, Rachel, Henry, Joseph, General, Ansley, Tilda, Minerva, Delphia, Maria, Mahala, Nicey, Chaney, Esther, Eliza, Tom, and Charles cooked, cleaned, and cared for wounded Confederate soldiers over the next two years. Pomeroy P. Clark, a Connecticut-born buggy manufacturer who arrived in Wilson in 1851, had a near-monopoly over the provision of enslaved people to the hospital, supplying almost all of the men and women named above.
Muster Roll dated 1 April 1862 showing enslaved people, at bottom left, rented to the Confederate Hospital.
This is curious. P.P. Clark is listed in 1850 slave schedule of Nash County, North Carolina, as the owner of four enslaved people. In the 1860 census of Wilson, Wilson County, he is described as a lumber manufacturer with $2000 in personal property, but is not listed in the slave schedule. We know that in 1860 Clark bought four enslaved people from John P. Clark as trustee of Nancy B. Clark. The adult in this group of four, a woman named Peggy, is not named as a hospital laborer. Peggy had once belonged to Henry Flowers, whose daughter was Nancy B. Clark. Flowers’ estate also included enslaved women named America and Isabelle, and an enslaved man named Henry (known as Harry), who married a woman named Flora around 1859. These four match names of people put to work at the Confederate Hospital, but who were the others? If Clark (who himself worked at the hospital as steward were acting as a broker for other enslavers, would Dr. Satchwell have recorded the workers as “Negro slave hired of P.P. Clark”?
In addition to enslaved people, a few free people of color worked at Confederate Hospital No. 2. On 26 May 1864, Lemon Taborn and William Jones were hired to perform unspecified work at $11.00/month. Alexander Jones was hired five days later at the same rate and, on June 1, Mord. Hagans came aboard for $10/month. The Jones cousins appear in the 1860 census of Old Fields township, Wilson County, and Mordecai Hagans in the 1860 census of Nahunta township, Wayne County.
Muster Rolls, Hospital Department, Wilson, N.C., 1862-1864, War Department Collection of Confederate Records, National Archives and Records Administration; photos by Lisa Y. Henderson.
Priscilla Joyner was born in Nash County, not Wilson, but close enough for her life story — and the context in which it unfolded — to be of particular interest to Black Wide-Awake readers.
“Priscilla Joyner was born into the world of slavery in 1858 North Carolina and came of age at the dawn of emancipation. Raised by a white slaveholding woman, Joyner never knew the truth about her parentage. She grew up isolated and unsure of who she was and where she belonged—feelings that no emancipation proclamation could assuage.
“Her life story—candidly recounted in an oral history for the Federal Writers’ Project—captures the intimate nature of freedom. Using Joyner’s interview and the interviews of other formerly enslaved people, historian Carole Emberton uncovers the deeply personal, emotional journeys of freedom’s charter generation—the people born into slavery who walked into a new world of freedom during the Civil War. From the seemingly mundane to the most vital, emancipation opened up a myriad of new possibilities ….
“… Uncertainty about her parentage haunted her life, and as Jim Crow took hold throughout the South, segregation, disfranchisement, and racial violence threatened the loving home she made for her family. But through it all, she found beauty in the world and added to it where she could.”
Priscilla Joyner’s family in the 1860 census of Dortches township, Nash County, N.C. She is believed to have been the daughter of Ann Liza Joyner and an unknown African-American man.
This Indenture made the 7 day of August one Thousand Eight hundred and Twenty five Between Lewis Artice of the State of North Carolina and County of Edgecombe of the one part and William Woodard of the other part of County and State aforesaid Witnesseth that I the sd. Lewis Artice for an in consideration of the sum of Four Hundred and three Dollars to me in hand paid at or before the sealing or Delivery of these presents the receipt whereof I hereby acknowledge that I have Bargaind, Sold and Conveyed unto the sd. William Woodard and his Heirs a Certain tract or parcel of land situate in the County above Written and on the South side of Little Contentney Creek and Boundered as follows to Wit Beginning at a white oak in the Creek then a line of Mark’d trees to a corner pine then to red oak which is a Dividing Corner Between the sd. tract and Wilie Ellis land then a line of mark’d trees to a Corner Sweetgum in the Creek then up the various Courses of sd. Creek to this first Station Containing one hundred and 3/4 Acres be the sum more or less the sd. Lewis Artice do warranted forever defend the rite title and Claim unto the sd. Wm. Woodard and his Heirs forever in witness whereof I have hereinto set my hand and seal the day and date ante written Signed and Sealed in presents of us. Jas. B. Woodard Lewis X Article
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Little Contentnea Creek arises just east of Saratoga in what is now Wilson County (but was Edgecombe County in Lewis Artis‘ day) and flows a short distance into Pitt County on the Greene-Pitt County line.
The relationship between Lewis Artis and John Artis Jr. is unknown.
Deed Book 18, page 433, Edgecombe County Register of Deeds Office, Tarboro, North Carolina.
