historic black business

An account of the estate of John H. Aiken, livery operator.

John H. Aiken died 20 July 1914 in Wilson. He operated a livery stable at 125 South Goldsboro Street. Livery stables were the essential equivalent of parking lots and car rental offices, offering boarding, feeding, and care of privately owned horses and rental of horses, carriages, and buggies. Aiken’s wife Georgia Crockett Aiken served as administrator of his estate before resigning on 27 August 1914 and joining Aiken’s heirs — children Quince Aiken, William Aiken, Samuel Aiken, Nannie Eperson, John McDaniel, Gollie Aiken, Levi Aiken, Lizzie Aiken, and Alice Aiken — to request the appointment of W.R. Bryan.

Georgia Aiken’s inventory and final account, filed 29 August 1914, offers a detailed look at a successful black-owned business in pre-World War I Wilson. The inventory reveals a large, though heavily mortgaged, stock in trade — 13 horses, 14 buggies, 5 closed carriages, 2 single surries, and 4 wagons of various types. (There’s also a fifty-dollar debt to Aiken owed by veterinarian Elijah L. Reid.)

Receipts show that Aiken did a healthy business renting out his conveyances. In the last 15 days of July, Georgia Aiken collected almost $190.00 “for teams and buggies,” averaging $12.65 a day [$413.38 in today’s dollars].

Georgia Aiken also took in payments from Briggs Hotel and Wilson Hardware Company, both white-owned businesses, for boarding the companies’ horses.

Most of Aiken’s disbursements were wage payments to laborers William Best, Henry Best, Edward Mooring, William Selby, George Lane, and Dave McPhail. J.Y. Buchanan received four payments for shoeing horses; Hackney Brothers and C. Mack Wells were paid for hack repairs; A.J. Ford was paid for repairing a harness; and Thomas & Barnes for an unspecified repair.

Aiken paid bills from Carolina Telephone Company, Barnes-Graves Grocery Company, and J. & D. Oettinger. She paid two feed bills from C. Woodard Company and made seven payments to Quinn-McGowan Furniture Company, likely for the costs of her husband’s funeral. She also paid stable rent to S.M. Richardson and unspecified rent to S.H. Vick, as well as miscellaneous fees related to probate. Interestingly, Georgia Aiken paid $79.39 — quite a large sum — to T.S. Beatty of the Knights of Gideon lodge. What was this for?

Wilson [County, North Carolina] Property Settlement Records 1905-1923, http://www.familysearch.org.

The 100 block of East Barnes Street.

This photo was published about 1972 in a Chamber of Commerce booklet, Wilson, North Carolina: Community Improvement through Citizen Action. Though it dates 20+ years after Black Wide-Awake’s focus period, it depicts a streetscape much closer to that of the first half of the twentieth century than what we see today in the 100 block of East Barnes [now, bizarrely, Barnes Street, S.W.] (An exception: at right, Heilig-Meyers furniture store wears a “modern” false front. It since has been restored to its original brick facade and houses the Wilsonian Event Center.)

At left, we see a vacant lot (formerly home to a series of grocery stores), a white-painted brick building, then a dark brick building. A sign hanging from the darker building reads Star Cafe. In 1948, Greek-American restaurateur Gus Gliarmis announced the opening of Star Cafe “for COLORED ONLY,” and the block became a weekend gathering spot for African-Americans.

Next to this building is a two-story building with a lower facade.  “Picture-taking” George W. Barnes‘ photography studio occupied a space on the second floor from about 1915 to about 1930. The building no longer stands.

Historic Black Business Series, no. 8: George W. Barnes’ photography studio.

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!

Of a photograph taken about 1920, my grandmother said: “Yep, that’s me standing up there, and [my sister] Mamie sitting in the chair. And that little arm [of the chair] off there, it was Picture-Taking Barnes, they called him then. You were gon have your pictures made, you went to Picture-Taking Barnes.”

Mamie Henderson (1907-2000, seated) and Hattie Mae Henderson (1910-2001).

I have seen that telltale chair in photo after photo – a light-colored wicker chair with a high rounded back and just one arm rest, the one on the left. 

Sarah Henderson Jacobs Silver (1876-1938).

Per Stephen E. Massingill’s Photographers in North Carolina (2004), George W. Barnes was perhaps the first of three African-American photographers operating in Wilson in the early part of the twentieth century and, in the 1908 city of directory of Wilson, he is working with white photographer Orren W. Turner in a studio at 105 West Nash. 

Arthur Thompson (1895-1915).

By 1916, Barnes had his own studio. On the second floor of what was then 113 1/2 [later 114] East Barnes and is the site of a parking lot adjacent to P.L. Woodard Hardware, Barnes settled his clients into his one-armed chair.

Picture-Taking Barnes’ Barnes Street studio, Sanborn fire insurance map of Wilson, N.C. (1922).

Lonnie Bagley (1891-??). 

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In the 1880 census of Wilson township, Wilson County: south of the Plank Road, farmer George Barnes, 41; wife Anna, 34; and children Hardy, 19, Reny, 17, Jessee, 12, Edmonia, 11, George, 9, Minnie Adeline, 6, Joshua and General, 3, and William, 1 month.

In the 1900 census of Wilson township, Wilson County: George A. Barnes, 60, farmer; wife Annie, 53; children George, 23, teacher, Joshaway, 22, farmer, and Jenerl, 22, teacher; grandson Paul, 11; son Harda, 32, and daughter-in-law Nancy, 30.

On 30 January 1905, George Barnes, 29, of Wilson, son of George and Annie Barnes, married Mary Jane Green, 23, of Wilson, daughter of Nelson [Neverson] and Isabella Green, at Neverson Green’s residence in Wilson. Baptist minister Fred Davis performed the ceremony in the presence of A.J.C. Moore.

In the 1908 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Barnes Geo W (c) photographer O W Turner h e Green nr Vick

In the 1910 census of Wilson, Wilson County: George W. Barnes, photographer-home gallery; wife Mary J., 29; and children Jessie, 4, Lala Rook, 2, and Isabella A., 6 months.

George W. Barnes’ occupation in the 1910 census.

In the 1912 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Barnes Geo W (c) photo Orren V Foust r 654 E Green 

In the 1916 and 1920 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directories: Barnes George W (c) photo 113 1/2  e Barnes r 702 e Green 

In the 1920 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 702 East Green, George Barnes, 49, photographer in own shop; wife 38; and children Jessie, 14, Alma Gray, 10, Elizabeth, 6, and Lila Rook, 2 [named for her elder sister?].

In the 1922 and 1925 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directories: Barnes George W (c) photographer 114 e Barnes r 803 e Green 

1922 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory.

In the 1928 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Barnes Geo W (c) photo 114 E Barnes r 803 E Green 

In the 1930 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Barnes Geo W (c) photog r 803 E Green 

George Washington Barnes died 13 April 1936 in Wilson. Per his death certificate, he was 65 years old; was married to Mary Barnes; was born in Wilson County to George A. Barnes and Annie Battle; lived at 803 East Green Street; and was a photographer.

Historic Black Business Series, no. 2: Annie V.C. Hunt’s grocery.

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.

Annie V. Collins Hunt was one of the earliest documented Black businesswomen in Wilson. By 1897 she had opened a grocery store on Goldsboro Street, most likely in the 100 block south of Nash Street.

The Gazette (Raleigh, N.C.), 19 June 1897.

Hunt did not stint in outfitting her shop. In August 1897, she placed an order with an Ohio company for a sixty-dollar safe with her name painted on its side.

This detail from the 1897 Sanborn fire insurance map of Wilson shows two groceries in the block of South Goldsboro just below Nash Street. Either might have been A.V.C. Hunt’s business.

The following spring, Hunt placed an ad in The Great Sunny South, a newspaper published in neighboring Greene County. “Go to Mrs. A.V.C. Hunt WILSON, N.C.,” it exhorted. “The first colored merchant to open a cheap grocery store uptown. She will sell you a pound box of baking powder, worth 10c, for 5 cents. Tobacco at 25 cents per pound. Soap at 3 1/2 cents per cake, ginger snaps at 5 cents per pound, coffee from 10 cts to 20 cts per pound, sugar from 4 1/2 to 5 1/2 cts per pound and many other things too numerous to mention. All good as cheap as can be bought. Call and examine her goods before buying elsewhere. All goods delivered in the city. Be convinced by calling to see Mrs. A.V.C. HUNT. Dealer in a first-class and reliable line of heavy and fancy groceries, Wilson, N.C., on Goldsboro street, next door to A. Katz’ market.”

The Great Sunny South (Snow Hill, N.C.), 29 April 1898.

Unfortunately, Annie Hunt’s mercantile success uptown was brief. Tragedy struck in 1899. First, her grocery was destroyed by fire — a crime her husband James Hunt was accused, and acquitted, of committing. Then, James Hunt was murdered, shot down in the street by the man who owned the grocery store building. Annie V.C. Hunt never recovered and died impoverished in 1903.

Photo by Lisa Y. Henderson, December 2023.