Lane Street

Lane Street Project: an earlier look at Lane Street.

My ears pricked up when I spotted this volume at Wilson County Register of Deeds office, but it wasn’t as helpful as I thought. It holds “plans and profiles” of proposed state highway projects in the county. Bishop L.N. Forbes Street, formerly known as Lane Street and State Road 1564, only appears once, and then only at its junction with  Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway, also known as Highways 264 and 58. I’d hoped to find documents related to the street’s paving some time in the late 1980s, but as paving didn’t happen until the street was annexed into city limits, it likely was not a state-funded project. 

Still, perusing the volume was not a complete waste of time. Page 1-D of Project 6.3410029 is one of the plat maps prepared in 1968 for a project to widen and improve 264/58 from U.S. 301 (then the city limit) to the split where NC 58 veers south toward Stantonsburg. In the map detail below, the old Rountree Missionary Baptist Church (a clapboard building I vaguely remember from childhood) is bottom left. Running alongside the church lot to the right is the eastern end of Lane Street. It’s a little difficult to see, but in heavy script spanning the street is “30′” over a double-ended arrow, then “Exist. R/W,” in other words, an existing thirty-foot right-of-way. 

A slightly closer look reveals the street width (highlighted in red) within the boundaries of the 30-foot right-of-way. (The little blob by the road, followed by, “GUM”? That’s a sweetgum tree standing inside the right-of-way.) Recall that today’s right-of-way is 60 feet wide. 

It’s difficult to know how close to scale this map is, but Lane Street/S.R. 1546 appears to be about half the width of the right-of-way, or about 15 feet wide. (For perspective, a single-car residential driveway is 10-12 feet wide.) Lane Street was unpaved in 1968 (and 20 or so years thereafter), but was a maintained road, meaning it was regularly scraped and resurfaced with fresh dirt or gravel. However, in the first several decades of Rountree, Odd Fellows, and Vick Cemeteries, this would have not have been much more than a dirt track, heavily rutted from wagon wheels and impossibly muddy after hard rains. 

1968, of course, was well after the period of active burials in the Lane Street cemeteries. A view of the older road is useful, however, to envision where graves may now lie in relation to the modern road and right-of-way.

Lane Street Project: the street.

I’ve talked about the narrowing of Bishop L.N. Forbes Street (formerly Lane Street) and now want to show you. It’s important that we interrogate the spaces we encounter: why does this look this way? what choices did planners have? who benefitted from the choices made? who lost?

Here’s an aerial view, per Google Maps, of the elbow of the arm that LNF Street forms between U.S. 301 and Martin L. King Parkway.

Below, I am standing at the beginning of the curve, looking toward 301, with Lane Park to the left and the undeveloped expansion portion of Rest Haven Cemetery on the right. The curbing comes to an abrupt stop here. Note the asphalt paving widths — the paver needed three passes to cover the street.

Now I’ve turned around to face the bend. The road abruptly narrows from three paving widths to two, requiring quick deceleration if you meet a car approaching the turn in the opposite direction.

There are no curbs. No gutters. Open ditches run along each side of the street. (I cannot think of another stretch of street — not highway, street — inside Wilson city limits where this is the case.) 

Let’s go to the end of the street between Rountree Cemetery and MLK Parkway. The word “Bishop” is superimposed on this map over the bridge spanning the sluggish murk of Sandy Creek. [As an aside: the gravel path entering the road below “Forbes”? It runs to a small natural gas pipeline substation that regulates the pressure and flow of gas from the pipeline that runs around Vick Cemetery. Also, you can see the power lines that start at Wilson Energy’s Substation #2 (which is located down LNF near the curve), run on poles through Vick and Rountree Cemeteries, then cut sharply south, passing over the end of the street I grew up on.]

Just past that bridge, the curb stops. It won’t resume until you round the curve at the point shown in the first photo above.

The ditches at this end are badly overgrown. Rountree Cemetery lies on both sides of the road here. In my childhood, I recall seeing a vault cover on the right side of what was then a dirt road. In late winter, daffodils bloom profusely on that side. There are graves there. LNF Street runs through the middle, then, with a slight dip in the road visible below, straight past Odd Fellows and Vick until the abrupt curve above.

So, why?

Because the graves of Rountree, Odd Fellows, and Vick Cemeteries were too close to the road to permit the installation of a standard-width street or curbs and gutters. In 1985, after a man jogging on Lane Street found human bones exposed in a ditch, Wilson Public Works official Bill Bartlett told the Wilson Daily Times that about 1980 the city attempted to define the road and found, because of the numerous graves in the area, only a 40- to 45-foot right of way could be allowed, compared to the usual 60-foot right of way.  

After an eight-year push to pave all the City’s remaining 23 miles of dirt streets — almost all of which were in Black neighborhoods — City Manager Bruce Boyette told the Times on 26 May 1984 that all but 1.2 miles had been completed, Lane Street (which is close to a mile long east of 301) was the primary street still in need of paving. 

The street was finally paved in the late 1980s. Rumors persist in the Black community that there are graves under the pavement. We certainly know they’re in the right-of-way up the edge of the ditch. 

Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, July 2023.

302 Lane Street.

The one hundred-fifty-ninth in a series of posts highlighting buildings in East Wilson Historic District, a national historic district located in Wilson, North Carolina. As originally approved, the district encompasses 858 contributing buildings and two contributing structures in a historically African-American section of Wilson. (A significant number have since been lost.) The district was developed between about 1890 to 1940 and includes notable examples of Queen Anne, Bungalow/American Craftsman, and Shotgun-style architecture. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.

As described in the nomination form for the East Wilson Historic District, this building is: “#304 [sic]; ca. 1930; 1 story; two-room house with bungalow traits; late example of this traditional type.” The original house number was 207.

——

In the 1941 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: King Thomas (c; Henrietta) lab h 207 (302) Lane

Henrietta King died 11 February 1946 at 302 Lane Street. Per her death certificate, she was born 22 May 1897 in Edgecombe County, N.C, to Charles and Sophie Hines; was married to Thomas King; and was buried in Rountree [likely Vick] Cemetery.

Wilson Daily Times, 14 February 1946.

In the 1947 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: King Thos (c) lab h 302 Lane

Wilson Daily Times, 14 December 1961.

Photo by Lisa Y. Henderson, April 2022.

Lane Street Project: aerial views.

A refresher:

  • The eastern end of Lane Street, in southeast Wilson, is home to three historic African-American cemeteries: Rountree (established about 1906), Odd Fellows (established circa 1900), and Vick (established 1913).
  • Rountree and Odd Fellows are privately owned. Vick is owned by the City of Wilson.
  • All three have been abandoned.
  • Rountree is completely overgrown with mature trees and heavy underbrush.
  • Odd Fellows is also overgrown, except for a narrow strip along the road that the city maintains.
  • In 1996, the city clear-cut Vick cemetery, removed its remaining headstones, graded the entire parcel, and erected a single marker in memory of the dead.

A series of aerial photographs of the cemeteries over time shows in astonishing detail the forgotten features of these cemeteries and the terrible march of neglect across all three. Each photograph has been overlaid with the present-day boundaries of tax parcels. The rectangle at left is Vick, then Odd Fellows and Rountree.

  • 1937

This blurry photograph shows the interconnectedness of the three cemeteries, with narrow dirt paths winding across property lines and no visible boundary markers. The light areas are too large to be individual stones and more likely are family plots of varying sizes. The back edge of Rountree and Odd Fellows cemeteries — marshy land along Sandy Creek — was wooded.

  • 1948

Though hundreds were buried between 1937 and 1948, Vick is still almost completely open field, with some trees at its western and southern edges and numerous plots visible.  A large cleared trapezoid straddles the Vick and Odd Fellows boundaries — what is this?

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  • 1954

Six years later, the change is shocking. Vick has clearly fallen into disuse, its paths allowed to fill with weeds. Rountree and Odd Fellows, too, are overgrown, but their major paths remain clear. The mystery trapezoid, however, is gone.

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  • 1964

Another ten years and all three cemeteries are well on their way to complete abandonment. Only one path is clear, a new passage cut to join an old one in Odd Fellows.

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  • Today

A contemporary aerial view of the three cemeteries shows the empty expanse of Vick; its lone city-sponsored monument; the paved path leading from the monument to a small parking lot located at the boundary of Vick and Odd Fellows; the cleared bit of Odd Fellows; and the jungle that is Rountree. There is no trace of the trapezoid.

I am indebted to Will Corbett, GIS Coordinator, Wilson County Technology Services Department, for responding to my inquiry re the availability of Wilson County maps, answering a million questions, and providing these remarkable images.

Lane Street Project: Lane Street on a breezy winter morning.

Two minutes, 49 seconds, of Lane Street on a breezy winter morning.

Sandy Creek spilling from the culvert under Lane Street.

The road, walking southwest.

The high bank of Rountree cemetery with its crown of honeysuckle and privet and catbrier and blackberry bramble.

Across the road, the low bank marking the cemetery’s western half. Note the daffodils. Sandy Creek flows just behind the trees; the houses crouch in its flood plain.

Just past the ditch marking its boundary, the gravestones of Odd Fellows Cemetery hove into view.

Between the Dawson and Tate family plots, Irma Vick‘s leaning concrete marker is visible at the edge of the woods. Hers is the outlier of the Vick family plot, which is otherwise overgrown.

A remnant of the cemetery’s wall; I enter the old gateway.

The cemetery looks empty. It is not.

The two tall marble markers are Dave and Della Hines Barnes, from the back. Presumably, other members of the Barnes and Hines family lie in their marked plot, but no stones are visible.

The city erected the two pillars at the entrance to the parking lot. They are, inaccurately, engraved “Rountree/Vick.” The parking lot bears the scorch marks of a torched vehicle. It is rarely visited by anyone with good intention.

Vick cemetery as playground.

The monument and its towering shrubs.

Video shot by Lisa Y. Henderson, February 2020.

A gathering of saints.

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Mount Zion Freewill Baptist Church, Wilson, N.C., 29 May 1950.

Mount Zion Original Freewill Baptist, founded in 1912, remains an active congregation and is located at 305 Lane Street Southeast, Wilson.

Many thanks to Edith Jones Garnett for sharing this wonderful photograph. If anyone recognizes these church members, please let me know.  — LYH