map

The 500 block.

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Page 14, Wilson, North Carolina, Sanborn map, 1908.

The intersection of East Nash, Pender Street and Stantonsburg Road. (Jane Street down there is now Ashe.) First Baptist’s church was two years away, but an early version of the Saint John A.M.E. Zion building was in place. The Darden Funeral Home building had a bicycle shop and general repair shop on the first floor, the undertaking business on the second, and lodge quarters on the third. In 1908, the main commercial strip of black Wilson — the 500 block of East Nash — was still primarily residential, but the map does show several general stores (540, 552, 565), a barbershop (528), two cobblers (525 and 526), a drugstore (538), and the Hotel Union (532-534) in place. An adjoining map (page 8), which depicts Nash Street from the railroad east, shows at 500-502, a general store; 504, barber; 508, tailor; 514, pool room; 516, bike shop and fishmonger; and 518, meat market.

The 1908 edition of Hill’s Wilson city directory identifies the block’s shopkeepers and business owners. (African-Americans are indicated by an *):

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Map of Wilson, 1872.

This is the first known map of Wilson, copied from a drawing made in 1872 by E.B. Mayo:

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The orientation is odd, as the bottom of the page is north. (Or, more strictly speaking, northeast.) There, encircled at the edge, is the only reference to any of the African-Americans who made up just over a quarter of the town’s population in the early 1870s. It’s Lemon Taborn‘s barbershop.

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Here, roughly outlined, is that area of downtown Wilson today:

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Spring Street is now Douglas and Nash Street extends across the tracks (replacing “the Plank Road,”) but otherwise street names remain the same. There are, of course, no marl holes or wells or trees in the middle of roads. The railroad in the 1872 map is not angled enough; despite appearances, it does not parallel downtown streets. Today, Lemon Taborn’s location at Tarboro just past Vance Street is close to today’s Wesley Shelter, Wilson County’s domestic violence and sexual assault agency.

Map of Wilson, 1882.

This is Gray’s New Map of Wilson, Wilson County, North Carolina, published in 1882:

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There, on the right edge of town, encircled here in red, is the sole reference to any building owned or occupied by African-Americans: “Col. Ch.” (Please click the image for a closer look.)

Don’t be mislead.

In 1880, town of Wilson had a population of 1475 of whom about 30% were black. The federal census of that year split the town and surrounding township into two enumeration districts, 303 and 304, and most African-Americans were clustered in neighborhoods in 304, south of the Plank Road (east of town limits), Nash Street (within town limits) and Nash Road (west of town limits). East Wilson, as we know it today, lay more than 25 years in the future, but black Wilsonians had begun to stake claim to the area east of the Wilmington & Weldon Railroad, as shown by the presence of a “colored church” on Pender Street, probably Saint John A.M.E. Zion.

[UPDATE, 23 Jan 2016: After publishing this, I returned to re-examine this map. Sure enough, at Tarboro, between Vance and Lee Streets, is “L. Tabourne” — Lemon Taborn’s house. My point yet stands.  — LYH]