Moye

White man killed by a mob.

The Miners Journal (Pottsville, Pa.), 15 May 1903.

This brief account of the murder of T. Percy Jones snatched at my eye. A man killed by a mob in Wilson in 1903? The backstory is complicated … and surprising.

Jones was a white insurance salesman from Little Rock, Arkansas, who had been boarding at the Fryar Building downtown for several weeks. A crowd of at least eleven white men broke into Jones’ room to confront him about (1) black women occupying his room and (2) suspicions that he was a detective investigating Wilson’s flourishing gambling dens. Allegedly two weeks earlier, the police had gone to Jones’ room looking for Fannie Adams, a black woman from Goldsboro wanted for stealing a watch. Adams was not there, but a letter addressed to her was found, as was a different black woman. Jones allegedly also had been spotted in a “Negro eating house” with a black woman. A posse sent a message to Jones to get out of town. Anticipating conflict, Jones kept a loaded shotgun at the head of his bed. When the mob broke down Jones’ door, guns blazing, Jones fired back. His shot lodged in the ceiling, Jones was struck in the abdomen. (Two of the mob caught friendly fire as well.) The men scattered, jumping out of windows and shimmying down ladders.

The police rounded up fish dealer J.B. Piver, merchant tailor Samuel J. Walls; brickyard laborer, prison guard and whiskey still operator John Pittman; Times pressman George Whitley, who also drove a hose wagon for Wilson Fire Company; W.P. Croom; carpenter William W. Barnes; Lawrence Morgan, who ran a gambling house; William H. Rich, a cotton mill superintendent from Alabama; farmer J. Thomas Bass of Wayne County, N.C.; barkeep Gil D. Ward, originally of Wayne County; and barkeep and Pitt County native John R. Allen, the man who was shot. At the coroner’s inquest, Mayor Doane Herring, who was among the first on the scene, gave testimony unfavorable to the arrested men, and feeling in town ran against them. Additional testimony hinted that police officers W.P. Snakenburg (a 21-year veteran and former police chief), Frank Felton, and George Mumford had been encouraged to make themselves scarce the night of the attack, and A.C.L. Railroad night watchman Peter Nichols had failed to stir when he saw the crowd moving. (Snakenburg was soon fired; Felton drew a ten-day suspension; and Nichols was stripped of police power.)

At trial, Barnes turned state’s evidence, and others each swore their innocence, claiming they had never conspired with their codefendants, were not on the scene, and in general knew nothing about the incident. A single black witness, George Moye, testified:

The Farmer and Mechanic (Raleigh, N.C.), 19 May 1903. This paper carried a blow-by-blow of both the coroner’s inquest and the trial.

In his summation, defense attorney Frederick A. Woodard thundered: “… when this crime came to my knowledge there also came to my mind the fact that a man was living here in sight of a church steeple in adultery with a negro woman. … And had he gotten what his acts deserved he would have been driven out and this horrible killing would have been averted.” Prosecutor F.S. Spruill, who had been brought in from Louisburg, N.C., shot back, “They not only killed the body but this defense has attempted to raise over this body the black name of infamy. Let those who are not guilty throw the first stone. Rich, in [Cora Duty‘s] bawdy house; Morgan in the home of a harlot when arrested and Ward, the slayer of his [black] mistress [in Wayne County.] Can these man point at a man who, it is claimed, has committed adultery?”

The first trial ended in mistrial, but in February 1904, Whitley, Ward, Rich, Pittman, Allen, and Bass were found guilty of the reduced charge of manslaughter and given sentences of six to ten months’ hard labor at the state penitentiary. Piver and Walls were tried separate from the others and were acquitted.

——

In the 1900 census of Wilson, Wilson County: kinship laborer George Moye, 52, widow, and boarders Annie Graves, 40, widow, and Cora Williamson, 23, both day laborers.

Notes from Mississippi: Wyatt Moye.

Among the documents I perused at Aberdeen’s Evans Memorial Library were local historian John Rodabough’s newspaper columns from the 1970s. Densely detailed and wide-ranging, Rodabaugh’s articles did not shy away from chronicling Monroe County’s roots as a center of Mississippi’s slave trade.

Let me remind you: Wyatt Moye (1793-1862) lived in Greene and Edgecombe Counties in the general vicinity of Stantonsburg. He served as Greene County sheriff for a while, then as an Edgecombe County legislator, where he sponsored legislation to create Wilson County. He was also a slave dealer. Working with other men from Edgecombe County, Moye was a trader and factor, moving “excess” or troublesome Black people from the Upper South to the Lower, where vast cotton fields awaited them.

The photograph of Wyatt Moye’s house, above, makes plain the abundant wages of human trafficking. In his 14 March 1972 “Port of Aberdeen” column, Rodabough described the house as “[t]he finest raised cottage of antebellum Aberdeen.” “The first floor was brick. The main floor above it was frame with a hipped roof. Brick piers supported the gallery of the main floor. A staircase rose from the walkway to that level. The floor of the lower porch was brick. Inside center halls bisected four rooms on each floor.”

As to Moye himself, Rodabough wrote, “Wyatt Moye was a partner in the banking firm of Cunningham, Moye & Co., which flourished in Aberdeen in the 1850’s. After his first wife’s death, he remarried in 1858 “and put his house up for sale. He moved to Memphis.”

Moye was also a director of Mississippi Mutual Insurance Company, which was incorporated in 1850. Among the lives it insured were those of enslaved people — to the benefit of their enslavers. Per Rodabough’s 31 August 1972 column: “In 1855 this firm was two doors from the northwest corner of Commerce and Locust Streets. On September 20, 1858, they purchased the building of Cunningham, Moye & Co., located [at] the present site of the western third of the First National Bank.” “Cunningham, Moye & Company was formed January 11, 1854, with a cash capital of $200,000. The firm was comprised of William R. Cunningham, Wyatt Moye, Robert S. Adams, and Moses J. Wicks.”

The Yazoo Democrat, 2 February 1853.

The I. Y. Johnson Home (Moye-Johnson) on the corner of Canal and Hickory Street in Aberdeen, Mississippi, built in 1855 by Wyatt Moye; Rodabough (John E.) papers, Special Collections Department, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State University Libraries (electronic version).

Ethel Coley retires after 40+ years of teaching.

Wilson Daily Times, 6 May 1971.

Long-time teacher Ethel Moye Coley‘s early education came at Wilson Training School, also known as the Independent School or Industrial School — the school the Black community founded after leaving Wilson Colored Graded School in protest in 1918.

——

In the 1910 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 459 Goldsboro Street, widowed laundress Della Moye, 31, with her children Albert, 17, twins Hattie and Mattie, 9, and Ethel, 2.

In the 1928 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Moye Ethel (c) student h 420 E Green

In the 1930 census of Wilson, Wilson County: laundress Delia A. Moye, 50; grandson William A., 12; Zophey Sills, 25, cook; and Ethel M. Moye, 19.

On 29 December 1933, John A. Cain Jr., 24, of Durham, son of John A. Cain Sr. and Georgeanna Cain, married Ethel Moye, 24, of Wilson, daughter of Boston Moye and Delia Moye, in Raleigh, Wake County, N.C.

On 18 August 1944, Ethel Mae Moye, 35, daughter of O.L.W. Smith and Della Smith [sic], married David H. Coley, 49, son of W.H. and Luanna Coley, in Wilson. A.M.E. Zion minister W.A. Hilliard performed the ceremony in the presence of C.L. Darden, Norma Darden and Mrs. Ambrose Floyd.

In the 1950 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 1207 Washington Street, David H. Coley, 56, barber, and wife Ethel Cain Coley, 40, primary teacher/principal at rural school.

Wilson Daily Times, 27 February 1987.

“Bear” Moye charged with running a blind tiger.

News and Observer, 28 July 1909.

——

  • George Moye

In the 1870 census of Stantonsburg township, Wilson County: farm laborer James Moye, 51; wife Edith, 54; children Delsey, 18, Harriet, 16, George, 10, and Warren, 8; and Learh Moye, 90.

On 17 October 1891, George Moye, 39, son of James and Edith Moye, married Annie Arrington, 30, daughter of Emma [no maiden name given] at Annie Arrington’s residence in Wilson. Free Will Baptist minister Crockett Best performed the ceremony in the presence of David Mercer, Adline Mercer, and John Artis.

In the 1900 census of Wilson, Wilson County: tinshop laborer George Moye, 52, widower, with boarders Annie Graves, 40, widow, and Cora Williamson, 23, both day laborers.

On 6 October 1904, George Moye, 58, son of E. and J. Moye, married Annie Gray, 45, in Wilson.

In the 1912 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Moye George carp h 106 N Pettigrew

George Moye died 13 August 1931 at the County Home in Wilson, North Carolina. Per his death certificate, he was 86 years old [actually, closer to 70] and was born in Wilson County to James Moye. Hattie Arrington was informant.

George W. Stanton house.

George W. Stanton house, near Stantonsburg, built circa 1873 and demolished circa 2000.

George W. Stanton’s house was built during Reconstruction, and no enslaved people labored there. I am certain, however, that it was staffed with formerly enslaved people and their descendants.

Stanton, though a committed slaveholder, was one of a handful of Union loyalists in Wilson County during the Civil War. We have met him here and here, and we know that he enslaved Larry and (very briefly, before transferring them to his mother Gatsey Truitt Stanton) Harry, Violet, Eliza and her child, Ben, Dan, and Edy. I have not been able to identify the names of any others he held.

——

In the 1860 census of Saratoga district, Wilson County: G.T. Stanton, 46, farmer, and children G.W. Stanton, 25, farmer, who claimed $3400 in real property and $4538 in personal property [which would have been mostly enslaved people], D.M., 12, and Celestia N., 10.

In the 1860 slave schedule of Saratoga district, Wilson County: G.W. Stanton claimed seven enslaved people, who lived in one house — men aged 72 and 36; a boy aged 8; a woman aged 38; and girls aged 14, 10, and 3. (These ages suggest a single, multigenerational family, but we cannot determine this definitively.)

Per the 1870 federal mortality schedule, Violet Stanton died in September 1869 of scrofula. She was 59 years old and a widow.

Perhaps, in the 1880 census of Sparta township, Edgecombe County: farmer Ben Stanton, 32; wife Leer, 25; and sons Gray, 9, and William, 5.

Luvennia Artis died 11 May 1924 in Wilson. Per her death certificate, she was 70 years old; was a widow; lived at 177 Narroway; was born in Wilson County to Haywood Moye and Eliza Stanton; and worked as a laundress. She was buried in Wilson [probably, Vick Cemetery.] Luvennia Artis perhaps was the child of Eliza noted above.

Photo courtesy of Wilson County Genealogical Society 2004 Calendar: The Families of the Stantonsburg & Saratoga Area.

Darden grid stars!

Wilson Daily Times, 20 September 1950.

  • William White — in the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 614 Green Street, George C. White, 41, hotel cook; wife Jane, 38, hotel laundress; and children Hampton, 3, William, 6, Margurite, 14, and Lucile, 4. In the 1950 census of Wilson, Wilson County: William H. White, 15, and brother Hampton, 13.

The Trojan (1952), yearbook of C.H. Darden High School.

  • Cornelius Moye — in the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: Anderson McCall, 30, mortar mixer; wife Annie L., 26, cook; and sons Feral McCall, 6; Fred Moye, 8, Cornelius Moye, 7, and William A. Moye, 5.
  • Eddie Best — in the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 406 Walnut, rented for $12/month, Aaron Best, 39; wife Estelle, 39; and children Rudolph, 14, Royce, 10, Harper and Gerald, 8, Eddie, 7, and Nannie Jean, 5.
  • Albert Cannady — in the 1940 census of Sand Hill township, Moore County, North Carolina: public laborer Albert Cannady, 35; wife Sylvan, 30; and children Lunia, 12, Harold, 9, Albert Jr., Graddick, 4, and Betty Jean, 3 months. In the 1950 census of Wilson township, Wilson County: on Lipscomb Road, Albert M. Cannady, 45, chief cook at state hospital; wife Sylvan, 43; children Albert M., Jr., 16, grocery delivery boy, Graddick, 14, and Betty J., 10; and granddaughter Amanda Farmer, 3.

The Trojan (1952), yearbook of C.H. Darden High School.

The once moral man is the father of the bastard child.

Screen Shot 2017-11-04 at 8.13.49 PM

Screen Shot 2017-11-04 at 8.14.57 PM

News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.), 2 November 1909.

Rev. Owen L.W. Smith had, of course, been a Presiding Elder of the A.M.E. Zion Church and United States minister to Liberia. The News & Observer‘s restraint in covering his downfall is especially remarkable when earlier coverage of the affair is considered. The Smith-Moye affair had scandalized black Wilson. Moye not only worked for the church, she was married, and her husband had been driven off by Smith’s peremptory claims to her time. Just as shocking — the magistrate’s dismissal of Smith’s suit!

Screen Shot 2017-11-04 at 9.22.10 PM

Screen Shot 2017-11-04 at 9.22.54 PM

Screen Shot 2017-11-04 at 9.23.51 PM

News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.), 27 August 1908. 

“Delia R. Moye” was Delia A. Moye, listed in the 1908 city directory as a teacher residing at Goldsboro near Bank. Also at that address, her teenaged son, porter Albert Moye. In the 1910 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 459 Goldsboro Street, widowed laundress Della Moye, 31, with her children Albert, 17, twins Hattie and Mattie, 9, and Ethel, 2, who was Smith’s child. (In subsequent city directories, too, Delia Moye was described as a laundress. She lost her teaching job as a result of her pregnancy. She also likely was not actually a widow.)

On 18 August 1944, Ethel Mae Moye, 35, daughter of O.L.W. Smith and Della Smith [sic], married David H. Coley, 49, son of W.H. and Luanna Coley, in Wilson. A.M.E. Zion minister W.A. Hilliard performed the ceremony in the presence of C.L. Darden, Norma Darden and Mrs. Ambrose Floyd.

Delia Ann Moye died 19 April 1955 at her home at 1207 East Washington Street, Wilson. Per her death certificate, she was born 27 March 1882 in Greene County to Sandy Malone and Mattie [maiden name unknown; was widowed; and was a retired school teacher. Informant was Ethel M. Coley, 1207 East Washington.