Owen L.W. Smith

The Smiths sell Trinity a lot for its church.

On 7 December 1909, Rev. Owen L.W. Smith and his wife Cynthia A. Smith sold the trustees of Trinity A.M.E. Zion Church — Rev. William J. Moore, Rev. Wyatt Studaway, and Morrison Speight — a 50′ by 100′ lot on the south side of Banks Street, 45 feet west of Goldsboro Street in Wilson. 

Deed book 86, page 299, Wilson County Register of Deeds Office, Wilson.

Trinity built its first church on the site and, to my amazement, owned the property until February of this year.

Detail, Wilson County, N.C., GIS Mapping Website.

Rev. Smith complains of a drainage ditch.

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Wilson Daily Times, 10 May 1910.

The 1908 Wilson, N.C., Sanborn fire insurance map shows Wilson’s electric light station on Railroad Street between Nash and Church Streets, across the Atlantic Coast Line Rail Road from the train station. (Today, this is approximately the location of the parking lot of Green Grocery, formerly known as M&W.)

The drainage ditch of which Rev. Owen L.W. Smith complained is not shown. Presumably, it drained away from the railroad and toward the African-American neighborhood southeast of Pettigrew Street.

Condolences on assassination of President McKinley.

Correspondence from and to Owen L.W. Smith, Consul General to Liberia, concerning the assassination of President William McKinley.

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Papers Related to the Foreign Relations of the United States with the Annual Message of the President Transmitted to Congress December 3, 1901 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1902).

Smith transmits intelligence.

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Guthrie (Ok.) Daily Leader, 21 July 1899.

Among his duties as counsel to Liberia, Rev. Owen L.W. Smith was responsible for keeping the United States Secretary of State’s office informed about the well-being of American emigrants to Liberia. In 1899, an Oklahoma newspaper printed this transcription of Smith’s missive concerning the illness and deaths among the families of Anderson White, Joseph Brown, William House and Mann Hart, who had left Kingfisher County, Oklahoma, as members of the “Hawes emigration.”

God bless Wilson and her worthy people.

One hundred nineteen years ago today, the Wilson Times ran a letter sent from Monrovia, Liberia, by Rev. Owen L.W. Smith, U.S. consul to that West African country. Largely a sycophantic roll call of Wilson’s elected officials, halfway through Smith suddenly jabs. Praising a hospital director, he commented that all had “the appearance that better things are coming, notwithstanding the ‘Jim Crow Car’ law, the election franchise act, and the constitutional amendment. But I believe you will let me vote.” He then drops a few lines describing Liberia’s system of suffrage. It’s not universal, but. Touché.

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Wilson Times, 9 June 1899.

Cemetery lot in Oakdale.

In 1896, Rev. Owen L.W. Smith purchased from the Town of Wilson, in the person of Mayor John F. Bruton, lot 7, F Street, Section North of Oakdale Cemetery (col’d). Oakdale was the mysterious cemetery of Cemetery Street, south of the business district.

This document raises so many questions:

  • Oakdale was a city-owned property. When was it developed? Where are records?
  • Where is “the official plat of said cemetery”?
  • O.L.W. Smith’s family, including members who died shortly after this plot was purchased, are now buried in the Masonic cemetery. Were they, and the countless other burials at Oakdale, exhumed?
  • Why and when did the cemetery close?

Deed Book 46, page 348, Register of Deeds Office, Wilson.

[UPDATE, 18 May 2018 — See here for answers.]

A wreck on the first day at sea.

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The Colonies and India (London, England), 9 April 1898.

Rev. Owen L.W. Smith, his wife Adora Oden Smith, and their daughter Flossie took passage on the African Steamship Company steamer Dahomey, which sailed from Liverpool to his assignment as ambassador in Monrovia, Liberia, on 6 April 1898. Hours after leaving port, the ship struck rocks near Holyhead, Anglesey, Wales. Passengers and crew were safely evacuated, but the ship remained stranded for 14 days before it could be floated off and returned to Liverpool. The incident was investigated, and a magistrate held: “The Court having carefully inquired into the circumstances attending the above-mentioned shipping casualty, finds, for the reasons stated in the Annex hereto, that the stranding of and material damage to the said vessel were due to the improper navigation of the master, Mr. James G. Cawthorne, whose certificate, No. 34,575, the Court suspends for a period of six months from the date hereof.”

A month will pass before the news reaches him.

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Colored American (Washington, D.C.), 2 February 1901.

On 29 November 1892, Owen L.W. Smith, 41, of Wilson County, married Adora E. Oden, 22, of Carteret County in Carteret County. It was Smith’s second marriage.

In the 1900 census of Wilson, Wilson County: Owens Smith, 49, minister; wife Adora, 30; son Jesse, 19; daughter Flossie, 4; widowed mother Maria Hicks, 78, a midwife; and boarder Carry Pettiford, a widowed teacher.

Flossie Smith is the child who died of burns. She is referred to as an “only child” in the article above, though Owen and Adora Smith adopted two children, Jesse A. Smith and Carrie Emma, who died as a teenager.

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The grave markers of Owen Smith’s daughter Carrie and mother Maria Hicks in the Masonic cemetery, Wilson.

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Flossie Smith’s mother, Adora Estelle Oden Smith (1870-1906).

Photo of gravemarkers taken by Lisa Y. Henderson in November 2015; photo of Adora Oden Smith courtesy of Wilson County Public Library.