Y’all remember back in August 2023 when I requested information from the City concerning the placement of power poles in Vick and Rountree Cemeteries? Via Gabriel Du Sablon, an attorney in the office of City attorney James P. Cauley III, the City responded on 22 September 2023, and I call your attention to this declaration:
Funny, because look what I just found on the Wilson County Register of Deeds website — an easement deed, dated 4 August 1997, from trustees of Rountree Missionary Baptist Church to the City of Wilson. (And prepared by James P. Cauley III.)
Via this document, Rountree Church granted the City permission to “construct, install, inspect, operate, repair and maintain one or more lines and appurtenant facilities for the transmission of electricity …” on part of its land.
Including the right to install power poles (and alter or substitute them “from time to time ….”
The power pole in Rountree Cemetery, October 2025.
The easement began on Rountree’s western property line at the property line of Odd Fellows Cemetery, on the south side of Lane Street; ran the width of the property to a canal (Sandy Creek); then back 41 feet; then back across the cemetery; then back to the beginning, containing about .25 acre.
May I remind you that the entire southern portion of Rountree Cemetery comprises only one acre.
For reasons that I cannot imagine, Rountree Church ceded a quarter of the main part of its old cemetery to the City. Worse, the City of Wilson plotted a power line corridor that demanded it. In 1997.
Page 3 of the easement continues the rights and privileges granted to the City by the easement.
The church gained no parallel rights, but can convey the land and easement. Nowhere in the easement is there an acknowledgment that this land is a cemetery.
And then there’s this attached plat map. It’s a little hard to make out, so I’ll zoom in on the pertinent part below.
Deed Book 1636, page 377, Wilson County Register of Deeds.
So, turned sideways, with Martin Luther King Parkway offscreen to the right, what we have is Lane Street (now Bishop L.N. Forbes) in red. (Note the narrowing as it passes the cemeteries.) In blue, Sandy Creek, which was channelized late in the 19th century as best I can tell. Yellow marks the boundary between Rountree and Odd Fellows Cemeteries. (I’d always believed it to be at the ditch shown left of the boundary, but the ditch is wholly in Odd Fellows.) The two halves of Rountree Cemetery are clearly shown. The top half is where the backhoe was roving late last year. The shaded area is the City of Wilson’s utility easement.
I repeat. There’s no mention that the City was securing a utility easement in a cemetery.
But maybe the City didn’t know, right? Here’s the pole again.
In the foreground, perhaps twenty feet away, is a pile of broken headstones, mostly belonging to an Ellis family. Another ten or fifteen feet further, the double-sided headstone of Daniel and Lottie Marlow, who died in 1918 and 1916. In 1997, when this pole was installed, the area was clear of brushy undergrowth, and these markers would have been plainly visible.
There’s no parallel easement recorded for Vick Cemetery. By 1997, the City had already confessed to owning the property and had recently cleared it of overgrowth and headstones, perhaps for this very purpose. And no recorded easement for Odd Fellows, which does not have a pole, but is crossed by the same power lines. In fact, graves in Odd Fellows were damaged just a few years later by heavy machinery brought into the cemetery for a line repair.
The repair sleeve on the middle line above Odd Fellows Cemetery.
This is nasty work, folks.
