receipt

Paid by their former master.

Thomas L. Mann issued these three receipts to freedmen for work performed in 1865. I have been unable to locate Mann or the men he had formerly enslaved — Lewis, Jocks and Jim Mann. However, it was not unusual for freedmen to “try on” one or more surnames before making a permanent selection, often different from their former enslaver’s name.

Jany 6th 1866 Recd of Thos. L. Mann our Former Master Fifty Six Dollars in full For my Services  for the Year 1865. Lewis (X) Mann

Witness [signature illegible]

——

Jany 6th 1866 Recd of Thos. L. Mann our Former Master Fifty four Dollars in full For my Services & Wife for the Year 1865. Jacks (X) Mann

Witness [signature illegible]

——

Jany 6th 1866 Recd of Thos. L. Mann our Former Master Forty Six Dollars 25/100 in full For my Services and Wife Patsey for the Year 1865. Jim (X) Mann

Witness [signature illegible]

Wage Receipts, Slave Records, Wilson County Records, North Carolina State Archives.

 

Received of Penny Lassiter.

James B. Woodard registered the receipt he issued to free woman of color Penny Lassiter for the $150 she paid to purchase her husband London Woodard in 1856. Though not legally manumitted, London lived essentially as a free man for the next ten years until Emancipation.

Deed book 1, page 155, Register of Deeds Office, Wilson.

Cemetery lot.

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.]