Richmond VA

Whitehead plays on Saint Philip’s softball team.

Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 14 July 1945.

Gertrude Whitehead, second from left on the top row, played softball for the Saint Philip Hospital nursing school team in Richmond, Virginia.

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In the 1930 census of Wilson township, Wilson County: on Highway 91, owned and valued at $2500, oil mill contractor Henry Whitehead, 53; wife Victoria, 43, seamstress; and children Katherine, 19, Odell, 17, James, 15, Grace, 13, Rosalyn, 11, Herbert, 9, Gertrude, 6, Mable, 4, and Victoria, 2.

In the 1940 census of Wilson township, Wilson County: widow Victoria Whitehead, 52, sewing; children James, 25, apprentice carpenter; Rosaline, 21; Herbert, 20, tobacco company floor hand; Gertrude, 16, Mabel, 14, and Victoria E., 12; and nieces Elizabeth Brodie, 32, public school teacher, and [actually, granddaughter] Joan Bynum, 6.

In the 1950 census of Richmond, Virginia: at 2109 Bainbridge Street, widow Lillian G. Smithea, 48; brother Robert L. Glenn, 36; and lodger Gertrude E. Whitehead, 25, registered nurse-public health.

Did Texas kill his wife?

Wilson Daily Times, 24 November 1911.

That first sentence is difficult to untangle, but my take-away is that Texas Faison of Wilson was believed to have killed his wife (who lived in Richmond, Virginia, but regularly moved between there and Wilson?) in Richmond.

  • Texas Faison — “Texas” was a common nickname in the era, and I suspect it suggested less a place of origin than a certain swagger. I have not found him in local records.

Unmarked.

https://player.pbs.org/viralplayer/3040506231/

During this pandemic, my work for the recovery of East Wilson’s black cemeteries is a banked fire, but it still burns. Please watch this timely mini-documentary for a deeper understanding of what is at stake on Lane Street and why I care.

Hat tip to Debbie Price Gouldin. Thank you!