Rountree cemetery

The obituary of Almeda Bynum Morgan.

Wilson Daily Times, 10 March 1949.

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In the 1900 census of Wilson township, Wilson County: lumber sawyer Charley Bynum, 41; wife Julia Ann, 43; and children Calvin, 21, Mary Jane, 18, Ameta, 16, Annie, 13, John C., 9, and Abraham, 1.

On 3 February 1904, Calvin Morgan, 23, of Wilson, married Almeter Bynum, 20, of Wilson, daughter of Charles Bynum, at Charles Bynum’s in Wilson. John Reid applied for the license, and Missionary Baptist minister Fred M. Davis performed the ceremony in the presence of Peter Bynum, John Bynum, and F.B. Barnes.

In the 1920 census of Wilson, Wilson County: Calvin Morgan, 39, tobacco factory worker; wife Alameda, 30; and children Willie, 15, butcher shop delivery boy, Calvin, 8, Surenda, 11, and Mayanna, 1.

In the 1928 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Morgan Calvin (c; Almeda) lab h 102 Ashe

In the 1930 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 600 Stantonsburg Street, rented for $12/month, Calvin Morgan, 52, laborer at Colored High School; wife Almeta, 40; sons Willie, 23, tobacco factory laborer, Surrender, 21, radio company laborer, and Calvin Jr., 17, bellboy at Cherry hotel; Almeta Hannah Jr., 16; son Fred D. Morgan, 14; daughters Mary A., 9, Sarah J., 8, Rubie, 7, and Ninie L., 3; and son Lindberg, 2; daughter-in-law Eloise Morgan, 18; and son-in-law Lemore Hannah, 22, fertilizer factory laborer.

In the 1940 census of Wilson, Wilson County: Calvin Morgan, 65; wife Almeta, 58; Calvin Jr., 28, tobacco factory laborer, Almeta, 26, housekeeper, Fred, 24, Baptist preacher, Mary, 20, tobacco factory laborer, Sarah, 19, tobacco factory laborer, Ruby, 18, housekeeper, Lindberg, 11, and Minie, 12.

In 1940, Calvin Morgan registered for the World War II draft in Wilson County. Per his draft registration card, he was born 25 January 1909 in Wilson; lived at 600 Stantonsburg Street, Wilson; his contact was Almeta Bynum Morgan; and he worked for Liggett & Meyers Tobacco Company, Wilson.

Almeter Morgan died 6 March 1949 at her home at 317 Stantonsburg Street, Wilson. Per her death certificate, she was born 23 September 1893 in Wilson County to Charlie Bynum and Julia Davis; was widowed; and worked as a laborer. She was buried in Rountree Cemetery. Mary J. Lassiter was informant.

Lane Street Project: the other power pole.

Back to the power poles.

We know four — three steel, one wooden — were punched into Vick Cemetery in 1997. Other than to respond to public records requests to say there are no records of the installation of these poles, the City has made no comment on this sacrilege. 

The desecration is not contained to Vick. From a pole at the edge of Vick’s parking lot, electrical lines swoop along the edge of Odd Fellows to a pole planted at the high point of Rountree Cemetery, a private, church-owned burial ground. 

We know that the City cleared Vick completely and placed a monument at its center the year before the power poles went in. We don’t know what condition Rountree was in in 1997, but it had been inactive for forty years or more and was likely seriously overgrown. Consider the photo below though. The City’s power pole is visible just left of top center. Twenty feet away, shown at the bottom of this image, is a cluster of concrete headstones. Most are broken — concrete was especially vulnerable to weather and the fire that was often used to clean graveyards — but ten year-old Buster Ellis‘ stands intact. The marker for his grandmother, Clarkie Atkinson Ellis, born enslaved, lies nearby. We have not identified the others. 

It is difficult to believe that this area was not cleared in preparation for the installation of the power pole and that this heap of markers — or Daniel and Lottie Marlow‘s standing tall just beyond them — was not visible. 

We demand an investigation into the circumstances that allowed the City of Wilson and/or Wilson Energy to install  power poles in African-American cemeteries.

The pole as seen from the eastern edge of Odd Fellows Cemetery. Its base is wrapped in wisteria vines.

Lane Street Project: Season 4, workday 1.

I pulled up at Odd Fellows a couple of minutes late; I had not anticipated the line at Wilson Doughnuts.

Senior Force members Castonoble Hooks and Briggs Sherwood were unpacking Briggs’ trunk while chatting with our photographer Chris Facey and two newcomers, John Kirk and Thomas Ramirez, who arrived bearing boxes of Bojangles biscuits. Shortly after, Barton professor Lydia Walker and Raven Farmer, a LSP season-one original, pulled up. Rev. H. Maurice Barnes stopped through on his way to another engagement, and then again in time to pray over the work done and yet to do.

Today there were just these few at Odd Fellows. And we were enough. Whether nine or ninety, however many show up always will be enough.

We tackled the short ditch between Odd Fellows and Rountree, which has been choked with dog fennel and wisteria and privet and cherry saplings. It appears in early aerials of the land, but its purpose isn’t clear. However, given the high bank on which the front edge of Rountree Cemetery sits, however, it seems likely that it was cut as a passageway for wagons to gain access into the cemetery.

Just beyond where Cass Hooks is walking above, the ground slopes up gently to grade level. With the right equipment — a little Bobcat? — we could carefully scrape this out, but I’m getting ahead of ourselves.

The wild overgrowth along the first couple of feet at the top of the bank has been chopped. I thought at first that maybe Wilson Energy was cleaning up around the base of the power pole it rammed into Rountree Cemetery in 1997, but no — the pole is just as enwreathed in gnarly wisteria as ever.

Still there is evidence that someone fairly recently did some rough chopping of some of the larger saplings just behind the pole — and it wasn’t LSP. None of the brush was cleared out, it was simply pushed over — including this log on top of the pile of Ellis headstones I photographed during my initial solo foray into Rountree in December 2019.

We gently pulled the fallen sapling off the pile and cleared vines from ten year-old Buster Ellis‘ headstone.

The Ellis headstones, almost all shattered or snapped, are evidence of some earlier clean-up — or cleanout — conducted with little regard for the memory or graves of those whose graves they mark.

For now, we leave them as they are.

Nearby, Daniel Marlow‘s handsome headstone marks his 1910 burial. The vines are relentless; we cut them back.

We hope, with the blessing of Rountree Missionary Baptist Church, to do more in Rountree Cemetery this season.

Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, December 2023. 

The funeral notice of Leasie Bynum McCoy.

Wilson Daily Times, [unknown day] December 1945.

This obituary makes a rare mention of a decedent being buried in Rountree Missionary Baptist Church’s cemetery. We have not found a gravemarker for Leasie McCoy.

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On 30 June 1897, W.J. McKoy, 25, of Wilson, son of Alex and Ellen McKoy, married Leacy Bynum, 20, of Wilson, daughter of George and Tamer Bynum, at George Bynum’s residence.

In the 1910 census of Stantonsburg township, farmer Will McCoy, 34; wife Leesie, 32; and children Joe, 11, Lossie, 9, Nancy, 8, Robert, 4, and Mary, 3.

In the 1920 census of Wilson township, Wilson County: farmer Willie McCoy, 47; wife Leecy, 45; and children Joe, 21, Nancy, 16, Robert, 15, Arena, 13, and Eddie, 10.

In the 1930 census of Wilson township, Wilson County: on Highway 91, farmer Willie McCoy, 55; wife Litha, 48; children Eddie, 18, and Mary, 8; and grandchildren Annie M., 5, and Emma McCoy, 10, and Fred Davis, 7.

Leassie McCoy died 26 December 1945 at her home at 810 East Vance Street, Wilson. Per her death certificate, she was 65 years old; was born in Wilson County to George Bynum and Taimer Jones; was married to Willie McCoy; and was buried in Rountrees. 

Lane Street Project: are there graves on the other side of the road?

Are there graves on the other side of Bishop L.N. Forbes Street?

Here is the evidence we have:

Per an aerial from Wilson County GIS website, here are the four cemetery parcels, plus the parcels across the street from Vick and Odd Fellows. All this land was originally part of a large farm owned by Frank W. and Mattie B. Barnes. Descendants of the Barneses still own the Wright Trust property and the Wilson Farm Properties parcel.

Rountree Missionary Baptist Church owns parcels on both sides of the road, one purchased in 1897 and the other in 1906. Together, they constitute Rountree Cemetery. No headstones currently are visible in the Rountree lot on the northwest side of the street. However, in late winter, profuse drifts of daffodils bloom in this lot, common indicators of old graves.

There is also this:

It is difficult to see here, but this is a rectangular slab of concrete at the edge of the ditch, perhaps six to seven feet long. Its surface is covered with dead plant matter, and fire ants have built nests along its front edge. In my youth, when (then) Lane Street was a dirt road, I saw an exposed vault cover parallel to and at the very edge of the ditch lining the street. This appears to be that vault cover.

The cement slab is visible as a light-colored rectangle in this aerial from Wilson County GOS website. 

But there’s also this:

We know the City placed steel power poles in Rountree and Vick Cemeteries in 1997, and an older set of wooden poles marches down the northwest of the street, as is visible in the upper left corner. There are also a fire hydrant and a manhole cover on the northwest side of the street. In other words, there is a municipal water line running either under Bishop L.N. Forbes Street or in the public right-of-way that occupies the first ten or so feet of Rountree Cemetery, measured from the edge of the street. There are no manholes in B.L.N.F. Street, which suggests the water (and sewer?) lines are in the right-of-way. There would have been no right-of-way observed during the period Rountree was actively receiving burials. Thus, as with Rest Haven, Odd Fellows, and Vick Cemetery, there were likely burials up to the edge of Rountree — on both sides.

This detail from a 1940 aerial depicts the stretch of B.L.N.F. Street that runs past the cemeteries. The patchy light areas below the street are family plots within the graveyards. However, the light areas above the street are ambiguous. They are clearly bare earth, but do they indicate graves? And what is going on across from Vick? A 1959 aerial shows that area completely denuded. There is no evidence, however, that this parcel has left the hands of the Barnes-Harriss-Wright family since the late 1800s, and it seems unlikely that they would have permitted burials on their property.

This detail from a 1985 aerial photograph of a section of the street is similarly ambiguous. The area encircled corresponds with the local of the cement slab above and appears to show several similar light-colored rectangles. There are some small white marks on the Wilson Farm Properties parcel, but are they graves?

The same year this image was taken, a jogger on Lane Street found bones on an unspecified side of road. Public Works director Bill Bartlett stated, “There is a concrete slab over one grave on one side of the road that wasn’t there when we annexed the property in 1972,” adding “The marker says the person was buried in 1950, but the slab has been poured in the past six or seven years.” Is this the slab above?

Bartlett also reported that a woman had called Asa Shreve, a former sanitation employee, and claimed she might have relatives buried under the street.  “Asa was going to look into that for me. It could be that we need to find out who that could be and see if they want to do some digging out there to remove the remains.” I’ve found nothing further about this alarming claim, but notice Bartlett didn’t dismiss the idea outright.

It is certain that graves lie on both sides of the road in the halves of Rountree Cemetery. Whatever the photos above may or may not show, more than one person has stated with certainty that they recall (or were told) that a family member’s grave was located on land across from Vick Cemetery as well.

Lane Street Project: the New York Times on “the decay, destruction and desecration plaguing many of America’s Black cemeteries.”

Last week, The New York Times shined its powerful spotlight on three African-American cemeteries and the women fighting to save them.

“Three Black women, shocked by the condition of cemeteries in Washington, Georgia and Texas, have turned their anger into action. None have prior experience in historic preservation, landscape architecture or design. But like many others working to save Black cemeteries, they view the work as a sacred trust and payment of a debt to ancestors who led the way.”

As disheartening as the details of these cemeteries are — Vick is not the only graveyard ravished by a utility company — I am encouraged by the increasing attention paid to their plights and the knowledge that Lane Street Project is not alone in its struggle. Or its dreams. “I don’t want to keep trying to save the land,” said Lisa Fager, who fights for Washington, D.C.’s Mount Zion-Female Union Band Society cemeteries, “I want to save the people and their stories.”

Lane Street Project: the street.

I’ve talked about the narrowing of Bishop L.N. Forbes Street (formerly Lane Street) and now want to show you. It’s important that we interrogate the spaces we encounter: why does this look this way? what choices did planners have? who benefitted from the choices made? who lost?

Here’s an aerial view, per Google Maps, of the elbow of the arm that LNF Street forms between U.S. 301 and Martin L. King Parkway.

Below, I am standing at the beginning of the curve, looking toward 301, with Lane Park to the left and the undeveloped expansion portion of Rest Haven Cemetery on the right. The curbing comes to an abrupt stop here. Note the asphalt paving widths — the paver needed three passes to cover the street.

Now I’ve turned around to face the bend. The road abruptly narrows from three paving widths to two, requiring quick deceleration if you meet a car approaching the turn in the opposite direction.

There are no curbs. No gutters. Open ditches run along each side of the street. (I cannot think of another stretch of street — not highway, street — inside Wilson city limits where this is the case.) 

Let’s go to the end of the street between Rountree Cemetery and MLK Parkway. The word “Bishop” is superimposed on this map over the bridge spanning the sluggish murk of Sandy Creek. [As an aside: the gravel path entering the road below “Forbes”? It runs to a small natural gas pipeline substation that regulates the pressure and flow of gas from the pipeline that runs around Vick Cemetery. Also, you can see the power lines that start at Wilson Energy’s Substation #2 (which is located down LNF near the curve), run on poles through Vick and Rountree Cemeteries, then cut sharply south, passing over the end of the street I grew up on.]

Just past that bridge, the curb stops. It won’t resume until you round the curve at the point shown in the first photo above.

The ditches at this end are badly overgrown. Rountree Cemetery lies on both sides of the road here. In my childhood, I recall seeing a vault cover on the right side of what was then a dirt road. In late winter, daffodils bloom profusely on that side. There are graves there. LNF Street runs through the middle, then, with a slight dip in the road visible below, straight past Odd Fellows and Vick until the abrupt curve above.

So, why?

Because the graves of Rountree, Odd Fellows, and Vick Cemeteries were too close to the road to permit the installation of a standard-width street or curbs and gutters. In 1985, after a man jogging on Lane Street found human bones exposed in a ditch, Wilson Public Works official Bill Bartlett told the Wilson Daily Times that about 1980 the city attempted to define the road and found, because of the numerous graves in the area, only a 40- to 45-foot right of way could be allowed, compared to the usual 60-foot right of way.  

After an eight-year push to pave all the City’s remaining 23 miles of dirt streets — almost all of which were in Black neighborhoods — City Manager Bruce Boyette told the Times on 26 May 1984 that all but 1.2 miles had been completed, Lane Street (which is close to a mile long east of 301) was the primary street still in need of paving. 

The street was finally paved in the late 1980s. Rumors persist in the Black community that there are graves under the pavement. We certainly know they’re in the right-of-way up the edge of the ditch. 

Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, July 2023.

Lane Street Project: Sam Vick’s purchase of the lot.

As we know, in 1913, Samuel H. Vick sold the Town of Wilson the 7.84 acres that became Vick Cemetery. As the deed below shows, Vick had purchased this land in February 1908 from banker Franklin W. Barnes and his wife Matilda Bynum Barnes. 

Deed book 81, page 196, Wilson County Register of Deeds Office.

Notice that Vick’s purchase is described as about 10 acres adjoining the Rountree Church lot. In other words, Vick bought a large lot that he later subdivided. At an unknown date, he conveyed the two or so acres adjoining Rountree Cemetery to Hannibal Lodge, Odd Fellows, for use as its cemetery and conveyed the rest to the City for Vick Cemetery in 1913. The Odd Fellows never filed a deed for their cemetery, but we now have a tighter window — between 1908 and 1913 — for the date of its establishment.

So, if Odd Fellows Cemetery was not established until some time after 1908, why do some of its grave markers show death dates before that time? Recall Wilson’s first Black public cemetery, Oakdale. Sam Vick was an ardent Odd Fellow. It may be that after the cemetery opened, he had the graves of his mother, father, and daughter Viola moved from Oakdale and reinterred in a new family plot. Chief Ben Mincey may also have done the same for his father and brother. 

Burial in “Round Tree.”

Laura Williams Sutton was born in Nash County and died in Farmville, Pitt County, in 1930, but her body was brought to Wilson, where she had lived for decades, for burial in Rountree Cemetery.

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On 21 March 1906, William Sutton, 27, of Wilson, son of Providence and Marguret Sutton, married Laura Williams, 24, of Wilson, at the Graded School. Free Will Baptist minister John Steward performed the ceremony.

William Sutton registered for the World War I draft in Wilson County in 1918. Per his registration card, he was born 30 June 1878; lived at 620 Stantonsburg Street; worked as a laborer for Southern Oil Mill; and his nearest relative was wife Laura Sutton.

In the 1920 census of Wilson, Wilson County: on Robinson [Robeson] Street, oil mill laborer Willie Sutton, 41; wife Laura, 37; and daughter Dora, 2; boarders Fannie Brown, 18, private nurse; Willie Taylor, 19, oil mill laborer; Geneva Jones, 20, cook; and Nelson Thompson, 20, oil mill laborer; and roomer Sadie Hardy, 40, tobacco factory laborer.

Laura Sutton died 23 June 1930 in Farmville, Pitt County. Per her death certificate, she was born 15 December 1888 in Nash County to Jake and Kizzie Williams; was married to Willie Sutton; and was buried in “Round Tree” Cemetery, Wilson.