Rountree

The estate of Wiley Rountree (1847).

When Wiley (or Willie, as his name was sometimes spelled) Rountree made out his will on 12 May 1847, he left land for his sons Willie and Jonathan Rountree on Contentnea Creek and Hominy Swamp, directed that his personal property be sold, and specified that “it is my will and desire that my Negroes be divided as follows among my children and my granddaughter Mary Ann Rountree, that is for my girl children each to have a full share of all my Negro property, and my boys and my granddaughter … one half share of the same.”

Rountree died weeks later, and his executors (who had married two of Rountree’s daughters) published this notice in a Tarboro newspaper:

Tarboro Press, 12 June 1847.

On January 1, 1850, Larry Dew, L.D. Farmer, and Joshua Barnes divided the 23 remaining enslaved people in Rountree’s estate among his surviving heirs:

  • Lot 1, Ruffin, Packolatt, Jane, and Amos, valued collectively at $1625, and lot 3, Marion, Ruford, Jack, and Margaret, $1600, went to William Woodard, on behalf of his wife Delphia Rountree Woodard
  • Lot 2, Joseph, Henry, Clarky, and Everett, $1625, went to Willie Rountree
  • Lot 4, Bob, Temperance, Edwin, and Elizabeth, $1575, went to John G. Williams, as the administrator of recently deceased Jonathan Rountree’s estate (Williams later sold Bob and Elizabeth to James J. Taylor for $750 and $492, and Temperance, her son Edwin, and an unnamed child to John Batts for $615. Bob and Temperance were a married couple. Thus, they and their older children Marion and David were separated from each other.)
  • Lot 5, Davy, Israel, and Adaline, $1550, and Lot 6, Haywood, Edwin, Zilphy, and Mary, $1550, went to Nancy Rountree

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  • Ruffin
  • Packolatt
  • Jane
  • Amos
  • Bob, Temperance, Marion, Dave, Edwin, Elizabeth

In 1866, Bob Rountree and Tempy Horn registered their 30-year cohabitation in Wilson County. [Note that Temperance declined to adopt Rountree or Batts as her maiden name. Horn was the name of the enslaver who sold her to Wiley Rountree.]

In 1866, Merion Rountree and Jane Barnes registered their seven-year cohabitation in Wilson County.

On 27 August 1866, David Rountree and Nancy Farmer registered their twelve-year cohabitation in Wilson County.

In the 1870 census of Wilson township, Wilson County: Robert Rountree, 62, farm laborer; wife Temperance, 49; Ann, 21, farm laborer; and Dora, 1.

In the 1870 census of Wilson township, Wilson County: farm laborer David Rountree, 35; wife Nancy, 33; and children Winnie, 12, Jonas, 11, Allen, 9, Tillie, 4, Laurence, 5, and Angeline, 1.

On 25 April 1872, Robert Rountree, son of Robert and Tempy Rountree, married Pricey Williamson, in Wilson County.

In the 1880 census of Wilson township, Wilson County: Robert Rountree, 82; wife Tempy, 68; daughter-in-law Priscilla, 30, and her son Willie, 7.

In the 1880 census of Wilson township, Wilson County: David Rountree, 46; wife Nancy, 45; and children Winnie, 21, Lawrence, 14, Jennie, 12, Dinah, 10, Sarah, 8, David, 6, Charlie, 4, and Jonas, 20, and Bettie, 1.

  • Ruford
  • Jack
  • Margaret
  • Joseph
  • Henry
  • Clarky
  • Everett
  • Israel
  • Adaline
  • Haywood
  • Edwin
  • Zilphy
  • Mary

The apprenticeship of Dewitt, Charles, George, and Ike (1866).

On 11 January 1866, Malvina E. Rountree entered into an agreement with the Goldsboro District Office of the Freedmen’s Bureau to indenture four orphaned children — Dewitt, 13, Charles, 10, George, 8, and Ike, 6.

Malvina Gill Rountree was the widow of Jonathan D. Rountree, who died in 1865. By time the 1870 census was counted, none of these children were in her household.

Rountree unearths ancient bones.

I don’t even know what to say about this one.

Goldsboro News-Argus, 10 January 1939.

The story of Stantonsburg’s mastodon (whale? dinosaur?) caromed around the state for a week or so, then faded away. Perhaps a call to the North Carolina State Natural History Museum is in order.

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In 1940, Moses Rountree registered for the World War II draft in Wilson County. Per his registration card, he was born 24 October 1906 in Saratoga, N.C.; lived at 413 Warren Street, Wilson; his contact was wife Mamie Mitchell Rountree; and he worked for the W.P.A.

The Rountrees attend a party.

Asbury Park Press, 25 September 1913.

We learned in Wilson County native William Rountree‘s obituary that he was a long-time Sunday School superintendent at Mount Pisgah Baptist Church in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Here, Rountree, his wife Fannie Best Rountree, the Misses Rountree (probably daughters Viola, Ethel, and Virginia Rountree), and son William Rountree Jr. attended a going-away party for Anna Jones. Jones was on her way to Princess Anne College, which is now University of Maryland Eastern Shore.

Plantation House Series: Lewis Rountree house. [Updated.]

I thought this antebellum house was built by a Woodard, but according to a state GIS map, it’s “Roundtree house (A. Cozart house).”

What does that mean? Where did I get Woodard from?

I first saw this house from the windows of my elementary school bus as it rumbled east from my neighborhood, Bel Air Forest, to pick up Robin, a boy who lived a mile down the highway. The road curved, then split, with NC-58 headed southeast to Stantonsburg and 264 more easterly to Saratoga. The two-story house sat in plain view on the north side of 264, up a dirt track. I can’t recall if the house was occupied then, but judging by its condition when I took these photographs circa 1991, I think not. In, as I recall, the late 1990s, the intersection was reconfigured, but the house stood until the early 2000s.

Detail from map of Wilson County at HPOWEB 2.0, nc.maps.arcgis.com. 

I did a little poking in deeds. Long story short, S.H. Cozart bought a bundle of parcels, including this one, from Graham Woodard in 1941. Graham Woodard had inherited the property as the only child of Fannie Rountree Woodard, who died in 1894. Fannie Woodard, whose husband Frederick A. Woodard we have met, had inherited it from her father Moses Rountree, the wealthy 19th-century Wilson merchant.

Wilson Advance, 30 November 1883.

Per the Nomination Form for the Moses Rountree House, built about 1869 in town, Rountree “was born in 1822 on the family plantation several miles east of the present city of Wilson on what is now Route 264.”

Detail of a 1894 survey map found in the Moses Rountree estate file showing two lots inherited by Graham Woodard. As the aerial image below shows, the main landscape features remain the same — Toisnot Swamp and its small tributary, a forked road. A tiny square marked “House” is the house in question.

No longer looking for a Woodard property, I went back to Kate Ohno’s Wilson County’s Architectural Heritage and voila — the Rountree House, believed to have been built  about 1830 by Moses Rountree’s father Lewis Rountree. (Lewis Rountree enslaved Hilliard Ellis and Warren Rountree, among a few dozen others. Moses Rountree also was a slaveowner, acknowledging three adults and one infant in the 1860 slave schedule.)

Per Kate Ohno, the Rountree House.

But wait. The house depicted in the book is not the house I photographed, though both were two-story structures built during the antebellum period. The most immediately noticeable difference is that the house above has a hipped roof and hip-roof porch, and Ohno’s house has a gable roof and shed-roof porch. But there are other inconsistencies — the number of chimneys, the number of porch posts and second-story windows, the ashlar skirting.

I’m back to square one.

Aerial image (via Google Maps) of Rountree-Woodard-Cozart property. Toisnot Swamp runs at bottom right. Its Mill Branch (2) is visible as a line of trees and a dammed pond. The approximate location of the house is (1).

Estate of Moses Rountree (1884), North Carolina Wills and Probate Records 1665-1998, http://www.ancestry.com.

[UPDATE, 16 March 2025: A course correction and comment on the fallibility of memory. Yesterday, I shared this post with members of Wilson County Historical Association in hopes that someone could help unravel the mystery. Among others, Cliff Darden responded and shared his own childhood recollection of the gable-roof Rountree house.  I began to wonder if I were conflating two distinct memories — seeing this house from my school bus window in the mid-1970s and photographing a house in the early 1990s. Though I was not sure the data would go back far enough, I checked Google Maps’ Streetview for images of the site. Voila — here’s the January 2008 view:

The resolution is terrible, but that’s clearly the gable-roof Rountree house. The house had disappeared by time the next image was made in 2012 (and the barn several years later.)

Where, then, did I take the photographs above? I lived in New York City at the time, and on visits home would ramble the backroads of Wilson and Wayne and Edgecombe and Nash Counties, photographing abandoned farmsteads with a Canon AE-1. I’m looking for my contact sheets and will update this post again if I’m able to pinpoint the location. I am reminded of the value of interrogating my own memories and am grateful for the time taken by others to share theirs.]

The Rountrees sell out.

Having joined the Great Migration north, in 1903 William and Fannie Best Rountree sold the property William inherited from his father Warren Rountree. The Rountrees settled first in Philadelphia, then moved to Asbury Park, New Jersey, around 1904.

Deed Book 68, page 224, Wilson County Register of Deeds Office, Wilson, N.C.

——

In the 1880 census of Wilson township, Wilson County: farmer Orren Best, 31, wife Hansey, 31, and children James, 9, Oscar, 6, George, 4, Fannie, 2, and Hattie, 3 months.

In the 1880 census of Taylors township, Wilson County: farmer Alfred Woodard, 50; wife Sarah, 45; children Florence, 28, Mary, 22, Howell, 18, Sarah E., 16, Zilly A., 17, Lundon, 13, Minnie, 12, Willie, 10, Josephine, 7, and Evvy, 4; and grandchildren Elizabeth, 7, Robt. B., 5, and John H. Bynum, 4. [Willie and Josephine were Alfred Woodard’s stepchildren. Their father Warren Rountree died in 1871, and Alfred Woodard’s wife Harriet Woodard Woodard soon after. On 13 February 1873, Alfred Woodard married Warren Rountree’s widow Sarah Woodard Rountree, who was his first wife’s sister.]

On 28 March 1900, Fannie Best, 22, married Willie Rountree, 28, at Orren Best’s house. Minister R.S. Rives performed the ceremony in the presence of Levi James, Fred Vastenable and Martha Vastenable.

In the 1900 census of Taylor township, Wilson County: farm laborer Willie Rountree, 29, and wife Fannie, 22. 

In the 1910 census of Asbury Park, Monmouth County, New Jersey: at 1310 Springwood Avenue, William Roundtree, 38, born N.C., odd jobs laborer; wife Fannie, 32, born N.C.; children Viola, 9, born N.C., Ethel, 6, born Pennsylvania, and Virginia, 5, born New Jersey; and boarders Henry Dixon, 49, and Edna Williams, 3.

In the 1915 state census of Asbury Park, Monmouth County, New Jersey: at 8 Borden Avenue, mail carrier William Roundtree, 45; wife Fanny, 37; children Viola, 14, Ethel, 11, Virginia, 10, and William Jr., 4; and boarders Richard M. Brooks, 43, and William Vance, 22.

In the 1920 census of Asbury Park, Monmouth County, New Jersey: hotel waiter William Rountree, 49; wife Fannie, 46; children Ethel, 16, Virginia, 14, and William Jr., 9; and lodgers Bertha Bess, 32, and Arthur Green, 12.

Asbury Park, New Jersey, city directory (1922).

In the 1930 census of Asbury Park, Monmouth County, New Jersey: at 8 Borden Avenue, owned and valued at $3000, city laborer William Rountree, 59; wife Fannie, 49; children Ethel, 26, maid, and William Jr., 20, chauffeur; and boarded Lulu Vann, 59, maid.

William W. Roundtree died 16 November 1932 in Asbury Park.

Asbury Park Press, 16 November 1932.

In the 1940 census of Asbury Park, Monmouth County, New Jersey: at 8 Borden Avenue, owned and valued at $2000, widow Fannie Rountree, 62, laundress, and five boarders. 

Fannie Rountree died 2 September 1953 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Per her death certificate, she was born 2 February 1876 in Wilson, North Carolina, to Oren Best and Nancy Harper; lived in Asbury Park, New Jersey; was a widow; and was buried in White Ridge Cemetery, Eatontown, New Jersey. Ethel L. Rountree was informant.

Rountree defends sister, threatens principal.

As printed in the 26 March 1915 edition of the Wilson Daily Times:

Julius Rountree Threatened Life of Principal Reid and Bound Over Under a Peace Bond.

There was only one case before Mayor Dickinson this morning, that of Julius Rountree, who threatened the life of J.D. Reid, principal of the colored graded school, telling him he would kill him if he put his foot on the ground.

Rountree went in the class room where he was making his threats, and witnesses heard him.

The trouble was over the principal whipping one of his pupils, a girl about 17 and sister of Rountree. Rountree was placed under a peace bond of $250 to keep the peace for six months. This was done at Reid’s request who stated he didn’t want to see Rountree go to the roads.

The evidence presented showed that Reid whipped the girl with a small switch and not unmercifully.

It seems the trouble started on the account of the misbehavior of the girl who shook her fist at Reid when reprimanded and the switching followed.

The girl resented this and struck Reid in the face and he put her out of the building. Then followed the entry of Julius into the trouble.

——

Julius Rountree was almost 20 years when he confronted J.D. Reid. The sister he defended was most likely Cora Rountree (sister Daisy Rountree had died the year before.) Three years after this incident, J.D. Reid was involved in the incident that led to the teacher strike and parent boycott of the Colored Graded School.

The obituary of Julius Rountree.

Wilson Daily Times, 19 February 1948.

——

In the 1930 census of Wilson, Wilson County: on Manchester Street, Isaac Tarboro, 48, sawmill laborer; wife Emma, 48; children Emma L. Roundtree, 22; John E. Tarbro, 15; Viriginer Tarbro, 13; and Richard Tarbro, 10; and grandson Julius L. Roundtree, 2.