In December 1909, Samuel H. Vick purchased fifteen shares of the capital stock of The McGirt Publishing Company and was issued this certificate:
Robeson County native James E. McGirt was poet of very modest talent who published a few collections of verse before moving to Philadelphia and founding McGirt’s Magazine, a monthly dedicated to African-American arts, literature, and general affairs. Public accommodationist declarations notwithstanding, Sam Vick was a race man, and his investment in this Black-owned business is not a surprise. It was a risky move, however, and in 1910 McGirt’s went under.
The Vick family plot was the nucleus of what is now Odd Fellows Cemetery. It contains five marked graves — Samuel H. Vick, his wife Annie Washington Vick, their daughters Irma and Viola Vick, and his parents Daniel and Fannie Blount Vick — but likely other family members.
With funds crowdsourced from Black Wide-Awake‘s readers, Foster Stone and Cemetery Care has been expertly cleaning, repairing as necessary, and resetting grave markers in Odd Fellows. The past few days, Billy Foster has worked his magic in the Vick family plot.
BEFORE
AFTER
The earliest of these markers belongs to little Viola Leroy Vick, who died in 1897 just before her third birthday.
It is a pretty little headstone, but oddly proportioned and badly in need of cleaning. When Billy Foster began to work on it, he discovered that the two-part base of the stone was completely buried — we’ve only been seeing the stele.
Foster dismantled the headstone.
When he cleaned it and reassembled it, an epitaph came into view on the pedestal:
A light from our household is gone
A voice we loved is stilled
A place is vacant in our hearts
Which never can be filled.
The plinth is also inscribed: Burns & Campbell, Petersburg, Virginia, a prolific firm known as much for its headstones as for constructing Confederate monuments.
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My deep thanks to M. Barnes, R. Breen, S. Brooks, V. Cowan, D. Dawson, D. Gouldin, J. Hackney, J. Hawthorne, B. Henderson, T. Lewis, B. Nevarez, and M. Wrenn for sponsoring headstone repairs. There is more restoration work to be done, and I hope others will donate to support our efforts.
When Dr. Frank S. Hargrave and Samuel H. Vick envisioned the healthcare facility they would found to treat African-American patients in Wilson, it had two parts — a hospital and a “tubercular home,” i.e. sanatorium, outside town limits.
Wilson Hospital opened on East Green Street in 1913. Later that year, Sam Vick sold a forty-acre parcel south of downtown to The Wilson Tubercular Home, Inc., for $5000. Vick had bought the parcel in 1902 from S.W. and Jean S. Venable.
Deed book 97, page 313, Register of Deeds Office, Wilson.
Despite reports that a building on the site was near completion, the Tubercular Home apparently never opened.
With the help of Wilson County’s GIS Coordinator Will Corbett, I have identified the rough location of “high sandy knoll self-drained and one-third of which is covered with native pines” upon which a sanatorium and patient cottages were to be built., Pinpointing the area will require additional research in the Register of Deeds office.
Samuel H. Vick was one of two African-American delegates from North Carolina to the 1904 Republican National Convention. The other was Henry Plummer Cheatham, former Second District Representative to the United States Congress.
Speaking to my home community at Wilson County Public Library has been a highlight of my Februarys lately, and I’m excited to return in person this year. I’ll be trying to do justice to the extraordinary life of Samuel H. Vick in an hour or so, and I look forward to seeing you there.
Samuel H. and Annie Washington Vick sold tobacconists R.G. Briggs and C.M. Fleming a quarter-acre lot at the fork of Stantonsburg and Black Creek Roads, at that time well beyond town limits.
A regular meeting of the Board of Commissioners of the Town of Wilson was held in the Mayor’s office, November 6, 1902.
…
S.H. Vick came before the Board asking that the Town furnish the gasoline for the operation of a Street Lamp on the east end of Green Street. The Lamp to be furnished and cared for by the citizens in that section of Town.
On motion, consideration of the application was deferred until
On motion, the Superintendent of Electric Lights was directed to investigate the cost of putting an Arc Light in the neighborhood of S.H. Vick and others.
…
Minutes of City Council, Wilson, North Carolina, transcribed in bound volumes shelved at Wilson County Public Library, Wilson.
