Spring Street

Historic Black Business Series, no. 18: Neverson Green’s grocery.

The 500 block of East Nash Street is justly remembered as the 20th century epicenter of Wilson’s African-American-owned businesses. However, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Black entrepreneurs and tradespeople also operated across the tracks. As Wilson’s downtown experiences a resurgence, let’s rediscover and celebrate these pioneering men and women.

Check in each Sunday for the latest in the Historic Black Business Series!

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Neverson Green owned a series of grocery stores in the 400 block of South Spring [now Douglas] Street in the early 20th century. We know he was in business as early as 1906, when he paid $57.50 for a computing scale, but the earliest address for which we have evidence is 410, a location taken over for Agnes Taylor‘s eating house.

On 24 December 1906, Neverson Green agreed to purchase a #10 Computing Scale from The J.H. Parker Co. of Richmond, Virginia, for $57.50 payable in installments. Deed Book 72, page 205.

Neverson Green’s first name was occasionally mistaken as “Nelson.” 1908 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory.

In 1909, Green’s grocery was burgled by the son of a rival grocery storeowner, Jacob Tucker.

City directories appear to show Green’s grocery store sliding up and down South Spring every year, which doesn’t seem probable. In 1912 and 1916, he is at 412 South Spring. In 1920, at 424. (This was also the address of Jacob Tucker’s grocery. The two may have been in the business together for brief periods.) In 1922, he’s at 420, but in 1924, he’s back at 424. In 1925 and 1928, he’s at 400 South Spring.

Detail from 1922 Sanborn fire insurance map of Wilson.

Remnants of the old Norfolk Southern tracks, seen in the map above, are still visible in the asphalt of Douglas Street. They offer a glimpse of the chaotic landscape of early 20th-century downtown Wilson.

In the 1920 census of Wilson, Wilson County: grocery merchant Neverson Green, 58, grocery merchant; wife Isabella, 54; daughters Lula, 21, Bessie, 16, and Eva, 12; and roomer Willie Ward, 19.

In the 1930 census of Wilson, Wilson County: grocery store merchant Nelson Green, 72; wife Isabella, 65; daughters Lula, 30, and Eva, 23; and grandchildren Lila R. Barnes, 12, and Lissa Strickland, 12.

In the 1930 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Green Nelson (c; Isabella) gro 400 Spring h 502 S Lodge

Historic Black Business Series, no. 10: Agnes Taylor’s eating house.

The 500 block of East Nash Street is justly remembered as the 20th century epicenter of Wilson’s African-American-owned businesses. However, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Black entrepreneurs and tradespeople also operated across the tracks. As Wilson’s downtown experiences a resurgence, let’s rediscover and celebrate these pioneering men and women.

Check in each Sunday for the latest in the Historic Black Business Series!

Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory (1912).

The entire 400 block of South Douglas (formerly Spring) Street is empty, and it’s difficult to determine the exact location of Agnes Taylor‘s eating house. (Or her house-house, which was just down the block.) It was a short-lived business, and both the 1908 and 1913 Sanborn maps show a grocery at 410 South Spring. It’s difficult to say, but per location I’d guess Taylor’s eatery catered to Black customers.

I have not otherwise found Agnes Taylor in Wilson records.

A glimpse of the past.

To stand at the intersection of Goldsboro and Spruce Streets, looking northeast, is to see Wilson much as it looked in the 1920s. Several early tobacco factories operated in this area, and the surrounded streets were lined with the small houses rented to African-American factory laborers.

At left, the two-story brick building, in its original cast-iron form, was Dibrell Brothers Tobacco Factory and Re-Ordering Plant and, by 1922, was the warehouse of tobacco brokers Monk-Adams & Company. The rail line, originally a spur of the Norfolk & Southern Rail Road, is visible in the detail of the 1922 Sanborn fire insurance map below. 

The low brick building at the right of the photo contained the office and tobacco storage and drying areas of the British-American Tobacco Company’s facility. The water tower at the far end of the block above can be seen on the map below as a small gray square with a blue insert near the corner of Spruce and Spring [now Douglas] Streets. 

The tin-roofed red building in middle distance appears to be an expanded version of the small auto shed marked just above the rail line on the Sanborn map. 

The three houses on the west side of Spring/Douglas Street have been demolished, but the little saddlebag house in the distance, its roof white with the remnants of a brief snow, is 515 South Douglas Street. Formerly numbered 601, the house appears in Sanborn maps as early as 1908.

 

Photo by Lisa Y. Henderson, January 2021.

515 South Douglas Street.

Formerly 515 South Spring Street, this house is not within the bounds of East Wilson Historic District. However, South Spring Street, now Douglas — below the warehouse district — has been an African-American residential area since the turn of the twentieth century.

The house likely originally comprised only two rooms — known as the “saddlebag” type. An ell at the rear would have been added later to encompass a kitchen and bathroom. Current tax records show that the house measures 792 square feet.

In the 1928 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Hargett Lemuel (c; Beadie) lab h515 Spring

In the 1947 Hill’s Wilson, N.C., city directory: Whitley Connell (c; Louise) USA h515 Spring

Photo by Lisa Y. Henderson, February 2019.

Bottles and jugs.

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6-6-1911

Wilson Daily Times, 6 June 1911.

Spearman, again:

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Wilson Daily Times, 3 October 1911.

And (with Tobe Barnes) again:

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Wilson Daily Times, 24 October 1911.

A blind tiger is a place in which liquor is sold illegally. “Retailing,” specifically, was selling liquor illegally.

Sis Spearman does not appear in Wilson city directories or census records.