tenement

What was the Independent School building before it was the Independent School?

I was asked a question that stumped me during one of my talks last week. “What was the building that housed the Independent School before it was a school?”

I recalled vaguely that Samuel H. Vick had purchased the building from famed brick maker Silas Lucas Jr., but not much more. Maybe something about the Methodist Church?

I found a deed quickly. On 24 October 1904, S.H. Vick paid Silas and Charity Lucas $1650 for a lot on Vance Street adjacent to property Vick already owned, “it being the same lot on which is situate a nineteen room house.” 

Deed book 68, page 227, Wilson County Register of Deeds Office, Wilson, N.C.

In the 1913 Sanborn fire insurance maps of Wilson, the building is labeled “Tenements”:

I can’t find the reference that I seem to recall about the building’s original use and will need to do some additional deed digging to find Lucas’ purchase. (By the way: Lucas was renowned as a brick maker. Not only are his reclaimed original bricks still sought after for renovation projects, the name “Silas Lucas” is now generically used to describe any soft, pinkish brick.)

Negro tenements.

There, at the lower right edge of this page of the May 1885 Sanborn map of Wilson, a cluster of “Negro tenements.” Just below them and across a short rail spur was a ticket office and freight depot, and it’s safe to assume that many of the men living here were employed as railroad laborers.

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The site is now an empty lot, roughly across Pettigrew Street from the union hall of the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Union, Local 270T.