tobacco farmer

Three men charged with stealing tobacco from Black farmer; selling it in town.

Wilson Daily Times, 7 September 1922. 

Tenant farmer Roscoe Pearson raised tobacco on Green Watson’s farm between Wilson and Kenly, a town at the edge of Johnston and Wilson Counties. He stored his crop in a packhouse near the road. Three white Johnston County men were accused of stealing his tobacco and selling it at Planters Warehouse in Wilson. A white Wilson policeman testified against the trio, asserting that one of them asked if he thought the matter would be dropped if they paid Watson (not Pearson) for the tobacco. 

  • Roscoe Pearson — I have found no record of Pearson in Wilson County.

Clipping courtesy of J. Robert Boykin III.

A producer of fine quality tobacco.

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Wilson Daily Times, 9 August 1946.

Floyd W. Farmer was not only a prosperous farmer, he was a force in the effort to get Wilson County to build rural high schools for African-Americans in the late 1940s.

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In the 1930 census of Gardners township, Wilson County: farmer Cromwell Farmer, 57; wife Mary Jane, 48; and children James, 20, Ida, 20, Cromwell, 19, Ella, 17, Maggie, 16, Clara, 14, Floyd, 12, Viola, 9, Liola, 9, Esther, 8, Lee A., 7, and George, 6.

In the 1940 census of Toisnot township, Wilson County: Mary Jane Farmer, 65, and children Floyd W., 21, Leola, 19, Viola, 19, Queen Esther, 17, and George, 15.

In 1940, Floyd Willie Farmer applied for the World War II draft in Wilson County. Per his registration card, he was born in April 1919 in Wilson; lived on Route 1, Elm City; his contact was mother Mary Jane Farmer; and he worked as a tenant farmer for Mrs. M.A. Bryant.

On 14 November 1942, Floyd Farmer, 24, of Elm City, son of Crumel and Mary J. Farmer, married Odell Sharp, 20, of WIlson, daughter of Alvin and Carrie Sharp, in Wilson. C.E. Artis applied for the license, and a justice of the peace performed the ceremony in the presence of J.H. Forbes, J.E. Miles and B.E. Howard.

Floyd W. Farmer died 16 April 2014.