Vick

Brother R.E. Vick.

For more than 60 years, Robert E. Vick was a mainstay of Wilson’s graduate chapter of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity. Vick pledged Rho Chapter at Johnson C. Smith University in 1928. Above, his photo appears at the left top of the bottom stem in the middle letter, psi.

The Bull (1929), Johnson C. Smith University, Charlotte, North Carolina.

Lucama news, March 1943.

Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Va.), 20 March 1943.

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  • Roxanna Kirby Exum

In the 1940 census of Springhill township, Wilson County: farmer William Kirby, 55; wife Nannie, 52; children Hobby Lee, 17, Havey Isa, 15, Nettie, 13, Willie K., 13, and Roxia A., 22; niece Lucille Shaw, 18; and lodger Jr. Barnes, 4.

Per their marriage license, Levell Exum and Roxanna Eva Kirby, both 25, were married 7 March 1943 in Johnston County, N.C. Primitive Baptist minister David Bynum lived near Lucama, in Wilson County, however, as did Mamie B. Williamson and David Bynum Jr.

  • Pvt. Daniel Vick

Daniel Vick registered for the World War II draft in Wilson County in 1940. Per his registration card, he was born 3 January 1917 in Wilson; his contact was mother Bethaniel Allen; he lived at Mount 1, Lucama; and he worked for farmer Joe Moore, Lucama.

  • Paul Morgan
  • Bettie Bess

Snaps, no. 118: Daniel Vick and his granddaughter.

Here, Samuel H. Vick‘s father Daniel Vick is seated in front of a living screen of fig leaves. The girl standing beside him is likely one of his granddaughters — Annie or Nettie Jones, whose mother Nettie Vick Jones had been murdered by their father A. Wilson Jones in 1897. Daniel Vick died in 1908, and this photo likely was taken shortly before then.

Vick is holding a photograph that appears to depict a young girl. Was she the girl’s sister? Both girls — and their brother Samuel Henry Jones — outlived their grandfather, but Annie and Nettie have not been traced into adulthood.

Photo courtesy of Vicki Cowan.

S.H. Vick places an ad?

Boston Globe, 3 March 1918.

Is this Samuel H. Vick Jr., who was about 18 years old in 1918 and perhaps drawn to Boston by his uncle Ernest L. Vick?

No, it wasn’t. Though S.H. Vick’s name was also Samuel, he was neither Samuel H. Vick Sr. nor Jr. of Wilson.

In 1918, Samuel Howard Vick registered for the World War I draft in Boston, Massachusetts. Per his registration card, he was born 15 February 1875; lived at 35 Sterling Street, Boston; and worked for the United States Quartermasters Department.

The lesson here, for me and any researcher, is not to assume that a familiar name is a familiar person. Samuel Vick’s prominence in Wilson led a few admirers who shared his surname to name their sons after him. Thus, even in Wilson — much less Boston — documents have to be probed to ensure accurate attribution.

Signatures, no. 7.

Signatures are often-overlooked scraps of information that yield not only obvious clues about literacy, but also subtleties like depth and quality of education and preferred names, spellings and pronunciations. They are also, in original documents, tangible traces of our forebears’ corporality — evidence that that they were once here.

This is the seventh in a series of posts featuring the signatures of men and women born before 1900, men and women who could not take even a basic education for granted.

  • Daniel Vick and Samuel H. Vick

Father and son. Both were born in slavery. Sam Vick probably retained no memory of it, but Daniel Vick was 20 or so years old, married, and with children before he was emancipated. As late as the 1880 census, he reported to the enumerator that he could neither read nor write. However, by time he cosigned the bond his son pledged when appointed guardian of the Henderson children in 1907, Daniel Vick could write his name. Though not as firm and fluid as that of the son he sent to Lincoln University, Daniel Vick’s signature was clear and complete — a perfect measure of the distance he had come in his long life.