Who bought all these Samuel H. Vick-related manuscripts from Swann Auction Galleries? Where is this material now?
Whitesboro NJ
Whitesboro Historic Preservation Project.
Vick has piled up a fortune.
In June 1916, a Laurinburg newspaper reprinted the Wilson Dispatch‘s tally of Samuel H. Vick‘s wealth.
Laurinburg Exchange, 1 June 1916.
Some minor corrections:
- Vick was neither born nor bred in Wilson, though he moved to town as a small child. He and his parents were from Nash County, North Carolina.
- In 1916, 98 town lots represented a sizable minority of all the lots in East Wilson. (Though not all Vick’s property was east of the tracks.) By time his empire collapsed in 1935, he owned much more.
- It is not clear why Vick — who had living siblings — would be considered the practical owner of his father Daniel Vick‘s estate.
- Vick’s holdings were in Whitesboro, New Jersey, not North Carolina.
The race needs more men of his ilk.
113 years ago today, Washington, D.C.’s Colored American published this flattering profile of Samuel H. Vick:
The Colored American, 9 January 1904.
Sam Vick and Whitesboro, New Jersey.
Typescript letter signed from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, signed by George H. White (Secretary and Treasurer of the George H. White Land and Improvement Company of Cape May County, New Jersey) to Samuel H. Vick in Wilson, North Carolina, 23 June 1911.
Testimonials from citizens of Whitesboro, N.J., and Wilson, N.C., concerning the lands owned by S.H. Vick in that place.
Front page, brochure advertising Whitesboro, New Jersey.
Postcard.
From Collection of printed and manuscript sales and promotional material for George H. White’s Cape May/Whitesboro, New Jersey housing project; Beinecke Digital Collection, Yale University Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Images available on-line.
Where did they go?: Pennsylvania death certificates, no. 1.
The first in a series — Pennsylvania death certificates for Wilson County natives:
- James I. Allen, Philadelphia
James I. Allen appears in the 1880 census of Wilson, Wilson County, with parents West and Harriet Allen; siblings Boston, Susan, Cornelius, John, Lettice and Effie Allen; and grandmother Harriet Allen.
1880 census, Wilson, Wilson County.
In 1894, James Allen and Clara Brown, below, were married by a Missionary Baptist minister in Wilson.
- Clara Brown Allen, Philadelphia
- William Anderson, Philadelphia
- James Artis, Whitesboro, New Jersey
Per Wikipedia, “Whitesboro [New Jersey] was founded about 1901 by the Equitable Industrial Association, which had prominent black American investors including Paul Laurence Dunbar, the educator Booker T. Washington and George Henry White, the leading investor and namesake. He was an attorney who had moved to Philadelphia after serving as the last black Republican congressman representing North Carolina’s 2nd congressional district. White and his fellow entrepreneurs wanted to create a self-reliant community for blacks, without the discrimination faced the southern states. Shares in the planned community were sold to African Americans from North and South Carolina and Virginia.” Samuel H. Vick was an investor in Whitesboro.
- Warren Barnes, Johnston, Cambria County
This is possibly the five year-old Warren Barnes listed in the household of Peter, 32, and Lizzie Barnes, 34, in the 1880 census of Stantonsburg township, Wilson County.