Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, Newspaper Articles, North Carolina

Lon W. Colvert.

Lon W. Colvert was born 10 June 1875 to Harriet Nicholson and John W. Colvert. He possibly was their second child and certainly was the only one to reach adulthood. My grandmother emphatically stated that his middle name was Walter, but her sister Launie Mae thought “Walker” – after his grandfather – and that’s the name that appears on certain records. Lon’s paternal grandparents reared him, but he was extremely close to his mother as an adult.

Lon was probably in his late teens when he arrived in Statesville from his family’s farm in the northern reaches of Iredell County. He was an ambitious young man with an eye on the main chance and a penchant for the shady that followed him even into his respectable years. By time he was 30, he was well-established downtown as a first-class barber, and the local paper obliged him with recognition:

Statesville Landmark, 7 May 1907

Lon and his first wife, Josephine Dalton, had three children, Mattie (1895), Golar Augusta (1897) and John Walker II (1898). Soon after Josephine’s death, he married Caroline M.M.F.V. McNeely and fathered three more daughters, Mary Louise (1906), Margaret Beulah (1908) and Launie Mae (1910).

In the mid-1920s, Lon’s business successes were short-circuited when his health began to fail. He passed away 23 October 1930, 83 years ago today.

Lon Walker Colvert Dies in Wallacetown.

Lon Walker Colvert, colored, 55 years old, died this morning at 1 o’clock at the home of his daughter, Gola Bradshaw, in Wallacetown. He was an old resident of Statesville, and for a number of years had a barbershop on South Center street, near the Southern station.

The funeral service will be Friday at 2:30, at Center Street A.M.E. Zion church, with interment in the local cemetery.

Surviving are his wife and six children; also one brother and one sister.

— Statesville Landmark, 23 Oct 1930.

Births Deaths Marriages, Migration, Newspaper Articles, Paternal Kin

Anna’s children succumb.

Kokomo Tribune, 13 April 1936.Kokomo Tribune, 13 September 1937.

Kokomo Tribune, 7 August 1942.

Edward Simmons, Susan Simmons Bassett and Muncie Simmons Bassett Palmer were children of Montreville and Anna J. Henderson Simmons. Susan’s age was seriously overstated. (She was about 60.) And Muncie’s obit completely elides the years the family spent in Ontario.

[By the way, Second Missionary Baptist Church in Kokomo remains active.]

Maternal Kin, Newspaper Articles, North Carolina

Delivery boy bitten.

Luther McNeely had one son, Robert Henry, who was worked for years as a drugstore porter in downtown Statesville.

I am happy to confirm that a later article reported that the bulldog was not rabid. (On a different note: this “boy” was 23 years old when this story ran in the Statesville Landmark on 23 August 1926.)

Newspaper Articles, North Carolina, Paternal Kin

Church home, no. 6: Turner Swamp Primitive Baptist, Eureka NC.

Church Directory “Fremont Items” – Rev. Jonah Williams of Wilson filled his regular appointment at Turners Swamp last Sunday.

The Blade, Wilson NC, 20 Nov 1897.

Turner Swamp Primitive Baptist Church still meets in a small church north of Eureka, Wayne County. Jonah was a brother of my great-great-great-grandfather Adam T. Artis, and descendants of several of their siblings are buried in the church cemetery.

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, Newspaper Articles, North Carolina, Oral History

Aunt Bert, as reported.

So, the conversation started with talk of Bill Bailey’s barbecue joint. Which was also a dance hall. Which, though it was right up the road, was, as my grandmother put it, “strictly off-limits” to her and her sisters. “We couldn’t stand him,” she said, because “he did everything illegal and got away with it.” He had a great big stomach and was “trashy,” but his steaks pulled the best of Iredell County’s partying white folks. And he was married to my grandmother’s Aunt Bert.

Me: Now, she wound up … She shot somebody, or something, didn’t she?

My grandmother: Yeah, she shot somebody. She shot a white man.

My mother’s first cousin, N.: What he do? Slap her? What did he do? He did something to her.

My grandmother: I don’t know what he did to her. But maybe … seems like to me he kicked her.

N: And she shot him.

My grandmother: And she shot him.

N.: They had to take his leg off.

[Pause.]

Me: Oh. Well, good for Bert.

When I wrote about this before, I was looking for newspaper coverage of the incident, thinking that a black woman shooting a white man in North Carolina in 1944 had to have galvanized the public. Well, sure enough, the Statesville Record & Landmark covered every step of ensuing criminal trial, though in a considerably less salacious manner than I might have expected. The headlines pretty much tell the tale:

James Warren, Merchant Marine Home on Leave, Seriously Shot. Mae Bailey, Colored, Held in County Jail Charged with Shooting. 29 March.

Warren Holding Own, But Will Not Be Out of Danger For Week. 30 March.

James Warren’s Leg Amputated. 3 April.

James L. Warren Is Better But Not Yet Out of Danger. 6 Apr.

Mae Bailey Freed from Jail Today, Hearing May 8th. 11 April.

May Postpone Murdock Trial. 29 April.

Warren Removed to the Naval Hospital at Portsmouth, Va. 1 May.

M. Murdock Trial Postponed Until Monday, June 12. 8 May.

James Warren Starts Civil Action Against Murdocks for $25,000. 11 May.

Mae Murdock Case Continued to August. 25 May.

Judge Bobbitt to Superior Court Preside August, Case of Mae (Bailey) Murdock Will Not Be Tried At This Term. 29 July 1944.

Murdock Trial Definitely Set For November 6, Warren is Able to Leave Hospital. 6 September.

Prosecuting Witness May Not Visit Scene of Shooting. 9 October.

Mae Murdock is Bound to Court Under $5000 Bond. 16 October.

Case Hinges on Warren’s Action Before Shooting, Testimony Rapidly Nearing Completion. 9 November.

Murdock Woman is Convicted. 13 November.

Murdock Case to Go to State Supreme Court. 14 November.

$25,000 Law Suit Against Murdock Woman Continued. 14 November.

Aunt Bert served her time at the state women’s prison in Raleigh and returned to Statesville after to pass her few remaining years. She had possessed considerable wealth after her father’s death in 1929, but lost much of it while she was away. My family maintains that William “Bill Bailey” Murdock had entrusted whites to help hide his shady assets, and they betrayed him after Bert shot one of their own.

Bert died in 1955. The Landmark ran her death notice without comment or reference to the incident for which she had been infamous just ten years earlier.

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, Migration, Newspaper Articles, North Carolina, Oral History, Photographs

Finding J.T.

My grandmother’s favorite cousin was her Aunt Lethea’s son, “Jay” or “J.T.”:

My grandmother: I had a cousin named Jay. Aunt Lethea’s son. She died and left three sons. James –

Me: Charles.

My grandmother: Charles. And Jay.

Me: Okay. J.T.

My grandmother: Mm-hmm. And Jay stayed with Aunt Min ‘cause Aunt Min reared him after Aunt Lethea died. And he was at this same house with Aunt Minnie and Grandma. Let’s see. It was Aunt Min and Grandma and Uncle Luther and Jay and I. We were all in the same house during the summer that I worked up there. And Jay and I used to have a good time. Oh, he was so nice. He would, the first time I rode on a rollercoaster, he took me. And we used to have a good time. He was really nice. He was a nice person.

Jay had two brothers, William and Charles. In the 1910 census of Statesville, Iredell County, I found three boys, William, 5, James, 3, and Charlie McNeeley, 2, living in the household of Sam and Mary Steelman and described as their grandsons. I identified these children, correctly I believe, as Elethea McNeely‘s children. I also guessed that Charlie Steelman, listed in the household, was their father. If he was, he and Lethea never married. Instead, in 1920, she wed Archie Weaver, a man my grandmother spoke of with vitriol.

My grandmother: Jay’s daddy had TB, and he just gave it to them. And his mother and Jay. But he lived years and years and years after both of them died.

Me: The father did?

My grandmother: [Inaudible] give them all this stuff. Oh, I could not stand him. She was my special aunt because she had boys, and she didn’t have any girls. And she just took me over her house, you know, and let me do things that girls did, you know.

I was unable to find James McNeely, whom I believed to be “Jay,” in any other record. I knew Jay was reared by his aunt, Minnie McNeely, and died young of the same dread illness that killed his mother, but I was never able to find a trace of him. That changed last night, when I stumbled upon his death announcement in the 15 December 1933 issue of the Statesville Record & Landmark:

As Grandma Carrie so memorably said, “Well, I’ll be damn.” Here was J.T., as last. Not James McNeely — much younger, in fact — but Irvin McNeely Weaver. (The same “mysterious” Irving McNeely listed in the 1930 census in Martha McNeely‘s Bayonne household. He was described as her nephew, rather than her grandson, and I jotted in my notes: “Who is this???”) My grandmother was married and living in Newport News, Virginia, at the time of his death, and is not among his named survivors. Ardeanur Smith was his cousin, not his aunt, and Charles McNeely was his brother. Mrs. John Long was his aunt Lizzie McNeely Long, and Mrs. Lewis Renwick was his cousin Louise Colvert Renwick.

The first photo is Jay as a boy, perhaps around the time he moved to Bayonne. The second, taken in Bayonne circa 1928, shows Jay with his first cousins Ardeanur Smith, Margaret Colvert and Wardenur Houser, and an unknown girl seated in front. The last is Jay, alone, perhaps not long before he died.

——

This is just one of many, many times that I’ve found something that one or the other of my grandmothers would have been “tickled” to see. They both lived good, long lives — to 90 and 101 — but I would have kept them with me always if I could.

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, Newspaper Articles, North Carolina, Oral History, Photographs

She was smart, and she was musical.

FINALS AT COLORED SCHOOL.

Statesville Colored Graded School Closed Tuesday Night with a Very Creditable Performance.

The closing exercises of the Statesville graded school were held Tuesday night in the new building. Before the exercises began at 8.30, a representative of this paper had the pleasure of looking thru the building and inspecting the most creditable exhibits of the work accomplished by the pupils of the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh grades. The exhibit showed surprising skill in drawing, sewing, fancy needle work and other forms of handiwork.

When the exercises began, the auditorium and two adjoining school rooms were filled, and the good order maintained was a noticeable feature. The opening chorus and duet by members of the graduating class were much appreciated by the audience.

“Resolved: That girls are more expensive to raise than boys,” was the subject of the debate discussed in an interesting manner by Eugene Harris and Harry Chambers, on the affirmative, and Guy B.Golden and Jettie M. Davidson, on the negative.

GRADUATING EXERCISES.

Class History. Buster B. Leach

Class Prophecy. Annie B. Headen

Class Poem. Willie D. Spann

Solo — ‘Be Still, O Heart.’ Thomas R. Hampton

Class Will. Maurie Dobbins

Valedictory. Louise Colvert

Class Song – ‘Fealty’

CLASS ROLL.

Mary Louise Colvert, Maurie Catherine Dobbins, Lillian Gennetta Moore, Willie DeEtte Spann, Buster Brown Leach, Annie Bell Headen, Thomas Richard Hampton, Eloise Earnestine Bailey.

Class Motto – We Learn Not for School, But for Life.

The colored people of Statesville take great pride in their school. They have a modern school building, steam heated and supplied with the latest equipment, something which very few towns and cities of the State have provided for its colored population. C.W. Foushee, the principal, has proven himself to be a good school man. He is assisted by eight teachers.

— Statesville The Landmark, 7 June 1923.

Louise went up to New Jersey and finished high school. They didn’t have a black high school in Statesville. They just had tenth grade. And she went to Jersey and finished high school in Jersey and then took a course in teacher’s education somewhere. I don’t know whether it was Winston-Salem or Salisbury. And then she taught at – Louise played an organ, I mean, she could play the piano. Yeah, she was just as smart as she could be. And she not only could teach, but she was musical. And she had heard she could get a job anywhere because she could do that. And I know Golar used to teach school, but Louise would do her commencement exercise for her. She would, Louise would do that, and they would have concerts. Not concerts, but the whole county would compete. And Golar’s thing would always bring a group of children, ‘cause Louise would teach them, you know. I don’t know, I can’t remember the name of that place. But she had a school out there. Williams Grove. And Louise used to do all the playing for that school, and they would ask her to prepare them for the thing. They had these county somethings. But it involved the whole county. The schools were all over Iredell County. And they would come together, and they would, it would be a big march, and then they would meet somewhere in particular, and then they would compete with the groups of singers and everything like that. And, child, when Louise started that stuff, when she started teaching, she had groups singing – young people and the older people, and then Golar would take her to her school and get her to teach her children.

Happy birthday, Aunt Louise.

Mary Louise Colvert Renwick (6 October 1906-15 September 1989)

——

Births Deaths Marriages, Free People of Color, Newspaper Articles, North Carolina, Paternal Kin

For 15 years she lived in Canada.

Obituary of Anna J. Henderson Simmons, daughter of James and Louisa Armwood Henderson.

Logansport, Indiana, Pharos-Times, 18 June 1906.

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, Newspaper Articles, North Carolina

The belle of her set.

IN THE “MOVIES.”

Colored Girl is Said to be Playing Part in Large Moving Picture Company.

Kittie Reeves, a mulatto girl who possesses more than the usual amount of good looks, lived in this city several years ago, but now is said to be a leading woman in a well-known motion picture company. Kitty Reeves lived here from her early childhood. Her name was Kitty Smith before she married Charles Reeves, a highly respected negro, a son of Fletcher Reeves, the veteran hearse driver of the old Wadsworth Livery Stables for numbers of years. Kitty was always said to have been the belle of her set. She was a bright and accomplished young negress, but the lure of the stage was always within her, and when Black Patti came through here in 1910, Kitty Reeves applied for a place in the chorus. Immediately upon signing the contract, her name became Katherine Reeves. The tour was a success, but during the between-season lay-off, Katherine secured a place in a well-known manicuring establishment in Philadelphia.

The girl was possessed of fair skin with coloring. Her hair was long, but black with many freckles on her face. After learning the secrets of the manicurists’ art, Katherine underwent treatment for some time. When she ceased working on her face and hair, a great transformation had taken place. No longer was the hair black, but it had been turned to a dull auburn. The freckles had departed from her face, and she bore all of the appearances of a white person.

After leaving Philadelphia, Katherine became connected with a well-known motion picture firm in the State of New York. Many of her colored friends in the city claim to have recognized her a number of times playing leading parts in the film plays. So far as is known, this is the only person from Charlotte who has ever appeared upon the screens as an actress for motion pictures.

Charlotte Observer, 29 December 1912.

Ten years before this article appeared, twenty-one year-old Frank Reeves applied for a marriage license for himself and Kate Smith, 18. Both lived in Mecklenburg County. Frank (called Charles, above) was the son of Fletcher and Angeline McConnaughey Reeves. Kate’s parents were listed as Thomas and Mary Smith. S.H. Hilton, justice of the peace, married the young couple on 1 Aug 1902 at the county courthouse.

The marriage did not prosper. When the censustaker reached their neighborhood in 1910, he found Frank and Kate’s only child, 7 year-old Wilbur, living with his paternal grandparents. Charles (or Frank) and Kate (or Kittie or Katherine) do not appear together in that census or any other. (She had gone off with Black Patti by that time and, presumably, was pursuing her career as a star of the silent screen.)

Births Deaths Marriages, Maternal Kin, Newspaper Articles, North Carolina, Oral History, Other Documents, Vocation

Irving Houser gets a McNeely Girl.

Me: Okay, and Emma, she was up in Bayonne.

My grandmother: This man went up there in his young years. I think he had an eye on her. People used to say that the men — all of Mama and her sisters were supposed to have been catches, you know. They were good-looking women and everything, and they just said the men said it didn’t matter which one it was so long as they got one of them.

Me: One of the McNeely girls?

My grandmother: McNeelys. Mm-hmm.

Me: So he came back and married Aunt Emma and carried her to New Jersey. To Bayonne — oh! Irving Houser, Sr.

——

Irving L. Houser was born in 1885 in Iredell County to Alexander “Dan” and Lucy Houser. He and Emma McNeely were married 6 September 1910 in Statesville. The couple migrated to Bayonne, New Jersey, and settled on Andrew Street.

Six years later, in a span of three days, Irving appeared twice in New York City newspapers. First:

OLD JOBS OFFERED BAYONNE STRIKERS

Standard Oil Co. Tells Them They May Come Back, But Without Increase of Wages.

MRS. CRAM PLANS NEW VISIT.

Says She Will Consult a Lawyer and Won’t Be Barred — Federal Conciliators at Work.

The Standard Oil Company refused yesterday to grant the wage increases demanded by employees whose strike has tied up practically every big Plant in the Constable Hook section of Bayonne, N.J. for more than a week, but offered to take the strikers back at the old wage scale whenever the men wanted to resume work. The Committee of Ten, which learned these terms from George B. Hennessey, General Superintendent of the Bayonne plant, endeavored to report to the body of strikers. The police prevented them because no police permit to hold a mass meeting had been requested, but one was issued for a meeting this morning, at which the strikers will decide whether to accept or decline the terms.

…

Pending today’s meeting, the strikers were quiet yesterday. Early in the morning there had been some disorder at Avenue E and Twenty-fourth Street, bringing a squad of policemen, who fired as many more. They caught Irving Houser of 92 Andrew Street, an employee of the Edible Products Company, which plant is near the Tidewater Oil Company, and locked him when they found a revolver in his pocket.

New York Times, 18 Oct 1916.

Then,

Bayonne, N.J.

Miss Viola Houser, of Orange, N.J., visited her brother and sister, Mr. and Mrs. Irving Houser, Andrew Street, on Sunday, October 10.

New York Age, 21 Oct 1916.

Amid social unrest and social calls, Irving and Emma had three children: Mildred Wardenur (1913), Henry A. (1915) and Irving L. Houser Jr. (1920). For many years, Irving worked in various jobs in an oil refinery, but by time he registered for the “Old Man’s Draft” of 1942, he was employed at Bayonne City Hall. By then, he had purchased a house at 421 Avenue C, a site now occupied by Bayonne Giant Laundromat. Irving Houser Sr. died in 1962.

Scuffalong: Genealogy.

Category Archives: Newspaper Articles