John Henry Henderson, son of James and Louisa Armwood Henderson, married Sarah Elizabeth Simmons, daughter of Bryant and Elizabeth Wynn Simmons, in about 1886. The couple remained in the Dudley area their entire lives and reared three children — Frances, Charles Henry and Henry Lee — to adulthood. John died of pulmonary tuberculosis in 1924.
TESTIMONY OF NAPOLEON HIGGINS.
NAPOLEON HIGGINS, colored, sworn and examined.
By Senator VANCE:
Question. Where do you reside? Answer. Near Goldsborough. I don’t stay in Goldsborough, but it is my county seat. I live fifteen miles from town.
Q. What is your occupation? A. I am farming.
Q. Do you farm your own land? A. Yes, sir.
Q. How much do you own? A. Four hundred and eighty-five acres.
Q. How did you get it? A. I worked for it.
Q. Were you formerly a slave? A. No, sir; I was a free man before the war.
Q. You say you worked for it? A. Yes, sir; I worked for it, and got it since the war.
Q. What is it worth per acre? A. I don’t know, sir, what it is worth now. I know what I paid for it.
Q. What did you pay for it? A. I believe I paid $5,500, and then I have got a little town lot there that I don’t count, but I think it is worth about $500.
Q. Then you have made all that since the war? A. Yes, sir.
Q. How much cotton do you raise? A. I don’t raise as much as I ought to. I only raised fifty-eight bales last year.
Q. What is that worth? A. I think I got $55 a bale.
Q. How many hands do you work yourself? A. I generally rent my land. I only worked four last year, and paid the best hand, who fed the mules and tended around the house, ten dollars; and the others I paid ten, and eight and seven.
Q. That was last year? A. Yes, sir.
Q. What did you give them besides their pay? A. I gave them rations; and to a man with a family I gave a garden patch and a house, and a place to raise potatoes.
Q. What about the rate of wages in your section of the country; does that represent them? A. Yes, sir; of course a no account hand don’t get much, and a smart one gets good wages.
Q. Have you made any contracts for this year? A. Yes, sir; but I am only hiring two hands this year.
Q. What do your tenants pay you for the use of your land? A. Some of the tenants give me a third of the corn and a third of the cotton. Then I have got some more land that I rent out to white men, and they give me a fourth of the cotton, and another gives me a thousand pounds of lint cotton for twenty acres.
Q. Does anybody interfere with your right to vote down there? A. No, sir.
Q. Or with any of the rights of your race? A. No, sir; we vote freely down there. Of course, if one man can persuade you to vote with him, that is all right. But you can vote as you please.
Q. What are your politics? A. I am a republican, and that is the way my township generally votes.
Q. You say there is no interference with the rights of your race there? A. Not that I know of.
Q. There has been something said here about the landlord and tenant act. Do you think that does anybody any harm? A. I think it is a good law.
Q. The object of it is to give you a lien on everything your tenant has until your rent is paid? A. Yes, sir; and I think I am entitled to that.
Q. These white tenants can’t run off any of your cotton until you are paid? A. No, sir; I am five or six miles from them, and they can’t run it off. They might do it and I not see them if I did not have the law to back me; and they are just as apt to run it off as not when they start.
Q. Then you think it is a good protection to you in your rights? A. Yes, sir; I do.
Q. Do you have any schools down there? A. Yes, sir.
Q. How is the money raised for them? Most of it is by a property tax, is it not? A. Yes, sir.
Q. And the poll tax all goes to education except twenty-five cents on the dollar? A. Yes, sir.
Q. Do you know how much land your race has acquired in that county? A. I reckon they have got fifteen hundred acres in our township; but I could not tell how much in the county.
Q. Is there any distinction made between the whites and the blacks down there in the renting of lands? A. None that I know of.
Q. Both are paid the same wages? A. Yes, sir; unless a man wants to hire some man to lock his doors and look after and keep his keys; then they pay him more. And if it is a colored man that he has confidence in, they pay him the same.
Q. Is there any distinction there to take all white men as tenants? A. No, sir; in our township they take them without regard to color. If a man is a smart man, he gets in just the same as a white man. Colored men rent from white men, and white men from colored men.
Q. Did you ever have any talk with any of those people who went to Indiana? A. No, sir; I never saw one who went.
Q. Did you ever hear any of the speeches of any of these men who were stirring up these men? A. No, sir.
Q. Did you see any of their circulars? A. No, sir.
Q. Nor hear of any inducements offered to them? A. No, sir.
Q. Did you get any letters from any of them who went out there? A. No, sir; I wasn’t acquainted with any who went. I learned more of it at Goldsborough last Monday night, when I was coming on here, than I ever knew before.
Q. Are there any complaints among your people to discriminations in the courts, between the whites and blacks? A. Yes, sir; I have heard them say that the same evidence that will convict a colored man for stealing won’t convict a white man.
Q. When they are convicted, are they punished alike? Yes, sir; in the same cases. I have spoke to them and told them, lots of times, that of course they would be convicted many times where a white man would get out, and the only way to avoid that was to quit stealing. I told them, a white man has got more sense and more money to pay lawyers and knows better how to hid his rascality, and the best way for the colored man to keep out of the penitentiary was to quit stealing.
By Senator WINDOM:
Q. Is it the general impression among colored people down there that they don’t get justice? A. Yes, sir; when two or three colored men get convicted they think so. But there are more black men convicted because there are more of them tried.
Q. You say they have not got sense enough to get out of it when they get in; they have attorneys, do they not? A. Yes, sir; but very often they have not got the money to feed up an attorney; and, you know, they more you pay a lawyer the more he sticks with you.
Q. Is there not discrimination there in the employment of mechanics? A. No, sir; I never heard of it.
By Senator VOORHEES:
Q. Do you know of any of these people, white and black, who have been convicted that you thought were convicted wrongfully? A. No, sir.
Q. You thought they were rightfully convicted? A. Yes, sir.
Q. You have been on juries yourself; did you ever make any difference between them? A. No, sir; I have sat on juries there many times, and sat on a case of a white man who was tried for his life.
Q. Was there any other colored man on that jury? A. No, sir; I was the only one on that one; but I have been on others.
Q. You have sat on juries when white men’s cases were being tried, both on the criminal and on the civil sides of the court? A. Yes, sir.
Q. Did any white man object to you sitting on them? A. No, sir.
Q.Then most of this talk about discrimination and injustice is by men who have been disappointed in the results of their suits? A. Yes, sir.
Q. You see no cause for it yourself? A. No, sir.
Q. You have heard white men complain just as bitterly? A. Yes, sir; of course. I suppose they are like I am. I always try to beat the case.
By Senator WINDOM:
Q. You say you think this land and tenant act a good thing; do you think the renter is in favor of it? A. I don’t know; they never say anything to me about it. I am on the other side of that question.
Q. Does not the fact that you own 285 [sic] acres of land give you a little better standing in the community than most of your colored friends? A. Of course; I suppose it does.
Q. How did you start it? A. I rented a farm and started on two government horses. I went to the tightest man I know and got him to help me. I rented from Mr. Exum out there.
Q. Are there others who have succeeded as well as you? A. Yes, sir; there are. One or two men who have succeeded better than me. There are several of them in good circumstances there in our township. I think, altogether, they own 1,500 acres there.
Q. How many colored people own this? A. I reckon 150.
Q. The 1,500 acres is divided up among 150 people? A. No, sir; a good many of them have got none.
Q. This is what I asked you: How many own this 1,500 acres, all put together? A. I reckon a dozen. It might not be more than eight. It is from eight to a dozen, anyhow. But there are a number who own some little lots of land of four or five acres that I have not mentioned.
This, of course, was Napoleon Hagans (not Higgins)’ testimony before a Senate Select Committee investigating the migration of hundreds of African-Americans from the South to Kansas Indiana in the late 1870s, allegedly because of “denial or abridgment of their personal and political rights and privileges.” Hagans’ testimony about the source of his relative wealth, as well his opinions about the political and judicial climate for colored men in his part of North Carolina, were well-received by the committee, which concluded that all was well in Dixie. Nonetheless, it is perhaps possible — if one suppresses natural feeling and attempts to stand in Napoleon’s shoes — to detect a very subtle undercurrent of resistance here and there in the essential conservatism of his words.
Transcript in Senate Report 693, 2nd Session, 46th Congress: Proceedings of the Select Committee of the United States Senate to Investigate the Causes of the Removal of the Negroes from the Southern States to the Northern States, Washington DC, beginning Tuesday, 9 March 1880.
Again from “The Adam Artis Family History“:
Robert Aldridge was born in 1819, in or near Savannah, Georgia. He owned about 700 acres of land in Dudley. He ran a brick kiln, where he employed a lot of extra hands to make bricks. He was taken ill in the woods opossum hunting and never recovered. He died in 1871 at the age of 52. He had 7 or 8 brothers and sisters.
Sentence by sentence:
(1) I suppose that it is remotely possible that Robert Aldridge was born in or near Savannah, but it seems highly unlikely. More probably, as reported in the 1850 census, he was born in Duplin County NC and was the free colored son of a white woman. An extended family of white Aldridges lived in the Duplin/Greene/Lenoir County area and at least one, Winnie Aldridge, had children of color during the right timeframe.
(2) At his death, Robert owned just under 600 acres of land near Dudley, as his estate division attests.
(3) His brick kiln was located on present-day Durham Lake Road, near the lake, which is a dammed stretch of Yellow Marsh Branch.
(4) Interesting.
(5) Actually, he died about 1899.
(6) If he did, who were they??? I am reasonably sure that John Matthew Aldridge was a brother, but that’s it.
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.)
I’m partial to the bells and whistles at 23andme and seldom check my AncestryDNA results. Today, though – eureka! An estimated 4th cousin with a Shared Ancestor Hint, John William Aldridge. I checked G.J.’s family tree and immediately knew exactly who she is – the granddaughter of one of my great-grandfather’s sisters. Our most recent common ancestors (MRCA) are John and Louvicey Artis Aldridge, and we’re actually 2nd cousins once removed.
John Aldridge and his brothers George and Matthew Aldridge were hired to teach in Wayne County in the late 1870s. For reasons unknown, they were assigned to schools in the far north of the county, some 15 miles north of Dudley:
From the same unsigned family history:
John Aldridge met Luvicie Artis at the school where he taught; she was one of his students. He built a 7 room house for her when they got married. John was a stout man with a reddish brown complexion and wavy black hair. He stopped teaching when he married Luvicie and started to farm and run a general store. The store was burned down in 1911. He sent his children to a private school. He died in 1910 of a congested chill. He was 58 years old when he died, and was worth about $30,000 at that time.
Bessie Henderson is the fulcrum. Or Bessie’s death anyway. The point at which my Hendersons diverged from the line, left Dudley’s track, frayed the thread that bound to them to their people. Her death launched my grandmother out of Wayne County and away from what could have been. Given all that happened later, the ways things turned out, it is not hard not to see why my grandmother cast the first few months of her life as the glory days. She was with her own mother and surely cherished.
Let’s look at her. At the only photo we have. Probably the only one there ever was.
She is a broad-faced, heavy-lidded beauty, the barest hint of a smile playing on her lips, a high-yellow Mona Lisa. Thick dark hair pulled up a la Gibson Girl; a hint of widow’s peak; a straight-bridged nose; a full bottom lip. The fat lobes of her ears depend from the nest of her hair. I recognize them as my grandmother’s.
What was the occasion? Why the first photograph of her life? It was surely taken in Goldsboro, or maybe Mount Olive, the small town and smaller town that bracketed Dudley, the crossroads at which she passed her entire short life. There are no props. The painted backdrop is mottled and indistinct, save a white bird swooping downward, a wingtip brushing her left hand. The portrait is three-quarter length, and it is hard to gauge her size. She was surely of no great height, perhaps an inch or two over five feet, and slim, but with a hint of hippiness. Her daughter and nieces were narrow-shouldered, but she seems not to have been so.
One arm, folded behind, rests on her hip. The other hangs loosely at her side, a slender hand brushing her thigh. I do not recognize the fingers; they are not my grandmother’s. Her arms, exposed below the elbows of her ruffled white blouse, are much, much browner than her face, evidence of her time in her grandfather’s fields, straw hat shielding her brow. There is a ring on her left middle finger. There are also two lockets hanging from her neck. She barely knew her mother; her father was a kind but distant white man; she never married. Who then gave her these trinkets? What became of them? What tiny images hid in the clefts of the lockets? Who loved her?
Like her own mother before her, Bessie was just nineteen when she died. She looks older here. A little weary maybe. A little sad. A second child born out of wedlock would get her drummed out of the church that her grandfather had helped found. The baby’s daddy joined church weeks later. Within months, Bessie was cold in her grave.
My grandmother tells it this way:
I thought of many times I wondered what my mama looked like. Bessie. And how old was she, or whatever. See, she was helping Grandpa Lewis. The pig got out of the pasture and, instead of going all the way down to where the gate opened, she run him back in there, to try to coax him in there. And when they picked him up and put him over the fence, she had the heavy part, I reckon, or something, and she felt a pain, a sharp pain, and so then she started spitting blood. Down in the country, they ain’t had no doctor or nothing, they just thought she was gon be all right. And I don’t think they even took her to the doctor. Well, she would have had to go to Goldsboro or Mount Olive, one, and doctors was scarce at that time, too, even if it was where you had to go a long ways to get them. And so she died. She didn’t never get over it. I don’t remember ever staying down there. ‘Cause they brought me up to Wilson to live with Mama and Papa. I stayed with them after Bessie died. My sister says she does, but I don’t remember Bessie. You never know what you’ll come to.
——
Photo in the collection of Lisa Y. Henderson. Interview of Hattie Henderson Ricks by Lisa Y. Henderson, all rights reserved.
From an unsigned narrative (“The Adam Artis Family History”) written, I think, by one of Adam Artis’ great-grandchildren:
“Adam Artis had about five wives and 39 children. His first legal wife was Frances Hagens of Eureka. She was very fair and had beautiful long black silky hair. Adam was very tall and slender. He owned a large farm in Eureka and was a first class carpenter. They lived in a nice two story house. Frances’ brother, Napoleon Hagens, owned a very large plantation near Eureka. He had several tenants and/or slaves there. He was very mean to his wife and tenants. He would sit on the fence in the shade and watch the tenants plow. If they didn’t plow the way he wanted them to, he would crack them with a whip. One day a tenant grabbed the whip and beat Napoleon’s shirt off.”
This is a nice starting point, if not entirely accurate. Frances Seaberry was Adam’s second legal wife. If he had 39 children, not even his last surviving daughter could name them. Her half-brother Napoleon Hagans never owned slaves, though he had many tenants, and he cast a shadow large enough that his sister’s descendants thought his last name was hers.
Also, “Frances and Adam Artis had 9 children (Hayward, William, Walter, Addie, Jesse, Doc, Georgianna, Luvicie and Ida.) Luvicie and Ida were twins. Frances died when the twins were only 13 years old.”
In fact, they had 11:
Ida Artis was born about 1861. (And was not Louvicey’s twin.) She married Isaac Reid (1853-??), son of Zion and Lucy Reid, about 1876 .Their children were Frances Reid (1877-??) and Lorenzo Eli Reid (1879-1952). Ida Artis Reid died 1880-1900.
Napoleon Artis, known as “Doc,” was born 28 February 1863. He married Sallie Taylor; their sons were Humphrey, Leslie and Odell. Doc died 16 October 1942. His descendants still live on land along Route 222 between Stantonsburg and Eureka once owned by Adam Artis.
“When Luvicie Artis was 13 years old, she married John Aldridge of Dudley. John was the son of Robert and Eliza Aldridge. … Luvicie had very high cheek bones. Luvicie was a mid-wife and nurse. She died at the age of 64. She only wanted to eat peas and sweet potatoes. She wouldn’t eat much meat or green vegetables, and would drink hardly any water.”
Louvicey Artis was born in 1865 and married John Aldridge in 1879. Their 11 surviving children were Zebedee Aldridge, Lula Aldridge, Frances Aldridge Cooper, John J. Aldridge, James Thomas Aldridge, Amanda Aldridge Newsome, Beulah Aldridge Carter, Correna Aldridge Newsome, Catherine Aldridge Davis and Christine Lenora Aldridge Henderson. Vicey Artis Aldridge died 13 February 1927.
Louvicey’s twin, Eliza Artis, married Haywood Everett. Before 1900, the couple migrated to Arkansas and settled in Lonoke County. They had no children, and Eliza died 10 October 1936.
Georgeanna Artis was born 1867. She married Henry Reid (1859-1930), son of John and Mozana Hall Reid (and first cousin to Isaac Reid, above) on 29 Nov 1883. Their children: Alice Reid Williamson, Cora Reid, William H. Reid, Brodie Reid, Lenny Reid, Nita Reid, Henry N. Reid, Linda B. Reid, and Georgia Reid. She died 18 August 1923 in Goldsboro NC.
Adam Toussaint Artis Jr. was born in 1868. He married Rena G. Wynn in 1893 in Wayne County and had one son, Lafayette. He migrated to Washington DC, and married Agnes West in 1904. Their son was Harry L. Artis.
Haywood Artis was born in 1870. He migrated to Norfolk, Virginia, in the 1890s, and married Harriet Hawthorne. Their children included Bertha Artis, Jesse Artis, Hattie Artis Johnson, Mae Willie Artis, Haywood Artis Jr., and Charles Artis.
Emma Artis, born 1872, married Robert H. Locust and died within months of the wedding. [A tidbit: Robert H. Locust’s second wife, Fannie Aldridge, was the sister of John Aldridge (Louvicey Artis’ husband) and Amanda Aldridge Artis (Adam Artis’ third wife.]
Walter Scott Artis was born 2 October 1874. He married Hannah E. Forte. Their children: Napoleon Artis, Beatrice Artis, Estelle Artis, Adam Toussaint Artis III, and Elmer H. Artis. Walter Artis died 25 June 1951.
William Marshall Artis was born 28 August 1875 and married Etta Diggs. Their children: Margaret Artis, William M. Artis Jr., Frances Artis, Irene Artis Carter, Adam H. Artis, Fletcher Artis, Doris V. Artis, Haywood Thomas Artis and Beulah M. Artis Exum. William died 28 September 1945.
Jesse Artis was born in 1878, presumably not long before his mother’s death.
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.
… Self life that might hender and draw you to earthly thing it inpels you on in to Godlines Paul sed I die dailey to the things of this world yeal your life dailey and hold your life in submision to the will of God and live by his word that you may grow unto the fulles measure of the staturs of Chris the one that lives wright is the ones who will a bide bide with him the day of his coming and stand when he a …
… Come by your God like impression God will take care of you no matter where you are cax aside all fear and put your trust in God and you are save. Then when your pulgrimage is over and you are call from labor to reward you will be greeted with that holy welcome that is delivered to all true missionaries come in the blessed of my father …
My grandmother had a large, dusty black Bible that had belonged to her “mama,” Sarah Henderson Jacobs Silver. (The Bible’s original owner was Carolina Vick, a midwife in east Wilson — her family’s birth and death dates are inscribed in its leaves.) When I first thumbed through the Book in the early 1990s, I found two scraps of paper stuck deep in its chapters. Pencilled in a square, unsophisticated hand were these bits of Sarah’s sermons. She had left the Congregationalism of her upbringing and joined the Holiness movement sweeping the country in the early 1900s. My grandmother was not impressed:
I was just thinking ‘bout that today, ‘bout how we used to do. Mama’d make us go to Holiness Church and stay down there and run a revival two weeks. And we’d go down there every night and lay back down there on the bench and go to sleep. Then they’d get us up, and then we didn’t have sense enough to do nothing but go to sleep and get up.
Mama’d go every night. And they’d be shouting, holy and sanctified, jumping and shouting. I don’t know, that put me out with the Holiness church. And sanctified people. I know Mama wont doing right.
Evangelist Sarah spent night after night jumping and shouting, leaving my adolescent grandmother to wash and iron the endless loads of laundry they took in from white customers. Sarah apparently met her second husband, Rev. Joseph Silver, founder of one of the earliest Holiness churches in eastern North Carolina, on the revival circuit. They married in 1933 and divided the five years before her death between Wilson and his home in Halifax County.
Sarah H. Jacobs and her Bible, with my uncle Lucian J. Henderson in the background, taken in Wilson NC circa 1930. (I have the Bible, but some time between when I first saw — and transcribed — the sermon scraps and when I took possession after my grandmother’s death in 2001, the pieces of paper were lost.)
Photo of Sarah Henderson Jacobs Silver in the collection of Lisa Y. Henderson. Interview of Hattie Henderson Ricks by Lisa Y. Henderson; all rights reserved.
Scuffalong: Genealogy. 
