Births Deaths Marriages, North Carolina, Oral History, Paternal Kin, Photographs

In remembrance, if not memory.

My great-grandfather, James Thomas Aldridge, was born 127 years ago today. Ordinarily, I’d do a “remembering so-and-so” kind of post, but something stays my hand. I don’t literally remember him, of course, but that’s not surprising. The problem is neither my father nor my grandmother, if she were living, could really say they much remember him either.

Nora and them stayed up there where the old house burnt down. And her mama, Aint Vicey — we called her Aint Vicey, but she was my grandmama. Her son was my daddy. And I stayed at Nora’s, they taken me up there, and Johnny always bring me watermelons. He’d say, “You just like your daddy.” And those kinds of things. So I ain’t made nothing outn it. I said, whatever. I would just say something like, well, “I’m some kin to the Aldridges.”

Johnny, he called me and I was working to the hospital. And he called me and told me, at least he called the hospital and wanted to speak to me: “Well, if you want to see your daddy – you said you ain’t never seen him before – come down here. He’s down here now. So, don’t let him know I told you.” So, I went down – I said, well, I’m gon go down there and see Silas Cox ‘bout selling the lots where Grandma Mag’s house was on. So, I got off. So, I got Mr. Fisher to take me down there. I said, “Mm, I wanna see that man.” So Nora had been all good to me and always said, ‘bout, “Tom was your daddy,” and she’d come and visit me, and I’d go down there, go down there and stay with her. When Jesse was a baby, I went down there and stayed. And when I was a child, when I went up to New York, that’s when Frances took me ‘cause I was her son’s, her brother’s child. I said, then in later years, nobody wanted to own me. But whatever.

So my grandmother met her father only once, after his brother Johnnie Aldridge called and she invented a ruse for stopping by his sister’s Nora Aldridge Henderson‘s house. The visit did not go terribly well, and Nora, to whom she’d been closest, never spoke to her again. My grandmother had spent time with her grandmother Vicey Artis Aldridge and aunts in Dudley and had started school in New York City while living with Tom’s sister Frances Aldridge Cooper Newsome, but over time — after Tom married and as his professional star rose — the Aldridges mostly drifted away. Or clanged shut the door.

Science has settled the question of my grandmother’s kinship to the Aldridges, though she did not live long enough for the validation. Happy birthday, Tom Aldridge.

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Education, Enslaved People, Land, North Carolina, Oral History, Paternal Kin, Photographs

Meeting the Saulses.

All week, I was pressed. Wave after wave of thunderstorms had been crashing over eastern North Carolina, tornadoes swirling in their wake. The rain didn’t stop until the night before I flew in, and I knew that Contentnea Creek floods early and often. Friday dawned bright and blue though. I headed down Highway 58, excitement brimming like the sheets of water standing in fields on both sides of the pavement. Though several roads around Stantonsburg were still closed, my path was clear, and I pulled into the Saulses’ driveway at the stroke of 10 A.M.

Cousin Andrew Sauls is a reserved man, but welcoming and friendly, and he and his wife, Cousin Jannettie, put me quickly at ease. They were curious about my connection to Daniel Artis and the Saulses, and as I began to explain about Vicey and Sylvania and Adam T., we realized that he had known many of “my” Artises as a young man. In addition to farming hundreds of acres northwest of Snow Hill, his father, Isaac Sauls Jr., bought, rehabbed and sold farms, was a skilled carpenter, and operated several businesses. In 1947, after a short-lived stint operating a funeral home in Snow Hill, Isaac bought a saw mill, refurbished it, and began cutting lumber the following year. Cousin Andrew started working there as a ten year-old and recalled that the factory made good money for more than 20 years because there was a high demand for raw lumber. In those days, he said, “I didn’t know nair black person had a brick house in Greene County. Nor hardly any white ones.” People needed lumber for home repairs and to build tobacco barns and other out buildings. Though most of the Saulses’ customers were white, they also sold to many black farmers in Greene and surrounding counties, including Les, William and Walter Artis in Wayne County. Brothers William and Walter were sons of Adam T. and Frances Seaberry Artis, and Leslie, son of Napoleon Artis, was their nephew. (William, Walter and Napoleon were brothers of my great-great-grandmother, Louvicey Artis Aldridge. All were grandchildren of Vicey Artis Williams, who was Daniel Artis’ sister.) Cousin Isaac recalled Les as one of the richest black men in Wayne County, and the first he knew of to own a Cadillac. He laughed as he recounted hauling a load of lumber to Walter Artis as a 17 year-old and being offered some liquor. Isaac Sauls Jr. also operated a “stick mill” that cut tobacco sticks for farmers during the summer months.

After a while, Cousin Andrew’s only surviving sibling, sister Hattie, who lives nearby in the “home house,” joined us and chimed in as Andrew talked about their father’s and grandfather’s achievements. He has an astounding memory and reeled off the dates and details of land purchases dating back ninety years to his father’s first acquisition of 57 acres for $400 in 1924. Today the family owns about 440 acres, which it leases to another farmer. When I mentioned his great-uncle Cain “C.D.” Sauls‘ involvement with an African-American bank in Wilson, he astonished me by exclaiming, “I remember my daddy talking about that! It went under. I think he said it was Stanback and Reid.” [And sure enough, J.D. Reid and H.S. Stanback were the bank officers convicted of the fraud that led to the bank’s failure.]

According to Cousin Andrew, in 1929, Isaac Sauls Jr. leased land to the state for the erection of a Rosenwald school. That school served African-American students in the area from 1930 until 1959. When it closed, Cousin Isaac bought the building and converted it into a house in which his son William lived until his death. The structure now stands a few hundred feet north of Cousin Andrew’s house. [Here for National Register of Historic Places nomination form for another Rosenwald school in Greene County.]

Cousin Hattie spoke of C.D. Sauls’ ownership of several businesses in Snow Hill, including a hotel and a funeral home. She was not sure if he was a formally educated man, but he appeared to be. He was on personal terms with Booker T. Washington and traveled to Tuskegee Institute to speak on occasion. He also owned shares in a cotton mill in Concord, North Carolina. (This would have been the ill-fated Coleman Manufacturing Company.) He apparently occasionally contibuted a column to a newspaper in Kinston, and she promised to send me a copy of an article. Later, when I mentioned that my mother had taught at North Greene Elementary School for a few years when she first came to North Carolina, Cousin Hattie asked if she knew Annie Edwards Moye, who’d taught there for 45 years. (Annie Moye was a descendant of Clara Artis Edwards, daughter of Daniel Artis.) I didn’t know the answer at the time, but soon learned that my mother in fact had commuted to Greene County with Mrs. Moye and other teachers who lived in Wilson!

Neither his father nor his grandfather had much education, said Cousin Andrew, but they were smart and shrewd and skilled and able to form strong business relationships on the strength of their word. Isaac Sr., born at the start of the Civil War to the enslaved daughter of a free-born, land-owning man and his enslaved wife, was a master carpenter who began to accumulate land at an early age and passed his drive and determination on to his children. One hundred and fifty years later, his gift shines in his grandson Andrew.

Cousin Andrew and me at Artis Town cemetery, 2 May 2014.

North Carolina, Oral History, Paternal Kin

Where we lived: 1109 Queen Street, Wilson.

My father: Let’s go back to when I remember when we moved to 1109 Queen Street. When I was about six years old. And we had what they call a shotgun house. Three rooms. Front room, middle room, and a kitchen. And to get to the kitchen, you had to go out on the back porch and come through. Now there were some people who had a door cut in between the middle room and the kitchen, so you wouldn’t have to go out on the back porch. But they said if you cut that door somebody in your family would die. [Laughs.] So we wouldn’t cut the door. All of us slept in the middle room. See, we did have a bed in the front room later on, but first we slept in the middle room. And we had, like, what they called a day bed. You pull it out. And me, Lucian, and Jesse slept in that bed. And Hattie Margaret and Mama slept in the other bed. And then we had a laundry heater in the middle. We had to make fires every night. Go out –

Me: Laundry heater?

My father: Yeah, well, it was what you’d call a space heater. Laundry heater.

Me: Oh. Okay.

My father: — that you put, well, we used coal. Some people were afraid to use coal because it would get so hot it would turn red. And, you know, sparks would fly and sometimes things would catch on fire. And that’s what we used to heat the iron to iron clothes, too. You’d put ‘em on top of that stove. But we had to make fires every morning. Had to get up. And we had linoleum in there, so the floor’d be cold. So when you walk around you had to walk on your heels when – [we start laughing] – you get up out the bed and go out and get the wood. And then, you know, we had that little slop jar up under the big bed. You had get up to go — then, see, that house didn’t have a bathroom. So the bathroom was outside — the bathroom sat in between the two houses. And you had just a stool. And that stool had a big water tank on the top. And so when you lift the lid up, it would flush. So that was for 1109 and the one right beside it. Probably just had a little partition between. It was probably 1107, and that’s where the Davises, Miss Alliner [Alliner Sherrod Davis, daughter of Solomon and Josephine Artis Sherrod, and actually a cousin], she lived right there at 1107. And then we had the water outside, and it was at her house. So there were two houses that had one toilet and one spigot. So we would go out there and get the water and stuff like that.

Me: And so you said you remember moving in there?

My father: Yeah, we moved from off Elba Street. ‘Cause we moved at night. You know when your stuff a little shaky…. [Laughs.] Somebody come by, it’d be dark, with all your stuff on the truck. And I remember I had a little hat, and it blew off on Green Street [laughs], and I couldn’t stop to get my hat. ‘Cause it was dark when we moved. And that was when I was probably in the first grade. I think it was 1940 when we moved around there in all those little endway houses. C.C. Powell owned the houses, and I don’t know how much we were paying, but we weren’t paying a whole lot. Behind the outhouse, we had built up like a little shed, like. Used to keep pigeons in there. Everybody had pigeons. The ones that go off – we’d see in the movies the ones that take little messages and all. So everybody would have pigeons. And then we had a little, I guess it was a garden. We had a victory garden in the back. I had to take a hoe and a shovel and dig up the backyard. Turn it over. Then Mama would go out there and make some rows and plant tomatoes and stringbeans and squash and stuff like that, and we used that to eat. Now, when I was growing up, at that time, we didn’t have no money. I went to school, all the way through almost, some days I’d go and didn’t have a penny. Not one penny. In my pocket. Not one penny. … And the icebox, it was a little small icebox, and you’d take the ice and put it in the top, and then there was a little hole so when the ice’d melt, it would run down. You’d have to have a little water container underneath. You’d have to empty that everyday. If not, the water would run out on the floor, out on the back porch. And it would always be so clear and just cold, but we had to go to the ice house, and the ice house was out there on Herring Avenue. And I would ride the bicycle out there to get it.

This house was one of a row of six identical shotgun houses on Queen Street built circa 1925. I took this dim Polaroid image sometime in the very early 1980s, and they were torn down not long after.

My father, age about 10, sitting outside a house on Queen Street. I’m guessing it’s 1107 because the door is on the opposite side of the house. Otherwise, the houses were identical.

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Civil War, Enslaved People, Free People of Color, North Carolina, Oral History, Paternal Kin

Daniel was always spoken of with respect and love.

I recently received a comment from a reader in response to my posts on the Daniel Artis family. She was hesitant to contact me because her ancestor John Lane had owned slaves — quite possibly some of the people I’ve written about — but was anxious to share a story about Daniel that had been passed down in her family for 150 years. I was surprised and excited to read her message and encouraged her to get in touch. Here’s our April 28 exchange:

Hi, Tammi! Please forgive my excitement and inability to wait for your response. I’m traveling to NC next week to meet some of my newfound Sauls relatives — descendants of Daniel Artis. I’m just beside myself wondering about John Lane — whom I believe apprenticed several of Daniel’s sister Sylvania’s children and might have owned Sylvania’s husband, Guy Lane. I know you’re busy, but I hope you’ll be able to touch base soon. Thanks again!

——

Lisa, thank you for getting back to me! … Yes, apparently there were a few children apprenticed. I recall, I think, five or six on one census. The younger Daniel Artis was 17 years old on, I think, the 1860 census in my g-g-grandfather John Lane’s home. From my family’s handed down stories, the little Daniel was my g-g-g-uncle Christopher Lane’s body servant. Christopher was one of John’s sons and only about seven years older than little Daniel. So they kind of grew up together. The story is that when they both grew up Christopher went to War and Daniel was allowed to go with him as his servant because Christopher was an officer. Only officers could take a servant with them. Daniel was considered free before the war although an apprentice as you probably know. Well, Christopher was captured by the northern troops and taken to their POW camp at Fort Pulaski, Ga. He died there from dysentery. The thing that my family is grateful for is that Daniel went to the camp with Christopher and stayed with him until his death, never leaving his side. When he died, Daniel made his way back to Bull Head, NC to let Christopher’s family and his father John Lane know what happened to him. Daniel was always spoken of with respect and love for what he did for Christopher.

I thank you so much for replying to me, Lisa, because I’ve always wanted to thank his descendants for what Daniel did and for his devotion to our family in such a terrible time. I always wondered if the Daniel Artis next door who was older was related to little Daniel. I saw on the census that he owned property near John Lane, my relative. I hope this information helps some, and I wish all of his relatives happiness and blessings.

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What a pleasure to hear from you! The Daniel you speak of was the older Daniel’s nephew. “Your” Daniel was the son of Sylvania Artis, a free woman of color, and Guy Lane, her enslaved husband. My direct ancestor, Vicey Artis, was the sister of Sylvania and Daniel the elder. Vicey also married a slave, Solomon Williams. Most of their children were apprenticed by Silas Bryant, a close neighbor of John Lane’s. Daniel the elder’s wife was enslaved, as were their children.

Thanks so much for sharing the story about Daniel the younger. I had no idea that he served in the War. I need to look in my files, but I don’t think I know much about him, though I recall that he married Eliza Faircloth. I do not know of any his descendants either. I grew up in Wilson NC, but with no knowledge of my Greene County links. During a visit home this weekend, I’m going down to Bull Head to meet some Saulses and visit Artis Town cemetery, which is where Daniel the elder was buried in 1905. I’ll keep you posted on anything I find about Daniel the younger.

If you are willing, I would love to share Daniel and Christopher’s story on my blog. I so appreciate your coming forth with this bit of history. Researching African-Americans is generally incredibly difficult, and so much lies locked away with other families. I always dream that someone will contact me just like you did!

Best wishes, keep in touch, and thanks again!

——

I’d be honored for you to use Daniel’s story, of course. I’ve also dreamed and wanted for years to find his relatives, as I mentioned, so I could thank all of them. To be honest, I don’t know if the younger Daniel was enlisted or just went along as an aide to Christopher. I’m only learning recently about the service of black troops both Confederate and Union. I don’t think Daniel was enlisted but I may be wrong. I’ve found the Saulses in many of my genealogy searches but not able to make a connection directly to the Lanes. I can’t remember if I mentioned but my genealogy research came to a brick wall with my g-g-grandfather John Lane. No one anywhere, not even Ancestry.com knows who his father was for sure. I have hints but nothing else. It’s all fascinating.

I can only imagine the difficulty there must be tracing African American genealogy, but I see DNA is being used which is great. It’s part of why I find Scuffalong so interesting. There’s so much information. I really love hearing about Vicey, Sylvania and the elder Daniel since their names have come up so often in my own research. And so happy to meet you, a descendant! Many of my Lane ancestors ended up in Wilson, NC after leaving Bull Head. I’m not sure why, but there were many there in my research including a great-grandmother of mine. Please pay my respects at the Artis Cemetery, to their memory, Lisa, when you visit it. Feel free to write me anytime, if you have any thoughts or questions or just to say hello!

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Christopher C. Lane enlisted in the 3rd North Carolina Infantry on 23 April 1861 at Snow Hill, Greene County. He was wounded at Gettysburg on September 1863, recuperated at home, then returned to war. He was captured 12 May 1864 at the Battle of the Wilderness, Virginia, and sent to Fort Delaware. In August, in retaliation for the Confederate Army’s imprisonment of Union officers as human shields in Charleston, U.S. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton sent 600 Confederate officers to Morris Island, South Carolina, to serve as human shields. Lane was among them. After 45 days, the men were transferred to Fort Pulaski, Georgia, and imprisoned in dismal conditions. Christopher Lane died there on 8 December 1864.

I have found no record of Daniel Artis’ service to Christopher Lane during the Civil War, which is not surprising. He was not a soldier; he would not have enlisted. The role of body servants in the early days of the War is the subject of intense debate, and Artis’ status as a free man of color, rather than a slave, further complicates any assessment of his motives (or volition) in following Lane to war.

Many thanks to Tammi Lane for reaching out and sharing a part of Daniel Artis’ life that would otherwise be lost to his family.

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Image found at http://www.fold3.com.

Land, North Carolina, Oral History, Other Documents, Paternal Kin, Photographs

The lots.

Said my grandmother:

And Johnnie [Aldridge], he called me, and I was working to the hospital. And he called me and told me, at least he called the hospital and wanted to speak to me: “Well, if you want to see your daddy – you said you ain’t never seen him before – come down here. He’s down here now. So, don’t let him know I told you.” [Laughs.] So, I went down – I said, well, I’m gon go down there and see Silas Cox ‘bout selling the lots where Grandma Mag’s house was on. So, I got off. So, I got Mr. Fisher to take me down there. I said, “Mm, I wanna see that man.”

My grandmother inherited two lots in Dudley from Sarah Henderson Jacobs Silver, her great-aunt and foster mother. (Because she had been informally adopted by Sarah and her husband Jesse Jacobs, my grandmother used the surname Jacobs until adulthood, when she reverted to Henderson.)

Mama had the lot where the house was, where Grandma Mag lived. Had that house built for her. The house they was staying in was up by the railroad, was just about to fall down. Somewhere down up there by where the Congregational Church is. And she built that house down there next to Babe Winn. I don’t think it was but one room. The porch, one room, and a little shed kitchen, a little, small, like a closet almost, and had the stove in it. Then had a stove in the room where she was, one of them round-bellied stoves where you take the top off and put wood in it. I remember that. And Sis Winn, her name was Annie, and she had a daughter, and she named her Annie after her. So they called the mother Sis, and they called the daughter Annie. And they were living in the house right next to her, Grandma Mag’s house. As I can remember. And after Grandma Mag died, the old preacher stayed in there and burnt it up.

I posted a query to my cousins:

Can someone tell me if the Dudley VFD was at its present location in the 1960s? I’m trying to figure out where two lots were on a 1967 plat. The plat mentions NC Secondary Road 1120 (which seems to run east-west), Simmons Street (abandoned) and Walnut Street (abandoned). James Newkirk and William Newkirk owned land on either side of where the fire station was on 1120. Thank you!

No luck.

Dudley Volunteer Fire Department is now on Highway 117 Alternate, south of its intersection with O’Berry Road. A Google search revealed that O’Berry was formerly known as Secondary Road 1120, so I now know that the fire department has moved around the corner. My father recalled that his mother’s lots were just west of the intersection, behind Silas Cox’s feed silos.

Here’s an aerial view of Dudley today:

Other than Road 1120/O’Berry Road at (4), there’s not much of anything that matches the plat. However, with the clue about the (1) feed or fertilizer silos, I’ve identified (2) as the approximate location of Grandma Mag’s house and the lots. (3) is Highway 117 Alternate.

My grandmother finally sold her lots in the late 1960s, ending more than 90 years of land ownership in Dudley by my line of Hendersons.

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Births Deaths Marriages, North Carolina, Oral History, Paternal Kin, Photographs

Remembering Uncle Jesse.

My grandmother’s second boy. Smooth. Dapper. Slick. Artistic. A chef. A painter. A hustler. A beloved uncle.

Happy birthday, Jesse Adam Henderson (17 April 1929-5 August 2005)!

Lucian and Jesse Henderson, circa 1932, Wilson NC.

Jesse, circa 1938, Wilson NC.

Circa 1944, Wilson NC.

With wife Jean and my grandmother, probably in the late 1950s, perhaps at the Jersey Shore.

Always “clean,” posted at the bar, 1960s.

One of my favorite photos of my uncle, with my niece, who adored him. Philadelphia, 2001.

Maternal Kin, North Carolina, Oral History, Photographs

Papa used to keep him just slick and pretty.

His name was Prince. And Papa sold Prince when he bought a car. But when he bought Prince, Prince had never been broken in. Nobody’d ever ridden him. And this man broke him in for Papa. But he was still high-spirited, because he was a race horse. And he had four white feet. That is what was so distinctive about him. He was chestnut. And we were so crazy about him that we would go in the – Papa had a big enclosed lot, like, that he could come out in. Other than the stable. And we would go in there with him, but he wouldn’t bother us. He would never bother us. And this old gentleman would be what was called currying. He would curry the horse and brush him and all, and he would hold me up and let me brush it. What was the man’s name? I can see him right now. He was an old man and real light. He was almost white. He had light hair, had white hair. And he loved Mama’s cooking. She used to bake something that was a pie. She called it a pie – but it was sweet potatoes. It was not mashed like you’d make up in a sweet potato pie ‘cause she would slice them and put them in the pie. Then she would make a sauce with nutmeg and lemon juice and thicken it with flour, you know. And then she would cook all of that in a big plate thing like that. And when Papa sold Prince, we went down where the man who had bought him had him, and he would look bad. His skin – you know Papa used to keep him just as slick and pretty. And that man would come to the house and wash him down with soap and water and everything and made him pretty. And he had pretty white feet. But Papa sold him to that man when he bought the car. And we went down there one day to see Prince, and he looked awful. He looked bony. He just looked awful. And we went down a little hill where he was in an enclosure. And we called him, and he came running over there where we were. We were so glad to see him. And we went home and told Papa that Prince said he wanted to come home. Yes, Lord. We wanted Prince moved.

Possibly Prince (though he only has two white feet), circa 1913, with Louise Colvert, Launie Mae Colvert, Bertha Hart and Margaret Colvert.

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Foodways, Maternal Kin, North Carolina, Oral History, Virginia

I never ate a bite in my life.

My grandmother, Margaret Colvert Allen: Papa was a hunter.

Me: He hunted?

My aunt: Papa was?

Grandma: Yeah. He hunted.

Me: So, he had hunting dogs.

Grandma: Yes, indeed. He had a place made to put his dogs in and — hound dogs, you know. Hunting dogs.

Me: Did — he hunted deer or smaller things?

Grandma: Naw. He never hunted deer. But he hunted rabbits and squirrels and quail. [Inaudible] and he would catch ‘em [inaudible] but I didn’t ever cook one. [Laughs.] His mother used to cook possum.

Me: Used to cook possum?

Grandma: Oh, possum, honey. They would cook those dern things.

Me: Well, possum stew. I guess I have heard of that.

Grandma: Hmm?

Me: Possum stew. I guess I have heard people talk about that.

Grandma: Naw. They didn’t have no possum stew. They’d bake this thing.

Me: Awwww!

Grandma: And, look, wait a minute. You know they’ve got big mouths. Long mouths. A possum. And he’d put a sweet potato in the possum’s mouth. [I laugh, hard.] I don’t remember cooking one, but my grandmother sure used to cook ’em. And Papa cooked ’em. But I refused to cook ’em. Not me. And you know these people when I came here ate muskrats?

Me: [Laughing.] In Newport News?

Grandma: John’s people ate muskrats. And you know the merchants would have ‘em hung up all on the outside the street, you know, like you used to have chicken cages where you could go and pick ….? Well, they would have these muskrats killed, and they were real bloody, and they would be hanging, and they’d just be killed. I mean, it wasn’t nothing wrong with ‘em if you liked that kind of thing. I cooked it for your daddy, but I declare before God I have never eaten a bite. [I laugh.] Not a bite.

My aunt: When I went to Africa, and we would take our day trips, they would have some kind of animal that they had split open –

Me: Butterflied. [Laughing.]

My aunt: And a rodent. Some kind of rodent. And I ain’t eating that. They had some kind of little rodent. And they had, like, barbecued it or something. And his head was still on.

Grandma: What you mean – little or big?

My aunt: Ma’am?

Grandma: How big would it be? ‘Bout the size of a squirrel or something like that?

My aunt: I don’t think it was a squirrel.

Grandma: Aw. Well, I don’t know what they were then. But, honey, these merchants on Jefferson Avenue used to have those muskrats hanging out there, honey, and you talking ‘bout bloody, and they would have skinned them, you know. And they were hanging like that. Ah. And bloodied. Ooooo. They would be so bloody. I fixed one and cooked it, but seriously, my hand to God, I never ate a bite in my life. I never intended to eat a bite. And my daddy didn’t like ‘em either. So my grandmother used to always bring him something down, she’d come down sometimes Sunday afternoon or Saturday night.

My aunt: Grandma Allen?

Grandma: No, no, no, no, no. My daddy.

Me: Harriet.

Grandma: She would always bring him something. Always bring him something. And this day she was supposed to have brought him some rabbit. Fried rabbit, you know. And I never shall forget. He sat over there by the window. Now, he’d had his dinner. He’d had Mama’s dinner, but when Grandma came and brought something he had to have some of that. He sat over there, and he ate, ate that piece of what he thought was rabbit, and he got down to the bone, and he knew it wasn’t rabbit. Because he didn’t – and he said, “Mama, what is this?” And she was crying laughing at him eating muskrat when he swore he’d never eat a bite. And she, I can see her right now. She was sitting over there, and, child, she was laughing. Laughing ‘til she cried. And Papa said, “You better be glad you’re my mama, ‘cause I certainly would whip you today if you weren’t my mama.” He was so mad.

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Births Deaths Marriages, Oral History, Paternal Kin, Photographs

Remembering Nina F. Hardy.

My parents married in 1961. When my mother arrived in Wilson shortly after, my father took her around to meet the elders who had not been able to travel to Virginia for the wedding. Along the way, they stopped at Dew’s Rest Home. As my mother stepped through the door, Aunt Nina threw up a cautionary hand: “Wait. You ain’t expecting, is you?” My mother, mortified: “No, ma’am!” “All right. ‘Cause it’s some uggggly folks in here!”

My paternal grandmother had a thousand stories about Nina — with a long I — Frances Faison Kornegay Hardy. Though she called her “aunt,” Nina in fact was her cousin. She was born March 15, 1882, probably in northern Duplin County, to John Henry Aldridge and Addie Faison. (John H. Aldridge, born 1844, was the son of John Mathew Aldridge, and first cousin of my grandmother’s grandfather, John W. Aldridge.) She seems to have been married briefly to Joe Kornegay in 1899 in Wayne County, but I have not found her in the 1900 census. By 1910, she had made her way 40 or so miles north to Wilson and was boarding in the household of Jesse and Sarah Jacobs as “Nina Facin.” The census also shows a “Nina Facon” living and working as a servant in the household of Jeff Farrior in Wilson. Though described as white, this is almost surely Aunt Nina, who cooked and cleaned for the Farriors most of her working life. Though she and her husband lived just outside Wilson on what is now Highway 58, she was at home only on her days off.

Said my grandmother:

Aint Nina lived up over the Farrior house on Herring Avenue. Herring’s Crossroads, whatever you call it. And that’s where she come up there to live. Well, the maid, as far as the help, or whoever, they stayed on the lot, where they’d have somewhere to sleep. So Aint Nina was living on Nash Road, way down there, and when we went to see her, me and Mamie would run down there five miles. She was working for Old Man Farrior then. When she was living out in the country, she was working for white people, and so she went up to their house and cooked for them. And when we’d go down to her house, she’d have to come from up there and cook when she get home. So we would go and spend a day, but it would be more than likely be on her day off. But when we had the horse and buggy, Mama drove out there once, and we went, I went with Papa with the wagon to where you grind corn to make meal, down to Silver Lake or whatever that place was down there. Lord, them were the good old days.

The Farriors, their back porch was closed in. It had windows. And had a marble floor in the back, and that stairway was on, where it was closed in on the back porch, you could go upstairs, and there was a room up there. You couldn’t go from out of that room into the other part of the house. You had to come back down them steps then go in the house. And that’s where Aint Nina stayed. I said, Lord, I wouldn’t want to have stayed up there. And then something happen … She had to come down and go down the steps, go upstairs, I mean, and come out of the kitchen, and then go up them steps out on this porch in her room. So she stayed up there. Lord, I wouldn’t want to stay up there. She get sick out there, she couldn’t get nobody. I didn’t see no – I was up in there one time, and I went up there just to look around. Well, she had a nice room, nice bed and chair and dresser and everything. There was a whole set in the room where she was. That was the only time I was up there. But I wouldn’t want to stay up there.

In 2004, J.M.B., a Farrior descendant, sent me copies of several photos of Aint Nina. My grandmother had described her (“She wasn’t real short. But she was heavy built, and she had big limbs. But she wasn’t that fat, but she just had big limbs and had a big face.”), and I had seen a couple of pictures of her before, like this one, taken in the mid-1950s with my uncle’s children:

And this one,

[There’s a photo booth shot that I can’t find right now. But I will. UPDATE: I found it. 1/3/2016]

But these …

… these touch me. Nina at work. Nina in a kitchen with a floured pan, perhaps making biscuits, perhaps the dumplings my grandmother relished. Nina, her own legs aching, tending to whitefolks. The columned Farrior mansion, since torn down, with Nina’s little room tucked out of sight.

In 1917, Nina married Julius Hardy in Wilson township. It is likely their house that my grandmother and great-aunt visited out on Nash Road:

They had guinea chickens. A car run over a chicken and killed it, and it kept going. And we, me and Mamie, was going out there, and we picked up the chicken and carried it ‘round there. And Aint Nina poured water and scald the chicken and picked it and cooked it, and we had the best time eating it. Wont thinking ‘bout we was going out there to eat. And so we come walking in there with that chicken, and she wanted to know, “Well, where’d you get that?” “A car run over it, and we picked it up and brought it on over so you could cook it.” And she said, “Yeah, it’s good. A car just killed it?” And it wasn’t too far from the house. And I reckon it was one of her chickens anyhow. Honey, she cooked that old stewed chicken, had to put pastry and vegetables in it. Lord, we stayed out all that time, then had to come home from way out there. But we was full.

And her brother, his name was James Faison, lived across the street from her, and his wife, and I think the lady had been married before because they wasn’t his children. It was two girls. And he worked at the express, at the station. The place was on that side, Nash Street station was over on this side. Baggage used to come over there. The baggage place where’d you take off the train. That’s where you put it over on that side at that time. And he was working over there.

Nina was a font of information about the family back in Dudley that my grandmother barely knew. Mama Sarah was impatient with questions about the past. Nina, on the other hand …

Mama never talked about her daughter Hattie. But A’nt Nina, she would tell everything. Mama got mad with her, said, “You always bringing up something. You don’t know what you talking ’bout.” So she’d go behind — Mama wouldn’t want her to tell things. And she never did say, well, if she said, I wouldn’t have known him, but I never did ask her, who Hattie’s daddy was. I figured he was white. Because she looked — her hair and features, you know, white.

Even as she waited on others, Nina struggled with her health:

But she was kind of sickly, and I went up there for something. See ‘bout her. Carry her something. And then when her leg was sore, and she come to stay with us. Oh, she stayed with us a long time ‘cause she had to go to the doctor, had to be taken to the doctor with that leg. That leg was still big. But it was much bigger than the other one. But it healed over. But it was so knotty-looking, like it’d heal up and draw up in places, and it just looked so bad, and so she’d wear her dresses long. But she had big feet! Oooo, she had big feet. With those big legs … And she was the one that Mama made Mamie iron her clothes on Sunday. ‘Fore you even got to playing, had to get her clothes. She was at Rocky Mount in the hospital with that leg. They had operated on that leg and Mama would go every Sunday and take her clothes, bring her dirty clothes home and wash ‘em and bring them back to her. So, Lord, we had a time with that. And I looked at that big leg and just said, ‘Wooo…. What in the world is that?’ Looked like it just swelled up. And I saw a lady right here in Philadelphia. I had passed, and I seen her, and she had a great big leg. And so by that woman having that big leg, I said, ‘Lord have mercy, I hope I don’t get that. I wonder what’s wrong with it? How come the swelling won’t go down in it?’ People don’t know what they’ll have to go through…. Yeah, ‘cause we went over there, and you didn’t have — it was an open sore, and it was always running. She had to keep her foot up and had to keep the flies from on it, and so I said, well, finally it got better, but that leg healed up, it drawed up and you could tell where the sore was all on her leg. And that leg was much bigger than the other one. It took a long time to heal. It was all healed up though before she died.

In the photo above, taken in her last years at the rest home where she protected my young mother from a disastrous maternal impression, Nina smiles her same sweet smile despite ailing legs wrapped and swollen feet encased in split loafers.

Aint Nina died 20 March 1969, just five days after her 86th birthday. Frances Sykes Goodman, granddaughter of Nina’s aunt Frances Aldridge Wynn, was the informant on her death certificate. She was buried in Rest Haven, Wilson’s black cemetery. (I’ve walked that graveyard and never seen her stone. Is her grave unmarked? If it is, and I can find it, it won’t be.)

Maternal Kin, North Carolina, Oral History, Photographs

A bird’s eye view.

The bird’s-eye view map of Statesville, North Carolina, drawn in 1907, reveals a number of features in Lon W. Colvert‘s landscape (click for a closer look):

At #1: near the intersection of Centre Street, 109 East Broad Street, early site of Colvert’s barbershop. At #2: Center Street AME Zion Church. At #3: Southern Railway station, built in 1906. Colvert had an earlier shop in the Depot Hill area near the depot. At #4: the railroad. The Colverts’ house was adjacent to the railroad in Wallacetown, southeast of the station, as was that of his in-laws, Henry and Martha McNeely.

Below, the current tenant at 109 East Broad:

Photo by Lisa Y. Henderson, December 2013.

Scuffalong: Genealogy.

Category Archives: Oral History