North Carolina, Oral History, Paternal Kin, Photographs

Was it that long?

They are now swaddled in acid-free paper in an acid-free box: three coils of plaited hair. Two are narrow as fettucine (and nearly as flat after all this time), tapering through a curl to nothing; the first a deep, deep brown, the other sandy. The third braid is twice as long as the others and, at its thickest, the breadth of an infant’s forearm. If I place the cut end at the nape of my neck, the tip unfurls heavily to the seat behind me.

No visit to my grandmother was complete without her lifting a small green leatherette suitcase from atop a chifforobe in her bedroom. Underneath packets of photographs, which I also had to examine, she eased out the plastic bags preserving the hair cut from her own head (the great thick braid); her mother Bessie‘s (the thin dark brown one); and her mother’s first cousin, her namesake Hattie Mae (the blondeish plait.) Hattie Mae died in 1908 at the age of 13. Bessie died in 1911 at the age of 19. Her own hair she cut in the late 1950s, after enduring years of headaches from the relentless pressure it exerted when coiled atop her head. It was only the second time she’d cut it.

And so Mama was working at the factory, and I used to go up there and look at her. And so that’s when I first cut my hair. I went there, and the lady was asking Mama at the table where she worked to, and she didn’t say nothing to me, but she said, “Unh, who is that child with all of that long hair?” And she took one of my plaits and held it up. I had it in three plaits. I’ll never forget it. I had one down here used to come here. Yeah, it come down to below the shoulder. Like I plait it up, and it be from there. Two plaits here and then this one down across. And I always put that one behind my ear. ‘Cause I didn’t like it parted in the middle. Seem like it just wasn’t right in the middle. So I asked Mama ‘bout cutting my hair, could I cut my hair. ‘Cause everybody: “How come you don’t cut your hair? ‘Cause you’d look pretty in a bob.” I don’t know. I just wasn’t half combing it. And it was nappy. Like I’d go to try to comb it, and knots would be in there. And then I’d get mad with it. Then I’d take the scissors and clip that little piece off. And then all that other part would come off. And so I wondered, “Mama, could – ” “It’s your head. It’s your hair. I don’t care if you cut it off.” And so one day, a fellow stayed up there on Vick Street was a barber downtown, a colored fellow, Charlie Barnes or whatever his name is. So he passed there one day, and I asked him, “Would you cut my hair for me?” And he said, “Yeah.” Said, “You come on down to the shop.” And I said, “Where is the shop?” And he went on and tried to tell me, and then he stopped there one day, and he told me, he said, “You say you want to get your hair cut?” He said, “You got too pretty a hair to cut.” And I said, “Yeah, but I can’t half comb it.” He said, “Well, anytime you want to come on down there, I’ll cut it for you, if it’s all right with your mama. You ask your mama?” I said, “Yeah, she allowed me to cut it.” So sho ‘nough, I went around there one Saturday morning, went down there. And so, he turned around and cut off my plaits on both sides ‘cause I had two plaits there. He cut them off, and then he put some kind of stuff on it and then somehow fluffed it all up. Awww, I thought I was something. I reckon I was ‘bout 12, 13 years old. After then I cut it off in a boyish bob.

I got a plait of Hattie Mae’s hair and a plait of my mama’s, Bessie’s hair, and then mine. I was looking at that the other day, and I looked at it, and I said, “Huh, it was that long?” Rudy, Rudy Farmer took that picture. ‘Cause I – He saw my hair. I was standing there with my housecoat on. I still got that thing now. And: “Goodness! I didn’t know your hair was that long!” We were staying on Reid Street. And he said, “I’d sure like to have a picture of that.” And I said, “Well, you got a Kodak?” And he said, “Yeah! You’d let me take a picture?” I said, “Yeah.” And so he went home and got it and took a picture of it. I was standing up in one and sitting down in one.

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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)

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

Two sisters.

We would visit A’nt Nancy in Goldsboro. Her oldest daughter married the undertaker, Jim Guess. And her youngest daughter, me and her was the same age. Bessie Lee. And Mama used to go over there to see A’nt Ella. And A’nt Ella stayed up there on that other little street back there, but her and Nancy were sisters. Two sisters. So, I said, ‘I’m going over there, and they all never come and see me or nothing.’ So I stopped going, and after Mama died, I just forgot about it. ‘Cause they ain’t never bothered nothing about it. And then too, they seemed like they were cool. They wasn’t friendly enough. Like to say, if you’re family and have something to talk about, or go talk about anything, just make up something to say. Act like you like ‘em whether you did or not, while they was around. So I stopped going over there. ‘Cause Bessie Lee …. Let’s see, the last time I was over there, she had gone some place and so I didn’t get to see her that time. So I said, she didn’t never want to come to Wilson to see me, and I had always asked her ‘bout coming to Wilson, and she said she was coming over there sometime, but she never did. So I just stopped going to Goldsboro, too. I don’t know what happened to them.

Nancy, born about 1865, and Louella Henderson, born about 1876, were daughters of James and Louisa Armwood Henderson. In 1881, Nancy married Isham Smith, freeborn son of Milly Smith and her enslaved husband Peter Ward. They settled in the Harrell Town section of Goldsboro, where Isham worked as a wagon driver and then an undertaker. Their children were: Annie Smith Guess (1883), Oscar Smith (1884), Furney Smith (1886), Ernest Smith (1888), Elouise Marie Smith (1890), Johnnie Smith (1891), Mary E. Smith Southerland (1894), James Smith (1896), Willie Smith (1899), Effie May Smith Stanfield (1904), and Bessie Lee Smith (1911). (Was Bessie really a daughter? Or a granddaughter?) Isham died in 1914, and Nancy married Patrick Diggs four years later. After Patrick’s death, Nancy restored her first husband’s surname. She died in Goldsboro in 1944 after suffering a fractured pelvis from a fall from her bed.

Louella Henderson is more difficult to trace. My grandmother recalled that Ella was married twice, the first time to a King, and moved from Goldsboro to a city in the North Carolina Piedmont, perhaps Gastonia. Wayne County census records reveal an Adam and Ella King, but their marriage license lists Ella’s maiden name as Herring. An Ella Wilson witnessed Nancy Henderson Smith’s second marriage, but the Ella Wilson (wife of Ed) listed in the 1930 census is much too young. Though she must have lived into the 1920s at least, I can find no certain trace of Ella after the 1880 census. [Update here.]

[P.S. The continuing connection between Nancy Henderson Smith and her siblings’ families is evidenced by the frequency with which her son-in-law James Guess was called upon to handle their funerals. Nonetheless, knowledge of the connection seems to have dropped off sharply after her death. I have met only one person — my grandmother — who knew that undertaker James Guess (whom people had heard of) had married into the family or that any Smiths in Goldsboro were their kin. And I’ve been unable to locate any Smith descendants.]

Maternal Kin, Oral History, Virginia

Mystery sister.

In the early 1940s, my uncle recently said, a mysterious woman appeared at his grandparents’ house. My uncle alone was there because he stayed with them sometimes during the school year; his aunt Marion was his teacher. In the manner of the day, no one bothered to introduce a child to an adult, but he gathered that the woman was Papa Allen’s sister. This was a surprise to him, as he had not known his grandfather to have any such relatives. The woman looked much like Papa, with very light skin. He never saw her again, and whether she ever returned he cannot say.

Who was this woman? She was not Emma Allen Whirley, John Allen‘s younger half-sister, who was not light-skinned and probably was dead by 1940. Could she have been Nannie, the 5 year-old listed in Graham and Mary Allen‘s household in the 1880 census of Charles City County? Nannie’s birth predated Graham and Mary’s marriage, and it is not clear which is her parent. Her pale skin suggests that Mary was her mother, and her father was, perhaps, the same white man that begot John. No other record of her has been found. She may have been the mother of Junius and Milton Allen, the grandsons recorded with Graham and Mary in the 1900 census, but I suspect that they were born to Emma before her marriage. Otherwise, if Nannie is the woman who appeared on Marshall Avenue just before the outbreak of World War II, she has eluded detection in the record.

Maternal Kin, North Carolina, Oral History

Carrie, formally.

Me: Well, I wonder where she got her name from?

My grandmother: Who?

Me: Your mama. Your mother. Caroline Mary Martha –

My grandmother: Yeah. Who ever heard tell of such as that?

Me: Fisher Valentine McNeely. Well, I know where the Martha came from, ‘cause that was her mother’s name.

My grandmother: Yeah.

Actually, it was Caroline MARTHA MARY Fisher Valentine McNeely. And “Caroline” was the name of her aunt, Caroline McConnaughey, Martha Miller McNeely’s sister. But Mary and Fisher and Valentine?

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North Carolina, Oral History, Paternal Kin

Papa’s sons.

Jesse Jacobs Jr.’s first wife, Sarah “Sally” Bridgers, died shortly after the birth of their youngest child, Annie Bell in 1895. A year later, he married Sarah Daisy Henderson, who reared Sally’s children alongside her own daughter and her sister’s two children. Jesse’s sons, James Daniel Jacobs (1881-1952), Dock Davis Jacobs (circa1888-1944), and Reddick Jacobs (1889-1921), were grown by time my grandmother came to live with Jesse and Sarah. They were not her blood kin, but were family nonetheless.

Jim Daniel. Jim Daniel Jacobs. He and Roxie lived down in Clinton down there, and he come to Wilson when they got married, before they had a family. I remember that. They talked about me coming to visit, but he used to come up to bring tobacco. I remember, “Why in the world he had to come all the way to Wilson …?” I just do remember him, by him – lots of times they would come by the house, see Papa, wanted to know how he was doing, and whatever. They didn’t stay no time, had to get back and see what time they was gon sell tobacco. So, I don’t know whatever became of him. Now, Mamie went down when Jim Daniel got married. He married Roxie, a girl named Roxie, and they was still down there in Clinton, wherever, somewhere down … anyway, I know it wasn’t Mount Olive, and so when Roxie got pregnant, then Jim Daniel wanted Mamie to come down there and stay with his wife. He said, “I’ll pay for her to look after her, stay with her in the house,” ‘cause he was working down in the field and needed some one to look after her. So Mamie went down there to stay. Didn’t stay, but … I never did go down there. I never did see ‘em, after Jim Daniel brought up some corn one time to see Papa ‘cause he was sick.

James D. and Roxie Simmons Jacobs.

Dock, now he married a lady named Nettie. I met her. She was brown-skinned, small, brown-skinned lady, and they had about six, seven children. He met her, they got married up there in New York and had all these children, and I think, I think they had a falling out, and he went to stay with somebody else. I don’t know. Yeah. I went to their house. Nettie, I saw her one time. And her hair was ‘bout like that, I reckon. ‘Cause it looked like it was plaited. She tucked it under. But she was very pretty and nice…. Well, she wont pretty to me. But I remember where she was a very sweet and nice person.

Dock, like his siblings Carrie and Reddick, migrated to New York City. In 1923, Jesse and Sarah H. Jacobs deeded their house at 303 Elba Street, Wilson, to Jesse’s surviving children Carrie, Jim Daniel, Dock and Annie Bell. On 15 Apr 1938, Dock filed a deed for the sale for $20 of his undivided interest in the house to my grandmother (then called Hattie Jacobs). He used the money to buy a train ticket back to New York, and my grandmother used the deed to claim a share in the sale of the only home she’d ever known.

Dock Jacobs.

The other brother, the younger one. Reddick. He was one that got shot in the café. He was getting ready to leave, and say him and another fellow got to arguing, and the man shot him. Well, they brought him home. Papa was living then. They brought him home, and they had to bring the body up to the house. And me and Mamie had to go examine it, you know. But I didn’t put my hands on him. I went in there and looked at him, and I said, “Well, where did he get shot?” After he was all dressed up, laying out there in the casket. And so Mamie said, she said, “Girl, don’t you see? They shot him right in his face. Right there.” And I said, “I don’t see nothing.” And then she had to put her finger right in his eye. And it was in his left eye. It went right in through there and come out the back of his head. He was sitting at the restaurant, and a fellow shot him.

Congregational Church cemetery, Dudley NC

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Photograph of James and Roxie Jacobs courtesy of Carla Carter Jacobs. Original photograph of Dock Jacobs in the collection of Lisa Y. Henderson. Photograph of gravestone taken by Lisa Y. Henderson in March 2013. Interviews of Hattie H. Ricks by Lisa Y. Henderson, all rights reserved.

North Carolina, Oral History, Paternal Kin

The link.

As a daughter often is, in the early 20th century Sarah H. Jacobs Silver was the linchpin of Lewis and Mag Henderson’s family. Death and migration had forced in wedges. Sarah set her broad back against them. She was in Wilson with her sister Loudie’s son and grandchildren; her brother Lucian was in Dudley; and brother Caswell in New York. Sister Ann Elizabeth Henderson Simmons died leaving children, but Carrie Henderson Boseman left none behind. Sarah maintained links between them and across generations, made sure her aged parents were cared for, and, later, when Lucian was failing, saw to it that he and his sickly wife ate:

Mama Sarah’d fix dinner and send it down to Dudley on the train. The man that run the whatchacallit, engine? Up there, where stokes the fire or whatever is on the train. He would take it. She would tell what day she was gon send it. And so somebody’d be up there to the train station to get it. And the train, ‘cause a lot of time the train didn’t stop. But anyway, the man, the conductor, he would pull the thing, whatever, for the train to stop long enough for him to drop off this package. And that’s the way Mama sent food down there to Uncle Lucian and A’nt Susie.

Though her mother was dead, and her grandmother, and her great-grandmother, and though she lived a long day’s journey away from her birthplace – because of Sarah my grandmother knew her family. Visited Uncle Lucian, A’nt Nancy, A’nt Ella, Cousin Henry and his wife Nora, and Cousin Dolly in Wayne County. Uncle Caswell in New York. Cousin Min in Philadelphia, and Min’s brother Daniel in Baltimore. Lived for a while with A’nt Mollie in Greensboro. Worked in tobacco with Cousin Elias and his children David John and Estelle. She didn’t always know exactly how she was kin to all these Hendersons, and over the years the bonds faded, but she knew they were her people. With her stories as blueprints, I was able to rebuild.

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

Where we lived: 303 Elba Street.

The windows were broken and the front door gaped wide open, and I stood in the middle of Elba Street, uncomprehending. An aged neighbor paused on her porch, and I marched over: “Good morning. ’Scuse me. How long has next door been empty?” “Andrews & Andrews …,” she began, and – wait, she think I want to RENT? – I up my decibels, “No, how long has it been empty?” She shrugged, “A good while. They might gon demolish it.” … Demolish?

This was my grandmother’s house. Sort of. Her great-aunt and -uncle — Sarah and Jesse Jacobs — had bought it nearly new in 1908, and my grandmother arrived as an infant three years later when her mother died. She grew up on Elba Street, and her children were – literally – born there, and there they remained until 1938, when Mama Sarah died, and several truths were revealed. One, in 1923, Papa and Mama Sarah had sold the house to his children. Second, contrary to promise and belief, my grandmother never been formally adopted. Papa’s daughters ruthlessly drove this last point home by ordering her and her children out. My father was a small boy, but remembers moving – his hat blew off as he rode away in the back of a truck. Despite the eviction, my grandmother was not done with Elba. One of Papa’s sons sold her his share in exchange for a train ticket back to New York, and the sisters were forced to pay her from the house’s sale.

This place has been gone from my family for 75 years, and yet, for me, it’s Mother Dear’s house. The stories I recorded cemented its place in my imagination – the mantel clock that struck as she rallied from pneumonia, the chiggers that had to be scalded from the walls, the little stable for Papa’s horse, the hoodoo’d peach tree….

“I’ve always wanted to see inside,” I tell the neighbor. “I’m going in.” A glance up and down to check for unwanted notice, a halloo at the threshold, and I stepped through into a small center hall, which surprised me. To either side, multi-function front rooms and, behind, a third room, a bath, and a kitchen under a shed roof, all strewn with the detritus of squatters. Of these last three rooms, only the kitchen was there in my grandmother’s day, and the only obviously original features were the mantels in the front rooms and the heart-pine floors under worn linoleum.

Soon this house will go the way of so much of abandoned east Wilson, which has never recovered from the ravages of the crack epidemic that scoured the neighborhood early and hard. There was nothing much left at 303 Elba to speak to me, but I’m glad I peeked in. It will give shape to my listening to my grandmother’s words, and that’s a gift.

Maternal Kin, North Carolina, Oral History, Photographs

Emma McNeely Houser.

Aunt Emma was so pretty. And I never heard her raise her voice. Not ever. And she was she was so sedate and so pretty. We’d go to her house, and we’d eat, and everybody would get up and start – “Oh, goodness! Leave the dishes alone,” she’d say, and we’d all go in the living room and sit down, and then she finally would let us get up and go clean up the kitchen.

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Land, Maternal Kin, Oral History, Photographs, Virginia

Where we lived: 748-21st Street.

My uncle: That’s where I was born and where John was born.

Me: At 748?

My uncle: That’s it.

My cousin: This crib right here?

My uncle: That’s where I was born.

Me: [Laughing.] Wow.

Tax records show that this tiny house — less than 800 square feet — was built around 1910. It now has two bedrooms and one bath, but the bath was undoubtedly a late addition. John C. Allen may have been the first to move a family into the dwelling; the Allens are shown there in the 1910 census of Newport News. John, who worked as a shipyard painter, reported that he owned the house subject to mortgage.

By 1920, the Allens had moved just around the corner to 2107 Marshall Avenue, the house I knew in childhood as my great-aunt Julia‘s. John Allen kept 748 and rented it out until his middle son married. John C. Allen Jr. and his wife Margaret Colvert Allen lived there until their fourth child, my mother, was two weeks old.

My grandmother: I lived I don’t know how many years in Mr. Allen’s house without any electricity. And just as soon as I moved out –

Me: He had it wired?

My grandmother: He had it wired. And one of the neighbors said she went out there in the street and laid him out. Said, that child over there with those children, washing and ironing and working herself to death, and you wait until she leaves out of your house, your son’s house? She said she laid him out.

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Scuffalong: Genealogy.

Category Archives: Oral History