Echoes from the Sandhills

Series 5 - Echoes in Action

Echo 13 - The Man Everyone Thought They Knew - James Walker (J.W.) Hood

Depending on which nineteenth-century newspaper you read, James Walker Hood was either a visionary educator helping build schools for formerly enslaved people or a dangerous political agitator who deserved public condemnation.

Which version was true?

J.W. Hood—Reverend, Bishop, educator, Assistant Superintendent of Public Instruction in North Carolina, and one of the most influential Black leaders of the Reconstruction era—was born free in Pennsylvania in 1831. He arrived in New Bern in January 1864 while the Civil War was still being fought. He did not come to North Carolina because of politics or in search of public office.

He came as an A.M.E. Zion missionary.

By 1869, Hood had become one of the leading figures in North Carolina's effort to educate formerly enslaved people. He traveled throughout the state organizing churches, encouraging the establishment of schools, supporting teachers, and helping build institutions that would serve generations to come. His influence soon extended beyond the pulpit. He served as Assistant Superintendent of Public Instruction, participated in the state's Constitutional Convention during Reconstruction, and later helped establish what would become Livingstone College. Few individuals left a greater imprint on the educational and religious life of post-war North Carolina.

Although his work carried him throughout North Carolina, Hood eventually made his home in Fayetteville. That places him much closer to the communities I have been researching than many people realize. As I followed estate records, church registers, and Freedmen's school reports across Cumberland, Harnett, Moore, and Lee counties, I kept encountering people whose lives intersected the educational and religious movement Hood helped build. His story is not separate from the Sandhills—it is woven into it.

Yet Hood's growing influence also made him a target.

To many African Americans and their allies, he represented hope, leadership, and opportunity. To many of his political opponents, he became a symbol of Reconstruction itself. Newspapers hostile to Black political participation attacked him relentlessly, while later writers dismissed him with labels such as "carpetbagger."  Those labels, however, often reveal as much about the people using them as they do about Hood himself.

The contemporary record tells a more complicated story. It shows a man constantly traveling, preaching, organizing churches, supporting schools, mentoring teachers, and working to create opportunities for people who, only a few years earlier, had been denied education, citizenship, and the freedom to shape their own futures.

The deeper I dig into the records, the less interested I become in the labels. I want to know what J.W. Hood actually did, who he worked with, and how his work reached communities like those in the Sandhills. The answer, I suspect, is far more interesting than either his admirers or his critics were willing to admit.

This Echo offers only a glimpse of J.W. Hood's remarkable story. His work and the lives of many others whose names emerge from these records will be explored more fully in the Echoes from the Sandhills book series, debuting this fall.

Echoes from the Sandhills

Series 4 – Echoes in Action

Echo 12 - When One Story Becomes Four

I've learned that research doesn't always take you where you intended to go.

Sometimes history has a story of its own to tell.

That was certainly the case when I sat down to research Lucy Saunders Herring.

My intention was simple. I wanted to write the next Echoes from the Sandhills blog about Lucy, one of Harnett County's Jeanes Supervisors. Like so many dedicated Black educators during the era of segregation, she worked tirelessly to strengthen rural schools by mentoring teachers, improving classroom instruction, and helping provide better educational opportunities for African American children.

I hoped to find reports she had written, correspondence, or other records that would help me better understand her work and the educational landscape of Harnett County.

Instead...

I found her husband.

His name was Asa D. Herring.

At first, that discovery seemed like a minor detour. Asa was Harnett County's farm demonstrator, another respected Black professional working to improve the lives of rural families. Since my research often explores the people who quietly shaped our communities, I decided to learn a little more about him.

Then I found the newspaper headlines.

Suddenly, the respected farm demonstrator had become the central figure in a sensational 1933 murder trial that ended with a life sentence.

Like any researcher, I started asking more questions.

Who was this man before the headlines?

The answer led me somewhere I never expected.

Asa wasn't simply a county farm demonstrator.

He was the son of George W. Herring, a man born into slavery in 1858 who became one of North Carolina's most respected agricultural leaders. George spent more than twenty years helping Black farmers build better lives through education, improved farming practices, and self-sufficiency. When he died in 1932, newspapers praised his life's work and proudly noted that his son, Asa, was carrying on his legacy as Harnett County's farm demonstrator.

One story had suddenly become two.

Then it became three.

As I continued searching census records, military files, prison records, and interviews, another name appeared.

Asa Darcy Herring Jr.

The little boy I found in the 1930 census, the son of Asa and Lucy, grew up to become one of America's pioneering Tuskegee Airmen and eventually retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Air Force.

I couldn't believe it.

I had started researching a Jeanes Supervisor.

Now I was following the lives of a family whose story stretched from slavery to agricultural leadership, from heartbreak to military distinction.

And through it all, one voice kept pulling me back.

Lucy's.

Years after the events that changed her life forever, she didn't describe the trial or the courtroom. She didn't revisit the newspaper headlines.

She simply said,

"The sky fell on my marriage."

Those six words changed the direction of my research.

I realized I wasn't writing a story about a murder.

I was writing a story about a family.

A family whose legacy began with a man born into slavery.

A family whose future seemed to collapse in one devastating moment.

A family sustained by a remarkable woman.

And a family whose next generation refused to let tragedy have the final word.

Sometimes we begin researching one person.

History introduces us to an entire family.

This story is still unfolding.

Every new census record, newspaper article, military file, interview, and family memory reveals another piece of the Herring family's remarkable journey. The more I discover about George, Asa, Lucy, and Lt. Col. Asa D. Herring Jr., the more convinced I become that their lives deserve far more than a newspaper headline.

They deserve a place in history.

The complete story of the Herring family, and many other remarkable stories from Cumberland, Harnett, Lee, and Moore counties, will be featured in the upcoming Echoes from the Sandhills book series. These volumes will go beyond the headlines, weaving together historical records, oral histories, family memories, photographs, and community research to preserve the people, places, and events that shaped the Sandhills.

This blog is where the discoveries begin.

Echoes from the Sandhills is where those discoveries become lasting history.

Until then, I'll continue following the records wherever they lead.

Because every family has a story.

Every community has a memory.

And every life leaves an echo.

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Help Us Preserve Our History

Do you have photographs, letters, school records, newspaper clippings, oral histories, or family memories that help tell the story of the people and communities of Cumberland, Harnett, Lee, or Moore counties?

The Sandhills Story Bank is preserving the complete history of our region, one family, one story, and one memory at a time.

Because every family has a story.

Every community has a memory.

And every life leaves an echo.

Echoes from the Sandhills

Series 4 – Echoes in Action

Echo 11 - They Had Names

History often remembers the names of landowners, soldiers, ministers, and politicians. Their stories were written into deeds, wills, court records, and family histories. But for many of the people who lived, labored, loved, and suffered in the Sandhills of North Carolina, history preserved little more than a first name.

In the records of the McNeill family, whose lands stretched across portions of Lower Little River, Anderson Creek, Jones Creek, Black River, Thornton's Creek, and the area that would later become Manchester and Spring Lake, we find a different kind of record. Not a census. Not a family Bible. Not a birth certificate.

A will.

In 1801, Archibald "Scribbling Archie" McNeill divided his estate among his children and grandchildren. Included among the land, livestock, and household goods were human beings.

Tilla.

Nell.

Will.

Bacchus.

Leanor.

Bett.

Virgil.

Angus.

Charles.

Cupid.

Judith.

Nan.

Fanny.

Flora.

Abith.

Their names appear in the will, not as sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, or neighbors, but as property to be distributed among heirs.

Some were grown men.

Some were grown women.

Some were children.

Some were mothers whose children would automatically follow them into bondage.

One passage directed that Tilla and Nell be given to a son and his wife during their lifetimes, and only after their deaths, if the women survived, they were to be passed on again to another heir. Their own wishes were never considered. Their futures were decided with the stroke of a pen.

Other enslaved men—Will, Bacchus, Virgil, Angus, Charles, and Cupid—were assigned to different family members as part of an inheritance. They were valued, accounted for, and transferred alongside acreage, livestock, and furnishings.

Twenty-seven years later, in 1828, Margaret McNeill prepared her own will. Once again, human beings were listed among the possessions to be distributed.

Jane and her child Caesar.

Jack.

Meredith.

Candace.

Nelson.

Charity.

Mary.

Maria.

Sharper.

Duane.

David.

Ferrah.

Again, their names survived because they were counted as property.

Not one of these records tells us where they were born.

Not one tells us who their parents were.

Not one tells us who they loved.

Not one tells us whether they had dreams of freedom, whether they sang while working in the fields, or whether they lay awake at night wondering if their children would be sold away.

We do not know whether Tilla was a mother.

We do not know whether Charles had brothers.

We do not know whether Charity ever married.

We do not know whether Cupid lived long enough to see freedom.

We do not know whether Abith was a little girl or a young woman.

We only know their names.

And perhaps that is where remembrance begins.

For descendants of families from Anderson Creek, Lower Little River, Manchester, Spring Lake, Jones Creek, Black River, and the surrounding Sandhills communities, these names deserve our attention. One of these individuals could very well be an ancestor of someone living today. One of their children may have taken a new surname after emancipation. One may have become a farmer, a church founder, a teacher, a soldier, or a parent whose descendants still call this place home.

The records do not tell us.

But the possibility remains.

Too often, enslaved people appear in history only as numbers. A plantation had twenty slaves. An estate listed ten enslaved people. A census recorded forty-two. Their humanity disappears behind statistics.

Here, however, the records left us something more.

Names.

Tilla.

Nell.

Will.

Bacchus.

Leanor.

Bett.

Virgil.

Angus.

Charles.

Cupid.

Judith.

Nan.

Fanny.

Flora.

Abith.

Jane.

Caesar.

Jack.

Meredith.

Candace.

Nelson.

Charity.

Mary.

Maria.

Sharper.

Duane.

David.

Ferrah.

We may never know their full stories.

We may never know where they came from or where they were laid to rest.

We may never know who among us descends from them.

But they lived.

They worked.

They endured.

They mattered.

And for at least this moment, more than two centuries later, we speak their names.