Rebecca Horton Hinton – Zebulon Matriarch
By MaryBeth Carpenter
Still hearty at age 96, Rebecca Horton Hinton reflects on her life in Zebulon and on the house and area where she was born.
Rebecca was born on January 3, 1924 in a Victorian home on Arendell Avenue, a home that her father built in 1915. Her father, Samuel Allison Horton, inherited land from his father, and selected choice pieces of timber from a sawmill he owned to build a grand and charming home. The house was erected in preparation for his marriage to Vernona Jeffries, who he married in October of 1915. “Mom and Dad went to Richmond for their honeymoon, and when they came back the house was ready for them to move right in,” she reports.
“My grandfather, (Robert Blacknall Horton 1857-1925) owned all the land on Wakefield Street and part of Arendell, and made a road between it. He gave each of his children some land. So Dad inherited land and farmed tobacco, cotton and corn,” Rebecca explains. Her grandfather died in 1925 when Rebecca was a baby, but she grew up experiencing a rich tapestry of activities from the extended family of Hortons in the area.
Rebecca was one of three children that Samuel and Vernona Horton bore in that house. “Dr. Barbee and Dr. Outlaw, who lived on Sycamore Street, delivered me in that house in the middle of a terrific snowstorm,” she reports. While she grew up, there were only three houses in the neighborhood, and the children played in the street. “Arendell was just a dirt street, really just a path, and cotton and corn was grown on each side of the street,” she recalls. “Dad was a terrific farmer, and we’d rotate the corn crop,” she recalls. Her mother, who family and friends called “Nona” could be seen churning butter with an old fashioned stick on the porch.
Her brothers Robert Edd Horton (1916 – 1998) and Samuel Dewarner Horton (1919-1921) were also born there, but Samuel died at age 20 months old of colitis.
Until she was 15, the family had no indoor plumbing. “We had a little outhouse, and one kitchen and four bedrooms in that house. We drew water from the well on the back porch. We just had a tub, lavatory sink and a commode. Then we got a sink on the back porch and it was just heaven to turn on the spigot and not have to draw water from the well,” she recalls.
Her family were devout Baptists, and attended Wakefield Baptist Church. When it burned in 1924, her father provided timber for the new church. “I remember hearing stories of our community moving the church with logs and mules,” she says. After the “new” church was built, she recalls walking to services behind her father. “Two times I got to ring the bell – it was an honor to pull the rope to ring the bell at the new church.”
She recalls walking to the Movie Theater on Saturdays to see a movie for 15 cents and paid five cents for a Coca Cola. Through the years along with her older brother Robert Edd Horton she shopped at Antones, Popes, and City Market Grocery Store. Later as times changed and the businesses expanded and changed hands, she shopped at Temple Market, Center Flower Shop, her brother frequented City Barber Shop, and would have a hot dog at Cannon’s Café. “People would come from all around to eat his hot dogs,” she remembers.
She walked through snow and rain to attend Wakelon School which she dubbed “the best school in the world.” She recalls, “We never had snow days and I walked there and home every day.” The three mile walk was a common activity for all the area children, she remembers.
She was very young when the Great Depression arrived, and says it was hard on people in town, but her parents weathered it well. “Lots of people lost land in the Depression. One of Dad’s sisters decided to move away, and mother bought her land, about a mile from here on Perry Curtis Road,” she said. Since they were farmers, they always had food during this time. A large garden provided cabbage, tomatoes, peas, corn, okra, butter beans, and blackberry bushes provided berries. This garden bounty was put into jars and cans, and sometimes placed into the icebox for later use.
When Rebecca was 11, her father died unexpectedly, on August 6, 1935. His death certificate lists the cause of death as a cerebral hemorrhage. He was embalmed by undertaker Norman Screws on the second floor of Zebulon Supply Company, which is now Whitley Furniture. He was buried in the Horton Family Cemetery on Wakefield Road in Zebulon.
Her mother had tenants who helped the Horton family to farm the land and keep everything running. “I loved these people, and I played with their children, they played with me,” she recalls.
In her late teenage years in the 1940s, Rebecca saw 75 percent of her male classmates in high school enter the military to serve in World War 2. “Three of my classmates were killed in the war,” she notes.
After graduation, Rebecca attended East Carolina Teaching College, and then taught school for one year in Goldsboro. She was one of five teachers and taught second grade at Corinth Elementary, and then at Wakelon. During this time, many of her classmates returned from serving in the war. Joseph Hardin Hinton had been a good friend of hers over the years, and was attending NC State when he was drafted for the war. “He was in the Marine Corps in the Pacific in Okinawa, and once he came back from the war, I saw him in church. We started dating.”
A year later they married, on September 10, 1946 at Zebulon Baptist Church. They went to Yankee Stadium to attend a baseball game on their honeymoon, and then came back and settled in Zebulon. Rebecca quit her post when she married, a common practice for teachers at that time.
She and Joe built a house on two acres of land across the street from the home she grew up in, and in 1948 moved over there. They had two children, Jane and Joe, and raised them in this Arendell Avenue home. Her daughter Jane married Waddell Mitchell, and has one son Chris, and a granddaughter Yancie, and they live in Zebulon. Rebecca’s son Joseph married Debra Dabney, and had two sons, David, who lives in Carthage, and William, who passed away in 1996.
Throughout the decades, the extended Horton family held an annual reunion each August. Initially the reunions were held “at the old homeplace” on Wakefield Road, and Rebecca reports that her father’s youngest brother inherited that home. “The first Horton reunion was held there under the shade trees, and we had barbecued pig and cake and served 100 in the yard,” she recalls. In later years the reunion site moved to different homes and the Lion’s Club, and then to an air conditioned church. She reports 76 attended in 2016.
Her husband, Joseph Hardin Hinton, died in December 1996 and was buried in Gethsemane Memorial Gardens in Zebulon. Rebecca and Joe had enjoyed a 50 year marriage in the same house on Arendell Avenue, across the street from the home where Rebecca was born. Both houses remain in family ownership. Rebecca continues to live there and relive her memories while creating new ones with friends and family.
“I’m real proud that my grandfather (Robert B. Horton) looked ahead and planned this part of the community. My extended family have all stayed here and enjoyed it. This is the next place to heaven to me, and I hope I can always stay here,” she exclaims. “Having a wonderful family and friends, I feel so blessed.”
By MaryBeth Carpenter, Copyright 2020, All rights reserved. Excerpt from the book, “Legendary Little River Locals” which will be published soon. Info taken from interview with Rebecca Horton Hinton in August 2017. MaryBeth is Executive Director of Preservation Zebulon Inc.
