Thomas Josephus Wiggins and Bettie Pender
He was just thirteen years old in the summer of 1881, as he sat outside the small unpainted building on the Jack Pender Plantation. This building housed a small store that sold lamp oil, sugar, salt, small tools and other necessary items that folks living in the lightly populated Eastern section of Wilson County (formerly Edgecombe) needed. It was referred to as a Necessity Store or a Necessary Store.
The Necessity Store was a lone building in 1881 and was located at Pender’s Crossing at the same location Alvis Greene Grocery would be in later years and across the road from where Bridgers Grocery and Farm Supply would later be located. This Crossroads would become a booming, profitable and thriving community. That transition of Pender’s Crossroads would take place in the early 1900’s. On this day in the summer of 1881, thirteen year old Tom Wiggins saw a Crossroads that some called Pender’s Crossing as a muddy mess of deep ruts in the mud made by wagons and buggies. Five dirt roads converged at this muddy crossing used by travelers to and from Town Creek, Temperance Hall, Pinetops, Stantonsburg, Macclesfield, Pinetops, Saratoga, Farmville, Holden’s Crossroads, Elm City, Bridgersville, Wilbanks, Sharpsburg, Tarboro, Wilson, Rocky Mount and other towns and neighborhoods. Water was available for the horses. In addition to the supplies, there was a convenient and well-maintained outhouse behind the store. Those who traveled through Pender’s Crossing often stopped at the Necessary Store.
As young Tom sat in front of the unpainted store, Jack Pender came by and approached him. Jack Pender was no stranger to young Tom Wiggins. Tom’s parents, William Roland and Caroline Wiggins, were friends of the Pender family. They visited “back and forth” with T.W. and Nancy Pender and daughter, Bettie Pender, who was a year younger than Tom. They visited when Tom and Bettie were young children and the two were friends and playmates. In an interview with The Wilson Daily Times in 1958 when Tom Wiggins was 90 years old, he told the reporter that he and Bettie Pender were childhood sweethearts. He stated that he spent about as much time at the Penders’ as he did at his own home. He wasn’t too fond of going to school but he went just so he could carry Bettie’s lunch pail. Tom said that when he was eight years old, and Bettie was just seven, she proposed marriage to him. She told him that she wanted her house to be reached by an Avenue and not have all the paths like the Pender house had. He said she was bright and talented. Keron Pender gave Bettie piano lessons and Tom said he walked a little slower to hear the piano when he walked through the yard at the Pender home. The big two story Pender house was often filled with music, either Keron playing the piano and singing or the lessons being given to Bettie. Bettie told her parents of her fondness for Tom and her plans for them to marry. Her childhood dreams never came true. Bettie had measles with some complications and died in l882 when she was just 12 years old. (Some of these statements and others by Tom Wiggins were in the Wilson Daily Times April 22, 1958, edition).
On that day in 1881 Jack Pender told Tom to come on home with him. Pender offered Tom a job on the farm. Tom came to the Pender Place about sixteen years after the Civil War and the farm labor was done by paid day labor. About 1884 that changed to sharecroppers providing labor in exchange for housing and a percentage of the farm profits. Jack Pender took Tom to his house and soon into his home. Although his parents owned a farm Tom said his father was a half ass farmer and a half ass preacher. Tom’s parents did not get along so they separated. Both continued to live in the same house. They divided the house and they divided the children. The Wiggins property was located across the muddy crossroads on what is now Shallington Mill Road less than a mile from the Pender Place. William Roland “Billy” Wiggins, Tom’s father (my great great grandfather), sometimes walked back and forth the length of the wrap around porch of the sprawling one story house and he preached his version of the Gospel. It has been said that he sounded angry, could be animated and loud. Tom missed his mother and on numerous occasions he left the Pender ‘place’ and went back to his home to see his mother and siblings. After a few days either Jack Pender would go and ask him to come back or Tom would leave on his own and return to the Pender home. Tom’s father raised sheep, hogs and cattle and there was always food from their gardens. There was plenty of food at his boyhood home but there was never a surplus of money. At the Jack and Keron Pender house there was a drawer filled with silver and gold and he was made welcome to use what he needed.
At the Jack Pender farm Tom slept in the dormitory and took his meals in the Pender Kitchen. The dormitory was built in 1855 when Jack Pender and Keron Wilkins were married. It was actually a small house near the big house with two sleeping rooms, a kitchen with large fireplace and a “sitting room.” It had been built for Thaddeus and Cadmus. When Jack Pender married Keron Wilkins in 1855 he felt that his sons needed a separate residence.
Jack Pender’s son, Cadmus, had died in 1862 early in the Civil War and Thaddeus was wounded in the war and was disabled. Thad was married and living with his wife in another house on the property in 1881 so the dormitory had been empty for some time. Tom Wiggins moved into the house that was referred to as the dormitory. As Tom ate the fine meals of meats, fruits, vegetables, breads and desserts prepared by excellent cooks, he remarked in his later life how much he liked rich folk’s food. Tom Wiggins enjoyed good food for the rest of his 91 years.
Pender was impressed with Tom and gave him an apprenticeship. He was now learning about growing cotton, grain and livestock. The 1850 Census showed that Jack Pender owned 855 pigs. The 1860 Census showed the number of pigs had grown to 1,390. Jack Pender died in 1882 so Tom only worked with his mentor for about a year and a half. In 1884 the demand for cotton was declining and the price was decreasing but the demand for tobacco was on the rise and the prices were increasing. The decision was made to cut production of cotton by 50% and start raising tobacco. Tobacco became the most profitable crop and remains the same today. Keron Pender took him under her wing and taught him how to keep farm records, about profit and loss and about supply and demand. She taught him the ways of a gentleman.
Tom told the story to his grandchildren of his childhood playmate, Bettie Pender, and how they were friends from the time they were five and six years old. He talked about how that friendship changed to them being childhood sweethearts. It has been passed down for generations the reason Tom Wiggins inherited the Pender plantation was that the Penders loved him as their son and also his childhood friendship with Bettie and her plans for their marriage and future together. Jack Pender had no living children or grandchildren. Keron Pender, Jack Pender’s widow, lived in the Pender homeplace for fifteen years after his death. Although Bettie had died when she was just twelve years old Jack and Keron continued to love and treat Tom as their son. One reporter who interviewed Tom Wiggins when he was about 90 years old said he told stories about fox hunting, trips to the coast, his favorite hound dogs, drinking parties, his first horse and buggy, the cars he had owned and about his many friends and his long life. He hunted and partied with ne’er do wells and with Govenors. He talked about all of this with ease but when he talked about Bettie Pender, her childhood marriage proposal to him and her dying when she was so young, “Mr. Wiggins got a little teary eyed”.
The story has been repeated for over a hundred and forty years and it can still bring a tear to the eye.
Montress Greene (Great granddaughter of Tom Wiggins)
Website: Montress Greene.com
Great story of a remarkable man. What was the connection between Jack Pender and William Dorsey Pender?