The recent post on Kingstree's bygone gardens noted that we don't know the names of the black male gardeners and yardmen who spent many hours keeping those gardens beautiful. There is, however, a group of black men who also worked hard at their profession and whose names we do know. They are the barbers, and today we'll look at three of them and their lives.
John D. Mouzon was a very young man when he took over the barbershop at the Coleman Hotel on Main Street, on the site where Williamsburg County Water & Sewer and the Development Board are now located. From the 1900 census, we can deduce that he was 25 years old when he ran a notice in the March 1903 issue of The County Record, announcing that he would close the barbershop at the hotel promptly at 11 a.m. on Sunday mornings.
The Hotel Van Keuren, built on the site of the old Coleman Hotel in 1907.
John Mouzon's barbershop was probably at the far right of the photo.
Courtesy Williamsburgh Historical Museum
John Mouzon came from a well-known family as Edwin Epps noted in his memoir that in the 1880s, the Mouzons lived in the only two houses in the open fields on Brooks Street between the Baptist Church and the railroad. John's father, Benjamin, was a farmer; his mother, Harriet Niles Mouzon, was a laundress. His grandmother Nancy Mouzon also lived with his family, which included 13 children.
When the Coleman House ceased operation, Mouzon moved his barbershop to the small space at the rear of the archway in the three-story Gourdin building on Main Street, close to the old hotel. In 1907, when R.H. Kellahan built a new hotel, the Hotel Van Keuren, on the site of the old Coleman House, Mouzon moved back to the hotel. The County Record noted that his new quarters provided more room and natural light. At hotel manager Herbert Van Keuren's death, the hotel was renamed the Kellahan Hotel, but John Mouzon's barbershop remained a fixture there.
The archway in the Gourdin Building as it looks today.
When the building was under construction in 1904, it was referred to as
the "Gourdin Skyscraper" as it was the first three-story building in Kingstree.
Photo by Linda Brown
The Kellahan Hotel.
Courtesy Williamsburgh Historical Museum
In 1909, Mouzon was written up in the newspaper as something of a hero. On Saturday, July 24, he was walking down the sidewalk toward his barbershop when he passed his old place of business in the Gourdin building and noticed flames shooting up toward the ceiling. At the time, Jeff Fulton operated a pressing club where men could take their suits and shirts to be pressed in the building and had gone home to dinner, leaving a small boy in charge of the shop. According to the newspaper, "somehow the stove came into contact with gasoline and the resulting explosion sent flames to the ceiling." John Mouzon calmly put out the fire and was credited with saving the building and possibly the entire block, as the fire would have spread quickly.
Published in The County Record, March 23, 1911
John's father Benjamin was not listed in the 1910 census. John, however, still lived with his mother Harriet and several of his siblings, but they now lived on Hampton Avenue. Joe Alston, another barber, boarded with the family.
Yet another barber who plied his trade in Kingstree a little earlier than John Mouzon was Evans J. Aoston. Evans Aoston was from Wilimington, NC, where he married Nellie Gibson on July 5, 1887. They came to Kingstree not long thereafter, and by 1900, he, Nellie, their one-year-old adopted daughter Mabell, and his 13-year-old nephew, George Clayton, were living on Mill Street. Aoston ran a barbershop, fruit stand and bicycle repair shop on Academy Street, next door to Dr. D.C. Scott's drugstore. In 1897 E. J. Aoston ran a notice on the front page of The County Record which said, "Having placed my wife behind the counter of my fruit stand adjacent to my barber shop, patrons of the shop are requested to bear in mind this fact and refrain from using profane or obscene language while in the building. This rule is absolute and violators of it will be refused admittance. E.J. AOSTON.
Ad published September 22, 1898.
Notice that Academy Street was sometimes called Wall Street in those days.
In April 1898, he ran two more notices. The first said, "The patrons of my barbershop are requested to send their children to me during the week and not on SATURDAYS when they want their hair cut. I am always crowded with gentlemen wanting shaves on Saturday, and it would be a great accommodation if they boys would come during the week."
The other said, "All patrons of my barbershop will please take notice that it will be closed next Sunday, owing to other matters requiring my attention. This is absolute, as I will not be in the shop at all that day."
Published March 6, 1902.
In early 1903, the Aostons moved to Society Hill, leaving behind the irate members of the Odd Fellows, a fraternal organization for which E.J. Aoston had served as treasurer. The Odd Fellows maintained that the barber had absconded with $80 of their money and wrote him that he needed to return it. Aoston responded and arrived in Kingstree on the train, only to be met by Sheriff George Graham who escorted him to jail where he spent the night and somehow came up with the money. The next morning Graham released him, and he went on his way. By 1910, he, Nellie, and Mabell lived in Red Springs, NC.
Cohen Isaac Whitehead worked as a barber in Kingstree during Reconstruction. He was, however, better known as postmaster for the the town of Kingstreee, a job to which he was appointed on July 26, 1877, and in which he served until October 25, 1886. In 1881, his compensation was $484.81, making him one of the more highly paid postmasters in South Carolina. He ran the post office from his barbershop, located on W. Main Street not far from the river. His wife Elizabeth Plumeau Whitehead managed a dress-making shop in the same little, one-story, frame building. We don't know much more about them, but we can tell from their daughter Tressie's delayed birth certificate that both Cohen and Elizabeth Whitehead died at age 70.
The Whiteheads were apparently well-thought of in Kingstree. In 1898, Joel Brunson wrote an article about the horrific assassination of Frazier Baker, postmaster at Lake City, and his infant daughter by a mob of angry white men. In contrast, Brunson noted that Cohen Whitehead, a black man, had served as postmaster here years before and "gave the most efficient, polite service and received nothing save kindness at the hands of the entire community."
These were not the only black barbers in Kingstree. The City Barber Shop, over the years, employed Joe Alston, B.O. Blakely, Abraham Wheeler, George McKnight, and possibly others. It never fails to amaze how much history can be gleaned from old census, marriage, and death records, as well as from old newspapers.
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