Geer Cemetery-Delia Jenkins

"Today we honor the life of Delia Jenkins, whose headstone tells us was born this day, June 10, in 1860. Delia was most likely born enslaved, to parents Wiley and Judy/Julia (Jordan) Mitchell. We first find record of their family after emancipation in the 1870 census living in rural Orange County.

Delia was the 3rd of 11 children born between 1854 and 1873.
The family moved to the growing city of Durham around 1874, where Wiley bought 2 acres in what would become the West End neighborhood, placing him among Durham’s earliest Black property owners.

Wiley worked as a drayman (horse carriage driver) for the Blackwell Tobacco Factory. In 1880, Delia married Washington Jenkins who worked as a bricklayer, most likely for his famed neighbor and entrepreneur Richard Fitzgerald.

The extended Mitchell family lived on the 800 block of Chapel Hill Rd. (today named Kent St.) bordering Maplewood Cemetery. Census records tell us Washington and Delia had 5 children, but sadly only one, a daughter Hattie born in 1882, survived to be recorded in the 1900 census. City directories also list Delia as a “sack maker”, crafting the muslin bags that stored loose tobacco.

The newspaper recorded details of Delia’s death in 1905 from severe burns received from an accident while lighting the household stove, a common hazard of the era. She was buried in Geer Cemetery, where her brother Nelson Mitchell was one of the founding board members listed on the original 1877 cemetery deed.

While no headstones exist, records tell us that Geer holds many of Delia’s family, including husband Washington (d. 1922), brothers Nelson (d.1931) and Samuel (d.1931), and sisters Beatrice Hayes (d.1928) and Ellen Mebane (d.1936), as well as potentially her parents, other siblings and children that died before the advent of death certificates.

Daughter Hattie Jenkins was a lifelong teacher at the West End School , her contributions to Durham an important part of Delia’s legacy.

This legacy also includes the only extant headstone for the Mitchell family in Geer, one which mysteriously lists her death date as October 22, 1923, 18 years to the day after her actual death."

Source:
Friends of Geer Cemetery - Durham, NC
Posted: Friday June 10, 2022