| Summary: | This is a photograph (1) and obituary (2) relating to Simon Jackson. According to Florence historian Lee Freeman: "In June of 1908 Simon Jackson married Sarah Lee Pruitt (ca. 1888-aft. 1930), a daughter of Albert Pruitt and Matilda Thompson, and the young couple in 1910, who had one child, were living on Cloverdale Road and Simon was employed as a "fireman" with the "water company," meaning that his job was to stoke the furnaces. By 1920 Simon had relocated the family to Savannah Road. By ca. 1922 Simon had been hired as the custodian at the white Gilbert School in North Florence, a job he would hold until his death in 1933.
Simon Jackson died under very peculiar circumstances on Saturday night, January 14, 1933. At about 9:30 pm Jackson allegedly got into a fight with another African-American resident, Willie Franks, on the corner of Court and Alabama Streets in Florence and dropped dead after allegedly slashing Franks with a knife. Franks was supposedly treated for his injuries then fled. In the meantime a preliminary coroner's inquest ruled the cause(s) of Simon's death inconclusive as it was unable to locate Willie Franks, despite the efforts of Sheriff Mitchell to bring him in. However Simon's death certificate recorded his cause of death as a "cerebral hemorrhage." Nothing else is known of Simon's death at this time--more research needs to be done.
Simon Jackson was buried on Tuesday, January 17, 1933 in the "Bill [William] Coffee Cemetery," a reference to the Hickory Hill Plantation Slave Cemetery on Cloverdale Road."
|
|---|
