Sometimes topics for my blog just fall into my lap. That was the case with today’s post about Jane Renwick Smedburg Wilkes.
As I was doing the research for yesterday’s blog about Good Samaritan Hospital in Charlotte, I was led to do some research about a July 17, 1911, train wreck near Hamlet, North Carolina. The train wreck research led me to a Richmond County Daily Journal newspaper article (https://www.yourdailyjournal.com/news/108231/pair-of-researchers-seeking-more-information-on-train-wreck-from-1111-years-ago) which provided additional information about the hospital. The link is a little elusive, but I hope you can find it if you want to read more about the train wreck.
I am a Carolina Panthers fan, but I can’t afford to go to their games or to anything else at Bank of America Stadium; therefore, I have not seen the historical marker pictured in that online newspaper article. None of my online research about the hospital mentioned Jane Renwick Smedburg Wilkes.
That historical marker reads: “Good Samaritan Hospital (1891-1961) Site of the first independent private hospital in North Carolina built exclusively for African-Americans. Established by Jane Renwick Smedburg Wilkes of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. One of the oldest black hospitals then in operation in the U.S.”
When I saw Jane Renwick Smedburg Wilkes’ name on that historical marker, I knew there had to be a story there.
As much as I just wanted to tell her story today, it soon became obvious that I could not tell her story without also telling a little bit about her husband. Since I had never heard of either of them, I had a lot to learn. There were some serendipitous findings along the way.
I was born in Charlotte and have lived most of my life in or near the city, but until a couple of weeks ago I’d never heard of Jane and Jack Wilkes. Jane’s is not the kind of name one easily forgets once they have heard it. The fact that I had never heard of her makes me sad, but it mainly makes me a little angry. I should have known her name and a little about what she did.
An online search of her name brought up so many articles and resources that I began to wonder how I would be able to condense her life into one blog post.
Reading that titles of some of the online articles about Jane piqued my interest and curiosity. She was born on November 22, 1827, in New York City to a wealthy family. She was one of 13 children and grew up on the family estate in the Catskill Mountains.
So how did she end up in Charlotte, North Carolina, being a nurse to Confederate soldiers, and establishing a hospital for black people?
My hunch was that marriage must have brought Jane to Charlotte, so I started my research there. Her story takes a strange turn.
This gets a little involved, but bear with me. In 1853, Charles Wilkes and a firm in New York entered an agreement and established The Capps Gold Mine Company. (You may recall that the first gold discovery in the United States was in Cabarrus County, North Carolina, in 1799. Cabarrus is the county immediately east of Charlotte. Goldmining in the area in the early decades of the 19th century necessitated the establishment of a branch of the United States Mint in Charlotte. The area was a hotbed of mining activity until the Civil War pretty much put a halt to mining.)
Charles Wilkes’s wife’s uncle, James Renwick, owned the land where the St. Catharine’s Gold Mine and St. Catharine’s Mill were in western Mecklenburg County (the county of which Charlotte is the county seat.) Silver, pyrite, and chalcopyrite were also mined there.
It turns out that Jane married Charles Wilkes’ son, Captain John “Jack” Wilkes, on April 20, 1854. Jane and Jack just happened to be first cousins, but I’m not going down that rabbit hole other to say they had nine children. Also, I can’t resist to comment that it is just the South that is the butt of jokes about cousins marrying cousins, but Jane and Jack were both from New York. Just sayin’.
I don’t know the details of it, but Jack Wilkes ended up coming to North Carolina to manage his father’s property. It took some digging, but I finally figured out how Jane of the wealthy Catskills family ended up in Charlotte.
After living near St. Catharine’s Mill, in the 1870s Jane and Jack moved into Charlotte and lived on West Trade Street. When I read that Jack owned and managed a flour mill, an iron mill, and a cotton mill, I had to delve into that part of their story.
An unexpected connection with my family
Reading that Jack Wilkes owned and managed an iron mill in Charlotte sent me on a search to find out more about that. My father was a structural steel draftsman. He worked for a few years in the 1960s as a draftsman at Mecklenburg Iron Works, which I knew at that time had been in operation for more than 100 years.
Sure enough, it turns out that Jack Wilkes acquired Mecklenburg Iron Works in 1859. There is proof that it was in business at least as early as 1846. My father’s connection with a company owned by the husband of Jane Renwick Smedburg Wilkes made me even more regretful that I had not learned about her before now.
Through my father’s employment at Mecklenburg Iron Works, I knew that the company made cannonballs for the Confederacy during the Civil War. The company also manufactured the gold stamp mill still in operation for demonstration purposes at the Reed Gold Mine State Park in Cabarrus County.
Jane and Jack’s married life
It pained me to learn that Jane and Jack owned more than 30 slaves. Many of them worked in their mills. That was interesting to learn because I tend to associate slaves in the United States in the 17th century and the first two-thirds of the 19th century as living and working on plantations. I honestly had never thought about any of those slaves working in factories.
And how was it that Jane and her husband owned more than 30 slaves, yet she ended up helping to establish Good Samaritan Hospital in Charlotte in 1891 to serve the black people of North Carolina?
Jack and Jane sided with the South in the Civil War, but tow of Jane’s brothers fought in the Union Army and Jack’s father gave monetary support and supplies to the Union.
It sounds like the classic “brother against brother” kind of story associated with the American Civil War!
During the Civil War, the Confederate Government took over Mecklenburg Iron Works and it was used as a naval ordnance depot. Wilkes got the factory back after the war ended in 1865 and changed production from cannonballs to agricultural equipment. The company was sold to Carolina Steel Corporation in the 1960s.
Back to Jane Renwick Smedburg Wilkes, the original subject of today’s post
Jane joined St. John’s Episcopal Church in High Shoals, North Carolina. High Shoals is in Gaston County, just west of Charlotte. It was originally a textile community. I don’t know if Jack joined the church there or not. When they moved to Charlotte, they both became members of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church where Jane served as president of the church’s Aid Society.
During the Civil War, Jane volunteered at several of the camps in Charlotte where wounded Confederate soldiers were brought. The experience made a deep impression on her. Soon after the war she started leading the effort to build a civilian hospital in Charlotte.
Jane was the leading voice, apparently, in the establishment of St. Peter’s Hospital for white people in 1876. With that accomplished, she started working for the construction of a hospital to serve black people. The result was Good Samaritan Hospital, which was the topic of my blog post yesterday, https://janetswritingblog.com/2025/07/14/getting-a-local-history-lesson-in-a-round-about-way/.
In 2014, Charlotte Trail of History installed an 800-pound, 7.5-foot-tall statue of Jane Renwick Smedburg Wilkes just off East Morehead Street near the address 1445 Harding Place in Charlotte.
When I set out to find out something about Jane Renwick Smedburg Wilkes, I had no idea what a journey it would be! Thank you, Tangie Woods, for prompting me to go down this path.
Until my next blog post
If you have a good book to read, consider yourself fortunate. Many people in the world don’t have that luxury.
Don’t forget the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina.
Janet
Janet's Writing Blog 
Very interesting knowledge Janet. It is so important to conserve history. That is something that we are very good at here in the “old” world… Have a great day and all the best to you!
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Fascinating, Janet. Had to laugh at your comment on Southerners marrying cousins. From reading lots of articles about Thomas Jefferson, I know it was prominent in his and other FFV families. A separate article about Virginia State mental hospitals documented that. 😵💫😁
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Thank you, Francis. We aren’t so good at preserving history in the New World, and now even the little that has been saved is under attack if it does not show America is a good light. Enjoy the rest of your day.
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LOL! Yes, I couldn’t resist throwing in that comment. I’m so tired of the South being the butt of so many jokes. The myth that makes me the angriest is that there is no racial prejudice north of the Mason-Dixon Line. We all know now that’s not true, but it was drilled into us in the 1960s.
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I went to highschool in Rhode Island and college in Virginia. Like all generalities, there are exceptions. What I observed, up North, they may have been less overtly prejudiced to the group but much less to have Black friends or interact with individuals, but in the South there more likely to have individuals as friends but more public disdain for the group.
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So true Janet, and so sad to see… Thank you so much and all the best!
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I have never lived north of NC, but I think your observation nailed it. Over the last 20 years our area has had an influx of new residents from NY, MI, CT, etc. It has been my experience with my new friends that they are appalled at the thought of a white person having a friendly relationship with a black person. A real eye-opener for me.
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I spent a lot of time living all over the US except the Midwest and found this generally true. It’s who your neighbors, coworkers, and classmates are. What was funny or maybe sad in Rhode Island, the jokes were all about the Portuguese but further north the punchline was changed to French Canadians. In many cases it can be Polish jokes. Substitute the race, religion, national or sexual orientation of your humourous choice.
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It seems like every group needs a group to look down on. When I lived in Robeson County, NC, it was one-third white, one-third black, and one-third Native American. The whites looked down on the other two. The other two looked down on each other. Now I understand the county is racially in fourths with Hispanics added since I lived there in the early 1980s. Interesting dynamics.
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Quite a story!
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Yes, Vicki. Lots of surprises!
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A fascinating piece of history. I know just what you mean by “The fact that I had never heard of her makes me sad, but it mainly makes me a little angry. I should have known her name and a little about what she did.” I’ve had the same experience many times.
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Of course there is racial prejudice north of the Mason-Dixon line—the Boston race riots of 1974 being a case in point.
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It really was the Boston race riots that made us aware that as Southerners we’d been lied to all our lives. A good friend and her parents visited Boston in the early 1970s. Their car was stolen there. In their dealings with some residents and the police they were subjected to snide remarks about how racially prejudiced Southerners were. Little did my friends know that the schools in Boston were segregated! In fact, after all the trouble in Boston about desegregating the schools, a group of high school students from Charlotte were invited to go up there to meet with students and adults to discuss how desegregation had been handled in Charlotte. It wasn’t a piece of cake in Charlotte by any means — there were years of forced bussing to give every school in the district an exact percentage of white and black students. Students were shuffled every year as the population changed. One of my Charlotte friends was assigned to a different school every one of her years in high school — which was a high price for a teenager to pay. In my county, students were assigned to the nearest school and we were not under a court order like Charlotte-Mecklenburg to meet specific racial balance. I was in the 7th grade when black students in my county could attend their closest school or they could continue to go to the black schools. The next year, the black schools were closed and integration became mandatory. In retrospect, the old segregated system was ridiculous. While it was in place, it was just accepted as the way it was — like blacks being required to sit in the back of city buses. As a child, I just didn’t know any better and had no real concept of how it was the law.
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Bussing was not a good solution to right past wrongs. And of course we Northerners have nothing to be smug about when it comes to prejudice.
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Court-ordered bussing in Charlotte was horrible. Students were being bussed all the way across the city to schools that their parents couldn’t even find in order to attend parent-teacher conferences, etc. Not to mention the hours students had to spend on school buses and the wasted fuel and wear and tear on the buses. There were a few turbulent years, and I was glad I lived just across the county line.
The racial prejudice issue is an interesting one. I have had northerners who have moved here try to justify their prejudice by saying, “Black are different in the North than they are down here.” What they are insinuating is that black people in the North have a bad attitude and aren’t like the blacks in the South. How does one even respond to such a comment? I’ve also had northerners who have moved down here and voiced their prejudice to try to justify their beliefs by saying they feel the way they do, “because my mother was from Kentucky.” How do you respond to that kind of comment? So here we are — all of us trying to live in the same country. Some of us want to embrace our diversity, and some of us want to destroy it. I don’t know how our current divisions can ever be healed.
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All the court-ordered bussing accomplished was to make parents and children angry and resentful toward the race they saw as responsible. I’m sure there were classroom managment problems for the teachers affected as well.
I think the problem with ongoing prejudice is that people are viewing those different from themselves as a group, as “other,” “they.”
Your final comments remind me that there was a good reason Christ said, “turn the other cheek.” For healing to begin, someone (many someones) need to be the better person.
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That’s right, Liz. “Turning the other cheek” seems to be a foreign concept in America today, especially at the White House. The example being set from the top is “Do unto to others before they have a chance to do unto you. And if, by chance, they do unto you, silence them by any means necessary.”
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It’s no way to live.
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