Smithfield Man Scours Pacific For Buffalo Soldier Legacy

by Hal Young - Contributing Editor

RALEIGH - In 1913, the highway from Smithfield to Raleigh was a dirt road. One day that year, Wesley Bell, a man who still bore scars on his back from whippings he suffered as a slave, turned his muledrawn wagon off the road onto the land he had just purchased. Picking a likely spot on high ground, he began clearing his own property to build a home for himself and his family.

Ninety years later, Bell’s greatgrandson lives on part of the land his ancestor paid for with bales of cotton. After moving his family 400 miles to reclaim part of his heritage, Joseph Avery of Smithfield has crossed the Pacific twice to help strangers reclaim part of theirs — the legacy of American Buffalo Soldiers who stayed in the Philippines after serving in the Spanish American War.

Avery is a local business owner and vice chairman of the Republican Party for the 2nd Congressional District. He grew up in New Jersey, but his parents were from Johnston County and brought Joseph to visit family as a child.

Like many others, Joseph Avery Sr. left the farm he sharecropped and moved north after World War II, seeking higher-paying industrial jobs. In the mid-1980s, his son decided to return to the family’s old home in North Carolina. He purchased part of the 225 acres once owned by Bell.

“That part of the county is still called ‘Bell Town’ by the neighbors,” he said, in tribute to the family that lived there for many years. Some of the family’s memories, though, run deeper and more troubling. Just as many white Southerners have family traditions about relatives who served with Gen. Robert E. Lee, or what happened when Gen. William T. Sherman passed through the area, Joseph said his family passed down traditions about the other side of that culture.

Joe Avery On One Of His Visits To The Inner Banks



This is a great article about one of the most impressive men in the Republican Party of North Carolina. Joe Avery is a good friend of the Inner Banks, and a good friend of education. When the efforts to close J.P. Law and Askewville Elementary Schools were happening in Bertie County, Joe, a former NAACP Education Director for Johnston County, researched what was going on and on two occassions drove on his own nickel to Bertie County to try and help stop the closure. He is a believer in local schools being the best solution for all chidren, but especially minority kids. I have not forgotten his efforts and will always appreciate how hard he worked for kids that may never even know who he is. There was nothing in it for Joe except helping kids. It is a long way to Johnston County from the Inner Banks, but this is a man who we all can admire.

For the rest of this article about Joe Avery and the Buffalo Soldiers, click here for the PDF Copy of Carolina Journal for April. The complete article is included starting on the bottom of page 1.