McCrorey Heights is an historic mid-century neighborhood in west Charlotte, North Carolina, that was once home to many of the Queen City’s leading African-American doctors, lawyers, educators and businesspeople. The McCrorey Heights Neighborhood Association is constructing a website featuring the histories of many of the homes in the neighborhood. One is 1927 Oaklawn Avenue, a bungalow belonging for fifty years to Abraham H. and Susan Peacock Prince.
1927 Oaklawn Avenue. Photo courtesy of McCrorey Heights Neighborhood Association.
“Rev. Prince ranked among the leading ministers in the southeastern United States, director of evangelical outreach for the Atlantic Synod and later the Catawba Synod of the Presbyterian Church.” … “He married Susan Peacock Prince in 1930 and the pair likely built this house soon after. She came from Wilson, North Carolina, where her father [Levi H. Peacock] had been a political leader during the years before Disfranchisement, appointed Assistant Postmaster in 1891. Susan attended Shaw University in Raleigh and became a lifelong educator in Charlotte’s public schools. In 1940 the U.S. Census indicated that the couple had two daughters: Dorothy, age eight, and Susan, age six.” … “Rev. Prince lived in this house at 1927 Oaklawn Avenue during the 1930s and into the 1940s. His work for the Presbyterian synods evidently spurred him to find a home more central to his travels. By 1951 he was no longer listed at this address, nor even in Charlotte. But he continued to own the house as rental property at least into the 1970s. A note in the 1967 JCSU yearbook indicated he was then living in Columbia, South Carolina, pastor of Ebenezer Presbyterian Church.”
For more on Rev. Prince and the house at 1927 Oaklawn, see here. (Many thanks to M.H.N.A. for citing Black Wide-Awake as a source.)