Jacksonville was once a close-knit community northside of downtown Montevallo, Alabama that nearly became one of America's forgotten historic Black neighborhoods. Team Untold has been working to restore the obscured history of this neighborhood. Thanks to contributions from descendants of Jack and Narcissus Shortridge -- from as far away as Maryland, North Carolina, and Arizona -- we can begin to tell the story of historic Jacksonville.

For memories of Jacksonville from the 1890s, we learn much from a Shortridge family history compiled in 1997 by Dr. Linda Thompson, a descendant of Jack and Narcissus (sometimes Narciss) Shortridge. The Shortridges were a leading family in Jacksonville.

Born into slavery, by 1870 Jack owned a prospering farm with 45 developed acres, probably on land now owned by the University of Montevallo. By 1900 the Shortridges occupied and owned a substantial home with a greenhouse on a one-acre plot on Main Street in the vicinity of what locals will remember as Eclipse Coffee.

The light-skinned Narciss, formerly Narcissus King, was an educated and highly respected herbalist, midwife, and wet nurse who attended Ward Chapel AME church. Jack, who took the name of his Shortridge enslavers, worked as a farmer and carpenter. He is said to have founded Jacksonville.

Jack and Narcissus: from the Shortridge Family History

Narcissus Shortridge "was very light with light eyes. She was a very prim woman. She did not go to college, but you would never have known it." Photo courtesy of Dr. Linda Thompson. No image of Jack is known to exist.

Jack and Narciss Shortridge had a large family home in Montevallo. Jack was brown-skin, medium height and size. The first joint of his first and second fingers had been cut off. Narciss was very light with light eyes. She was a very prim woman. She did not go to college, but you would never have known it. Narciss was a wet nurse for white people. She was very respected by upper-class whites whose babies she nursed because she was so intelligent and knew what she was doing. She had a greenhouse and grew many unusual plants and flowers.

Jack Shortridge was well respected in the community and his family lived in a neighborhood called Jacksonville (named after Jack), on the main street which was up a hill. They lived in the best house blacks had, and owned a lot of land.

Narciss went to church every Sunday, but instead of church, Jack preferred to sit in the swing on the front porch and sip on corn liquor. At the end of the street [Main Street], around the corner, was a little Methodist church [Ward Chapel AME] which the black people attended. The back of the church sat on the edge of the creek. People used to wade in the creek and got water from a spring that flowed in the creek. When you stepped off the porch, there was a path that led down to the opposite corner of the block where Jack's brother Lewis lived.

(Source: Linda Thompson, “The Family History of Lillian Shortridge Jones in Celebration of Her 100th Birthday,” 1997).

The Shortridge property on Main Street

An altercation. . .

In October of 1893, Jack was in an altercation with a neighbor, Wesley Perry. Allegedly, Jack cut Mr. Perry with a knife. A local correspondent in the Birmingham Age-Herald, Oct. 8, 1893, reporting the incident, credited Jack with being “the founder of Jacksonville, a suburb of Montevallo.”

An article from the Shelby Sentinel, Oct. 5, 1893, suggests that the altercation may have stemmed from one of Jack’s horses getting loose in Perry’s cornfield. Both men worked farmland.

The goings-on of people of color were seldom considered newsworthy by the mainstream press. What can we learn from these two notices? The reference to “tragedy in high colored circles” tells us that Jack probably enjoyed elevated standing within the Black community and, for whatever reason, was a figure of note among the white people who read and wrote copy for the newspapers. The snarky, superior tone suggests the writer felt at liberty to treat Black affairs with mockery.

In Spring 1894, several months after these newspaper articles came out, Jack was charged with assault "with the intent to murder" Wesley Perry, "by cutting him with a knife." The charge was ultimately dismissed as frivolous and Perry was ordered to pay court costs. Jack admitted to a lesser charge of assault with a weapon and was fined $50. It was a sum he was prepared to pay.

Persons of means

Jack and Narcissus were persons of means. In 1870, in the first Federal census to recognize African Americans by name, Jack is identified as a farm laborer. Inherited stereotypes might lead one to assume that Jack was barely eking out a living as a sharecropper. By a stroke of good fortune for fans of true history, a Federal agricultural schedule from that same year allows us to correct this false impression.

The Shortridges farmed 45 acres of improved land with a cash value of $450. They owned a mule and two pigs, and we can infer that they had owned cows, perhaps sold or slaughtered over the course of the year, for they claimed 100 pounds of butter (as well as 400 bushels of corns and 175 bushels of potatoes). The total value of farm products was given as $1425. That's the equivalent of $34,215 today.

Wesley Perry

The story of Wesley Perry remains to be told. We know that in 1900, age forty-nine, he lived with his wife of eighteen years, Charlotte, and a son James, in a mortgage-free house. He may have been a leading figure in the Jacksonville community, like Jack, which would explain why one of the 1893 newspaper clippings refers to a “tragedy in high colored circles.” He would marry at least two more times, first to Susie Fluker (1902) and then to Susie Pitts (1908). In a 1921 quit claim deed he is named as a trustee of Ward Chapel AME Church, suggesting that he was held in high regard by members of this well-established church.

Wesley Perry’s second marriage. Notice that the wedding was officiated by Rev. Joseph Prentice, revered preacher and educator in central Alabama until his death in 1946.

Death and Burial

Shortly after Jack's death in 1903, apparently of heart disease, the legally well-informed Narcissus had a new will drawn up. It establishes that she owned an acre of land on a hill leading out of the city. This goes some way toward confirming the family memory that Jack and Narcissus "lived in the best house blacks had, and owned a lot of land.”

Narcissus died in 1914. Jack and Narcissus are buried side by side in the City of Montevallo cemetery.

Sources: This piece is truly a collaborative effort. Our great thanks to Dr. Linda Thompson and Richard Shortridge Cain, descendants of Jack and Narcissus Shortridge, and to Melanie S. Morrison, descendant of George D. and Elizabeth King Shortridge, for invaluable information about their ancestors. We have Dr. Thompson to thank for the excerpt from the Shortridge family history, Mr. Cain to thank for calling our attention to newspaper clippings relating to the 1893 altercation, and James Salter to thank for information about Perry’s role as a trustee of Ward Chapel AME Church. Jack and Narcissus’s grandson, Birmingham civil rights leader William E. Shortridge, is the subject of an earlier Untold Story written by Melanie Morrison, whose advice helped shape this article. Details of The State vs. Jack Shortridge (1894) are in Circuit Record Book 1889-1894 in the Shelby County Museum and Archives, in Columbiana, Alabama. We welcome any information our readers can provide about the Shortridges, the Perrys, and Jacksonville, one of America's lost and nearly forgotten historic Black neighborhoods.