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twenty years her senior and well into his sixties when they married in May 1913,
and their happiness must have served to spur on Dawson’s thoughts about his
own prospects.
In time, despite the odds stacked against him, Dawson began to find favor
with a girl named Clementine Burns. The song “Oh My Darling, Clementine,”
which had first gained wild popularity in 1884, probably factored into her
naming at birth. She was a year older than Dawson and lived with her parents
and seven younger siblings right there in Holly Shelter. In some regards, her
prospects may have been as limited as his. Their courtship began like all others
in that day, with shy talk that grew bolder over time. Dawson was soon in love,
never a casual thing for the deeply emotional Jordans.
They exchanged vows in late January 1914 and began their lives together.
About eight months later Clemmer, as she was known, told Dawson she was
pregnant, and in April 1915, she delivered a strong, healthy boy in their tiny
shack. They named him William Edward Jordan. There’s every indication that
the event brought immense happiness for the new father.
If only that happiness could have lasted.
The first signs of trouble came hard on the heels of the birth, the night sweats
and the urinary discomfort. Then Clemmer began coughing blood. The most
telling symptom was the development of the tubercles themselves, the small
rounded masses or nodules that attached themselves to bone and tendon.
“That was the black people’s disease, tuberculosis,” recalled Maurice Eugene
Jordan. “Back then there wasn’t too much they could do about it.”
The airborne disease was highly contagious, and though North Carolina was
one of the first Southern states to open a sanitarium for blacks, in 1899, the
privately financed facility had a mere dozen beds, and the cost was exorbitant.
The only other option for the families was to set up a white screened tent or
temporary building in the yard outside their homes, which allowed loved ones to
spend their last days close to family with a hope of not spreading the
tuberculosis. The demise of loved ones could drag on over agonizing months or
years. Clemmer Jordan saw a doctor in the early stages of the disease but died on
an April morning in 1916, not long after her son’s first birthday.
It was not uncommon for a young widower to abandon his children in that
era. It would have been simple enough for Dawson to allow Clemmer’s family to
raise the boy. Certainly Dawson Jordan had his options. As a seaport,
Wilmington was alive with opportunity to sign on as a cook with one of the
many vessels coming and going. But the simple truth that emerges from the