Kathy Buie Vance’s Memories of Growing Up in Wagram, in Scotland County, NC Until 1965

Wagram, NC, is a small town (population 840 in 2010) in the southeastern part of North Carolina, located on US Highway #401 between Raeford and Laurinburg. Scots settled the area in the 1700s and named it Scotland County in 1899. These stories are my memories of growing up there from 1943 through 1965 when I...

Is It Even Possible to Really ‘Know’ America? Yes

I was observing to my friend Bruce Johnson that, after nearly a decade away from America, I wondered if I even know my home country anymore. His response: "What it is truly to 'know' a place is, like knowing a person, a profound question. Not only are our experiences limited, but we see through filters,...

Why Was NC Village of Wagram Named for Austrian Village? French Emperor Napoleon Inspired It

I bet few residents of my hometown of Wagram, NC, population 850, consider themselves global citizens, but they are. A television reporter in the nation of Austria contacted me to ask why a village in North Carolina where I grew up was named for a village so far away, 4,712 miles away to be exact, in...

Beautiful Fair Bluff, on Southeastern NC’s Lumber River, Is Revitalized

When I was 19, I spent a week with three college buddies canoeing what we called the Lumbee River from Scotland County to Georgetown, S.C. on the intercoastal waterway. It was quite the adventure, warily eyeballing huge snakes and alligators, and surviving crashing thunder and lightning storms on the river, popping right next to our...

The South: Like Other Places, Only More So, As Charles Portis Imagined

Charles Portis (1933-2020), novelist and journalist, originally from Arkansas, was best known for True Grit, Norwood, and The Dog of the South. "Portis’s early articles reveal the deadpan irony that would later characterize his fiction...He satirizes his fellow Southerners, incorporating their particular dialect (including its sometimes-racist elements) into his craft, all while treating these characters...

A Powerful Novel from Greenville, SC with a Female Voice

No, this is not my autobiography, though some might think it should be. It's a classic 1992 Southern novel by Dorothy Allison, a thinly disguised story about growing up in Greenville, South Carolina. It's a coming-of-age story with a strong voice. It features poverty, class struggle, sexual abuse, child abuse, feminism and lesbianism.Yet it is...

Murdaugh Case Proves the South Still Exists

I admit that I was obsessed with the Alex Murdaugh murder case and its implications for South Carolina history and Southern culture. On Substack I wrote Might SC’s Culture Change? Murdaugh verdict could spark examination. I argue that the state’s culture enabled some of the corruption that Murdaugh committed. In a separate piece, I speculate...

Remembering Bill Roper

My friend and distant cousin Bill Roper, who was born and raised in Wagram, NC has passed at age 69. His full obituary, including condolences, is here. His daughter offered these memories at his graveside service. -- JB. By Ginny Roper Buddenberg Growing up, I had lots of adventures with my dad, William (Bill) Roper....

Ghost-hunting in North Carolina

I ran into North Carolina author Joe Sledge at Persnickety Books in Burlington, NC where he was giving presentations on his book, "Did You See That Ghost? A Ghostly Guide to the Haunts of the Old North State"; and travel guides to out-of-the-ordinary attractions in the state. "Growing up on the Outer Banks of North...

How to Teach Grandchildren About Their Ancestors?

My grandson, age 7, is learning to swim and boat in the Lumbee River, a ritual repeated from many generations of his relatives and ancestors going back to the 1700s. This is particularly poignant since he is probably the last generation of his ancestors, beginning nearly 300 years ago, probably in the 1740s, to participate...

‘The Lovely Lady and Her Ancestral Home’ Offered Connections to Local History

I often think of my native Scotland County, North Carolina as, like Lake Wobegone, the land that time forgot, and that the decades cannot improve. Beacham McDougald wrote a wonderful profile in The Laurinburg Exchange in 2019 of The Lovely Lady and Her Ancestral Home'. Carolyn McNeill Roper was a cousin of my father, and...

2: The Dog Should Have Known Better

By Kathy Buie Vance. Aunt Ann and Uncle Mac brought us our first boxer puppy in 1949 when I was in first grade.  She was named Felicity, Duchess of Wagram and called Fe for short.  Fe was our constant companion and went with us all over Wagram and even to the Lumbee River about a...