USA > North Carolina > Scotland County > Laurinburg > Hill's Laurinburg (Scotland County, N.C.) City Directory [1962] > Part 2
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and doctors. The talking professions seem to have been espec- ially attractive to Scottish youth.
Tories Active
During the Revolution, Scotland and Richmond Counties were harrassed by Tory raids from without, and torn by con- flicting sentiments within, for many of the Highlanders re- tained a stubborn loyalty to the crown. In the main, how- ever, the few settlers to west of Lumber were free to establish their homes, increase their families, and enjoy the warm, favorable climate, with its 212-day growing season.
During the middle years of the nineteenth century, a slow but significant drift in population was occurring from the Laurel Hill Church to a point two miles southeast. There Duncan McLaurin, his family and friends, put up a school in 1852 which, within two years, was attracting students from as far away as Charleston.
Old Store
The village around the school was called "The Old Store," in reference to James R. McLaurin's general store, where whiskey could be had for a reasonable 10 cents per tumbler. A cotton gin, blacksmith shop, and three or four dwellings were the only other companions to the handsome new high school.
Old Store, or Laurinburg, as the Post Office officially called it, was pushed into an era of headlong growth by the advent of railroading. The first train came through just in time to carry off a contingent of Scotland boys to the Civil War. The Carolina Central moved its shops from Wilmington to Laurinburg, and until 1894 they were the areas biggest industry. There was a mild depression when the shops pulled out, but Laurinburg quickly shifted its attention to cotton and textiles, and payrolls again rose to a hopeful level.
Sherman Was Here
Sherman's army seems to have been omnipresent in 1865. He marched through Scotland too, burning and pillaging. He made old Laurel Hill Church his headquarters. An especial target was Morrison's gun factory at Richmond Mills.
The following decade was a momentous one for Scotland's future economy. It was during that time that the textile in- dustry was firmly established, and this trade has grown to be the biggest single employer outside of farming.
In petitioning for a new county called Scotland, the resi- dents of east Richmond testified that they had spent more money in transportation to Rockingham and for accommoda- tions there than it would take to run a county government for 100 years.
Reconstruction
The making of Scotland County involved more serious issues than mere convenience. The decade during which citi- zens of the lower end of Richmond County were working for separation was also a decade of political unrest throughout the
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whole state. The legislature of 1897 was Republican-Populist, and nowhere were the ill-effects of carpet-bag govenment so fiercely resented as in this Democratic territory which is now Scotland County. Forty-eight Negroes held office in Richmond, many as magistrates and school board members who could not write their own names. The sturdy Scotchmen of lower Richmond formed an active Red Shirt organization to oppose irresponsible leadership and to press for the new county. In 1899, after almost ten years of intense lobbying and legislative travail, Scotland was finally allowed its longed-for birth. Heroes in the effort were W. G. Quakenbush, who prepared an exhaustive table of comparison showing the relative stand- ing of Scotland among the other 96 counties, and Hector Mc- Lean, the area's representative in the 1899 legislature, Throughout their troubles, the citizens of Scotland were noted for their peaceful and lawful methods.
Little Squalor
Like most counties in North Carolina, Scotland County has its share of poor folks. Per capita income in 1958 was $1,215, Scotland ranking fortieth in the state. However, most of the homes in both city and countryside appear to range from modest to substantial, with a minimum of squalid farms or slum areas. It is interesting to note that Laurinburg has con- structed 200 housing units replacing some of its worst slum areas.
The Indian population in Scotland amounts to some 350 people. They are though to be of the same stock as the In- dians of Robeson County, ones known as Croatans. A few of the Indians own land, but most are tenant farmers, a fast- dying breed in Scotland.
Schools
The county's school system clings to the tried and true. Some people still remember when a good teacher and an in- terested pupil were the only necessary ingredients in the edu- cational stew. If there was no building to be had, class met under a convenient tree. If there were few or no textbooks, school didn't close down, because the teacher's head was filled with solid information and wisdom, not just pedagogical methodology. Today there are plenty of buildings and text- books, but the emphasis in Scotland is still on those prime factors-teacher and the pupil. Scotland was the first county in the state to vote a county-wide tax extending the school term from eight to nine months.
The county system has eleven schools, five of which are combined elementary and high schools.
Good Teachers
Despite the fact that Scotland has no big schools and pays no supplement, the system has had no trouble finding good teachers. Out of a total of one hundred and forty-four instruc- tors, only three are teaching on the B certificate. This is a remarkable record for a rural county system, and we suspect one big factor is Supt. J. J. Pence, who has been in the county since 1920.
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Visitor's Comment
You may have heard that Scotland is clannish. It is; but all you need to join the clan is goodness, honesty, and a work- manlike spirit. For Scotland is conservative in the best sense of the word, weighing each change to make sure it is really for the better, rejecting any step that violates its well-tested values.
Towns
As Laurinburg sprang up around a school, so Wagram built itself about a church. To many people, a Scotch Baptist may seem to be an impossible phenomenon, but there was such an animal on Scotland's northeast border. His name was Donald or Daniel Whyte, and he emigrated to the Carolinas in 1807, stopping beside the Lumber River to minister to a small band of compatriots who farmed the land there. Rev. Whyte was such a powerful preacher that he even converted some Presbyterians, and Spring Hill Baptist Church was or- ganized with just seven members. A marble inscription in the present church states that the forenoon services were in En- glish, and the afternoon services in Gaelic. Donald Wyte and his wife, Catherine Campbell, owned 2000 acres of land along the river, and to this day, every bit of it has remained in the hands of their descendents.
Wagram is one of those place-names whose origin may soon be lost to rising generations. It seems that about 1850 a Mr. Williams from Red Springs built a narrow-guage rail- road from that point to the Spring Hill Community. A great admirer of Napoleon Mr. Williams decided to name the station after one of the Frenchman's most glorious victories, that at Wagram in lower Austria. (Napoleonic pronunciation-Vah- grahm; Carolina version-Way-grum.) The town was incor- porated in 1912, and had a 1961 population of 562.
Spring Hill
Spring Hill was so named because of a little branch which ran out of the knoll on which the church was built. By 1820, Spring Hill Academy had been established, and shortly after- wards a post office was built and named Fontcol, Latin version of Spring Hill. This little community between Shoe Hill Creek and the Lumber River was augmented in 1910 by the removal of Montpelier Presbyterian Church from over in Hoke County. W. G. Buie's general store had been opened around 1900.
Gibson
It is said that Gibson was settled when Anson county's western border was the Mississippi River, but it was not in- corporated until 1899. Quaker families predominated in the first group of settlers. A traveling minister in 1751 wrote in his journal that he had visited a small settlement of Quakers on Gun Swamp and Piney Grove (S. C.) and found them in good spirits even though they had to travel 100 miles to attend the year meeting. John Whitcomb Riley's grandmother was among them. After 1800, most Quakers, abolitionist by reli- gion, joined the great migration to Indiana and the Northwest territory, leaving behind those who had married out of their faith. Other immigrants soon took over their property, and
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their descendents comprise the Gibson Community of today. The Gibsons were Scots from Virginia and came sometime in the 1750's.
Modern Gibson, right on the South Carolina line, is one of Scotland's four incorporated towns. It is the only town in the county which is not predominantly Presbyterian or Baptist. Noah Gibson, in addition to being a successful merchant, was an ardent Methodist. His brother Thomas was a minister, and together they created a stronghold of Methodism in the midst of a Presbyterian land. Most of Gibson's people are farmers, but a number cross the line to work in Delta Mills, Cheraw, S. C. Z. V. Pate General Merchandise store is a large and historic establishment and operates another store in Laurel Hill. Two sizeable cotton gins are still running in Gibson. The town is characterized by niee homes, a neat business district, and 501 friendly people. Gibson had a newspaper at the turn of the century called the Gibson Vidette. And the Commercial State Bank there has the longest continuous history in the County.
Laurel Hill
Laurel Hill's most interesting senior citizen is Ralph Mor- rison, 86 year-old past superintendent of Waverly and Morgan, Mills. It was Mr. Morrison's father who owned a gun factory at Richmond Mill Pond during the Civil War. Ralph Morrison says Laurel Hill was named for the mountain laurel which once grew around the edge of Gum Swamp, and for the fact that the town was on a slight rise. For many years, the vil- lage was known as Laurel Hill Depot, to distinguish it from Laurel Hill Church, which used to be a town in its own right. The depot was established around 1861 for what is now the Seaboard Airline. In 1899 there were 10 or 12 homes and Z. V. Pate's general store. Now a number of merchant establish- ments stand on Laurel Hill's main street, and the nearby tex- tile mills provide employment for many residents. But most of the people are farmers and bring their cotton in to the Pates Gin. Mr. Morrison, a still faithful member of the Pres- byterian Church, remembers the time when every man made his own law and had a weapon to protect it.
Old Hundred
On U. S. 74 west of Laurel Hill community stands the little village of Old Hundred. It marks the hundredth mile of the Seaboard formerly Carolina Central Railway, measuring from Wilmington. This hundred mile stretch is said to be the second longest stretch of perfectly straight railroad in the world. Moscow Railway across the Russian steppes boasts the longest.
Johns
Johns, a small town in the southern corner of Scotland, was settled in 1875. The name came later, in 1884, and hon- ored Capt. James T. John who gave land for the Atlantic Coastline Railroad station there. A store and post office were established in, 1886, and the Scotland Supply Co., a sizeable operation, in 1901.
East Laurinburg
East Laurinburg is the only incorporated mill town in
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Scotland. Tangent with Laurinburg proper, it contains around, 695 people and the several textile mills in which they work.
Riverton
Riverton community, between Wagram and the river, is a unique summer homing place to many descendents of the Old Spring Hill settlers. Not a few of these Johnsons, McMil- Ians, and Memory's trace their lineage right back to Donald Whyte and Catherine Campbell. In fact the name Riverton was given by a great-great grandson of theirs, Archibald Johnson. Ancestral homes of this old clan stand side by side with new summer cabins along the riverside roads. This in- viting retreat, tucked away in shady groves, is enjoyed by about fifty residents.
Airpine
Laurinburg and Maxton have taken a pumpkin and turned it into a dazzling coach which is hurrying down the road of industrial progress. From World War II to 1955, Laurinburg- Maxton Air Base sat among the weeds, an island of deserted buildings in a sea of useless land. Now, under the name of Airpine the old airbase may become North Carolina's most unusual industrial park.
Located on 5,700 acres between Shoe Heel Creek and Lumber River, Airpine has been released by the government to a joint commission from the two towns. It is the only park in America where Class A manufacturing concerns operate side by side with a 900-acre pasture and feed lot for the com- mercial fattening of beef cattle. Airpine's stock on the hoof amounted to some 4000 head in 1961 and 1962. Swift and Co. is the biggest contractor at present. Strategically situated downwind from less odorous enterprises, the pasture has total facilities for 30,000 head of cattle.
Eight industries are currently located in the park. Many of them have occupied existing buildings and hangars left when the air base was shut down. One hundred zoned indus- trial sites are available, and prospects are good that there will be eventual takers for all of them.
The Airport Commission has made elaborate and detailed plans for the development of their emmense facility. Pine trees have been planted on 2000 acres, roads are being im- proved; and industrial employee can look forward to a de- luxe recreation center, restaurant, bank, post office, drug store, and service station. One runway is being maintained for the use of private planes.
Completely financed and managed by local people, Air- pine holds out a lure to the home-seeking industry. The sur- roundings are beautiful, the plans are extremely professional, the facilities will be unrivaled; and even the steers, munch- ing leisurely in their wooded pasture, lend a sense of quiet serenity and relaxation to the setting.
Laurinburg
Lazy people wouldn't like Laurinburg; and Laurinburg wouldn't care too much for them either. Because work is among the supreme virtues in Scotland's county seat. It is an
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ancestral attitude, and the 8242 people are about 95 percent native. Scotch blood runs strong in the veins of these people. They know that work is not only practical; it is proper. It is the rock of character, the mother of discipline, and the con- querer of handicap. The attitude of work is abundant, and spills over into the after-five-o'clock hours. Laurinburg citizens are by nature more inclined toward public service than toward private recreation. Church and club work are actively sup- ported. Industry is eagerly and effectively pursued. Racial problems are anticipated and solved. The future of the town is considered and planned in advance. These matters are in- tegral, not peripheral, elements in the community life. A majority of citizens participated and nowhere is the "let George do it" approach apparent.
The fruits of work are plainly visible: an $80,000 public library, a large modern hospital and medical center, a brand- new municipal building, a top-ranking school system, a bur- geoning of industrial receipts to equal the agricultural in- come, a multi-million dollar college with a revolutionary cur- riculum.
In 1956, Laurinburg was designated an All-America city which was the smallest entry in the nationwide contest and the only southeastern city to receive the coveted award.
Laurinburg has been often described as the city of beauti- ful homes. In a few years, the phrase will have to be enlarged, for Laurinburg is embarking on a program of urban renewal and slim clearance which will spruce up its business district. Low rent housing was under construction in 1962.
Nevertheless Laurinburg manages to convey a feeling of relaxation and friendliness which some prosperous towns have sacrificed. Because work here is not a materialistic frenzy, but a historic and natural way of life.
For a little city Laurinburg has exceptional recreation facilities. The city operates seven summer playgrounds under the supervision of a full-time recreation director. There are three parks, a nine-hole country club golf course, three swim- ming pools. Fishing and hunting are conveniently available. Lumber River is suitable for canoes and small craft, and the North and South Carolina beaches are a hundred miles away, Golfers reach Pinehurst or Southern Pines in thirty minutes. Around twenty manufacturing establishments in Laurinburg and East Laurinburg employed 3500 in 1961. Most industries are manned by white labor, but the Laurinburg Plywood Plant is noted for its 98 percent Negro work force. Unions have made no headway in Laurinburg, because labor and manage- ment know and respect each other. Almost all industries are locally owned and managed.
Laurinburg set a record in its contributions to St. Andrews Presbyterian College. Donations in the city amounted to over $200 per capita.
Laurinburg's twenty-five churches are the focal point of the community. The old Scottish Presbyterian ingathering is still an annual cvent, and the custom has even spread to other
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denominations. The older churches, all imposing structures, are scattered up and down Church Street, which crosses Main at the courthouse.
Laurinburg was settled about 1787 and incorporated in 1877, but as late as 1840 contained only three dwellings, a store and a saloon.
More than 100 years ago an academy was at the site. It was succeeded in, 1853 by privately-founded Laurinburg High School, which gained a reputation for the caliber of its faculty. The best-remembered was Dr. William Graham Quackenbush, a crippled, orphaned Virginian, perhaps the most effective newcomer ever to reach Laurinburg. He reopened the high school in 1879 and for 21 years turned out a stream of superior graduates, many of whom justified his instruction by laying the foundations for modern Scotland County. Among them were Governor A. W. McLean, Admiral Victor Blue, Secretary of Commerce Daniel Roper and others.
Quackenbush helped charter Scotland County. The com- munity's appreciation is expressed by a monument on the courthouse lawn, and Dr. Quackenbush is said to be the only schoolteacher in North Carolina to be so honored.
Laurinburg city school system now has 7 schools and 145 teachers. The superintendent A. B. Gibson also is president of the county historical society.
The town was named for the old high school, which was named for the McLaurin family.
The McNairs
The history of the McNair family is an indispensable ele- ment in the Scotland County story. John F. McNair, Sr. was here before Laurinburg was. After a four-year hitch in the Confederate Army, he returned home to build a store at Spring- field Mills where his father's homestead was. He shortly built another one in Laurel Hill, and his son opened up business in Laurinburg. After the sons death, Mr. McNair, Sr. settled in Laurinburg and became the origin of an immense chain of interests which includes just about every type of business in the county. He was the biggest farmer in the state (his bank paid off every depositor in full at the 1929 crash and remained open in spite of it.) He left an estate second only to that left by the Dukes and Reynolds.
Rough Town
Laurinburg was a rough-tough town for a few years after the Civil War. The railroad brought in a hard-drinking crowd, whose mode of recreation was a little on the violent side. There were as many as twelve saloons in the little town, and there was nothing the boys loved better than shooting up the place after an evening at the bar. Many Scotchmen were also known to have a considerable capacity for whiskey, and the battle between wets and drys was a close one. Finally in 1892 the barrooms were permanently shut down. Beer and wine were voted out in 1949.
Inventor
The honor of having invented a revolutionary cottonplanter
0
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belongs to a Scotland County man, James Lytch. The Lytch Cotton Planter, used all over the South, was patented in 1870. John W. Huntley of Union County had come out with a planter in 1859 which did not meet with much success. Although simi- lar in some respects, the Huntley and Lytch planters were different enough for each to be patented in its own right.
Blind Trade
One of the customs at the Old Scotch Fair was swapping horses in the dark. Only the sorriest glue-factory material was offered in this way. On one occasion, a man took his nag out into the dark and asked $5 boot from every trader. After working all night, he brought his horse up to the light and found he had made $140 boot and the same old nag he started with. The Scotch Fair ran for almost 100 years, and was finally closed on petition of citizens because of the rowdy and boister- ous behavior of the participants. Reports of the fair state, how- ever, that "only one white man was killed during the entire history of the fair."
Drowning Creek
Scotland's main waterway has three names. Some folks call it Drowning Creek, as it was in early times and still is in surrounding counties. John Charles McNeill, N. C.'s poet Laureate, affectionately named it the Lumbee, but the official designation is Lumber River. The name is possibly of Indian derivation, or it may refer to the logging interests which used its stream. Lumber River is a succession of horse-shoe curves, and at very few places can you see more than an elbow of water. Filtered through miles of sandhill region, the river is nevertheless stained by juniper and cypress roots. It is a tran- quil, cool stream, narrow but deep enough to carry canoes and other small craft. Fish of all kinds are caught in its wat- ers, and some daring souls even swim there. When asked if there weren't snakes in the Lumber, one citizen of Wagram replied, "I guess so, but when you're in there, you just pretend like you don't know it."
Scot Humor
For every Scotchman that ever lived, there is at least one joke about his thrift. More often than not, this admirable quality is made out to be a vice rather than a virtue. If so, we say that individuals and governments could stand a little more of this particular vice. At any rate, here's a typical story.
A certain Scotchman who had come to this country was courting a girl from whom he had been unable to obtain a definite answer. At last his ardent nature could endure the suspense no longer, and he went to the village station and telegraphed. All day he waited with many a sigh until at last just after six o'clock the answer came and was favorable. The operator whose sympathy had been excited remarked that he wouldn't have a woman that would keep him all day in such suspense. But the Scotchman replied, "Na, na mon. Gie me the lassic that waits for the night rates. It's the gude wife she'll make." (From Rev. A. A. McGcachy in an address before the Scotch Society of America.)
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City That Failed
Also characteristic of the Scotchman is a kind of Old Testament sense of justice. Duncan McFarland, Richmond County's first congressman (1805), testified in his will that he never injured anyone except in retaliation after they had done him the first harm.
McFarland owned most of the land around Laurel Hill Church which stands on the Old Wire Road, and believed that the town would one day become the center of the world and a metropolis to rival New York and London. Accordingly he divided hundreds of acres of land into two acre plots for the residential district. Included in his plans was a city of free Negroes. His will provided that each one of his slaves should be freed at 50 and given three acres of land. This stipulation in his will was not fulfilled, the residential plots were not used, and today Laurel Hill Church is exactly that-a lone house of worship standing at a quiet crossroads, surrounded not by tall buildings but a whispering forest.
Banking
For a long time, the First National Bank of Laurinburg was the only bank between Wilmington and Charlotte. A. L. James was the president and he also built the first textile mill in Laurinburg. The First National is now defunct, and State Bank stands as the oldest bank still in business.
Unreconstructed
One usually reads that although southern planters ac- cepted slavery as necessary, they didn't really like it. There was a Mr. McIntyre of Laurinburg, however, who was so in favor of the institution that he wouldn't live in an area where slavery had been abolished. He left this country for Brazil at the outbreak of the Civil war, and died soon after slavery had been outlawed in that country as well.
Courthouse
Scotland's present courthouse was built in 1901, just a year after the county obtained its charter. The old brick building will be replaced with a modern style structure as a part of Laurinburg's urban renewal plan.
Opera
Laurinburg had an opera house in the gay nineties. It was on the second floor of the building on the present Belk's site and featured plays as well as musicals. Banquets were also held at the opera house, and in the Argyle Club Rooms in the State Bank building. The Argyle Club was made up of the most wealthy and prominent men in the community. The club rooms were furnished in the most expensive manner, and it is thought that the high cost involved was the eventual cause of the club's dissolution. The women had a counterpart in the Thursday Afternoon Club, which devoted itself to literary as well as social accomplishments. One of the most elegant events in Laurinburg history was the Thursday Club's Eliza- bethan ball, featuring costumes and coiffures of the 16th century and an Italian orchestra from Wilmington.
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