Telling Fuquay‘s Tobacco Story

Connecting the Docs: True Stories from the Old North State

This second episode of the season tells the story of the tobacco industry in Fuquay-Varina, a now booming suburb south of Raleigh. This story is told through the lenses of Morgan Johnson, a former intern at the State Archives and Fuquay native, and Fred Wagstaff, a 94-year-old from Fuquay who worked in the local tobacco fields and markets his whole life. An oral history interview conducted with Wagstaff recounts the entire history of the leaf that made Fuquay a "busy, bustling town," from his relatives who moved to the area in the early 1900s to escape the notorious Granville Wilt tobacco disease, to his own time as a ticket marker in the town's tobacco markets until their closure in the 1990s and early 2000s. The history of tobacco in Fuquay is a compelling reminder of the agricultural legacy in North Carolina's rural communities and the power of telling everyday stories through oral history.