A Brief History of La Grange

By Cecilia Carver

Virginia Hester's husband, LB Hester, died in 1997 and the time had come to sell the farm. Developers landed on her doorstep within a month of LB's passing, but she couldn't bear to see the farm covered with houses. Around that time, someone introduced her to TLC. As it turned out, TLC was able to get a grant through the state's Clean Water Management Trust Fund to purchase the portion of the farm along the river—308 acres of our unique natural heritage running along the banks of the Deep River.

LB's grandfather, Mr. Hugh Womble of Goldston, together with a Mr. Bynum, bought the land for timber in the 1890s. After the timbering, Mr. Womble purchased Mr. Bynum's portion and operated it as a cotton plantation. At one time there were 28 families on the farm. There was a cotton gin here, and a siding of the railroad track called Womble's siding. Mr. Womble's daughter, Vallie, married LB Hester Sr. who returned from Winston-Salem to raise the first tobacco in Chatham, making this a cotton, corn and tobacco plantation.

Prior to the Revolutionary War, this was an operating plantation named "La Grange."

In a visit with Virginia Hester, we were shown galax, ginseng, cross vine, lyre-leaved sage, ragwort, ox-eyed daisies, yellow primroses and meadow lilies. Virginia knows and loves them all.

I'm looking forward to future trips back to walk this land and see it change from pasture to forest. I hope you will come visit it too. Lucky for us that TLC takes the clear path of setting such special places aside for all of us.