Secrets of My Southern Roots

“I seek to reclaim stories of the dead who lost their voices long ago.”

A ruin of an old farmhouse sits on the North Carolina family farm where I grew up, a part of the rural landscape I saw every day of my early life. I knew nothing about the old house or the history of a grave in a nearby field.

Ruffin Johnson House  |  Credit: Courtesy of the State Archives of North Carolina

In 2007, when I started researching the old house, the mystery began to unravel. For the first time, I learned the name of my great-grandfather and developed what I thought was a plausible narrative of events. Only in recent months did the murky picture begin to clear.  

Read the entire article in Next Avenue, 2025, to learn more about the old house, the grave, and my roots.