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Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1940s
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UNC junior Joe Felmet is elected executive secretary of the campus American Student Union
The Daily Tar Heel reported that Felmet, a junior from Asheville who had been active in the American Student Union for two years, was elected unanimously as executive secretary of the Carolina chapter after representing it at the group's national convention in New York. He took his A.B. at UNC in 1942.
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Fire destroys the Bivins Basket Factory east of Hillsboro
A fire of unknown cause razed the Bivins Basket Factory on the Durham-Greensboro highway just east of Hillsboro. The plant had been used mostly for storage, and its owners called it a total loss.
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Chapel Hill appoints its first town planning commission
After more than a year of urging by the Chapel Hill Weekly, the town named a five-member planning commission to review the design of new and remodeled buildings. It set the Colonial Revival look of downtown for the next decade.
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Charles E. Rush takes charge of the university library
Charles E. Rush, head of the Cleveland Public Library and a former vice president of the American Library Association, took over as university librarian, succeeding Carl M. White, who had left for the University of Illinois. Assistant librarian Olan V. Cook had run the library in the meantime.
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Chapel Hill's British war relief committee raises money for a mobile canteen in London
The local committee raised $1,160 to buy a mobile tea kitchen and a large stock of food for Londoners under German bombing.
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Orange County sells the county home and its farm at auction
The county auctioned the old county home, its 241-acre farm, buildings, stock and tools, and a Forrest was the high bidder. Its last residents had been boarded with relatives and friends at county expense, which the welfare superintendent said cost less than half as much.
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The livestock auction market at Hillsborough holds its first sale
The county gave the land, the town installed watering, and the Farmers Exchange built the barn for a livestock auction at Hillsborough. Its first sale was held November 6, 1941, and yearly sales grew from $150,000 to $1,100,000 by 1951.
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Chapel Hill organizes civilian defense after Pearl Harbor
Within days of Pearl Harbor, Mayor John Foushee called for hundreds of civilian-defense volunteers, and armed sentries guarded the airport, the University Lake dam and the power plant. A control center opened at the Carolina Inn, with a branch volunteer office for Black residents at Perry's barber shop, and UNC students formed a volunteer training corps.
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UNC forms the Carolina Volunteer Training Corps and opens a War Information Center
In the month of Pearl Harbor the university organized a volunteer military training corps for students and set up a War Information Center.
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A filling station is built at 212 North Churton Street
A parapet-roofed filling station with garage bays goes up at 212 North Churton Street about 1942. Around 1980 it lost its tiled pent roof, was stuccoed and enlarged, and became the John Couch Oil Company.
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A memorial to local Revolutionary War soldiers is placed at New Hope
In 1942 a monument honoring Revolutionary War soldiers from the neighborhood was set in the grounds of New Hope Presbyterian Church, beside its cemetery.
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A state farm forester begins part-time work in Orange County
From 1942 Orange County farmers could call on a state forester part time for help with woodland management and timber sales. The 1947 forester, V. G. Watkins, reported on thinning demonstrations.
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A. L. Stanback succeeds E. C. Hester as principal of Hillsborough's high school for Black students
Albert Leon Stanback, a teacher at the Hillsboro High School for Negroes, replaced its first principal, E. C. Hester, in 1942. The school took the name Central High School the next year, and Stanback later pushed for the Cedar Grove consolidated school to take the lower grades.
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Akers is named dean of the School of Library Science, UNC's first woman dean
Akers, director of the school since 1935, was named dean, the first woman dean at UNC-Chapel Hill. She held the post until 1954.
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Coates trains as a civil defense instructor and Popular Government issues a defense number
Called to a War Department school in Texas in the summer of 1942, Coates returned to run civil defense training through the Institute, and that fall Popular Government published a 'Defense Issue' on espionage, water system protection, gas attacks and air raid warnings. In 1945 an Army Service Forces colonel credited the Institute with the plan for joining local and state forces with federal ones to defend the state.
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Douglas and Frances Hill buy the Cabe-Pratt-Harris House and add a large rear wing
The Hills bought the house and about 180 acres from the Harris family in 1942 and soon added a rear wing, removing the old boxed stair to the loft. The farm's later name, Riverbend Farm, dates from the twentieth century.
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Geologist Joseph Hyde Pratt, first chairman of the Chapel Hill Planning Board, is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
Joseph Hyde Pratt (1870-1942), professor of geology and the first chairman of the Chapel Hill Planning Board, was buried in the cemetery.
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Guion Griffis Johnson leads home-front work in Chapel Hill and Orange County
During World War II Johnson chaired the Community Service Committee of the Chapel Hill War Price and Rationing Board, was public relations officer for the Orange County Office of Civil Defense, and collected war records for Orange County.
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James C. McFarling gives up dairying on the Bennett-McFarling farm on Erwin Road
McFarling, given the farm by an uncle, raised cotton on 170 acres and ran an 80-cow dairy with his wife Alice at the Triple-A farmhouse at 101 Erwin Road until he quit the dairy business in 1942. A milk house and cotton house were still standing in 1992.
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James Collins buys the closed Black Presbyterian church and its lot
About fourteen years after the congregation disbanded, James Collins bought the church building and land on Orange Street.
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James J. Freeland builds his first house at US 70 and Faucette Mill Road
Three years after marrying Maxine Hayes, Freeland built the family's first home where Highway 70 crosses Faucette Mill Road, next to land that became the Fairview subdivision the following year.
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Jim Tatum coaches UNC football for a single season
Tatum was UNC's head football coach for one year in 1942. He then joined the navy and learned the split-T formation as an assistant to its founder, Don Faurot, at Iowa Pre-Flight.
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Maurice Julian opens The College Shop, a men's clothing store
Julian moved into the space Durham Dairy Products had left at 140 East Franklin and opened a men's clothing store he called The College Shop.
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Orange County farmers bring in more than a hundred beef cattle
Over a hundred beef cows and heifers arrived in the county in 1942, and purebred bulls were placed as well. Fourteen 4-H boys bought Hereford heifers, and the Farmers Exchange Market bought the State Fair's first-place Hereford bull.
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The Carolina Theatre is built on East Franklin Street to a Williamsburg design by Archie Davis
The new two-story brick theatre at 108 East Franklin Street, with a steep roof, dormers and brick pediments and arches, was the one building in the 100 block of East Franklin to follow the Williamsburg plan.
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The Institute of Government becomes part of the university
The Institute of Government, begun as a separate body, was made part of the university in 1942.
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The Janitors' Association reorganizes as a CIO union local
The Janitors' Association became Local 403-P of the State, County and Municipal Workers of America, a CIO union. Minutes of July 2, 1942 name pay as the most important matter, and laundry worker Rebecca Clark became a shop steward.
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The Methodist church annex on Franklin Street becomes a recreation center
The former Methodist church, kept as an annex when the new church went up in 1926, was converted into a recreation center.
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The Paul Riley Store is built on Eno Street
A one-story brick store with a stepped parapet and inset entrance went up at 907 Eno Street, carrying the West End commercial style farther west. A longtime resident recalled it, with the nearby Methodist church, as a center of childhood life in West Hillsborough.
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The old Carolina Theatre is renamed The Village
With the new Carolina Theatre open on the south side of the street, the 1927 house on the north side took the name The Village.
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UNC starts a pre-induction curriculum for students bound for the service
The university set up a course of study for all students entering military service; it later grew into the College for War Training.
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Wilbur Kutz opens The Varsity, a clothing store with a basement soda fountain
Kutz's clothing store on the north side of East Franklin had a soda fountain downstairs that drew a crowd.
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William Picard Jacocks retires to Chapel Hill
After about thirty years of public health work for the Rockefeller Foundation, much of it against hookworm in India and Ceylon, Jacocks retired and moved back to Chapel Hill, where he was active in alumni affairs.
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Eleanor Roosevelt speaks at Memorial Hall to close a post-war planning conference
Eleanor Roosevelt spoke in Memorial Hall at UNC to a capacity audience of about 2,000 people, closing a two-day conference on post-war planning sponsored by the Carolina Political Union and the International Student Service. She warned the audience that there was no going back to normalcy.
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German, Italian and Japanese aliens re-register at the Chapel Hill post office
All German, Italian and Japanese aliens over 14 living in Chapel Hill had to re-register, with three photographs, at the post office. Postmaster William S. Hogan and Assistant Postmaster Strowd ran the registration, following the procedure of one held there in 1940.
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The Orange County Public Library bookmobile makes stops in Chapel Hill
In late February 1942 the Chapel Hill Weekly announced that the county bookmobile, with librarian Ernestine Grafton in charge, would park in front of the Texaco station from noon to 2 p.m. for browsers and borrowers. That spring the bookmobile offered a $5 prize to the school collecting the most waste paper, with the proceeds buying children's books, and a state aid increase let the library order books on readers' requests.
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A wartime munitions plant opens in the former Mill No. 7
National Munitions Corporation converted the empty Mill No. 7 on Roberson Street into a shell-loading plant that pressed tetryl pellets for Navy anti-aircraft ammunition, growing from about 126 workers to more than 500; an explosion hit its pellet houses on September 6, 1942.
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Chapel Hill aldermen elect Robert W. Madry mayor
The board of aldermen unanimously elected Robert W. Madry, director of the University news bureau and an alderman, as mayor to succeed John M. Foushee, who had moved out of town after ten years as mayor. The Weekly believed no one in the University's service had headed the town government before.
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Chapel Hill High School burns
Fire destroyed the Chapel Hill high school building on South Columbia Street, then the Pittsboro highway, early on Saturday, August 8, 1942. The school board arranged to hold grades 10 to 12 in rooms at the Baptist church and the ninth grade at the elementary school, and wartime material shortages delayed a new building for years.
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UNC's General Faculty names John M. Booker to chair a committee on University government
The General Faculty authorized a committee, chaired by English professor John M. Booker, to study faculty government and write a uniform set of principles for the powers and duties of the University's divisions. Reporting in sections over eight years, its work became the 1950 Faculty Legislation on University Government.
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A regimental review in Kenan Stadium honors Commander Kessing as he leaves for the Pacific
With Admiral Halsey asking for him in the southwest Pacific, Commander O. O. Kessing was ordered to sea duty, and the Pre-Flight School held a regimental review in his honor in Kenan Stadium. Lieutenant Commander John P. Graff succeeded him in command.
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Kenneth Tanner lends West House to the Carolina Volunteer Training Corps
Tanner gave the student officer-training corps the use of West House as its headquarters for the rest of the war. The corps then had 125 students in eight companies under Lt. Col. W. A. Raborg.
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Fire destroys Orange Grove School
Fire destroyed Orange Grove School in December 1942. On December 6, 1943 the county board sought a $16,000 insurance settlement, and at the Orange Grove committee's request classes went on in the old Orange Grove building rather than moving to Hillsboro.
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A Freewill Baptist church meets in a former store on South Nash Street
A small frame building at 219 South Nash Street, shown as a store on the 1911 and 1924 Sanborn maps and later a hot dog stand and a house, appears as the Freewill Baptist Church on the 1943 map. It keeps a small square steeple in its front gable.
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Black shank disease first strikes tobacco in Orange County
A new tobacco disease, black shank, appeared first in 1943 and spread quickly through the tobacco belt. The book ranks it with wilt for damage and notes a partly resistant seed.
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Daphne Athas graduates from UNC
Athas graduated from the university in 1943 after studying writing with Betty Smith and Phillips Russell.
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Dr. H. W. Moore restores the Hasell-Nash House with architect Archie Royal Davis
Dr. H. W. Moore restored the Federal-style Hasell-Nash House on West Queen Street with the help of architect Archie Royal Davis, who extended the rear of the two side wings around 1943.
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Elizabeth Janet Gray wins the Newbery Medal
Gray received the 1943 John Newbery Medal for Adam of the Road, a story of 13th-century England, a decade after she left Chapel Hill. She was then living in the Germantown section of Philadelphia.
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Engineer Thomas C. Atwood dies, ending the firm of Atwood and Weeks
Atwood's death in 1943 closed the partnership that had carried out much of the university's building since the 1920s.
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Fairview is platted as a neighborhood for Black families north of US 70
The first of Hillsborough's mid-century African American subdivisions was laid out in 1943 along roads that were already there, with twenty-five-foot lots meant to be bought in combination. Local builder James J. Freeland, who owned land in Fairview, built many of its houses.
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Kessing Pool opens behind Woollen Gymnasium for Pre-Flight swimming training
An outdoor pool behind Woollen Gymnasium opened in 1943 for the Navy Pre-Flight School's aquatic training and was named for Oliver Owen Kessing, the school's first commanding officer. Thousands of servicemen trained in it, among them Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush.
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Pre-meteorology and aviation training units arrive at UNC
In the first half of 1943 the university took in pre-meteorology and aviation training units, adding to the Navy programs already on campus.
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Rachel Crook opens a fish and produce market on West Franklin Street
Crook made an old service station, lately a chicken house, into a fish and produce market.
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Robert Rhinehart buys the Hill Bakery from Mrs. William Neal
Rhinehart bought the bakery that William Brumfield Neal's widow had run since his death in 1935.
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St. Mary's School closes as its pupils are merged into the Hillsborough schools
Consolidation with the Hillsborough schools closed St. Mary's School in 1943.
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The 1844 Orange County Courthouse is rehabilitated
The county rehabilitated its courthouse of about 1844 in 1943 and later added an annex, but the building stayed too small, and a new courthouse was finished just south of it in 1954.
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The Black women's clubs pay off the last of the Efland Home's debt
Four years after the home closed, the North Carolina Federation of Colored Women's Clubs cleared its remaining debt on the Efland reformatory in 1943, the year the legislature voted $25,000 for a state-run training school for Black girls.
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The Farmers Mutual Exchange builds a slaughterhouse on Occoneechee Farm
In summer 1943 the Exchange put up an abattoir next to the Hillsborough livestock market on Occoneechee Farm. Farmers could bring cattle and hogs for slaughter at cost and collect the meat the next day.
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The General Assembly passes a resolution commending the Institute of Government
Peyton Abbott, a Winston-Salem lawyer who moved into the Institute building on December 1, 1942, led its coverage of the 1943 session, winning a seat at the press table and a copy of every bill. Before adjourning, the legislature passed a joint resolution praising the Institute's service to it.
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The Hillsborough High School for Negroes takes the name Central High School
Under principal A. L. Stanback, the school for Black students in Hillsborough changed its name to Central High School in 1943.
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The McLartys sell the Berry Brick House to Mr. and Mrs. F. Ross Porter
In 1943 F. S. McLarty and his wife, who had bought the Berry Brick House in 1936 and added dormers, sold it to Mr. and Mrs. F. Ross Porter.
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William Meade Prince becomes head of the university's art department
William Meade Prince took charge of the University of North Carolina's art department during World War II, while also making posters and drawings for wartime causes.
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The NROTC holds its annual dance to open the new armory
The Naval ROTC dedicated its armory with its annual Navy dance on the drill deck, with the Navy B-1 Band, the Black enlisted musicians stationed with the Pre-Flight School, named as the band. The drill deck stayed a favorite dance floor through the war.
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Person and Caswell sign a tri-county library contract with Orange
On March 29, 1943 the Person and Caswell library boards signed a contract forming a tri-county library arrangement with Orange, already in effect, which used state aid to serve all three counties by bookmobile, with its Orange office in the Confederate Memorial Library. Chatham dropped out of the earlier arrangement, which from 1941 had joined Person, Orange and Chatham.
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Governor Broughton speaks at a Pre-Flight School graduation in Kenan Stadium
Broughton and UNC president Frank Porter Graham both spoke at Navy Pre-Flight School graduation exercises in Kenan Stadium on June 2, 1943.
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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, written in Chapel Hill, is published
Smith wrote the novel in a one-room house on North Street in Chapel Hill, rising about half past five and working against the chimney wall to keep warm. Harper published it on 17 August 1943 and it sold more than 150,000 copies within two weeks.
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The Burke grave plot is given to the State of North Carolina
The university chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution gave the state the small plot holding Governor Thomas Burke's grave. The chapter had cared for the site since students found it in 1923 and was raising money for a monument.
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Chapel Hill High School moves into the old Hume house on West Franklin Street
After fourteen months of classes in the Baptist church following the 1942 fire, the high school moved into the former Hume house, once the Hogan house and the Zeta Beta Tau house, owned by Caesar Cone. It held the principal's office, the library and four classrooms, with larger classes in the elementary school basement.
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Reader's Digest profiles Albert Coates and the Institute of Government
Roving editor J. P. McEvoy visited Chapel Hill that summer, and his article, titled 'Don't Shoot Your Sheriff: Teach Him,' ran in the October issue. It brought Coates speaking invitations from several states and an offer from founder DeWitt Wallace to pay him to tour the country, which Coates declined.
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A one-story brick store is built at 109 East King Street
A three-bay brick commercial building with a central entrance between large multi-light display windows was put up at 109 East King Street around 1944.
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Charles S. Mangum Jr. sells the old Mangum house on East Rosemary Street to Betty Smith
Charles S. Mangum Jr. inherited the old Mangum house at East Rosemary and Hillsborough streets from his aunt, Mary Elizabeth Mangum Wilson, who died in 1944, and sold it that year to the novelist Betty Smith.
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Coates publishes his first history of the Institute of Government, paid for by DeWitt Wallace
In place of a speaking tour, Coates wrote a 76-page account of how the Institute grew out of his law classroom, issued under the Popular Government name in the National University Extension Association's studies series. Wallace paid for 30,000 copies for national distribution, and on the advice of Louis R. Wilson and W. T. Couch, Coates took out the profanity before it went to press.
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Governor Broughton asks the Institute of Government to help towns plan for after the war
As Allied armies advanced across Europe, Broughton called on the short-staffed Institute to help plan for life in North Carolina's towns and cities once the war ended. State payments for this work and for civil defense training steadied the Institute's budget.
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John N. Couch chairs the university botany department
John N. Couch succeeded his teacher William C. Coker as chairman of the botany department in 1944 and led it until 1960. He was given a Kenan professorship in 1945.
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Len Hearn buys the East Main Street building his family grocery rents
After John Hearn died his son Len ran the store as L. D. Hearn, bought the building in 1944 and extended the back three times. It became L. D. Hearn & Son in the 1950s and, under grandson James, Hearn's Grocery.
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Polio and vaccination
Polio closed the county’s schools in 1944 and 1948, the University pool in 1950 and two UNC football games in 1952, and the county’s polio chapter bought iron lungs. The first Salk vaccinations reached first and second graders in 1955, and more than 25,000 residents took the Sabin oral vaccine on one Sunday in 1964.
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Pritchard's drugstore on East Franklin Street closes after its owner dies
James Manning Pritchard died and his drugstore shut. Rachel Crook sold pecans in the empty store for a short while before the North Carolina Cafeteria, formerly on Fraternity Row, bought the building and moved in.
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The B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation buys a lot on Cameron Avenue
The North Carolina B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation bought a lot on Cameron Avenue in Chapel Hill and later built a house there where a rabbi held services for students and townspeople.
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W. B. Thompson sells the Chapel Hill News, which becomes the News of Orange County
W. B. Thompson, who had published the Chapel Hill News since its start, sold it in 1944 to J. Roy Parker. The paper was renamed the News of Orange County.
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Orange County FSA honors 15 Black farm ownership borrowers
The county Farm Security Administration office awarded certificates of merit to 15 Black farm ownership borrowers, former tenants it had helped to buy farms. By March 1944 the county had 22 approved tenant-purchase loans.
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Vic and Rebecca Huggins run Huggins Hardware on East Franklin Street
The Hugginses bought the University Hardware Company and opened Huggins Hardware on March 22, 1944, adding kitchenware and general merchandise to the keys, paint and tools. They sold the store in 1968.
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Rev. Joe Brooks is a Ridge Road leader in the Black farm families' wartime food drive
Black neighborhood, 4-H and home demonstration club leaders across Orange County pooled efforts to produce and conserve more food for their families and the war effort in 1944. Rev. Joe Brooks was one of the leaders named for the Ridge Road neighborhood.
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Hillsborough well-baby clinics are held separately for Black and white babies
The Junior Service League and the district health department held two well-baby clinics each month in Hillsborough, one for Black babies and one for white babies, focused on preventive care.
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Quakers organize the Chapel Hill Monthly Meeting of Friends
The Chapel Hill Monthly Meeting was organized, the first Friends meeting in Orange County since the old Eno Meeting was laid down about a century earlier. It had no building and had bought a lot on Highway 54.
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District health officer reports the season's typhoid cases
Dr. William P. Richardson, district health officer, reported two confirmed cases of typhoid fever in the district in the past two months, one in Chatham County and one in Person County, with a suspected case in Person County and indirect reports of two cases in Orange County that health officials had not been able to confirm.
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Mrs. E. G. Danziger buys Henrietta Smedes's house on Hillsborough Street
The Danzigers, Austrian refugees whose candy and pastry shop was on Franklin Street, bought the 1919 house at 211 Hillsborough Street from Henrietta Smedes, who had retired from the university staff. That September they advertised their Forest Hills house for sale.
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Wartime day nursery opens for the children of Black working mothers in Chapel Hill and Carrboro
A federally funded day nursery for Black children opened at the Orange County Training School, caring for thirty children aged two to six from 7:15 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. while their mothers worked. Parents paid for food, and by October 1944 two nursery schools were running, one in the Masonic building on the edge of Carrboro and one on Brooks Street.
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Frederick Koch dies and is buried in the old Chapel Hill Cemetery
Koch, who taught dramatic literature and playwriting at UNC for twenty-six years and organized the Carolina Playmakers, died on August 16, 1944 and was buried in the old Chapel Hill Cemetery. Samuel Selden succeeded him as chair of the Department of Dramatic Art and director of the Playmakers.
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Orange County schools stay closed until after September 18 during the polio epidemic
On the recommendation of the State Health Officer and Governor Broughton, the State Board of Education kept all North Carolina public schools closed until after September 18 because of the infantile paralysis epidemic. Orange County schools, which Superintendent R. H. Claytor had planned to open September 14, were held back with the rest, though teachers still reported on September 14.
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Orange County's Black home demonstration clubs hold their first dress contest in Hillsboro
Women from every Black home demonstration club in the county modeled thirty-six dresses, suits and accessories they had made at the Hillsboro high school auditorium. By 1946 the clubs met monthly in rural communities including White Oak Grove, Jordan Grove, Cool Springs, Cedar Grove, Harmony, Ridge Road, St. Mary's, Sartin and Carr.
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O. David Garvin becomes health officer of the district covering Orange County
Garvin came to the district in 1944 on assignment from the North Carolina State Board of Health and the Public Health Service during the war emergency, after a year and a half in Scotland and Richmond counties. A later account of his resignation gave his starting date as September 4, 1944.
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Jeter and Ethel Neville buy a corner lot at Cobb and Broad streets in Carrboro
On September 13, 1944, Jeter and Ethel Neville bought a small lot at the northwest corner of Cobb and Broad streets, in the Lloyd-Broad section of the Black Northside neighborhood, from Guilford Realty and Insurance Company. Jeter Neville was a janitor at Northside Elementary School.
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Smith Furniture Company opens on West King Street in Hillsborough
Smith Furniture Company opened in the building formerly occupied by the Scott store, selling furniture, stoves and rugs. R. J. Smith ran it as proprietor, and it was still selling G-E appliances and heaters on West King Street in the 1960s.
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A granite monument is dedicated at Governor Thomas Burke's grave
The Sons of the American Revolution and the Lloyd Memorial Association dedicated a memorial monolith at Burke's grave on the Latta plantation northeast of Hillsborough and presented it to the state. Governor J. Melville Broughton and Archibald Henderson were among the speakers.
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James Freeland opens the Fairview Bowling Alley in Hillsborough
James Freeland opened the Fairview Bowling Alley in a building he put up himself, casting the cinder blocks and laying the concrete floor. It opened with three duckpin alleys and room for a tenpin lane.
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Home demonstration clubs report the year's work at Achievement Day in Hillsboro
At the county home demonstration clubs' Achievement Day at the courthouse, the home agent reported that women had canned an average of 350 quarts and that 94 percent made their own clothes, and that the women's curb market in Chapel Hill had taken in $30,280.68 over the past year. Clubs from Caldwell, Carr, Cedar Grove, Efland, New Hope, Orange Grove, St. Mary's, Schley and Murphy had made 699 garments and 744 other articles for the Red Cross.
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The county school board sells the closed Harvey's Chapel schoolhouse
The Orange County Board of Education approved the sale of the Harvey's Chapel schoolhouse, a school for Black children about three miles from Hillsboro. It had closed several years before, its pupils sent to the Hillsboro school, and Mary E. Breeze bought the building.
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Commissioners' chairman Collier Cobb Jr. lays a county revaluation plan before the Chapel Hill aldermen
Collier Cobb Jr., chairman of the Orange County commissioners, told the Chapel Hill aldermen the county would raise the tax valuation of plainly under-valued property for 1945, naming Franklin Street business property, suburban lots selling far above farm-land values and some northern tobacco land.
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Nelson Callahan and Morris Timmons open the Village Printshop next to the Porthole
The Village Printshop opened at 7 Fraternity Row, next door to the Porthole, run by Nelson Callahan, who had worked at the Orange Printshop since 1928, and Morris Timmons, operator of the Porthole. It did job printing by letterpress and offset.
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
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A Negro library committee was already running library service for Black readers in Orange County
The committee met in September 1945 under chairman Mrs. M. D. McPherson, reported over a hundred new books received and 800 books circulated during the summer, and was assembling book kits for rural areas. Miss Annie Cameron was named as one of the people who started the library for Black residents of the county.
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A brick Colonial Revival office building is built at 115 East King Street
A one-story Flemish-bond brick office building with a slate roof and a large central display window was built at 115 East King Street around 1945.
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A row of Colonial-style stores fills the 300 and 400 blocks of West Franklin Street
As downtown pushed west after the war, an unbroken row of Williamsburg-inspired shops went up along West Franklin Street, many designed by Archie Davis.
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A. H. Poe buys Ben Strowd's Pure Oil station on West Franklin Street for his DeSoto dealership
Poe bought the Pure Oil service station from Ben Strowd and moved his DeSoto car agency into it.
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Andy Griffith plays his first role, in The Gondoliers at Memorial Hall
Andy Griffith, who had arrived at Carolina in July 1944, auditioned on a whim and made his stage debut in a Carolina Playmakers production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Gondoliers at Memorial Hall.
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Black mason John Wesley Campbell and his sons build the stone Neville House in Carrboro
John Wesley Campbell and his sons, with Jeter Neville and mason Earnest Farrar, built the Nevilles' one-and-a-half-story bungalow of granite fieldstone trimmed in red brick, with an arcaded porch and a star and crescent moon set in stone beside the front windows. Campbell's son Handy said the stones came by army truck from Chatham County; the house is the least altered of Campbell's five 1940s stone buildings in Northside.
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Classics professor J. P. Harland builds the first postwar house in Laurel Hill
His shingled Colonial Revival cottage on Laurel Hill Road has an attached garage wing turned to face the street. Earlier Laurel Hill houses kept their garages at the far end of the driveway, so the nomination reads the wing as a sign of the car's new place in the suburb.
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Fitch Lumber moves its Mebane business to Carrboro after the Mebane branch burns
A. B. Fitch and all of the firm's Mebane operations came to Carrboro, and the Lloyd Street plant was enlarged around the same time.
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Four Orange County farmers run hybrid corn demonstrations
Four farmers ran corn demonstrations in 1945 on Experiment Station lines, using hybrid seed, shallow cultivation, close spacing and heavy nitrogen. The results showed yields could be more than doubled.
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George Livas becomes sole owner of the Carolina Coffee Shop
George Livas's partnership with James Gust ended and Livas became sole owner of the Carolina Coffee Shop, which he ran until his death in 1956.
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Hesslein and Company buys the Belle-Vue mill, ending local ownership
Belle-Vue Manufacturing Company had been run from Hillsborough since 1904, lately under L. E. Beard. In 1945 Hesslein and Company bought it and spent over half a million dollars on new machinery and on baths for the mill village houses.
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Homemont is platted as a Black neighborhood north of Hillsborough
Laid out in 1945 with gently curving streets and evenly spaced lots on Torain and Lawndale streets, Homemont filled mostly in the 1950s and 1960s with small Minimal Traditional houses, several of exposed concrete block, built by more than one builder for sale or rent. Next to a trash dump, it had no paved streets until the 1970s.
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John Scott Trotter sells the Hill House on West Franklin Street to the Baptist church
Trotter sold the Hill House, next to the Baptist church, to the congregation, which went on renting out its apartments. In 1958 the town's first public library opened in one of its rooms.
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John Wesley Campbell builds a fieldstone house for a pastor on North Graham Street
John Wesley Campbell designed and built a large fieldstone house at 214 North Graham Street in Northside for a local pastor, finished in 1945 and one of the first houses on the street. It is the largest of his four stone houses in the neighborhood, with a broad arched corner porch and a stone end chimney.
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Laurel Hill Road is extended south beyond the 1927 plat
On the 1927 plat the road stopped at the south edge of 603 Laurel Hill Road. The extension carried it south toward the line later taken by the 15-501 Bypass and opened lots for postwar houses.
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Mason Alfred Barbee builds his own house on Jones Ferry Road
After working at the Carrboro munitions plant during the war, the African American mason Alfred Barbee spent three years building his own house on Jones Ferry Road near the Strayhorn family homes, using his carpentry as well as his masonry skills.
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Morehead creates the foundation behind his Chapel Hill gifts
In 1945 Morehead created the Morehead Foundation to pay for the Morehead Building on the campus at Chapel Hill and to establish the scholarship that carries his name.
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Only 950 Orange County farmers have electricity
A dozen years after the county's pioneering rural power line, only 950 Orange County farmers had electric service in 1945.
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R. B. House becomes the first chancellor at Chapel Hill
North Carolina created chancellorships for its three campuses in 1945, and President Frank Porter Graham turned to House, who had been executive secretary from 1926 and dean of administration from 1934. House held the post until 1957, the longest chancellorship at Chapel Hill.
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The Fellowship of Southern Churchmen runs its headquarters from Chapel Hill
The Fellowship of Southern Churchmen, an interracial group of Southern church people founded in 1934, kept its headquarters in Chapel Hill while Nelle Morton was general secretary from 1945 to 1949, working on race relations, labor conditions and the rural South.
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The former Alberta mill reopens as Carrboro Woolen Mills
After fifteen idle years the modernized Mill No. 4 building reopened as Carrboro Woolen Mills, which ran until the early 1960s.
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The old campus infirmary is renamed Abernethy Hall
The university renamed its 1907 infirmary building Abernethy Hall in honor of Dr. Eric A. Abernethy, the university physician from 1919 to 1933. The infirmary itself moved to a new building in 1946.
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Town electricity and water are extended to West Hillsborough
Before the town took over in the late 1940s, the mills supplied power and water to their workers, cutting electricity to the houses during the day so the machinery could run, which left families without refrigeration.
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UNC begins marking Hinton James Day each February 12
The university started Hinton James Day in 1945, during the sesquicentennial of its first student's arrival. It falls on February 12 and now also honors other Carolina firsts, including Sallie Walker Stockard and Henry Owl.
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UNC establishes its Communication Center
The university set up a Communication Center at Chapel Hill in 1945. Departments of radio and religion followed in 1947.
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Newspaper describes the work of Orange County's public health nurses
A News of Orange County piece described the county public health nurses' duties: school inspections, immunization against diphtheria and smallpox, well-baby clinics twice a month, a monthly maternity clinic, tuberculosis and venereal disease clinics, orthopedic referrals, and the wartime maternity and infant care program for servicemen's wives.
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The Saturday Evening Post profiles Coates as 'The Ugly Duckling at Chapel Hill'
Warner Olivier's article cast Coates as the law school's misfit who had overcome objections to build an Institute admired around the country. It opened with a photograph of Albert and Gladys Coates in front of the Institute building.
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Black rural school districts more than double their Red Cross gifts
A Red Cross drive among the county's rural Black residents, run through the rural schools by A. L. Stanback and county agent M. C. Burt, closed with $472.55 from 428 people, against $224 the year before. Ridge Road district, with Mrs. A. A. Burt as principal, gave $36.32.
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The Farmers Exchange opens its Carrboro branch
The cooperative's Carrboro unit opened in March 1945, joining its Hillsborough branch. In the year to June 1952 the two branches bought $303,096 in produce and sold $1,149,392 in supplies.
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Bowling alley owner James Freeland knocks out a Black man who asked to bowl
Lorenzo Thompson, a Black man, came into the Fairview Bowling Alley late at night, said he had bowled up north and would not leave when told he could not bowl. Owner James Freeland knocked him unconscious and dragged him outside, and Thompson needed stitches.
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James Freeland opens a barbecue pit behind his Fairview Bowling Alley
James Freeland opened a barbecue pit behind the Fairview Bowling Alley and began serving barbecue every day. As with the alley, he built most of it himself.
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The Terrace View supper club opens on the Greensboro road west of Chapel Hill
The Terrace View, a dining and dancing club about five miles out the Greensboro road, was "christened" on Saturday, May 26, 1945 with a private ATO fraternity party held partly on its roof garden. By December it was open to the public every night, for couples only.
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Coates deeds the Institute of Government building to the university
After the legislature appropriated $44,000 to pay off the rest of the mortgage, Coates transferred title to the Institute property to the University of North Carolina. This completed the 1941 merger plan, under which the university would take the building once it was clear of debt.
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The Latta Cooperative Dairy opens its milk plant in Hillsborough
Organized in 1944, the Latta Cooperative Dairy built a small 500-gallon plant in Hillsborough that began work in June 1945. It bought milk from about thirty nearby farmers and ran routes in Hillsborough, Mebane and Durham.
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Chapel Hill celebrates the end of the war with Japan on Franklin Street
As the news spread that evening, townspeople, students and Pre-Flight School cadets filled Franklin Street while the campus bells rang and the fire siren sounded. Revelers draped the trees with toilet paper and lit a bonfire in the central block, and a policeman who tried to put it out was pushed aside.
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The National Munitions plant in Mill No. 7 closes
The shell-loading plant that National Munitions Corporation had run in Mill No. 7 since 1942 closed in August 1945. At its peak it employed 1,600 people, many of them former mill hands assembling anti-aircraft rounds, and it won the Army-Navy E award for production three times.
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William T. Couch leaves the University of North Carolina Press
Couch resigned in August 1945, after thirteen years as director, to lead the University of Chicago Press.
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The Negro Community Center opens for community use
After the Navy Pre-Flight School wound down, the community center returned to town control on October 24, 1945 and opened to Black residents of Chapel Hill and Carrboro. By December a nursery school filled the basement, and an all-Black board chaired by Hubert Roberson ran the building under the Town Recreation Commission.
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An old house said to contain part of the Nunn Tavern is moved across Kenan Street for the bus station
To clear the lot for the new bus station, a large two-story house was hauled across Kenan Street to 405 West Franklin, where W. W. McCauley later lived. Bryant traces the house to a section of the Nunn Tavern of about 1776, which had already been moved to this lot in 1923 when the Baptist church was built at Franklin and Columbia.
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Carolina Coach Company builds a Williamsburg-style bus station on West Franklin Street
The bus station at 311 West Franklin Street had a pedimented portico, a cupola with a weathervane and other Colonial details.
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Central High School adds a twelfth grade
Central High School, the county's high school for Black students in Hillsborough, added a twelfth grade for the 1946-47 school year. By 1949-50 it served 443 elementary and 206 high school students.
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Charles Crisp Oliver builds an auto and tractor repair shop at the Cedar Grove crossroads
Oliver put up a one-story concrete block garage with a stepped parapet on the lot where his father, T. L. Oliver, had kept a blacksmith shop early in the century.
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Charlie Justice chooses Carolina and begins four seasons at Chapel Hill
Justice was one of the most sought after players in the country after playing for the Bainbridge Navy team, and he chose Chapel Hill over South Carolina and Duke. He played tailback for Carl Snavely from 1946 to 1949, gaining 170 yards on 17 carries against Virginia in his freshman season.
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Commerce dean Dudley D. Carroll builds a small brick house on Laurel Hill Road for an in-law
The one-story side-gabled house has a traditional form with a large transom and sidelights at the door. English professor Blyden Jackson later owned it.
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Henry W. Lewis joins the Institute of Government faculty
After his discharge from the Army, Lewis joined the small faculty of the Institute of Government at Chapel Hill, where he worked mainly on election law and the property tax.
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Johnson-Strowd-Ward opens a furniture store on West Franklin Street
The furniture firm began in one of A. H. Poe's car showrooms and in 1947 moved further west on West Franklin into a building put up for it.
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Katherine Kennedy Carmichael succeeds Inez Koonce Stacy as dean of women
Carmichael, who held a Vanderbilt doctorate in British literature, became dean of women at Chapel Hill in 1946, succeeding Inez Koonce Stacy, adviser to women from 1919 and dean of women from 1942. She also taught an introductory literature course for the English department.
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Kenneth M. Brinkhous chairs the UNC Department of Pathology
Brinkhous succeeded James B. Bullitt as chair of pathology at the UNC School of Medicine in 1946 and held the post until 1973, building a research program in thrombosis and hemostasis. His department invented the partial thromboplastin time (PTT) test used in clinical laboratories.
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Lee County joins the health district serving Orange
The district health department, begun with Person County in 1935 and joined by Chatham in 1937, added Lee County in 1946.
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Medical dean Isaac Hall Manning is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
Isaac Hall Manning (1866-1946), the physician and medical school administrator who started Hospital Savings of North Carolina, the state's first medical insurance plan, was buried in the cemetery.
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Morehead gives the university a million dollars for a planetarium
In 1946 Morehead presented the university with one million dollars to build a planetarium and put the proposal to the Board of Trustees. The building opened in 1949.
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Orange County farmers seed the first ladino clover plots
There was no ladino clover in the county in 1945. Half a dozen farmers planted trial plots in 1946, and the next year about 200 farmers sowed more than 1,000 acres.
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Principal J. M. Harris refits the Murphey School lunchroom
Mrs. J. M. Harris, principal and teacher of the fifth and sixth grades, reported new chairs, tables, curtains and cooking equipment for the lunchroom in 1946. Her teachers were Myrtle Walker, Erna Link, Mrs. Chas F. Hudson and Florence Roat, and the school had a 4-H club, a chorus and a parent-teacher association.
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Terry Sanford revives Boys State, with William Friday among its counselors
After finishing his law courses, Sanford organized the first postwar Boys State session, staffed mostly by law students as counselors. Among them were William Friday, later president of the Consolidated University, whose first university paycheck came from the job, and William Aycock, a future chancellor.
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Terry Sanford serves as assistant director of UNC's Institute of Government
After the Second World War Sanford returned to Chapel Hill, completed a law degree in 1946 and served two years as assistant director of the Institute of Government before opening a law practice in Fayetteville.
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The Campbells build a stone bungalow for carpenter Vance Thompson on Broad Street
Next door to the Neville House, John Wesley Campbell and his sons designed and built a fieldstone Craftsman bungalow at 201 Broad Street for carpenter Vance Thompson and his family just after World War II. Land records show it finished by 1947; a Thompson son recalls moving in in 1946, and the family kept it until 2013.
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The Farmers Cooperative Dairy opens its plant in Chapel Hill
A larger cooperative of Orange, Chatham and Durham dairymen let the contract in June 1945 for a modern plant at West Franklin and Roberson streets; it was nearly finished in February 1946 and held a public open house at the end of May 1946. It handled fluid milk and made butter, ice cream and condensed milk.
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The Gospel Baptist Tabernacle is organized
Willie Thompson, S. E. Elmore and W. J. Johnson organized the Gospel Baptist Tabernacle and built a 250-seat church the same year, with Elmore as first pastor.
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The Institute builds a Highway Patrol training camp on Raleigh Road
Coates won approval to put a training camp on the eastern edge of the campus, on the south side of Raleigh Road at Country Club Road. State Highway Department crews brought seven wooden barracks built by the Civilian Conservation Corps from Camp Mackall near Fort Bragg and set them in a U around a drill yard, with water and sewer lines run from the university gym.
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The Pick Theatre on East Franklin Street closes
The Pick Theatre shut its doors in 1946. Its building was later remodeled for J. B. Robbins's House of Fashion, a clothing store that ran until 1969.
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The county buys land from Mary Vincent for a Cedar Grove school for Black children
In May 1945 board members Charlie Stanford and James Compton were asked to find a site near Vincent's Store crossroads for a Cedar Grove school for Black children. The board bought the land from Mary Vincent for $1,000 in 1946.
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Union Grove Methodist Church builds a stone Gothic Revival church
Union Grove Methodist, organized a century earlier, builds a stone church in the Gothic Revival style around 1946.
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Victory Village is built to house married veterans at UNC
As returning veterans pushed enrollment to about 6,800, the federal government put up the prefabricated metal houses of Victory Village on 65 acres of UNC's south campus in 1946. About 350 student families lived there, and the last units were torn down in the early 1970s for the expansion of UNC Hospitals.
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Popular Government resumes regular publication under William Cochrane
After a three-year gap and a single issue in 1945, the Institute's magazine came out nine times a year from January 1946, edited by Cochrane. He also managed the Institute's daily business until he left in 1955 for Senator Kerr Scott's staff.
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The Health Club of Hillsboro, led by Roosevelt Warner, turns the old Community Hall into a community center
The News of Orange County reported that the old Community Hall in Hillsboro was being made into a community center under the sponsorship of the Health Club of Hillsboro, whose president was Roosevelt Warner. The Youth Club held a Valentine dance in the hall on February 14.
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District health department X-ray unit offers free chest X-rays in Chapel Hill
The Orange-Chatham-Person Health Department's X-ray unit operated at the Chapel Hill health department from March 13 to 20, 1946, offering free chest X-rays for tuberculosis to any Orange County resident. Health officer Dr. O. David Garvin urged residents to use it.
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Marinda McPherson sings a joint recital at the Orange County school auditorium
Mrs. M. D. McPherson and Galvin Lampley gave a joint recital in the Orange County school auditorium in Hillsboro. She sang The Star by James H. Rogers and Because by Guy d'Hardelot, and Lampley played De Falla and Chopin.
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Swalin's newly professional North Carolina Symphony plays Memorial Hall
Benjamin Swalin brought the North Carolina Symphony to Memorial Hall after an expansion campaign that let him hire a professional orchestra for the first time. The Daily Tar Heel's critic, a longtime skeptic, wrote that it had become the most capable musical organization then playing in the state.
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Mrs. Collier Cobb sells the Cobb Terrace bungalows to private owners
Collier Cobb had kept the Aladdin kit bungalows at the north end of Henderson Street as rentals for young faculty. After his death in 1934 his widow kept them until April 1946, when she offered them for sale, first to the tenants and then to other faculty; by late June nine of the eleven had been sold.
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C. S. Cates opens a new movie theater in the old Hollywood Theatre building in West Hillsborough
Cates, a World War II veteran, remodeled the building the Hollywood Theatre had used, with new sound and projection equipment and seats, and advertised the opening for Wednesday, May 1, with a contest to name the house.
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County commissioners refuse to relicense beer sales at the Log Cabin filling station
The Orange County commissioners voted unanimously to keep refusing J. A. Thompson a license to sell beer at his filling station, the Log Cabin, on the Mebane road. Thompson and his wife called it a "Dirty Deal" and their lawyer pleaded for another chance without success.
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The county board approves twelve classrooms and a gymnasium for Central School
The board approved a building program of twelve classrooms and a gymnasium at Central, the county's school for Black students in Hillsborough.
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The county board closes Orange Grove School and sends its pupils to Hillsboro
The board discontinued Orange Grove School and first planned to split its children between Hillsboro and White Cross. Parents objected strongly to White Cross, so the board voted to send them all to Hillsboro; the school site went to Cane Creek Baptist Church for $50 in 1947.
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The county board ends high school classes at Efland
The board voted to discontinue Efland High School and send its students to Aycock and Hillsboro, leaving Efland an elementary school.
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The old Pre-Flight Armory reopens as a Scuttlebutt snack bar and bookstore
Instead of razing it for a dormitory, the university turned the Pre-Flight School's armory into a second Scuttlebutt, a soda fountain, bookstore and student hangout in the lower quadrangle.
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Lutherans organize Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Chapel Hill
Holy Trinity, the first Lutheran congregation in Orange County, was organized with 34 charter members and D. P. Rudisill as pastor. Its building was consecrated on January 6, 1952.
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Fire destroys the barbecue pit at Dud's Tavern near Hillsborough
A Monday afternoon fire destroyed the barbecue pit building and its contents at Dud's Tavern, with damage put at $1,800. The fire had gained too much headway by the time the Hillsborough fire department reached it.
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Poe-Mangum Auto Service finishes a showroom and parts wing at its West Franklin Street station
Bill Poe and Marvin Mangum added a DeSoto-Plymouth showroom and a parts department to their Pure Oil service station, stretching the building to a 140-foot front. The Weekly called it one of the biggest building projects in town since the war.
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Bayard Wootten shows her Mobile photographs at Person Hall
Bayard Wootten gave a talk, A Photographer Discusses Mobile in the Spring, in the small gallery at Person Hall, where a collection of the pictures she had made in Mobile that spring was on exhibit.
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John A. Parker arrives and UNC's planning program begins classes
John A. Parker, hired in 1945 to found a Department of City and Regional Planning, arrived in Chapel Hill in September 1946, and classes began that fall with four students. The department's first office was in the Alumni Building, shared with the Institute for Research in Social Science.
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The Institute of Government's first State Highway Patrol school opens in Chapel Hill
With money from the legislature to bring the Patrol back to its prewar strength, Governor Gregg Cherry's administration turned to the Institute, which offered an eight-week course for about a hundred recruits chosen from 1,300 applicants. Classes began on October 13, with instructors from the FBI, the State Bureau of Investigation, Northwestern University and New York University.
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Forty-four graduates of the Institute's Patrol school are sworn in as state troopers
Fifty-three men finished the first eight-week course, and 44 took the oath as State Highway Patrol officers on December 7; the other nine were hired as places opened within the year. After the 1947 legislature voted to double the Patrol, Sanford and Pace ran two more sessions.
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A community cannery is set up at Aycock School
G. A. Munn and E. F. Cude told the board in July 1947 that the cannery at Aycock School had used $3,500 and needed $1,500 more to finish.
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A wartime Army garage from Camp Butner is moved to North Churton Street
A one-story garage of concrete block and weatherboard, built at Camp Butner in 1942, was moved to 132 North Churton Street in Hillsborough in 1947. It still has five of its original wooden overhead doors.
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Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 2, 2026.
