Chronology

Edward Danziger opens a candy kitchen on Franklin Street

Edward G. Danziger, a candy maker whose family name was well known in Vienna, opened a candy kitchen with a tea-and-coffee room in the Munch building on Franklin Street, where Gooch's restaurant had been. He sold candy and ice cream with fresh fruit and planned to add Viennese and Turkish coffee, tea and pastries. The family business later included Danziger's Old World Gift Shop.

William Meade Prince joins the university's art department

The illustrator William Meade Prince, who with his wife, Lillian Hughes Prince, had moved from Westport, Connecticut, to Chapel Hill in the 1930s, joined the university's art department as a lecturer for the 1939-40 year. The Princes still spent summers in Westport.

People: Lillian Hughes Prince

A memorial tablet for Robert Bingham is installed in Memorial Hall

A memorial tablet in Robert Bingham's name was installed in the university's Memorial Hall in Chapel Hill on October 12, 1939.

Subject: Memorial Hall

House Speaker William Bankhead dedicates the Institute of Government building

On the eve of Thanksgiving a standing-room crowd in Hill Music Hall heard Bankhead, Governor Clyde Hoey and President Frank Graham praise Coates, with eight of the state's eleven congressmen and former governor O. Max Gardner on hand. A reception followed in Graham Memorial, and guests stayed for the Virginia football game the next day.

People: Clyde Roark Hoey · Frank Porter Graham · Albert Coates · Gladys Hall Coates · O. Max Gardner

Subject: Institute of Government · Hill Hall

Albert Coates completes the Institute of Government's Franklin Street building

Albert Coates built the Institute's Franklin Street headquarters with private gifts and a Jefferson Standard Life loan, and it opened in November 1939. The University took title only on June 30, 1945, after the legislature paid off the mortgage. The building later carried the Coates name.

Subject: Institute of Government

Ralph H. Graves is buried in Chapel Hill

Ralph H. Graves, a New York editor and newspaper syndicate agent born in Chapel Hill, died at his home in Garden City, Long Island, on December 1, 1939. After a funeral there, a burial service was held at the Chapel Hill cemetery on the afternoon of Tuesday, December 5.

People: Louis Graves · Ernest Graves

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

A Chapel Hill chapter of the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies is organized

Frank Graham and Durham banker George Watts Hill were among the first North Carolinians to sign on with the national committee formed in 1940, and chapters were organized in Chapel Hill and Asheville. Covington describes Chapel Hill as a center of support for the Allies while both of the state's senators opposed involvement.

People: Frank Porter Graham

Alice Noble becomes first adviser to the pharmacy school's Kappa Epsilon chapter

When the Lambda chapter of the Kappa Epsilon fraternity was set up at the School of Pharmacy in 1940, the school's librarian Alice Noble became its first adviser.

Subject: UNC School of Pharmacy

Archie Royal Davis becomes architect for the University of North Carolina

The Durham architect Archie Royal Davis took the post of university architect at Chapel Hill in 1940. He then helped give Franklin Street's business district its Colonial Revival look, designing several store buildings and painting watercolor views to persuade owners to rebuild in that style, with backing from George Watts Hill and town leaders.

People: George Watts Hill · Archie Royal Davis

Architect Eugene Stroud designs physician John J. Wright's house on Laurel Hill Circle

A two-story, three-bay shingled Colonial Revival house was built for physician John J. Wright to a design by Eugene Stroud.

Census finds nearly half of Orange County's Black-owned farms in Cedar Grove Township

The 1940 census counted 1,753 Black and 1,671 white residents in Cedar Grove Township, the county's only township with a near-even racial balance, and about three-fourths of the township lived on farms. Nearly half of Orange County's 503 Black-owned farms were in the township, which also had the county's highest share of Black tenant farmers.

Part of Farm labor in rural Orange County · 16 events

Crabtree Store No. 2 is built north of Cedar Grove

A frame country store, Crabtree Store No. 2, is built north of Cedar Grove around 1940.

Dudley Cowden builds a galleried house with a specimen garden on Country Club Road

The Cowden house is a two-story frame Colonial Revival dwelling with a two-story stone west wing, a front gallery, a stone terrace, a stone garage and a formal specimen garden.

Good-roads advocate Harriet Morehead Berry is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Harriet Morehead Berry (1877-1940), who campaigned for North Carolina road improvements in the 1920s, was buried in the cemetery.

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Harvey's Chapel builds a frame church near Efland

The Harvey's Chapel congregation near Efland built its present front-gable frame church in the 1940s. Lefler and Wager put it about 1946 and the congregation's own history about 1940; the 1993 county survey had estimated about 1930 from the building's style.

Henry P. Brandis Jr. joins the UNC law faculty

After two state tax posts, Brandis, the Institute of Government's first full-time staff member, joined the university's law school faculty in 1940. He became its dean in 1949 and a Graham Kenan Professor of Law in 1965, and retired in 1972.

Subject: Institute of Government · UNC School of Law

Hillsborough Methodist Church builds an educational wing

The congregation added a two-story educational wing behind its 1859 church in the 1940s. Another addition and a covered breezeway followed in 1985.

Subject: Hillsborough Methodist Church

Isaac Hall Manning retires from the medical faculty

After leaving the deanship Manning stayed on as a professor until he retired in 1940.

Subject: UNC School of Medicine

John Scott Trotter turns the old Bryan boarding house into The Hill House

Mrs. Green Bryan's heirs sold her West Franklin Street boarding house to Trotter, who renovated it and named it The Hill House, with hotel rooms and rental apartments.

Kennon Cheek dies at his home in Northside

Cheek, born in Chapel Hill about 1890, lived out his life in the house he built on land in Northside bought from the university's holdings, and died there in 1940 after diabetes and overwork wore him down in the late 1930s.

Little River Presbyterian Church builds a brick church

Little River Presbyterian, organized in 1761, replaces its church with a brick building in the 1940s. The large cemetery around it is one of the county's oldest.

Subject: Little River Presbyterian Church

Louis Graves starts a newspaper campaign to give Franklin Street a Williamsburg look

Feeling the business district looked shabby beside the new campus, Chapel Hill Weekly editor Louis Graves began praising Colonial Williamsburg's shops in editorials. Joseph Hyde Pratt, John M. Booker, W. D. Carmichael Jr., Collier Cobb and George Watts Hill backed the plan, and architect Archie Davis gave the planning commission watercolors showing owners how to remodel.

People: Joseph Hyde Pratt · William D. Carmichael Jr. · George Watts Hill · Archie Royal Davis · John M. Booker

Subject: The Chapel Hill Weekly

McDade and Laws stop functioning as crossroads communities

In the 1940s the crossroads of McDade and Laws in northern Orange ceased to hold together as communities and their stores closed, while Cedar Grove, where the Pender Store stayed open, kept its identity.

Orange County tobacco growers begin farming under acreage allotments

From 1940 each grower's tobacco acreage was allotted and enforced after a referendum on compulsory control that more than 90 percent of growers backed. The book credits the controls with better quality and yields.

Pastor S. F. Nicks leads a $12,000 addition of rooms to the Hillsborough Methodist Church

Soon after returning to Hillsborough in 1940, Nicks proposed adding rooms to the church. Robert Forrest and A. A. Lloyd raised the money with a match of one dollar from the Duke Endowment for every three raised, and much of the work was volunteer labor, Nicks included.

Subject: Hillsborough Methodist Church

St. Mary's Road is paved and straightened

The old Trading Path route east of Hillsborough, later the Oxford Road, was paved and straightened in sections around 1940, though its side roads stayed dirt.

St. Paul's A.M.E. builds a bungalow parsonage beside the church

The congregation put up a one-story bungalow next to the sanctuary as its parsonage.

Subject: St. Paul AME Church

The Agricultural Services Building is built on East King Street in two stages

A thirteen-bay, two-story brick Colonial Revival office building at 110 East King Street, running through to Court Street, was built in two parts: the left side before World War II and the right side after the war.

The Carolina Inn completes the first of its rear additions

The Carolina Inn, which Arthur Nash designed for John Sprunt Hill, gained a rear addition in 1940, the first of three (later ones in 1970 and 1995) that tracked the university's growth.

People: John Sprunt Hill · Arthur Cleveland Nash

Subject: The Carolina Inn

The Efland Knitting Company is started

A second family hosiery firm, the Efland Knitting Company, began about 1940 as an offshoot of John L. Efland's mill.

The Farmers Mutual Exchange installs a 30,000-egg electric incubator

About 1940 the Exchange put in an all-electric incubator holding 30,000 eggs, supplied by blood-tested county flocks. It sold baby chicks and gave farmers a steady market for eggs and broilers.

Subject: Farmers Mutual Exchange

The James Hogg House on the Burnside grounds is torn down

The house associated with James Hogg, the Revolutionary-era merchant, was demolished in the 1940s. The remains of one chimney still stand northeast of Burnside.

Subject: Burnside

The University Laundry is built on West Cameron Avenue

The university laundry at 609 West Cameron Avenue was built in 1940 of brick over a steel frame, with an Art Moderne front block and a long industrial rear wing. An addition came after 1960.

The WPA rebuilds the Forest Theatre in stone

Works Progress Administration crews remade the amphitheatre in local stone: a screen wall along Country Club Road, curved seating following the hillside, towers for lights and sound, and a rough stone stage. The present structure dates from this rebuilding.

Subject: Forest Theatre · Battle Park

The William Whitted House becomes Hillsborough's American Legion post

In the 1940s the William Whitted House at 306 North Churton Street becomes the home of the local American Legion post. It has since become a private residence again.

Subject: William Whitted House

The cotton warehouses beside Carrboro's two mills are torn down

The large cotton warehouses next to Mill No. 4 and Mill No. 7, where ginned cotton was bought and stored for Durham Hosiery Mills, were torn down and hauled away in the 1940s.

The university builds a heating and power plant on West Cameron Avenue

In 1940 the university put up a large steel-frame heating and power plant with brick walls at 503 West Cameron Avenue, two to four stories high. Its stepped facade and rounded corners are in the Art Moderne manner.

The university founds the Inter-American Institute, with Leavitt as director

President Frank Porter Graham founded the Inter-American Institute in 1940, growing out of Leavitt's work building Latin American research collections. Leavitt directed it until 1959; it took the name Institute of Latin American Studies in 1947.

People: Frank Porter Graham

Thomas P. Lloyd opens the Carolina Pharmacy

Lloyd, once James Pritchard's partner, opened his own drugstore in the space Ledbetter-Pickard Stationery left when it moved a door east.

UNC School of Public Health runs a Rockefeller-funded syphilis study in Orange and neighboring counties

The School of Public Health's first research project, a field epidemiological study of syphilis funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, ran from 1940 to 1950 with the state venereal disease control program in Orange, Chatham, Person and Durham counties. Project staff held clinics, lectured and traced contacts in the health departments.

Subject: UNC School of Public Health

UNC receives the Horace Williams tract by bequest

The core of what became the Carolina North tract, north of Estes Drive and west of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, came to the university as a bequest from Professor Horace Williams. The university later bought adjoining land, and parts of the site were used as an airport, landfill, town operations center and animal shelter.

People: Henry Horace Williams

University controller William D. Carmichael Jr. builds a large brick house in Laurel Hill

William Carmichael and his wife had one of the biggest Colonial Revival houses in town built at 106 Laurel Hill Circle, a red brick house with a classical entrance and flanking wings.

Wartime orders push the Eno Cotton Mill to about 600 workers

Military demand for cloth during World War II enlarged the Eno Cotton Mill, which by the 1940s employed as many as 600 workers on three shifts.

Subject: Eno Mill

White Furniture Company of Mebane takes over Orange Furniture Craftsmen in Hillsborough

The Mebane firm bought the Hillsborough plant and turned it to dining room buffets and cabinets, many of them eighteenth-century reproductions. By 1953 it employed 125.

William D. Carmichael Jr. returns to Chapel Hill as the university's finance officer

Carmichael left a New York Stock Exchange partnership and came back in 1940 to serve the consolidated University of North Carolina as finance officer. As finance officer, comptroller and then vice-president he raised money from the legislature, foundations, corporations and individuals.

People: William D. Carmichael Jr.

William Sprinkle designs Frances Gardham's house on Country Club Road

Frances Gardham's Colonial Revival house with vernacular details is one of three Rocky Ridge Farm houses the nomination credits to architect William Sprinkle.

William Van Sprinkle designs a Colonial Revival house for Horace Crockford on Country Club Road

For professor Horace D. Crockford and his wife, William Van Sprinkle designed a modest two-story Colonial Revival house of brick and weatherboard at 305 Country Club Road, with a garage wing and a cupola, as building in Laurel Hill picked up again at the end of the 1930s.

People: William Van Sprinkle

District health officer reports one of the district's best years for diphtheria

Although diphtheria was widespread in North Carolina in 1939, the Orange-Person-Chatham district recorded only 18 cases. Health officer W. P. Richardson credited immunization of children under six, warned that immunizations had fallen off over the past twelve months, and urged parents to have young children immunized.

Col. John K. Ross-Duggan holds 75th-anniversary exercises at the restored Johnston headquarters house

Col. John K. Ross-Duggan, who with his wife had restored the Dickson house outside Hillsborough, marked the 75th anniversary of the war's end there with afternoon exercises and a special postal cachet showing the house. A. H. Graham and W. B. Umstead of Durham were to speak.

People: Alexander H. "Sandy" Graham · William B. Umstead

Subject: Alexander Dickson House (Johnston’s headquarters)

UNC offers its faculty and laboratories to the national defense

Twenty months before Pearl Harbor, the university president telegraphed Washington putting UNC faculty, laboratories and equipment at the government's service; the trustees confirmed the step at their August meeting.

People: Frank Porter Graham

A Naval ROTC unit is established at the university

On September 11, 1940 the Navy named the university one of eight new Naval ROTC sites, and on September 25 about 100 freshmen began naval science classes under Captain Robert S. Haggart. During World War II the Navy's V-12 program there was built around the unit. An Air ROTC unit followed in 1947.

UNC makes physical training compulsory for every student

As part of its defense program the university began requiring physical training of students in all classes from September 1940.

Horace Williams dies and is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Williams died at eighty-two and was buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery. He left all of his property to the university in trust, the income to pay for fellowships in philosophy.

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Connor returns to the UNC faculty as Craige professor

After resigning as Archivist of the United States in 1941, Connor came back to Chapel Hill to hold the newly established Craige Professorship of Jurisprudence and History until he retired in 1949.

Fitch Lumber buys the Crawford brothers' spoke plant on Lloyd Street

Walter S. and Charlie M. Crawford had made wooden wheel spokes in a sheet-metal building beside the tracks, probably built about 1930. Fitch made it a planing mill that dressed rough lumber from county sawmills, later adding a raised shavings bin that farmers drove under to load bedding for their stock.

Illustrator William Meade Prince and his wife Lillian build a house in Greenwood

William Meade Prince, the illustrator who taught art at the university, and his wife Lillian were building a home in the Greenwood neighborhood at the end of 1941. He lived and worked there until his death in 1951.

People: Lillian Hughes Prince

Orange, Chatham and Person counties share a trained librarian under the new state aid

In the first year of state aid for public libraries, Chatham, Orange and Person counties shared one trained librarian, Ernestine Grafton, while each county kept its own book collection and bookmobile service. The state's 1941–42 library statistics list her as librarian at Hillsboro, Siler City and Roxboro.

Subject: Orange County Public Library

Robert H. Wettach serves as dean of the UNC School of Law

Wettach, who also served as an assistant state attorney general, lived with his wife Alpha in the rented Nash house on South Boundary Street.

Subject: UNC School of Law

Ruby Crews becomes the county's first home demonstration agent for Black women

An assistant agent was added in 1941 to work only with Black farm women, and Crews, later Mrs. Ruby Carraway, was the first to hold the job.

Subject: Home demonstration clubs

Sara Thomas Watters buys the Weaver House and its road takes her name

Alexander and Leta Hogan, owners since 1910, sold the old Weaver place to Watters. The dirt lane to it, formerly Old Hillsborough Road, was renamed Watters Road about then; a mapmaker misread the name and it has been Walters Road since.

Subject: Weaver House

The county home closes

The poorhouse on the land bought in 1823 closed in 1941, since most of its residents now qualified for old age assistance and could live in boarding homes.

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

The university hosts 108 South American students in its Winter-Summer School

In 1941 the university received 108 students from seven South American countries for English courses and regular classes in a program Leavitt directed. The General Assembly met in special joint session in Chapel Hill in their honor.

People: Frank Porter Graham

Subject: University Summer School

W. Reece Berryhill becomes dean of the UNC School of Medicine

Berryhill, who had been physician-in-chief at the University infirmary and director of the student health service in Chapel Hill since 1933, became professor of medicine and dean of the School of Medicine in 1941. He led the school's expansion from a two-year to a four-year program.

Subject: UNC School of Medicine

Walter Creech rebuilds a moved antebellum house as a Colonial Revival home on NC 54

In 1941 a two-story frame house from before the Civil War was hauled from Chatham County, turned with its gable end to the road and given one-story wings in the Colonial Revival manner.

Eben G. Merritt opens a new filling station on the Pittsboro Road

E. G. Merritt opened a new filling station on the Pittsboro Road, just above his old stand, with a tiled roof and a large parking lot. It later ran as Merritt's Service Station and store.

Subject: Merritt's Store and Grill

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.

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.

People: O. E. Bivins

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.

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.

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

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.

Subject: Farmers Mutual Exchange

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.

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.

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.

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

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.

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.

People: A. L. Stanback

Subject: Central High and Central Elementary, Hillsborough

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.

Beta Theta Pi and other fraternity houses quarter Navy trainees

While the university served as a naval training center, many fraternity houses, the Beta house among them, were used to lodge midshipmen, which held back chapter growth until the war ended.

Subject: Beta Theta Pi Fraternity House

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.

Subject: Institute of Government

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.

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.

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

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.

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.

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.

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.

People: James J. Freeland

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.

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.

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.

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.

People: Archie Royal Davis

Subject: Carolina Theatre (1942)

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.

Subject: Institute of Government

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.

People: Rebecca Clark

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.

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.

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.

Subject: Varsity Theatre (the first Carolina Theatre)

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.

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.

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.

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.

People: Frank Porter Graham

Subject: Memorial Hall

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.

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.

Subject: Orange County Public Library

Governor Broughton welcomes guests at the commissioning of the Navy Pre-Flight School

The dinner program for the commissioning of the Naval Aviation Pre-Flight School at Chapel Hill on May 23, 1942 has Governor J. Melville Broughton offering the welcome, and Josephus Daniels giving greetings to the Navy Department representatives and to Commander O. O. Kessing. The school trained 18,700 pre-flight cadets before it was decommissioned on October 15, 1945.

Part of The Navy Pre-Flight School at Chapel Hill, 1942–1945 · 10 events

People: Josephus Daniels · Oliver Owen Kessing

Subject: Navy Pre-Flight School

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.

The Naval ROTC moves out of Woollen Gym and Lenoir Hall into Swain Hall

By university decision the Naval ROTC left its quarters in Woollen Gymnasium and the basement of Lenoir Hall during June 1 to 9, 1942, and moved into Swain Hall, which its commander thought below the Navy's minimum standard.

Subject: Swain Hall · Woollen Gymnasium

Archie Royal Davis's plans for the Naval Armory are settled and building begins

After weeks of argument with consulting architect Arthur C. Nash, Durham architect Archie Royal Davis had his design for a Georgian Revival armory approved in mid-September 1942; R. K. Stewart and Son began building it late that year for about $41,000, meant as a temporary building to be replaced after the war.

People: Arthur Cleveland Nash · Archie Royal Davis

The Navy Pre-Flight School's armory is completed near the campus tennis courts

A semi-prefabricated armory and rifle range designed by Archie Royal Davis for the Pre-Flight School was finished near the tennis courts, a short walk from Navy Hall. It was a separate building from the NROTC Armory.

People: Archie Royal Davis

Subject: Navy Pre-Flight School

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Daphne Athas graduates from UNC

Athas graduated from the university in 1943 after studying writing with Betty Smith and Phillips Russell.

People: Betty Smith · Phillips Russell

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.

People: Archie Royal Davis

Subject: Hasell-Nash House

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.

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.

People: Thomas C. Atwood

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.

People: James J. Freeland

Guion Griffis Johnson lectures in the Navy V-12 program at the University

Johnson taught as a lecturer in the Naval V-12 program at the University of North Carolina in 1943–1944.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Subject: St. Mary's School

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.

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

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.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

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.

Subject: Occoneechee Farm · Farmers Mutual Exchange

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.

People: Albert Coates

Subject: Institute of Government

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.

People: A. L. Stanback

Subject: Central High and Central Elementary, Hillsborough

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.

Subject: Berry Brick House

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.

The Naval ROTC moves into its new armory on South Columbia Street

The NROTC took over its new armory in January 1943, with classrooms in use by January 7 and a drill hall whose mezzanine served as a ship's bridge for drills. It is the first NROTC unit's building in North Carolina and has housed ROTC training ever since.

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.

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.

Subject: Orange County Public Library

Navy Hall opens as the Pre-Flight School's visitors' entrance and cadet lounge

Designed by Archie Royal Davis and first drawn as a temporary office and hostess building, Navy Hall opened in March 1943 with offices for the Pre-Flight School and recreation rooms for cadets; the public was invited in on March 21.

People: Archie Royal Davis

Subject: Navy Pre-Flight School

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.

Part of The Navy Pre-Flight School at Chapel Hill, 1942–1945 · 10 events

People: Frank Porter Graham

Subject: Kenan Stadium · Navy Pre-Flight School

The Navy V-12 program opens at UNC with about 1,300 men

The Navy's V-12 college program, which paid for future officers to finish degrees, began at UNC with an entering class of about 1,300, straining dormitory and dining space already taken up by the Pre-Flight School. It absorbed the Naval ROTC until 1945.

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.

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.

Subject: Thomas Burke’s grave (Tyaquin)

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.

Subject: Chapel Hill High School

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.

Subject: Institute of Government

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.

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.

People: William T. Couch · Louis Round Wilson

Subject: Institute of Government

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.

People: Albert Coates

Subject: Institute of Government

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.

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.

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.

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.

Subject: The News of Orange County

The Scuttlebutt, a Navy canteen, opens on the UNC campus

The Scuttlebutt, a canteen built as an extension of the Book Exchange for the Navy and Marine trainees on campus, opened on the morning of January 11, 1944, after months of delay over a sugar contract. Pete Pulley managed it, and at first only trainees with Swain Hall meal tickets could buy there.

Subject: The Scuttlebutt

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.

People: Robert Hughes

The Navy B-1 Band leaves Chapel Hill for service in Hawaii

The B-1 Band, the first Black Navy unit whose members held a rating above messman, cook or steward, was sent from Chapel Hill to Hawaii after nearly two years of playing across the campus and town.

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.

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.

Subject: Home demonstration clubs

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.

Part of Public health in rural Orange County · 26 events

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.

People: Dudley Dewitt Carroll

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.

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.

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.

Subject: Orange County Training School / Lincoln High School

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.

People: Samuel Selden

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery · Carolina Playmakers

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.

People: R. H. Claytor

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.

Subject: Home demonstration clubs

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.

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.

Subject: Jeter and Ethel Neville House

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.

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.

People: J. Melville Broughton · Archibald Henderson

Subject: Thomas Burke’s grave (Tyaquin)

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.

People: James J. Freeland

Subject: Fairview Bowling Alley

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.

Subject: Home demonstration clubs · Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

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.

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.

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.

People: Marinda D. McPherson

Subject: Orange County Public Library

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.

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.

People: Archie Royal Davis

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.

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.

Subject: Memorial Hall · Carolina Playmakers

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.

People: John Wesley Campbell

Subject: Jeter and Ethel Neville House

Carl Snavely returns to coach UNC football

Snavely came back to Chapel Hill in 1945 after being assured that his program would have the full support of the administration. His 1946 to 1949 teams, built around Charlie Justice and returning servicemen, won two Southern Conference championships and played in three bowl games.

People: Charlie Justice

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Subject: Bellevue Mill

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.

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.

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.

Part of Historic Black neighborhoods of Chapel Hill and Carrboro · 55 events

People: John Wesley Campbell

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.

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.

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.

Subject: Morehead Planetarium

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.

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.

People: Frank Porter Graham

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.

Subject: Carr Mill

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.

Subject: University infirmary (Abernethy Hall)