Search and filters
Search and filters
6,171 dated events and 63 storylines match your filters.
Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 3,801–4,000 of 6,234, 200 to a page.Back to highlights
Entries
Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1940s
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
An Order of the Eastern Star chapter is established in Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill gained a chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star, twenty-two years after Hillsborough's.
-
Architect James Webb moves to Chapel Hill to help start UNC's planning program
James Webb, an architect and planner trained at Berkeley and MIT who had worked for William Wurster, came to Chapel Hill in 1947 to help John Parker set up the university's program in city and regional planning. He taught there until 1975 and kept a private practice that brought San Francisco Bay area modernism to the town.
-
Bethsada Baptist Church builds a 500-seat church
Bethsada Baptist Church, a Black congregation led by Jesse Morrow and Rudy Whitmore, built a church seating 500 in 1947.
-
Brinkhous begins research on dogs that carry hemophilia
Brinkhous began studying canine carriers of hemophilia in 1947. The work led to the laboratory now called the Francis Owen Blood Research Laboratory and to UNC's hemophilia research and treatment center.
-
Clyde Roberts wins the Bank of Chapel Hill corn growing contest
The Bank of Chapel Hill sponsored a yearly corn contest with at least 50 entrants. In 1947 Clyde Roberts won with 93.3 bushels of N. C. Hybrid 26 on one acre, against a contest average of 61.9.
-
Dickerson Chapel's old courthouse frame is encased in brick
In 1947 the frame building that began as the third Orange County courthouse was covered in brick, giving Dickerson Chapel A.M.E. Church its present look with pointed-arch stained-glass windows and an entrance tower and steeple.
-
General Assembly funds the Good Health Plan's four-year medical school and teaching hospital
The General Assembly appropriated money in 1947 to expand the UNC medical school at Chapel Hill to four years, enlarge the medical sciences building, and build a 400-bed hospital, a School of Nursing and staff residence halls. The plan grew out of a study commission Governor J. Melville Broughton created in 1944.
-
Local 403 petitions for student support in a campaign over university wages
After the legislature approved a 20 percent raise for state employees and the university dropped a wartime bonus, Local 403 workers circulated petitions and flyers asking students for support. Under shop steward Rebecca Clark laundry workers won wage increases, safer workspaces and better schedules.
-
Milton Julian opens the Clothing Cupboard on West Franklin Street
Milton's Clothing Cupboard was among the businesses started on West Franklin in 1947 and 1948. It later moved to East Franklin, where it stayed until the mid-1990s.
-
Mr. and Mrs. W. V. Fryer give a Baldwin organ to the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church
During Irving Birdseye's pastorate the Fryers gave a new Baldwin organ in memory of R. H. Claytor Sr., and also carpeted the sanctuary's pulpit and aisles.
-
North Carolina Memorial Hospital and the medical center, from
The Good Health Plan of 1947 funded a four-year medical school and teaching hospital at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina Memorial Hospital admitted its first patients in September 1952. It ended racial segregation in 1965, became UNC Hospitals in 1989 and the UNC Health Care System in 1998, and with the cancer and neurosciences hospitals made the town a medical center employing about 7,000 people by 2010.
-
Orange County breeders organize the Spotted Poland China Breeders Association
Hog breeders formed a county Spotted Poland China association in 1947, building on 4-H pig chains started by the Chapel Hill Rotary Club and the Sears-Roebuck Foundation. It had 65 members four years later.
-
Orville Campbell starts the Colonial Press in Carrboro
Established in 1947, the Colonial Press did commercial printing for the university and state agencies and had 20 workers by 1953. Its owner also wrote the football song All the Way Choo-Choo.
-
The Farmers Mutual Exchange opens a pulpwood yard in Carrboro
In 1947 the Exchange began buying pulpwood at its Carrboro warehouse, paying cash for any amount from a wagonload up. The book calls this new market the main advance in county farm forestry.
-
The New Hope community helps build Camp New Hope for Orange Presbytery
Beginning in 1947 the New Hope Grange community contributed a good deal toward building Camp New Hope, which belonged to Orange Presbytery. The camp was also open to other youth groups, among them 4-H clubs and Boy Scouts.
-
The Orange Hosiery Mill starts at Efland
Opened in 1947, the Orange Hosiery Mill was the only one of Efland's four family hosiery plants under corporate ownership. Together the four employed about 100.
-
The William Edward McPherson House is built on Nash Street in West Hillsborough
The 2017 Hillsborough architectural survey records the William Edward McPherson House at 303 Nash Street and dates it to 1947. The McPherson family, whose Edward (Pete) McPherson managed Hillsboro's Black All-Stars baseball team in these years, owned several lots along the west side of Nash Street.
-
The first section of the new Chapel Hill High School opens on West Franklin Street
After five years in borrowed rooms, Chapel Hill's white high school moved into a new building on West Franklin Street, whose first section was paid for largely with insurance money from the 1942 fire. That section was nearly ready in late 1946, and the 1947 school year opened with an assembly in front of the new building.
-
Cates's Esso station in Hillsborough is named the cleanest Esso station in North Carolina
A statewide survey by the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey picked C. H. Cates's Esso station in Hillsborough as the cleanest Esso station in North Carolina, ahead of stations in Elizabeth City and Durham. The company arranged to name him on its Esso Reporter broadcast over WPTF.
-
The Hickory House restaurant opens in downtown Hillsborough
E. W. Godfrey's Hickory House opened to the public at noon on a Saturday after an informal inspection the night before, and became a regular meeting place for town merchants and clubs. In May 1948 it installed air conditioning, which the paper called a first for a Hillsboro business.
-
Orange County polio chapter reports buying an infant-size iron lung
In its annual report, the Orange County chapter of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis said it had spent $500 in direct aid to polio patients and bought a $550 infant-size iron lung, kept for the time being at Watts Hospital.
-
Hillsboro's Black baseball team opens its season at McPherson's Baseball Park before a record crowd
The News of Orange County's column for the Black community reported that the baseball season opened at McPherson's Baseball Park on Sunday, April 6, before a record crowd; the home team lost to the Roxboro Stars and on Easter Monday to the Graham Stars.
-
Journey of Reconciliation comes to Chapel Hill
Interracial riders testing segregation on interstate buses reached Chapel Hill on April 12, 1947. The next day police arrested four of them at the bus station and a white cab driver struck rider James Peck. Convicted in Orange County, Bayard Rustin, Igal Roodenko and Joe Felmet surrendered at the Hillsborough courthouse on March 21, 1949 to serve chain-gang sentences.
-
Paul Henderson reopens the restored Colonial Inn in Hillsborough
Col. Paul Henderson bought the run-down inn on West King Street in 1946 and restored it as a hotel and dining room, managed by Martin Henderson. About 100 people came to the formal opening of the dining hall, a Hillsboro Merchants Association dinner addressed by R. B. House.
-
Joseph Felmet is tried in Chapel Hill Recorder's Court on the bus seating charge and sentenced to the roads
Felmet's trial, put off in May while Bayard Rustin and Igal Roodenko were tried, was held in Chapel Hill Recorder's Court on June 24, 1947. He was sentenced to the county roads, appealed to Superior Court and posted a $50 bond.
-
A bronze plaque honoring Lt. George Howard Jr. is placed at the Naval Armory
A plaque to naval officer Lt. George Howard Jr. was put up under the armory's portico, where it still hangs.
-
Mrs. Walter D. Toy sells her West Franklin Street home for business use
Mrs. Walter D. Toy sold the house she and her late husband had owned since the late 1890s to Margaret Davis Haywood of Durham, and the lot was to be used for business. The Weekly tied the sale to the business district's spread west along Franklin Street and noted talk of an A&P store on the site.
-
Dr. S. A. Nathan opens the Curve Inn, a curb-service stand on Strowd Hill
Dr. S. A. Nathan opened the Curve Inn, a curb-service place on the Durham road halfway down Strowd Hill, with his son Marx as co-manager. It sold beer, sandwiches and fried chicken and was known for the pronto pup, a batter-dipped hot dog.
-
Glenn T. Proffit succeeds R. H. Claytor as Orange County school superintendent
Glenn Theodor Proffit, a Wilkes County native who had led high schools in Clinton, Harnett County and Dunn, took over the county schools in July 1947 and served until 1951.
-
Morris Telephone Company switches Hillsborough to dial telephones in a new exchange building
The Morris Telephone Company of Roxboro replaced Hillsborough's hand-crank telephones with a dial system housed in a new brick exchange on East King Street, begun in March 1947 at an estimated cost of $40,000 with equipment. The cutover was set for 4 p.m. on Monday, September 1.
-
Occoneechee Speedway, Hillsborough
Bill France and four partners chartered a company in September 1947 to build a one-mile dirt oval by the old Occoneechee Farm, and it opened in June 1948. The track held a race in NASCAR's first Strictly Stock season in 1949, was renamed Orange Speedway in 1954, and closed after Richard Petty won its last race on September 15, 1968.
-
The Terrace View supper club opens a new building beside its first one
George J. Captain, who ran the Terrace View, held the official opening of a new building with a main floor and a mezzanine, added to the old one, which was kept for private parties. Ads that fall invited students to dine and dance in its "NEW home".
-
Chapel Hill NAACP holds its first meeting at the Community Center
On October 23, 1947, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro branch of the NAACP held its first official meeting at the Negro Community Center, now the Hargraves Center. The branch, which marked 75 years in 2022, gave Black residents a civil-rights organization apart from church and school.
-
The League of Women Voters of Chapel Hill applies for recognition
Thirty-three women applied for provisional status as the League of Women Voters of Chapel Hill, raising the required finance money that fall. The league later became the League of Women Voters of the Chapel Hill Area in 1997 and of Orange, Durham and Chatham Counties in 2001.
-
Fire destroys the Farmers Exchange livestock market near Hillsborough
A fire of unknown origin leveled the Farmers Exchange livestock pens and office on the old Durham road near Hillsborough. The loss was put at $15,000; the workers escaped, but 13 to 20 cattle and 18 hogs died.
-
A bus route begins running through West Hillsborough
Until 1948, when a bus line started running through its streets, mill families without cars had no easy way to reach downtown Hillsborough, nearly a mile away, or the rest of the county.
-
Archie Royal Davis becomes architect for the Orange County schools
In 1948 the Durham architect Archie Royal Davis became architect for the Orange County school system. His work for the county included Cedar Grove and Efland-Cheeks schools for Black children, the first Cameron Park School building, Central High's 1959-60 main building and Central Elementary.
-
Architect James Webb designs a modernist house on Round Hill Road for Norman Eliason
One of Webb's first Chapel Hill commissions was a modest low-gabled house for English professor Norman Eliason and his wife, with a broad carport at the front and a covered walk leading to the door.
-
Carl Boettcher carves the Circus Parade for the Circus Room
University woodcarver Carl Boettcher carved the Circus Parade, a redwood frieze nearly 25 feet long based on William Meade Prince's drawings, for the Circus Room snack bar in the Monogram Club building (now Jackson Hall).
-
Charlie McAdams and George Crawford Amick open the A & M Grill in Mebane
Charlie McAdams Sr., who had sold barbecue from a service station kitchen since 1947, opened the A & M Grill with building owner George Crawford Amick. The name joined their two initials.
-
George Campbell and his father build a stone house on North Graham Street
On a lot owned by George Campbell, he and his father John Wesley Campbell, helped by the other Campbell sons, designed and built a small one-story fieldstone house at 203 North Graham Street, finished in 1948. It is the only one of the family's Northside stone houses whose stonework runs up into the gable.
-
George Kirkland, Chapel Hill's first African American dentist, is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
George Kirkland (1899-1948), the first Black dentist in Chapel Hill, was buried in the cemetery.
-
Hyconeechee Regional Library is established
The three county library systems incorporated as one region to enlarge book collections, run a shared bookmobile and provide trained supervision. The regional board held its second meeting on September 13, 1948 at the Confederate Memorial Library in Hillsboro, with Sydney Green of Orange County as president and Mrs. Douglas Davis as regional librarian.
-
J. L. Phelps wins the county corn contest with 136.4 bushels an acre
In the 1948 Bank of Chapel Hill contest eleven growers topped 100 bushels an acre. The winner, with 136.4 bushels, was J. L. Phelps, from the county's sandy tobacco section.
-
James Welch Patton becomes director of the Southern Historical Collection
Patton succeeded J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton as director of the Southern Historical Collection at the UNC library and taught a North Carolina history course each year while he held the post.
-
Lattisville Grove Baptist Church builds a Gothic Revival frame church
Lattisville Grove Baptist Church near Caldwell builds a frame church in the Gothic Revival manner in 1948, late for the style.
-
Lt. Gov. Alexander Graham has Watts Carr remodel Montrose as a Colonial Revival house
In 1948 Lt. Gov. Alexander Graham and his wife hired Durham architect Watts Carr to turn the Victorian house at Montrose into a Colonial Revival one, with a high hipped roof, side wings and a Georgian Revival entrance. Carr helped work in mantels, doors and trim from old Orange County houses, including double doors from the Burwell School.
-
Orange County abolishes the office of treasurer
The treasurer, first called trustee, had held county money since 1778 without any power over spending. The office ended in 1948.
-
Ridge Road School reports 75 pupils and a 149-book library
The principal's report for 1948-49 counted 75 children enrolled, 57 in average attendance, with the sixth and seventh grades the largest group at 40. The school's equipment was a globe, a flag, word cards, art supplies and a library of 149 books.
-
Ted Danziger names the passage to his Rathskeller Amber Alley
Danziger gave the name Amber Alley to the passageway off East Franklin Street that led down to his new Rathskeller. The Weekly said the name came from the yellow lanterns along its walls, not from the novel Forever Amber.
-
Ted Danziger opens the Rathskeller in the basement of his father's candy shop
Edward Danziger's son Ted opened the Rathskeller in the basement of the Danziger candy store on Franklin Street. The Hall of Fame credits it with being the first local restaurant to serve draft beer.
-
The A&P leaves East Franklin for a new store on the old Toy lot on West Franklin Street
The grocery chain moved off East Franklin into a building it put up on the former Walter Dallum Toy property, bought for the purpose in 1947. Rose's store then spread into the space the A&P had left.
-
The News of Orange County is sold to E. J. Hamlin
In 1948 the News of Orange County changed hands again, passing to E. J. Hamlin.
-
The county board hires supervisors of instruction for its Black and white schools
The board decided to hire supervisors of instruction and chose Norma Snipes for the Black schools and later Cora Paul Bomar for the white schools. In 1955 the state ended Snipes's position under a rule of one supervisor per hundred teachers, and she went to teach at Efland-Cheeks.
-
The county board moves Murphey School's seventh grade to Hillsboro
Many Murphey-district families had been sending children to Hillsboro, some riding the bus against the rules, and in 1947 the board agreed to keep the seventh grade at Murphey only until numbers justified a move. In 1948, with about seventy pupils left, it sent the seventh grade to the Hillsboro school.
-
UNC re-establishes its School of Education
The university, which had discontinued its School of Education in 1933, set it up again at Chapel Hill in 1948.
-
William Friday serves as assistant dean of students at UNC in Chapel Hill
After receiving his law degree from UNC in 1948, William Friday was assistant dean of students and later acting dean of students on the Chapel Hill campus until 1951, when he became assistant to Consolidated University president Gordon Gray.
-
William Sloan opens Sloan's Drugstore on East Franklin Street
Sloan opened his drugstore in the store where D. Pender's grocery had been. It lasted until the mid-1970s, when Spanky's Restaurant took the space.
-
The county board approves electric wiring for five rural schools for Black children
The Orange County board voted to electrify five rural schools for Black children, asking each community to pay half the cost. Ridge Road School had two electric lights in each room by the late 1940s, but when it was wired is not known.
-
The county board sells the former Wardsville and Cool Spring school sites
On January 5, 1948 the county board confirmed the sale of the Wardsville school site to D. D. Jones of Durham for $100, and on March 1 it confirmed the sale of the unused two-room Cool Springs school to C. C. McClees of Durham for $400. Both had been schools for Black children in the Murphy district.
-
Fire guts Pete McPherson's cafe and pool hall in West Hillsborough
A fire that started in a defective flue gutted the frame and brick building near the Black school in West Hillsboro where Pete McPherson ran a cafe with a pool and beer hall. Most of the stock was saved, but all the pool tables were lost.
-
Hillsboro Speedway, Inc. buys the Occoneechee Farm racetrack tract
W. S. Murchison and J. R. Rogers sold two hundred acres of the old Occoneechee Farm, including its horse track, to Hillsboro Speedway, Inc., the company Bill France and four partners had chartered to build a stock car track. France had spotted the track while flying over Orange County.
-
P. L. and Lloyd M. Senter open their new drugstore building next to Lloyd-Ray Hardware
Father and son pharmacists P. L. Senter and Lloyd M. Senter held a formal opening for their new Carrboro drugstore building, with a new soda fountain, on the evening of January 27, 1948. They treated it as the store's fifteenth anniversary.
-
Fire damages the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority house, the old Graham home on Battle Lane
A fire that began in the attic of the Alpha Gamma Delta house on Battle Lane, built for Edward Kidder Graham and still owned by his son, did about $6,000 in damage and left nine students without a home. Students carried out the furniture within ten minutes while a crowd of about 650 watched.
-
An Orange County Superior Court jury convicts Felmet and the other three Chapel Hill bus defendants
A jury found Andrew S. Johnson, Bayard Rustin, Igal Roodenko and Joseph Felmet guilty of breaking the bus seating law, and Judge Chester Morris sentenced each to 30 days. The men, defended by C. J. Gates, Herman L. Taylor and E. R. Avent, appealed to the North Carolina Supreme Court and posted bond.
-
Architect H. Raymond Weeks presents plans for a school for Black children in Cedar Grove Township
H. Raymond Weeks showed the Orange County Board of Education his design for a consolidated school for Black pupils in Cedar Grove Township. The board sent the plans to the Federal Works Agency, which lent school systems money for architects' fees.
-
The Farmers Mutual livestock market near Hillsborough reopens in a new auction building
A new auction building with a sale ring, loading ramps, automatic scales and offices replaced the one lost to fire in December, and regular Monday sales were set to resume on March 15.
-
Political scientist Donald Hayman joins the Institute of Government staff
Recommended by political science chair Charles B. Robson when Coates wanted help screening Patrol recruits, Hayman was hired on the spot as an assistant director, the first non-lawyer on the staff since accountant T. N. Grice. He took the place of Terry Sanford, who had left to practice law in Fayetteville.
-
The district board of health extends its ordinances to Lee County
The District Board of Health for Orange, Person, Chatham and Lee counties met at the Bank of Chapel Hill and extended the district's milk and excreta disposal ordinances to Lee County, which had joined the district in September 1946. Collier Cobb Jr. chaired the board.
-
Hillsborough Presbyterian Church begins its educational building
After gifts starting in 1943 and a December 1947 drive that reached half the cost, the church started work on its educational wing in May 1948 and finished it that November.
-
Occoneechee Speedway opens
Occoneechee Speedway, a one-mile dirt oval that Bill France and four North Carolina partners built on the old Occoneechee Farm horse track outside Hillsborough, opened with a 100-mile NASCAR stock car race won by Fonty Flock.
-
Health officer urges typhoid shots after a case in Hillsboro
District Health Officer O. David Garvin urged Orange County residents to take the health department's typhoid vaccinations after a case of typhoid fever occurred in Hillsboro. Clinics were held at the Chapel Hill and Hillsboro health departments on Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings, and he advised sound privies and tested water.
-
Fowler's Food Store opens its new building on West Franklin Street
Fowler's Food Store, successor to the old Model Market, held a grand opening in a new 80-by-200-foot building on West Franklin Street, with a parking lot reaching through to Rosemary Street. Robert L. Fowler of Chapel Hill and Marvin M. Fowler of Durham owned the store.
-
Piney Mountain School closes and its pupils go to Morris Grove School
The county consolidated Piney Mountain School, one of its Black schools, with Morris Grove School. A new gravel road into the area let a bus carry the children out; the school had been kept open only because no bus could reach it.
-
Farmers Mutual opens its new farm supply warehouse on Margaret Lane
The farmers' cooperative Farmers Mutual, Inc. opened its new Hillsborough warehouse with a ribbon-cutting by manager J. H. McAdams before a large crowd of county farmers. The building replaced a machinery shed the co-op had used for eight years to buy supplies and market grain, poultry and eggs.
-
Polio postpones the opening of Orange County schools twice
With 12 polio cases counted in the county by early August, Superintendent Glenn T. Proffitt, on the advice of health director O. David Garvin, moved the school opening from September 1 to September 7. After a second postponement the county schools opened on Monday, September 13, 1948, for about 4,000 pupils.
-
Chapel Hill's polio quarantine on children is lifted
The month long mandatory quarantine of children sixteen and under, imposed during a polio outbreak in Chapel Hill and the vicinity, was ended, though District Health Officer O. David Garvin asked parents to keep children close to home and discouraged trips to the movies. He and the university physician notified the Veterans' Club and Graham Memorial that they could reopen.
-
Hillsboro's Black All-Stars beat the town's white All-Stars at McPherson's Park
In a Sunday game at McPherson's Park billed as the Stars against the Stars, Hillsboro's Black All-Stars defeated the town's white All-Stars 13 to 10.
Suggest a correction to an entry →
A dated event is a fact, filed on the page of the subject it belongs to: a person, a place, a theme, or a named event or history. Pages are subjects, with their own works and sources; the Place, community, or institution filter also gathers the institutions that recur in the entries without a page of their own. The page opens on the highlights; a search or any filter looks through every dated event and storyline, and each filter’s counts say how many entries choosing it would show alongside the others. A storyline is a longer history that gathers related dated events, and each storyline’s page lists its own. Counts give dated events and storylines separately. Dates come from the sources named on the cards and from the index’s event pages; where sources disagree, the card follows the county records. Entries marked approximate or needing research say so on the card; the rest were checked against the source named on it. The correction link under the entries opens the contact form; name the entry and its date and the Friends will check the source. Suggest an event →
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 1, 2026.
