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Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1910s
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The Orange County Red Cross chapter organizes permanently under John W. Graham
At a court house meeting on July 5, 1917, the chapter read its national authority to organize with jurisdiction over all of Orange County except Chapel Hill and elected Maj. John W. Graham chairman, with Henrietta P. Collins as secretary and Margaret Forrest as treasurer. The Red Cross Central Committee's recognition letter followed on July 17.
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The Council of Defense forms a committee to handle soldiers' business affairs
On July 9, 1917, the Orange County Council of Defense formed a Soldiers' Business Aid Committee, chaired by Frank Nash, to attend to any business a soldier wanted looked after. The Red Cross later cited it as the reason the county needed no separate civilian relief committee.
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The county board pays for a school for Black children at Jordan's Grove
On July 9, 1917 the county board agreed to pay J. L. Wilson $119 to build a school for Black children "at Jordan's Grove and Grover," near Caldwell. The frame field school ran until 1951; the 1993 survey found it the only Black field school left in the county, badly deteriorated.
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Mary Lily Kenan Flagler Bingham dies, leaving the university a fund for professors
Mary Lily Kenan Flagler Bingham, the South's richest widow, died at Louisville, and her will gave the university an endowment expected to pay $75,000 a year to be known as the Kenan Professors Fund. Litigation over her estate delayed the money for years.
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Nurse Mrs. R. B. Hayes starts a surgical dressings class in the Hillsborough Red Cross room
Mrs. R. B. Hayes, a registered nurse, began a class in surgical dressings that met Tuesday and Friday mornings in the Red Cross room, John Norwood's old law office east of the court house, which J. Cheshire Webb lent for as long as the Red Cross needed it. Notice of the classes went to Cedar Grove.
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Orange County women organize the Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense
About fifty women representing every women's organization in the county met at the Hillsborough court house on August 1, 1917, and elected Mrs. J. Cheshire Webb chairman, Lula Cassidy secretary and Mrs. Isaac Manning treasurer. On Labor Day they replaced township units with one central committee of eleven departments.
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The Orange County Red Cross takes on a quota of 200 knitted sets for soldiers
Headquarters allotted the Hillsborough-based chapter 200 sets of a sweater, muffler, socks and wristlets, and on August 20, 1917 the executive committee named committees to find knitters and raise money for wool, asking the Cedar Grove branch for ten to twenty-five sets. By September 1 Mrs. C. H. Robertson had sixty experienced knitters waiting for yarn.
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Black residents of Hillsborough organize a Red Cross auxiliary
The Orange County Red Cross heard at its August 1, 1917 meeting that Hillsborough's Black residents had organized an auxiliary, which was ready for instruction in surgical dressings and already knitting in cotton. J. Cheshire Webb lent separate Red Cross rooms for white and Black workers.
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Cedar Grove organizes a Red Cross branch
By August 1, 1917, a Red Cross branch had been organized at Cedar Grove and was making surgical dressings. In the fall the county chapter thanked Cedar Grove for giving it the premiums from the community fair.
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Hillsborough gives a Labor Day dinner for Orange County's first drafted men
On Labor Day, September 3, 1917, the county honored its drafted men with a dinner for white men at the warehouse and a separate dinner for Black men at the Black school house. Lily Hamilton's Comfort Bag Committee gave bags to the first seven men called from the county.
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The Orange County Red Cross grants New Hope Church a branch
The chapter's executive committee read and granted New Hope Church's application to form a Red Cross branch on September 7, 1917, and filed Cedar Grove's certificate of organization at the same meeting. By December New Hope was sending surgical dressings to Hillsborough for shipment with Cedar Grove's.
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J. Cheshire Webb is named Orange County's food administrator
On September 20, 1917, State Food Administrator Henry A. Page appointed J. Cheshire Webb of Hillsborough food administrator for Orange County, with R. A. Eubanks as administrator for Chapel Hill. The record says no mill in the county broke a Food Administration rule.
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R. H. Claytor becomes superintendent of the Orange County schools
R. H. Claytor took office as county school superintendent in September 1917 and served until July 1947. Merging the small rural schools was one of his first goals.
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Wartime enrollment reaches 1,034
Graham had expected fewer than 800 students, but by October 1, 1917, 1,034 had registered, more than five hundred of them in the military courses. Entering freshmen averaged seventeen, two years younger than in 1915, and about two hundred students left during the term.
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The Orange County Red Cross reports 455 members at its first annual meeting
At a public meeting in the Hillsborough court house, chairman John W. Graham reported 455 members since June 4, branches at Cedar Grove and New Hope, an auxiliary for Black residents, a case of 1,453 surgical dressings shipped to Atlanta, about 150 knitters, and $1,535.43 given. The officers were re-elected, and Capt. Stuart Allen of Canada's Princess Patricia regiment spoke on the fighting in France.
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Eugene C. Branson urges county teachers to back the food conservation drive
At a court house meeting of teachers and school committeemen called by J. C. Webb, Branson explained why food conservation mattered, and Mrs. Isaac Manning described her work in the south end of the county. Forty-two teachers attended, and the meeting laid the plan to register every woman at her school house on October 27.
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The Chapel Hill Red Cross re-elects its officers and names delegates to the state Red Cross congress
At the chapter's second meeting, held under its constitution on October 17, 1917, members re-elected the officers except treasurer Mrs. J. H. Pratt, who resigned, and chose Dr. J. M. Bullitt in her place. George Howe, Bullitt and Mrs. K. J. Brown were named delegates to the state Red Cross congress in Raleigh on November 1 and 2.
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Hillsborough men enlist in a Home Guard detachment of the state militia
Answering Gov. Bickett's call, the Council of Defense chose 25 men on October 20, 1917, and they enlisted for the duration at the Hillsborough court house on October 22 and 24, electing Shepperd Strudwick first lieutenant. The county bought their uniforms, and they drilled twice a week until the influenza ban on meetings.
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A Liberty Bonfire on the court house square rallies Hillsborough for the Second Liberty Loan
On the night of Tuesday, October 23, young Billy Hayes lit a Liberty Bonfire at the corner of the court house square, and seven speakers gave three-minute talks. The county's four banks sold $132,550 in second-loan bonds, and a women's committee under Mrs. James H. Webb raised $79,800.
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Orange County women sign the food pledge at their school houses
On Saturday, October 27, 1917, committees at every school house in the county registered the women of the district and asked each to sign the Food Administration pledge. A house-to-house canvass of every housewife followed from October 29 to November 4.
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Governor Bickett gives a wartime University Day address
A month after the term opened, Governor Thomas W. Bickett spoke at University Day in a chilly Memorial Hall, denouncing slackers. Marshals led the academic procession through ranks of uniformed men.
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More than 200 Orange County women register for war service
In October 1917 the Woman's Committee held the Registration of Women for Service, and more than two hundred women filled out and signed service cards.
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Robert and Mollie Malone open Orange County Training School on the old Hackney campus
Principal Robert E. Malone, his wife Mollie Holmes Malone as domestic science teacher, and two other teachers began classes in academic, industrial and farm subjects at the county's new training school for Black students. Black residents had raised $3,000 toward the board's 1916 purchase of the Hackney campus on Merritt Mill Road.
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The Carolina battalion begins digging practice trenches east of the campus
Under Capt. Allen, the student battalion began a system of front-line, support and communication trenches, dugouts and barbed wire on a field behind Judge Brockwell's place, to train for the war in France. By late November the Tar Heel reported the works nearly complete.
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Orange County raises about $2,000 in a Y.M.C.A. war fund drive
A Y.M.C.A. drive ran November 11-19, 1917, led by N. W. Brown, G. K. Collins and T. M. Grant. At a packed court house rally on November 18, with Maj. John W. Graham presiding, pledges reached $1,400, and the rest of the $2,000 was raised afterward.
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The Orange County Red Cross fills its quota of 133 Christmas packets for soldiers
Asked to furnish 133 Christmas packets for soldiers, the chapter put Mary Spurgeon in charge on November 12, 1917, raised money in the community for the packets not yet paid for, and had the whole quota shipped by December 1. In January she read the executive committee letters from soldiers who received them.
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A Christmas membership drive signs the Orange County Red Cross's quota of 400 members
J. Cheshire Webb led a membership drive in the week before Christmas 1917, run from an office in the Orange Trust Company room, and reported on January 5, 1918 that the chapter had reached its quota of 400 members. Half the drive's receipts stayed with the chapter and let it pay its bills.
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A Black county committee raises $525 for the United War Work drive
In the United War Work drive, a county committee of Black residents led by Prof. R. W. Malcom, with Rev. A. E. W. Wilson for Hillsborough and Rev. J. M. Hackney as secretary in Chapel Hill, raised $525 of the county's $7,485.
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Baptist pastor S. W. Oldham and his wife nurse the sick in the flu epidemic
During the influenza epidemic the Baptist pastor S. W. Oldham and his wife cared for the sick of Hillsborough, a neighbor recalled in the Baptist paper Charity and Children.
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Chapel Hill Red Cross treasurer Dr. J. B. Bullitt resigns to enlist in the Army Medical Corps
In the spring of 1918 Dr. J. B. Bullitt, who had set up the chapter's monthly subscription plan, resigned as treasurer to enlist in the Medical Corps of the United States Army. Dr. J. M. Bell succeeded him, and after about a month Dr. W. M. Dey took over when Bell went to Washington for government work.
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Durham Hosiery sets up looping machines in a Center Street house
After the former school at 109 Center Street was lengthened at its north end, the company, out of room in Mill No. 4, installed extra looping machines there for closing the toes of hose. It became a house again a few years later, once the mill was enlarged.
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Eight local school tax districts raise $10,650 for their schools
Special school taxes supplied $10,650 of the county school fund: $4,000 from the Chapel Hill district and $6,650 from seven other local tax districts.
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Farmer and lumber dealer Brodie Lloyd builds a large bungalow at Calvander
Around 1918 Brodie Lloyd, who farmed and ran a lumber business in Carrboro, had a roomy bungalow built on Old NC 86. The report ranks it among the biggest and best kept in the township.
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Federal and state agriculture departments survey Orange County's soils
Crews from the U.S. and North Carolina departments of agriculture mapped the county's soils during the 1918 field season. E. S. Vanatta's report, published in 1921, identified twenty-three soil types.
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Former mayor Algernon Barbee is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
Algernon Barbee (1840-1918), once mayor of Chapel Hill, was buried in the cemetery.
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Forty-one of the county's 78 public schools have a single teacher
Sixteen of the 50 white schools and 25 of the 28 Black schools had one teacher; only one Black school, with four teachers, tried any high school work. The survey named these small, scattered schools as a root problem of the county system.
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Frederick Koch's first playwriting class meets with twelve women and Thomas Wolfe
Koch's new playwriting course, English 31, opened in the fall of 1918 with thirteen students. Twelve were women students; Thomas Wolfe was the only man, since most male students were then in army uniform.
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Henry Guthrie opens a movie theatre on West Franklin Street
Henry "Buddy" Guthrie opened a picture house just west of Graham Street, in the blocks where Black families were settling. Under Davie O'Kelly it became the Standard Theatre.
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Ida Lloyd becomes the first clerk in the county superintendent's office
Ida Lloyd was hired as office assistant to the county superintendent in 1918, the first to hold the post, and worked under R. H. Claytor, Glenn Proffit and G. P. Carr for about forty-two years.
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John Nolen recommends a site for the engineering building
As plans took shape for the School of Applied Science building paid for by the 1917 bonds, planner John Nolen advised placing it between Memorial Hall and the Peabody Building and chose a spot for a flagpole. He promised broader campus plans by the June 1918 commencement.
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Of 5,593 school-age children in Orange County, 4,131 are enrolled
The school census listed 3,639 white and 1,954 Black children aged 6 to 21; 2,844 white and 1,287 Black children enrolled in 1918-19. About one child in four of school age was not on any school roll.
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Old Commons Hall is taken down
The 1885 building that had served the university as ballroom, gymnasium, dining hall and basketball court was still in use in March 1918 but was gone by January 1919, when the Tar Heel wrote that 'Old Commons is no more'.
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Only 237 of the county's public school pupils, two of them Black, do high school work
About 5 percent of the 4,131 enrolled pupils were in high school grades: 235 white and 2 Black. Nine schools offered some high school work, only two a full course, and two townships had no school beyond the elementary grades.
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Orange County runs fifty public schools for white children and twenty-eight for Black children
The survey counted 78 county public schools, 50 white and 28 Black, under one superintendent. More than half the schoolhouses stood off any traveled road, and with roads close to impassable in some months he could get to each school about once a year.
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Orange County spends $7.89 per enrolled child on its public schools
The county's school fund from all sources was $44,178.20, or $7.89 a child, about a dollar under the state average; the survey pointed out that most states spent over $25 a pupil. Per pupil actually in daily attendance the cost came to $15.22.
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Orange County women's committees sell $59,600 in Third Liberty Loan bonds
With Harriet M. Berry of Chapel Hill as county chairman, women organized in every township made $59,600 of the county's $99,150 in Third Liberty Loan sales, more than two-thirds of the allotment. Mrs. T. J. Wilson's Chapel Hill committee took 85 subscriptions for $18,500 and the Hillsborough committee raised $36,000.
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Orange County's schoolhouses are valued at $110,000, $10,000 of it in Black schools
The survey valued the white schoolhouses at about $100,000 and the Black schoolhouses at about $10,000, not counting sites, which would raise the total past $125,000. The Chapel Hill school alone was worth $35,000, about a third of the whole.
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The Bivins Liner Company begins making tobacco hogshead liners in Hillsborough
Founded in 1918 as the Bivins Liner Company and later called the Hines Liner Company, the firm made the hoops that hold tobacco hogshead heads in place. It also ran a lumber and planing mill nearby.
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The Carolina Playmakers and the founding of UNC Press
Frederick Koch's Carolina Playmakers, organized in 1918, and the University of North Carolina Press, founded in 1922, made Chapel Hill a place where plays and books were made as well as read.
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The Carolina Playmakers are organized
Frederick H. Koch organized the Carolina Playmakers at UNC.
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The Ernest P. Cox House is built on Bellevue Street
The one-story hip-roofed house with projecting gabled wings and a wraparound porch at 112 Bellevue Street is the best preserved of West Hillsborough's one-story houses of the period.
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The Orange County Red Cross counts 850 knitted articles and 41,396 dressings for
During 1918 the chapter and its branches at Cedar Grove, New Hope and Oaks sent 850 knitted articles to Atlanta and fourteen boxes holding 41,396 bandages and surgical dressings. The history adds that the Black auxiliary did little sewing but drew in Black members.
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The Temple of Truth is organized
Henry Thompson, R. C. Turner and others organized the Temple of Truth, a United Holy Church congregation, and built its church in 1918.
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The power house wing of Mill No. 4 is raised to two full stories
In 1918 Durham Hosiery Mills built the original power house wing of Mill No. 4 up to two full stories and gave it a taller two-story tower on the north side.
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The survey finds the county's Black teachers better schooled than its white teachers
About a quarter of the white teachers had been to college, a sixth to a normal school, and an eighth no further than grammar school. Two-thirds of the Black teachers had attended college, so on schooling alone the survey judged them the better prepared group.
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The trustees approve a three-year wartime engineering degree
Before the SATC arrived, the trustees approved an accelerated engineering course leading to a bachelor's degree in three years, with military training and military French. Students were deferred while enrolled and then went on to army or navy service.
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The university buys Stephen B. Weeks's North Carolina library
After Weeks died in May 1918, the university bought his collection of about 9,000 books and pamphlets on North Carolina. The purchase roughly doubled the North Carolina Collection's book holdings and became its nucleus.
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The university's extension bureau starts a Bureau of Community Drama under Koch
The university's Bureau of Extension added Koch in 1918 to run a community drama division, which lent plays and gave free advice to schools and towns across the state. Requests grew from 40 playbooks in 1919-20 to 2,150 in 1924-25.
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The usual public school term in Orange County runs four months and three weeks
Most white and Black schools alike kept school for four months and three weeks a year. The survey urged the county board to lengthen the term as well as raise pay so Orange could hold trained teachers.
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Three Black school districts have no schoolhouse, and two others meet in log houses
Every white district had a schoolhouse, but the 28 Black districts had only 25: two used churches and one had no place at all. The survey judged every Black school building unsatisfactory, worst at Sunnyside, Merritt's, Cedar Grove and Maple Grove, and the first two were log houses.
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Trustees name the first five Kenan professors
The trustees adopted President Edward Kidder Graham's recommendations for the new Kenan professorships, funded under the will of Mary Lily Kenan Flagler Bingham. Venable was named Kenan Professor of Chemistry, with H. V. Wilson, Edwin Greenlaw, William MacNider and William Cain.
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University Day is canceled because of the influenza epidemic
Fear of the influenza epidemic led the university to cancel its University Day observance in the fall of 1918. The literary societies also failed to meet that fall.
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University janitors organize with the Industrial Workers of the World
Black janitors at the university formed an affiliate of the IWW and weighed a strike for higher wages as the spring term closed. Business manager Charles T. Woollen answered that he would hire a new crew from Durham, and the effort faded. That fall all the campus help lost their jobs when the SATC took over the buildings.
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W. S. Roberson builds a two-store brick building west of the Bank of Chapel Hill
Roberson's building, nearly finished in 1918, held two stores. In the early 1920s the Peoples Bank took the western half and the Lowe brothers' Chapel Hill Hardware the eastern.
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White teachers earn a median $50 a month and Black teachers $35
From visits to 46 schools, the survey put the median white teacher's pay at $50 a month and the median Black teacher's at $35, about $166 a year. Once board was paid, it reckoned, a Black teacher had under $3 a month left for clothes, books and doctors, against about $11 for a white teacher.
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White teachers' pay takes $50.50 of every $100 for the schools, Black teachers' pay $15.60
Of each $100 raised for Orange County schools, $50.50 paid white teachers and $15.60 paid Black teachers. Running costs got $4.30 for white schools and $1.60 for Black schools, building and repairs $7.30, and the Hillsboro and Chapel Hill high schools $2.10 each.
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The Chapel Hill Red Cross moves its workrooms into the Zeta Psi fraternity hall
After its first home, a Main Street store lent by Mayor W. S. Roberson, was sold to the People's Bank, the chapter moved on January 1, 1918, into the lower floor of the Zeta Psi fraternity hall, offered by the university's Upsilon chapter.
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C. H. Robertson becomes chairman of the Orange County Red Cross executive committee
At the chapter's first meeting of 1918, Robertson was elected unanimously to succeed the Rev. Thomas M. Grant, who had moved away, as chairman of the executive committee. He led the committee through the end of the war and signed the chapter's history as its chairman.
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A winter cyclone wrecks the dairy barn at Occoneechee Farm
A storm on a Friday night damaged every building on Julian Carr's Occoneechee Farm and demolished the dairy barn, killing a number of blooded cows. Carr began rebuilding at once.
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Chapel Hill school children organize a Junior Red Cross auxiliary
The Chapel Hill School Auxiliary to the Red Cross was organized in January 1918 with 132 members. The girls sewed refugee garments and hospital supplies, 130 children planted home gardens, and the boys built shipping boxes for the Red Cross in the school basement.
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The Efland excelsior mills burn
Fire destroyed the Efland Excelsior Mills, four miles from Hillsborough, with a loss estimated at $15,000 plus about $3,000 in wood. The fire was believed to have been set.
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The trustees give the faculty a second $250 raise
Following a $250 raise in September 1917, the trustees added another $250 in January 1918, bringing a full professor's top pay to $3,000. Graham turned down the increase in his own salary, from $4,000 to $6,000, that the board had voted at the 1917 commencement.
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W. S. Roberson joins the county's legal advisory board for draft questionnaires
A legal advisory board was formed to help Orange County men fill out the government's draft questionnaires, with Major John W. Graham, Frank Nash and W. S. Roberson as members.
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The county agent buys a carload of pigs to sell to farmers at cost
With extension work revived in wartime, the commissioners advanced money for County Agent Chance to buy young pigs and sell them to county residents for cash at cost. E. S. Vanatta, who came that year to make the soil survey, followed him as agent until February 1921.
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Farmers' Union delegates at Schley ask that no wheat be threshed before July 15
At J. Cheshire Webb's request, the county's Farmers' Union, in convention at Schley on March 30, 1918, resolved to favor a Food Administration rule that no threshing machine start before July 15, to protect crop cultivation. Webb issued the order, and only two farmers broke it; both paid to the Red Cross.
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The county agrees to pay for a home demonstration agent
The commissioners ordered two-thirds of an $800 salary paid for a home demonstration agent, with the school board paying the rest. The work stopped after the war and did not resume until 1935.
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Orange County raises its Third Liberty Loan honor flag at the court house
The county subscribed $99,150 to the Third Liberty Loan against a $75,000 allotment, and on May 9, 1918, raised its Honor Flag at the court house, with Judge Bond of Edenton speaking. Hillsborough had raised its own town Honor Flag at the cross streets on May 2.
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Mrs. J. Cheshire Webb is named the Orange County Red Cross's director of woman's work
At the request of Mrs. John W. Grant, the executive committee named Mrs. J. Cheshire Webb director of woman's work on May 11, 1918, and set supervisors over the work: Sue B. Hayes for surgical dressings, Mrs. S. Strudwick for hospital garments, Mrs. W. H. Webb for supplies and shipping, and Henrietta P. Collins as chief clerk.
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Orange County Red Cross knitters report more than 1,100 garments in seven months
Mrs. C. H. Robertson, chairman of knitting, reported in May 1918 that from September 10, 1917 to April 10, 1918 the chapter bought 381 pounds of yarn for $877.03 and its knitters made 234 sweaters, 211 mufflers, 214 wristlets, 521 socks and 6 helmets. The count included work taken over from the Navy League when its knitting merged into the Red Cross.
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The Orange County Red Cross accepts a branch at Oaks
On May 11, 1918, the chapter's executive committee read and accepted the Oaks community's petition to join as a branch. Oaks joined Cedar Grove and New Hope as branches of the Hillsborough chapter.
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The Orange County Red Cross raises $4,294 in its second War Fund drive
A drive led by F. A. McNeer ran May 20-27, 1918, after ministers across the county preached on Red Cross Sunday, May 19. It raised $4,294.38, and the chapter sent $3,300 to national headquarters and kept about a quarter for local work.
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Jean Blue enlists as a Red Cross nurse and goes to France
Jean Blue enlisted in Unit 65 from Watts Hospital on May 27, 1918, trained at Camp Lee and in New York, and sailed for France at the start of September. At Brest she nursed soldiers with influenza and wounded men on their way home.
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The Orange County Red Cross sends literature to women in outlying communities to start Red Cross work
On May 31, 1918, after accepting the Oaks branch's certificate of organization, the chapter sent Red Cross literature to Nellie Perry at Cane Creek, Mrs. Cain Roberts near St. Mary's and Mrs. Clyde Compton at Carr in hopes of organized work there. Carr became a branch that August.
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Chapel Hill more than doubles its Red Cross War Fund quota
Assessed $500 in the Red Cross War Fund drive of May 1918, the Chapel Hill chapter raised it within a few days and turned in $1,156.60 by the drive's close, under Dr. J. M. Bell with J. S. Holmes.
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Frederick H. Koch is hired as professor of dramatic literature
Recruited by Edwin Greenlaw from the University of North Dakota, where he had founded the Dakota Playmakers, Frederick Henry Koch signed in late May 1918 at $2,500 a year to teach dramatic literature, a title he chose. He arrived that summer meaning to build a folk drama program in North Carolina.
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A subdued wartime commencement honors the governor, Senator Overman and the Rev. W. D. Moss
With about a third of the class of 1918 already in camps, the university gave honorary degrees to Governor Bickett, Senator Lee S. Overman, Edwin Mims and the Presbyterian pastor W. D. Moss. Frederic C. Howe, immigration commissioner at New York, gave the address.
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The Council of Defense extends into township community councils
At a court house meeting on June 15, 1918, J. Cheshire Webb organized community councils of defense for each of the seven townships, choosing the township over the school district as the unit. Their charge was to support every war activity without forming new organizations.
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Marine Samuel Maris Wilkerson of Cedar Grove dies of wounds in France
Samuel Maris Wilkerson of Cedar Grove enlisted in the Marine Corps on December 8, 1917, and served with the 5th Marines in France. Reported wounded on June 15, 1918, he died of his wounds on June 17.
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Hillsborough dedicates a tablet crediting Daniel Boone with an expedition from the Old State House
During a day of patriotic meetings and a war bond drive, Hillsborough dedicated a steel tablet at the site of the Old State House stating that frontiersmen under Richard Henderson, led by Daniel Boone, set out from there for Kentucky on March 17, 1776. A Trading Path tablet was added to the monument on July 4, 1931. The inscription is disputed: the American Revolution tour AmRevNC says Boone was not with the party that left the courthouse that day.
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Orange County pledges three-quarters of its War Savings quota in a June drive
The county's War Savings Stamps quota was $331,400, about $20 a person. A drive June 23-28, 1918, pledged 75 percent of it, and a second drive September 9-14 sought the rest; the county finished with $272,956 pledged and $264,370 sold.
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Kameichi Kato becomes the first Asian student to finish a four-year degree
Kato, from Hiroshima, Japan, graduated with the Class of 1918, the first Asian student to earn a four-year degree at the university. He had organized Epsilon Phi Delta, a society for the study of Japanese-American relations.
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The Class of 1918 plants a shoot of the Davie Poplar
Worried that the lightning-struck Davie Poplar might die, the seniors planted a rooted shoot of it that William Long of Chapel Hill had raised. Both trees were still standing a century later.
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The Orange County Red Cross's June box of 8,000 compresses goes straight to France
The chapter's June 1918 box to headquarters held 8,000 compresses, which were sent on to France without repacking, as the executive committee heard on July 19.
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The university gets an ROTC unit under Lt. Col. Gustave W. S. Stevens
With the university's ROTC application finally approved, the army called Lieutenant Colonel Gustave W. S. Stevens out of retirement in New Orleans and sent him to Chapel Hill in June 1918 to run the program. He stayed on to command the campus when the SATC replaced it.
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Orange County holds a Fourth of July war rally on the UNC campus
At the Governor's request the UNC Summer School invited the county to its July 4, 1918 celebration, and at least 3,000 people came for a parade, a flag raising and S. M. Gattis's address in Memorial Hall. The county Council of Defense met in Gerrard Hall, and Adolph Vermont's pageant on French-American friendship played in Battle's Park.
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The Orange County Red Cross sends $120 for canteen work among troops passing through Raleigh
Answering James H. Pou's appeal, the executive committee voted on John W. Graham's motion on July 19, 1918 to send $120 from chapter funds to Mrs. William Grimes of the Raleigh chapter for troops passing through Raleigh. The same meeting reported War Fund receipts of $4,294.38.
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Eight Orange County women enroll in the U.S. Student Nurse Reserve
A canvass of the county by the Woman's Committee in July 1918 for the U.S. Student Nurse Reserve enrolled eight young women, six white and two Black.
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The Orange County Red Cross grants a branch to Carr precinct
At its August 12, 1918 meeting the chapter granted Carr precinct's petition to become a branch, its fourth after Cedar Grove, New Hope and Oaks. The same meeting heard headquarters' advice to stop giving comfort kits to men leaving for camp.
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A four-church committee raises $504 for Jewish war relief
About the middle of August 1918 a campaign for the Jewish Relief Fund, run by men from the Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian and Episcopal churches, raised $504.
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Palmer Grove Methodist Church is organized
A revival that began on August 4, 1918 in the new Palmer's Grove schoolhouse, about three and a half miles northwest of Hillsboro, closed with the organizing of a Methodist church with seventeen members; the people meant to build a church soon. Lefler and Wager name E. T. Blakely, R. T. Murdock and T. H. Yates among its leaders.
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The Chapel Hill Red Cross starts a conservation committee that ships nut shells for gas masks
The chapter appointed a Committee on Conservation under Mrs. M. H. Stacy on September 1, 1918. On November 20 it shipped four barrels of nut shells for gas masks and seventeen pounds of tin foil.
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The Hillsborough Community Chorus formally organizes
Already singing at patriotic gatherings, the chorus organized at the Hillsborough Library on September 2, 1918, with Mrs. W. D. Benton as director, and gave the Red Cross $73 from an August concert. It later planned four concerts a year to help the Daughters of the Confederacy build a public library as a memorial to the county's Confederate soldiers.
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The Orange County Red Cross forms a canteen committee to give packages to men leaving for camp
On September 2, 1918 the chapter appointed a canteen committee of five women, each to add another, with authority to buy supplies for packages worth up to a dollar for men leaving Hillsborough for camp. In October the Chapel Hill chapter offered to share the cost, since the men came from all parts of the county.
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A War Savings rally in Hillsborough welcomes home wounded volunteer Jim Cheshire
On the night of Registration Day, September 12, 1918, a crowd packed the court house for a War Savings rally to hear two of Pershing's soldiers. One was Jim Cheshire, the first man to volunteer from the town and the first to come home, sent back wounded to train troops. That day 1,727 county men registered for the draft.
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Orange County organizes for the United War Work drive
A court house meeting on September 19, 1918, elected N. W. Brown county chairman for the United War Work drive. The county raised $7,485; Carrboro gave $1,240 on a $500 quota, and Hillsborough Township, under Elizabeth Cornelius, gave $2,300.
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The Students' Army Training Corps takes over the campus
Registration, put off to September 24 and 25, opened a year run by the army: dormitories became Barracks 1 through 8, Swain Hall the Mess Hall, and the year was cut into twelve-week quarters with classes grouped by age. About seven hundred enrolled, nearly all of them required to take a course on the issues of the war, and the commander worked from the Sigma Chi house.
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Capt. J. Stuart Allen returns to command the students outside the SATC
When the Students' Army Training Corps took over the campus in the fall of 1918, about 300 students too young or otherwise ineligible had to room in the village. Capt. J. Stuart Allen, back for a second year, commanded their non-SATC training company, which drilled on the old class field.
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750 University students are inducted into the Students' Army Training Corps
At noon on October 1, 1918, about 750 University students took the oath at the campus flag pole from Lt. Col. Stevens, the commandant, and became members of the Students' Army Training Corps, at the same moment as students at about 500 colleges across the country. President Edward Kidder Graham gave the address, and the corps was reviewed from the steps of the Alumni Building.
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Chapel Hill Red Cross membership grows to 687
The Chapel Hill chapter, which had enrolled 71 members at its first meeting in 1917, counted 687 members on October 1, 1918.
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Orange County's new Board of Health orders churches, schools and theatres closed and forbids all meetings
After the state Council of Defense warned county chairmen of the spread of Spanish influenza, they formed a County Board of Health, which on October 7 ordered the closing of all churches, schools and theatres and forbade meetings of every kind, the disease having already broken out in the community. Red Cross members carried most of the relief work that followed.
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Lt. Joseph Henry Johnston of Chapel Hill is killed in France
Joseph Henry Johnston of Chapel Hill Route 2 volunteered in May 1917, trained at Fort Oglethorpe and became a first lieutenant in the 322nd Infantry, 81st Division. He was killed in France on October 15, 1918.
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The Tar Heel counts some 300 student cases and three deaths as the three-week campus quarantine eases
Confined to the campus for three weeks, the Student Army Training Corps men had their first leave on Saturday, October 19, under orders not to leave town. The paper counted about 300 cases among the students, three deaths and 35 still in the college infirmary, credited the second-year medical students with keeping the toll low, and noted that both of the university's physicians, Dr. Mangum and Dr. MacNider, had fallen ill.
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President Edward Kidder Graham dies of influenza and pneumonia at his home in Chapel Hill
Graham, 42, president since 1914 and regional director of the Student Army Training Corps for the South Atlantic states, died on Saturday night after five days' illness. The SATC battalion escorted the funeral, conducted at the grave by W. D. Moss of the Presbyterian church; Josephus Daniels and Newton D. Baker sent tributes.
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The Orange County Red Cross organizes volunteer nursing for the epidemic
Meeting on October 26, 1918, with the county influenza relief committee, the chapter named T. N. Webb and Nellie Russell to take requests for nurses in the West Hill and Hillsborough school districts and canvassed the town for volunteers. Chester Turner and Ross Turner, a Black man, served as volunteer nurses wherever needed.
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The trustees make Marvin H. Stacy chairman of the faculty with a president's powers
Five days after Graham's death the trustees named his dean, Marvin Hendrix Stacy, chairman of the faculty with the full powers of the presidency. Stacy named Harry W. Chase acting dean of the College of Liberal Arts, and the trustees agreed.
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A Black committee of the women's Liberty Loan organization raises $1,350 in Hillsborough Township
In the Fourth Liberty Loan the Hillsborough Township women's committee included a committee of Black residents, among them Annie Renshaw, Fannie Benton and Christianna Ferribow, who raised $1,350 from 27 Black subscribers.
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Black residents keep an influenza soup kitchen at the Black school
During the 1918 epidemic in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, Black residents ran a soup kitchen at the Black school and looked after the sick in their settlement, work the Chapel Hill Red Cross history singled out.
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Carrboro opens an influenza diet kitchen in the mill club rooms
When influenza spread from the university to Carrboro, a volunteer nursing committee worked night and day, and J. S. Carr gave the club rooms for a diet kitchen and paid its costs. For two weeks Mrs. R. B. Lawson and Mrs. Arthur Blackwood served at least seven gallons of soup a day, and orderlies checked homes each morning.
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Cedar Grove Township counts about 375 influenza cases and four deaths
Cedar Grove Township had about 375 cases of Spanish influenza and only four deaths, and the epidemic there lasted until the second week of December 1918.
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Chapel Hill women nurse influenza patients as volunteers in the University hospital
When influenza broke out after the University opened in the fall of 1918, the Red Cross offered its help to the physicians, and for weeks Helen Shell, Katherine Bourne and Mrs. K. J. Brown nursed as volunteers in the University hospital while other women helped stricken families in the village.
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Chase takes charge of the college and then the faculty after two deaths
Chase was appointed acting dean of the College of Liberal Arts after President Edward Kidder Graham died in October 1918, and chairman of the faculty after Marvin H. Stacy died in January 1919.
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Eno Mill opens an influenza diet kitchen at West Hill school
When influenza reached the Eno Mill district, the mill opened and paid for a diet kitchen at the West Hill school for about seven weeks, run by home demonstration agent Elizabeth Cornelius. It fed as many as 150 people a day, and the mill hired nurses for the sick.
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Influenza epidemic strikes Chapel Hill
Spanish influenza swept the University in early October 1918, putting the campus and its student soldiers under a three-week quarantine. By October 23 about 300 students had been ill and three had died, and President Edward Kidder Graham died of influenza and pneumonia on October 26.
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Members of the Woman's Association make 120 gauze masks for the campus Hospital Corps
Meeting in small groups during the epidemic, women of the university's Woman's Association sewed 120 gauze masks and sent them to the infirmary for the Hospital Corps. The county's 1919 war record, summing up the association's work that fall, counts 150 influenza masks.
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Nurse Bessie Roper dies after nursing UNC students through influenza
Miss Roper left a paid nursing job to care for university students with influenza and stayed at her post while ill herself until doctors made her stop. She developed pneumonia and died within days.
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Orange County subscribes $331,700 to the Fourth Liberty Loan despite the influenza ban
The county meeting planned for Liberty Day, October 12, 1918, was called off when the epidemic closed public gatherings, but Orange subscribed $331,700 against a $300,000 allotment. Hillsborough Township gave about $175,000 on a $55,000 allotment, and the women's committees raised $227,300.
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The Orange County Red Cross ships 2,682 pounds of clothing for Belgian relief
In October 1918 the chapter shipped eleven boxes holding 2,682 pounds of clothing for Belgian relief and sent 706 linen articles, valued at $234.90, for soldiers in French hospitals. The Oaks branch, unable to send clothing, gave $40 for Belgian relief.
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The university publishes the North Carolina Club's study of county life
The extension program issued a 188-page report on the counties built on the North Carolina Club's research, in which E. C. Branson called county government the least creditable institution in the country. The study later fed the 1920s county government reforms.
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UNC's women students make masks and arm bands for the emergency hospitals
In the first days of the epidemic the Red Cross called on the co-eds to make face masks for doctors and nurses in the emergency hospitals. They made 286 masks and 170 arm bands for hospital attendants.
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Chandler J. Cates of Hillsborough dies of wounds after the armistice
Chandler J. Cates of Company F, 120th Infantry, 30th Division, was severely wounded on October 17, 1918, after distinguished service, and taken to hospitals in France and England. He died of his wounds on November 20, 1918.
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The Chapel Hill Red Cross elects A. H. Patterson chairman at its annual meeting
At its annual meeting on Thursday, November 21, 1918, the chapter elected Dr. A. H. Patterson chairman, with Alice Noble vice-chairman, Nellie Roberson secretary and Dudley Carroll treasurer. Earlier that fall George Howe had resigned for his duties on the University's Student Army Training Corps committee, and J. M. Bell had taken his place.
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About 2,240 university men are in uniform when the war ends
At the armistice about 2,240 university men, counting alumni and faculty, were in service. The Alumni Review's October to December issues listed 33 dead, and the only faculty member killed was Lt. Joseph Henry Johnston of the School of Education.
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The Chapel Hill Red Cross moves its workroom to the University Inn
After the armistice of November 11, 1918, the chapter left the Zeta Psi fraternity hall for roomy quarters in the University Inn that the University provided.
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The Orange County Red Cross mails 111 Christmas boxes to men overseas
In November 1918 a chapter committee inspected, packed and mailed 111 Christmas boxes for men in the American Expeditionary Forces. A hundred comfort kits that Mrs. C. H. Robertson's workers had made for a Capt. Davies, which could not be shipped to him, went instead to fill a headquarters order for Italian comfort kits.
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The university Woman's Association holds a Thanksgiving peace festival
To pay for layettes and other war relief, the Woman's Association planned a Thanksgiving Peace Celebration: a Gypsy Festival moved by rain into the Y.M.C.A., ending with a pageant in Gerrard Hall. It raised $350, $150 of it for the United War Fund.
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A memorial service for President Graham fills Gerrard Hall
Every seat in Gerrard Hall was taken for the formal memorial service for Edward Kidder Graham, held after the epidemic had eased. Horace Williams and R. D. W. Connor spoke, and J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton read a tribute from C. Alphonso Smith.
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The SATC is demobilized and half its men leave Chapel Hill
Demobilization of the Students' Army Training Corps was completed on December 10, 1918, ending military control of the campus, and half of the SATC men left on the next train. Faculty judged the arrangement a failure because the university had answered to two masters.
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Sgt. Charles Battle Wills of Chapel Hill dies of pneumonia overseas
Charles Battle Wills of Chapel Hill enlisted June 19, 1917, and served as a sergeant in Battery C, 113th Field Artillery, 30th Division. He died of pneumonia overseas on Christmas Day 1918, and L. P. McLendon paid him tribute at the Chapel Hill homecoming.
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A second influenza wave strikes Cedar Grove, Efland and Hillsborough
After Christmas 1918 a second epidemic spread through the county and was very bad at Cedar Grove, Efland and Hillsborough. This time schools and churches stayed open, and the outbreak slowly died down.
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Edwin Greenlaw becomes dean of the Graduate School
Greenlaw became the third dean of UNC's Graduate School and led it until he left for Johns Hopkins in 1925.
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The Chapel Hill Red Cross signs 550 members in its 1918 Christmas Roll Call
J. S. Holmes chaired the chapter's Christmas Roll Call of 1918, which secured 550 members. The school's Junior Red Cross auxiliary enrolled 310 in the same roll call, with every grade of the graded school at full membership.
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Trustees and faculty back a $150,000 student building as Edward Kidder Graham's memorial
A joint committee of trustees and faculty, meeting in the governor's office in mid-December, agreed to raise $150,000 privately for the student activities building Graham had hoped for, to stand where Person Hall was. Albert Coates ran the drive and by the end of January 1919 announced $20,000 pledged by students, $14,500 of it in one night.
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Acting dean of students A. H. Patterson reports on drinking at the spring dances
When complaints about drinking at the revived spring dances reached President Chase, Patterson, whom Chase had made acting dean of students, blamed most of it on visiting alumni and said there was little he could do about the newer dances.
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Alexander H. Graham becomes chair of the Orange County Democratic Party
After his discharge from the Army as a captain in 1919, Alexander H. "Sandy" Graham of Hillsborough was elected chair of the Orange County Democratic Party.
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Alice Noble writes the history of the Chapel Hill Red Cross chapter
As chapter historian, Alice Noble signed the Chapel Hill chapter's account of its war work, from the 1917 first aid class through the 1919 welcome home for soldiers and sailors in Memorial Hall.
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Charlotte Hawkins Brown starts the clubwomen's drive for a home for delinquent Black girls
As president of the North Carolina Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, Charlotte Hawkins Brown of Palmer Memorial Institute began a public campaign in late 1919 for a reformatory for Black girls, the same year the legislature set up juvenile courts. The drive led to the Efland Home in western Orange County.
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Chase keeps E. C. Branson at Chapel Hill with a Kenan professorship
When the University of Virginia tried to hire the rural sociologist to rebuild his program in Charlottesville, Chase made Branson a Kenan professor with $1,000 more in pay, and he stayed.
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Dudley D. Carroll leads UNC's School of Commerce
Carroll came to UNC as professor of economics in 1918 and became dean of the School of Commerce, which he helped plan, holding the post for thirty-one years.
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Edgar Wallace Knight joins the UNC faculty
Knight, who had taught education at Trinity College, joined the University of North Carolina faculty in 1919, and Chapel Hill remained his home from then on.
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Eric A. Abernethy becomes the university physician
After he came home from the war, the university hired Dr. Eric A. Abernethy as its campus physician, in charge of the infirmary. UNC A to Z calls him the first person to hold the post and says he brought modern ideas about sanitation and medical practice to the campus.
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Eugene C. Branson proposes calling the planned social science school the School of Public Welfare
Branson had urged a school of social science on Graham in 1916. In 1919, worried that "social science" sounded like socialism to North Carolinians, he proposed the name School of Public Welfare, which John Sprunt Hill endorsed, and suggested Hill endow it.
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Frank Porter Graham becomes dean of students
Chase brought Graham back from the Marines over the summer to fill the new post of dean of students, in charge of discipline and of reviving student government after the SATC, while also teaching history. He agreed to try it for a year.
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Frederick Koch reads A Christmas Carol in Gerrard Hall
Koch brought his annual reading of Dickens's A Christmas Carol to UNC when he arrived in 1918. The Raleigh News and Observer described a 1919 reading in Gerrard Hall, with carols by university singing groups in the two intermissions. His reading in Memorial Hall on December 10, 1943 was his 39th annual reading of the Carol, a series he had begun at the University of North Dakota.
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George Howe becomes dean of the College of Liberal Arts
Howe, professor of Latin since 1903, took over the College of Liberal Arts in 1919 to handle academic affairs while the new dean of students handled discipline.
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Gus Paviakis opens the Carolina Confectionery, later the Carolina Coffee Shop
Paviakis opened the Carolina Confectionery in the space the University Athletic Shop had used. George Livas and James Gust later bought it and renamed it the Carolina Coffee Shop.
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Houston J. Walker buys the James A. Cheek House from Annie Gray Ruffin
Annie Gray Ruffin, widowed since she and Allen J. Ruffin bought the Cheek house in 1908, sold it to Houston J. Walker. Three years later Walker and his son Allen H. Walker Sr. opened Walker's Funeral Home in Hillsborough.
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Inez Koonce Stacy becomes the University's adviser to women
After Clara Lingle left, the post went to Inez Koonce Stacy, widow of acting president Marvin Stacy. For years she was the only woman on the regular University payroll apart from stenographers and library aides.
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James Webb Jr.'s house Mid-Lawn is sold to David and Elizabeth Patterson
In 1919 Mid-Lawn, the Italianate house James Webb Jr. built in 1881 at East Queen and North Cameron streets, was sold to David and Elizabeth Patterson. It has since been known as the Webb-Patterson House.
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Korean lespedeza is introduced on Orange County farms
By 1919 farmers had been persuaded to try Korean lespedeza and nearly a thousand acres were grown that year. The legume became the county's main hay crop and winter cover.
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Lenoir Chambers is hired to teach journalism and run the University news service
Chase recruited Chambers, a newspaperman then still in France, to teach a journalism course and manage the University's news service, arranging the job through his father while Chambers was crossing the Atlantic.
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Luther Hodges leads the UNC student council and his senior class
Hodges worked his way through the University of North Carolina, where he was president of the student council and of his senior class. He graduated in 1919.
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Orange County Training School enrolls 215 students
Two years after it opened on the former Hackney campus in Chapel Hill, the county's training school for Black students had 215 enrolled.
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Oscar Efird organizes the Law School Association
Law teacher Oscar Ogburn Efird turned the school's loose moot courts into appellate-style law clubs under a Law School Association. It faded after he left the next year.
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Paul John Weaver is hired as the University's first director of music
Chase completed the hiring, begun by Graham, of Weaver of St. Louis as the first director of music, a full professor at $2,750. Chase asked him to take music education out to the state's schools, as Frederick Koch was doing with drama.
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Phillips Hall opens, named for three Phillips family teachers
Phillips Hall opened on the Chapel Hill campus in 1919, honoring three members of the Phillips family who taught at the university in the nineteenth century: James Phillips, his son Charles Phillips and his grandson William Battle Phillips.
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Sallie Hemphill, later Sallie Markham Michie, buys the house at 121 South Columbia Street
Sallie Michie bought the two-story house next to what became the Ackland Art Museum in 1919 and kept it for 73 years, refusing for decades to sell it to the University.
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The Bacon farm on St. Mary's Road takes up dairying
After the First World War the owners of the Bacon Farm switched to dairying, building a large gambrel-roofed dairy barn and two frame milking parlors behind the house, which was remodeled as a bungalow in the same years.
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The Bank of Chapel Hill opens a branch, the Bank of Carrboro
The Bank of Chapel Hill raised its capital in the summer of 1919 so it could open a bank in the mill town, and the Bank of Carrboro opened for business on a Saturday late that fall. Deposits on the first day came to more than $30,000.
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The Bellevue mill changes over from steam to electric power
The mill was built to run belt-driven machinery from a steam engine. By 1919 it ran partly on electricity, and by the mid-1920s it had changed over completely, with individual motors on the machines and the belt-way removed.
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The Forest Theatre, an outdoor amphitheatre, is built at the edge of Battle Park
The university's open-air theatre on the western edge of Battle Park dates from 1919. It now carries the name of drama professor Frederick Koch.
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The Playmakers turn the new public school auditorium into their first stage
With no stage on campus, Koch got the village officials' leave to use the auditorium of a newly finished public school a few blocks away. Volunteers built out the stage and a proscenium, and the room, called the Play-House, served the Playmakers for seven years until Smith Hall opened.
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The University carries out a building program under President Chase
William M. Kendal of McKim, Mead and White planned an expansion for 3,000 students, proposing twenty-one new buildings. By December 1928 the University had built nine dormitories (eight for men, one for women) and Saunders, Murphey, Manning and Venable halls, with Bingham Hall and the library nearly done, and had remodeled the old campus buildings. Faculty above the rank of instructor grew from 66 to 158 over the decade.
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The clerk of superior court becomes judge of Orange County's juvenile court
A 1919 state law required a juvenile court in every county. In Orange, as in most counties, the clerk of superior court was made its judge.
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The county board adopts a policy of raising teachers' pay to an average of $75 a month
Shortly before the survey came out, the Orange County Board of Education decided to lift teachers' salaries to a $75 monthly average, half again the white median and more than twice the Black median the survey found.
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The county war record lists 23 Orange County servicemen who died in the war
Annie Sutton Cameron's record for the Council of Defense lists 23 Orange County soldiers killed in action or dead of wounds or disease, four of them Black. The list includes men from Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Hillsborough, Blackwood and Rougemont.
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The university hires Aberthaw and McKim, Mead and White for its expansion
For the postwar building program the university engaged the Aberthaw firm in 1919 to survey the campus and rework its plan, and by May 1920 it had retained the New York firm of McKim, Mead and White, led by William Kendall, as consulting architects for red brick Colonial Revival buildings. Local supervision came later, under Thomas C. Atwood from 1921, with H. P. Alan Montgomery and, from 1922, Arthur C. Nash.
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The county board decides to turn every one-teacher school into a two-teacher school
In January 1919 the board resolved to convert all of its one-teacher schools to two teachers, the same meeting at which it bought water coolers and erasers for the classrooms and raised the superintendent's pay.
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Fire destroys three fraternity houses on Fraternity Row and nearly takes the Carnegie Library
Fire broke out about 2 a.m. and destroyed the Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Pi Kappa Phi and Sigma Nu houses at the lower end of Fraternity Row, a private lane behind the Carnegie Library. The library, about thirty feet from the Sigma Nu house, lost only some window panes and had water damage. The university then bought land across South Columbia Street and swapped it with the fraternities for their old lots, which led to the fraternity courts of the 1920s.
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Acting president Marvin Hendrix Stacy dies of influenza
Stacy, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and chairman of the faculty with a president's powers since Graham's death, died on Tuesday morning after several days' serious illness, the second university head lost to the pandemic in three months. The pandemic led the university to appoint its first university physician, Eric Alonzo Abernethy.
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Enrollment drops to 759 for the postwar winter quarter
When the winter quarter opened after the SATC left, 759 students registered, the lowest count in more than a decade. Officials hoped returning soldiers would add about 150 in March.
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Former president Kemp Plummer Battle dies at Senlac
Kemp Plummer Battle, who helped reopen the university in 1875, served as its president from 1876 and wrote its history, died in his sleep at Senlac, his home at the edge of campus. He had turned 87 in December, and his death came two weeks after Stacy's.
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Students open the Graham Memorial fund drive in Gerrard Hall
At a student rally led by Albert Coates, with William H. Bobbitt and Luther Hodges also speaking, students and faculty pledged $20,000 toward a building now budgeted at $150,000. The drive reached about $70,000 by its June deadline and $120,000 by the end of 1919.
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The Woman's Committee of the Council of Defense is discharged
Gov. Bickett advised in February 1919 that the legislature would not fund the Council of Defense, and on February 15 the state chairman gave all members of the Woman's Committee an honorable discharge, ending the county organization.
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Planner John Nolen delivers a campus plan for the university
Hired by the university's new buildings committees, John Nolen produced a campus plan in February 1919 that laid out fourteen new buildings, among them classrooms, a gymnasium and three dormitories. The university then engaged McKim, Mead and White and local architects to carry it out.
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Orange County raises $2,075.84 for Armenian relief
An Armenian Relief campaign led by Dr. E. C. Branson ran from February 21 to March 6, 1919, and raised $2,075.84. Much of it came through the county's white and Black schools; Nellie Russell led Hillsborough Township.
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Richard H. Lewis chairs the trustees' search for a new university president
After Edward Kidder Graham's death, the trustees named a search committee chaired by Dr. Richard H. Lewis of Raleigh, which met students and faculty on the campus in mid-February. In mid-May it put forward Frank L. McVey, Robert J. Aley and Harry W. Chase, with McVey its favorite.
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UNC faculty adopt a three-quarter academic year
Under Chase's guidance the faculty dropped the old two-term year for three quarters at its February 1919 meeting, keeping a lesson of the wartime SATC schedule. Students back in January could finish two-thirds of a year's work in six months.
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Gerrard Hall memorial service for Marvin H. Stacy
Students, faculty and friends met in Gerrard Hall to remember Stacy, who had died of influenza on January 21. Former president Francis P. Venable, a childhood friend, and Albert Coates for the students spoke.
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Carolina Playmakers present their first bill
The first bill included Thomas Wolfe’s The Return of Buck Gavin, with Wolfe in the title role.
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The State Board of Health proposes a course for health officers and public health nurses at the university
After the 1918 influenza epidemic and the poor condition of army recruits, the legislature paid for a campus health officer, and Dr. William deB. MacNider won over Dr. Benjamin E. Washburn of the State Board of Health to a joint training plan. The board's tentative report offered the university a postgraduate course for health officers and public health nurses; President Harry W. Chase welcomed it, but the plan stalled for lack of money and faculty support.
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The General Assembly grants the University's full $215,000 request
The 1919 legislature approved all $215,000 a year that Chase sought, up from $165,000, and added $20,000 toward a deficit of about $47,000. With the raises that took effect in September 1919, University pay stood about a quarter above 1914.
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The county board commits $20,000 to a new Hillsboro school as a memorial to the county's war dead
The board first offered Hillsboro $5,000 for a new school plant if the town raised $2,500, then settled on $20,000, and asked that the building honor the men of the county killed in the First World War. It offered Carrboro $2,500 on condition that voters there pass a $20,000 bond issue.
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The county board sets out to close small weak schools and merge them with nearby ones
After visiting Orange Grove, which it kept as a three-teacher school, the board stated its aim of shutting small and inefficient schools and consolidating them with neighbors. The policy guided its building and busing decisions through the 1920s and 1930s.
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The Chapel Hill Red Cross reports 66 cases of supplies shipped since its founding
The chapter's report of woman's work to April 12, 1919 counted 66 cases shipped from its workroom and auxiliaries: 200 comfort kits, 306 oakum pads, 8,155 dressings, 1,004 hospital garments, 20 cases of refugee clothing weighing 2,500 pounds, 235 Christmas packages and about 725 knitted articles.
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Edgar Wallace Knight becomes assistant superintendent of Orange County schools
In April 1919, the year he joined the UNC faculty, Knight was hired as assistant to county superintendent R. H. Claytor; the board agreed to pay him $40 a month, though later biographies describe the post as unpaid. He was still styled assistant superintendent of schools in 1923.
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Chapel Hill welcomes home its World War soldiers alongside Confederate veterans
On Saturday, May 10, 1919, a parade of Confederate veterans, returned soldiers and sailors, former student soldiers and town groups filled Franklin and Columbia Streets. Over 2,000 people crowded Memorial Hall to hear Archibald Henderson, L. P. McLendon and Joseph Hyde Pratt, with William Cain presiding.
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Orange County raises $800 for the Salvation Army
In a Salvation Army campaign May 16-26, 1919, South Orange under W. S. Roberson raised $300 and North Orange under R. H. Claytor raised $500.01 on a $500 quota.
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Orange County subscribes $137,050 to the Victory Liberty Loan
In the fifth, or Victory, Liberty Loan the county subscribed $137,050 against a $112,500 allotment, from 202 men, 70 women and 4 corporations. The women's committee reported $67,300 obtained by direct solicitation.
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Orange County towns and townships win honor flags in the Victory Loan
For meeting their Victory Loan quotas, Cedar Grove, Chapel Hill, Cheeks, Eno and Hillsborough townships and the towns of Chapel Hill and Hillsborough were awarded honor flags, the Chapel Hill News reported on May 29, 1919, crediting Mayor W. S. Roberson as Victory Loan chairman. The paper said county residents had put more than a million dollars into government securities since the first Liberty Loan.
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The Orange County Red Cross commits its women workers and $300 to the soldiers' homecoming
At the request of the homecoming chairman, Robertson called the chapter's executive committee and workers to the court house, where they agreed to decorate the town and serve the soldiers' dinner on July 16. He named Mrs. W. L. Wall chairman of the dinner, and the committee voted $300 of its $399 balance toward the celebration.
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Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 3, 2026.
