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Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1910s
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A. W. Clarke becomes Orange County's superintendent of roads
A 1915 act ended township road administration in Orange and put every county road under a superintendent. Clarke accepted $65 a month from March through November and $3 a day for winter work.
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Edward Kidder Graham is inaugurated president in Memorial Hall
A procession of about 1,400 marched to Memorial Hall, where Chief Justice Walter Clark gave Graham the oath and Governor Locke Craig presided. Graham's address cast the state university as the instrument of democracy. Three former presidents walked with him in the procession.
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The county board buys the Annie Hughes Academy to house a Cedar Grove high school
Answering a petition from Cedar Grove residents, the board offered on May 3, 1915 to buy the old Cedar Grove Academy from Annie Hughes and on May 15 paid her $1,500 for it, deeding her the lot of the one-teacher school it closed. The new Cedar Grove High School took grades one through eleven.
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A Christian Church congregation is organized near Mebane
The congregation later called Mebane Congregational Christian Church was organized on May 16, 1915, with W. C. Clements, pastor of the Christian church in Chapel Hill, as first pastor. Its building was finished in 1931.
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Mary Owen Graham is endorsed as supervisor of Orange County's canning clubs
The commissioners approved Graham, of Charlotte, to lead the county's canning clubs, the start of extension work with farm women. In 1916 they renewed $250 a year for tomato club work.
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The county board re-elects Superintendent Lockhart and funds an assistant for him
The Board of Education returned Samuel P. Lockhart to office and set aside $400 to pay Mary O. Graham as his assistant.
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The school board names Lula Cassidy rural supervisor and county canning agent
A week after electing Mary O. Graham supervisor, the board chose Lula Cassidy as rural supervisor and canning agent. In 1916 it put her in charge of a county-wide school commencement in Hillsboro.
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The county board orders two privies built at every school
Meeting in August 1915, the board bought desks and equipment and voted to put two privies at each county school, paying half the cost and leaving the community to pay the rest.
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Emilie Holmes starts Mayfair War Relief work in Chapel Hill
Emilie R. Holmes (Mrs. J. S. Holmes) organized Chapel Hill war relief work for the Mayfair War Relief of New York in October 1915 and directed it until September 1917. About a dozen workers sent 13 boxes holding 1,183 surgical dressings, 300 rolled bandages, 160 pads and 36 hospital shirts.
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Billy Strayhorn, who spent boyhood summers in Hillsborough, was born
Composer and pianist Billy Strayhorn was born in Dayton, Ohio. From about age five he stayed with his grandparents at Margaret Lane and Hillsborough Avenue in Hillsborough, attended his first year of school there, learned piano in their home, and spent breaks and summers in the town into his early teens.
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Superintendent Lockhart's first township teachers' meeting meets at the Carrboro school
With rural supervisor Lula Cassidy, Lockhart set up meetings of the teachers in each township, smaller than the county meeting. The first, at the Carrboro school, drew a state education official and University School of Education staff, and the Merritt school came with all its teachers and its whole committee.
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A brass plate from the Old East cornerstone is returned on University Day
University Day 1916 brought back a brass plate that had once been part of the Old East cornerstone. A Tennessee foundry owner had found it in a pile of scrap metal, and how it got there was unknown.
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Adam Kluttz sells his Franklin Street store to the Solomon Brothers, who keep his name on it
After a heart attack, merchant Adam Alexander Kluttz sold his original store to the Solomon Brothers of New York on the condition that it go on carrying his name. B. Y. C. Buice became manager.
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Bank cashier Milton E. Hogan buys the Thomas Hume house on West Franklin Street
Milton E. Hogan, cashier of the Bank of Chapel Hill, bought the West Franklin Street residence of Dr. Thomas Hume. The house later passed to Caesar Cone, a fraternity and the University, and in 1943 held the high school.
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Chapel Hill's white graded school and high school move into a new West Franklin Street building
After a school bond election in May 1915, Chapel Hill's new $35,000 graded school building went up on West Franklin Street and was in use when the public school opened on September 11, 1916. It held the grammar grades and the high school, whose enrollment had doubled to 85 in four years.
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Eno Cotton Mill reports 150 women among its 500 workers
Reports from the years before the wartime changes count about 500 workers at Hillsborough's Eno Cotton Mill, 150 of them women and 50 children under 16, on a 60-hour week. The top average daily wage for women was $1.75 against $4.00 for men; at the smaller Bellevue mill nearby women's top average was $2.50.
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Hackney's school on Merritt Mill Road is bought for a public training school
Louis Hackney had opened his school for Black students on Merritt Mill Road in 1912. In 1916 the property was bought for a public training school for Black students, after Black residents raised $3,000 toward the purchase.
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Julian S. Carr endows a scholarship on his class's fiftieth anniversary
At the 1916 commencement, fifty years after his class was due to graduate, Durham industrialist Julian S. Carr gave $4,000 to endow a scholarship fund. Treasury Secretary William G. McAdoo gave the address.
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Professor W. S. Bernard rents the old Sam Phillips law office from the Kluttz family
Professor William Stanley "Bully" Bernard rented the old Sam Phillips law office on East Franklin Street from the Kluttzes, remodeled the inside and made it his home.
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Segregated schooling and the rise of Lincoln and Central High schools
In 1916 the county board of education bought Louis H. Hackney's private school campus in Chapel Hill, helped by $3,000 raised by Black citizens, to house the Orange County Training School, which took the name Lincoln High School in 1949. Hillsborough's school for Black students was built in 1936 and became Central High School in 1943. Lincoln High merged with Chapel Hill High School in 1966. In 1968, a year of student walkouts against a phased desegregation plan, Central graduated its last high school class, and its high school students then went to Orange High School.
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The Bellevue mill is also turning out cheviot cloth
By 1916 the Bellevue mill was weaving cheviot, a rough-finished cloth, alongside its ginghams.
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The Lloyd grist mill burns and is rebuilt in brick
The original wood-frame grist mill and cotton gin building burned in 1916 and was replaced by the brick mill that survives at 101 B Street. Around 1921 lightning struck the brick mill, and the fire burned its interior.
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The Tar Heel Theatre opens on Franklin Street beside Strowd's garage
A new movie house run by Lindsey and Strowd opened in one of the new buildings on Franklin Street, with a balcony and modern fittings. S. J. Brockwell's new Pickwick went up in the same row.
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The county road superintendent is equipped to work convicts on the roads
In 1916 the board authorized the road superintendent to buy the equipment he needed to put convicts to work. Prisoners were used on county road projects until the state took over most sentenced prisoners in 1931.
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Walter W. Pickard sells the Pickard Hotel to William and Louisa Uzzel
Walter W. Pickard sold his Franklin Street hotel to Major William Uzzel and his wife, Louisa. The maps carry the hotel under Uzzel's ownership until it burned.
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William Jennings Bryan argues against entering the war in Memorial Hall
Former secretary of state William Jennings Bryan, campaigning for peace, spoke in Memorial Hall to students and townspeople, a crowd that spilled into the street, and urged Americans to keep out of Europe's war.
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Wilson Odell Lacock opens a shoe store and repair shop on Franklin Street
Lacock, who had clerked at Herndon's hardware, set up his own shoe store and repair shop in a small frame building west of R. A. Eubanks's general store that the express office had used. The family kept a shoe shop on the street into the 1940s.
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Thomas J. Campbell arrives as the university's first athletic director
After coach T. G. Trenchard's contract ran out with the 1915 season, Graham and a faculty committee ended alumni control of athletics and put a director in charge. Thomas Joseph Campbell, a former Harvard football star, took the post by early March 1916 and coached under a new rule that made athletes wait a year before playing.
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The Chapel Hill to Durham road is turned over to the federal engineer
The commissioners placed the road under the U.S. government engineer, as the central highway through Hillsborough already was, and set $40 a mile a year for upkeep. On May 1 they did the same for the road from Carrboro to the Alamance line by way of White Cross.
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Emerson Field's concrete stadium is ready for the 1916 baseball season
The stadium paid for by Isaac Emerson, with white concrete stands behind Bynum Gymnasium seating up to 3,200, was ready for a baseball game with Virginia set for April 3, 1916. Its plans were the first at the university to allow parking for automobiles.
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The Orange County school board asks Superintendent Lockhart to resign, and he refuses
The board said Lockhart had failed to adjust to the county's enlarged educational plans and would not cooperate with county supervisor Lula Cassidy. He refused to resign and stayed in office until his term ended in 1917.
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State and university educators set up a teacher-training program for Orange County
State superintendent J. Y. Joyner, rural schools chief L. C. Brogden and UNC's L. A. Williams met the county board and won approval for a 1916-17 plan of general teachers' meetings in November and March and group meetings at centers across the county, run by the UNC School of Education. Teachers were paid to attend, with a per diem and mileage for Saturday sessions.
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Susan Moses Graham, the president's wife, dies at Chapel Hill
Susan Moses Graham, 34, died on the last day of the fall session after six weeks of infection. Remaining classes were called off, and she was buried in the Chapel Hill cemetery on December 23 after a service at the Chapel of the Cross. She had helped found the Chapel Hill Community Club.
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A Department of Military Science opens with more than half the students enrolled
For 1917-18 the university added a Department of Military Science with three faculty, as large as the Greek department, and more than half the student body took its courses.
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Black congregations in Chapel Hill form Red Cross auxiliaries
Among the auxiliaries of the Chapel Hill Red Cross chapter were groups at the Black Methodist church and the Black Baptist church of Chapel Hill, and one at Zion Church. Like the country circles they made hospital and refugee garments and comfort kits for the chapter.
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Bud Perry and Moody Lloyd open the Carolina Barbershop
The Carolina Barbershop started in a small frame building beside the new post office. It moved west in 1920 and was still on the street in the late 1930s.
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Capt. J. Stuart Allen organizes the volunteer UNC Reserve Corps
Graham brought Captain J. Stuart Allen, a wounded Canadian veteran of Ypres and the Somme, to run military training, paying him $4,000 from the budget. Volunteers bought their own uniforms and earned five credit hours for twelve or more hours a week of drill and trench digging east of the campus.
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Cedar Grove voters approve a special school tax district
The board allowed Cedar Grove to call an election on a special school tax in July 1917, and the returns reported in September showed 34 votes for and 16 against. The board then set pay for each Cedar Grove high school teacher at $50 a month.
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Chapel Hill's Rally Day of 1917 becomes a "Win the War Day" with a Red Cross booth
Rally Day in 1917 was given over to the war effort: Red Cross members ran booths on conservation and service, a farm exhibit showed county produce, and cooks displayed war breads and canned goods for prizes judged by the state Department of Agriculture. Women in uniform made surgical dressings in the Red Cross booth and signed up many new members.
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Clara S. Lingle becomes the university's first advisor to women
Graham hired Clara S. Lingle as advisor to women, the first woman given administrative duties at the university. Formally on the extension staff working with women's clubs, she was meant to speak for the two dozen women students within the administration.
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Claytor's first report counts 42 one-teacher schools in Orange County
Claytor's 1917 report to the state listed 42 one-teacher schools, 19 white and 23 Black, with 2,569 white and 1,259 Black pupils. Nineteen Black schools had only benches and no desks.
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Cornelia Spencer Love works as a librarian at the University of North Carolina
Love came to Chapel Hill and worked in the university library from 1917 to 1948. She later wrote When Chapel Hill Was a Village, published in 1976.
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Dr. C. S. Mangum teaches a daily first aid class at the 1917 UNC Summer School
Dr. C. S. Mangum taught first aid every day through the six weeks of the 1917 Summer School to a large class of Chapel Hill people and summer visitors, with two local Red Cross members helping with bandaging. The course closed with practical and written examinations sent from Washington.
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Hillsborough children aged six to sixteen learn to knit for soldiers in a Red Cross class
Henrietta P. Collins and Mrs. J. Cheshire Webb taught girls and boys from six to sixteen to knit wash cloths for soldiers, using knitting cotton that Daniel Miller and Co. of Baltimore donated through Lillie Bivins. The room was full at every meeting, and the better knitters moved on to wool; by October about fifty children were knitting for the chapter.
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Julian S. Carr Jr. starts the Industrial Democracy plan in Durham Hosiery's mills
In 1917 Julian S. Carr Jr., who ran Durham Hosiery Mills, set up a plan of worker representation and profit sharing in all sixteen company mills, Carrboro's among them. Its Senate of superintendents and foremen and House of elected workers met twice a month in the Carrboro clubhouse, voted help for families hit by sickness or death, and paid for repainting most of the mill houses.
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Lewis J. Johnson builds a two-story house on Shadylawn Road
Johnson built the I-house at 930 Shadylawn Road Extension, with rubble-stone chimneys and a Craftsman porch and dormer, and raised a garden and a handful of hogs, cows and chickens without farming for a living. Lilly B. Williams later owned it until her death, and it was remodeled in 1985.
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Mary Lindsay Thornton becomes librarian of the North Carolina Collection
Fresh out of library school, Mary Lindsay Thornton took charge of the university's North Carolina Collection, then about 1,500 items kept in a small upstairs corner room of the library building that later became Hill Music Hall. She led it for forty years.
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Orange County mobilizes for World War I
Orange County organized a Council of Defense, Red Cross chapters in Chapel Hill (May 28, 1917) and Hillsborough (June 1, 1917), Liberty Loan and War Savings drives, and food conservation committees. On October 1, 1918, 650 UNC students were inducted into the Student Army Training Corps, and volunteers nursed the sick during the influenza epidemic.
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Paul C. Collins leads Orange County's First Liberty Loan, and the county's banks sell $51,650 in bonds
Hillsborough banker Paul C. Collins was county chairman of the men's committee for the First Liberty Loan. The four banks in the county sold $51,650 in bonds, $30,150 of them at his Bank of Orange; he went on to chair the second, third and fourth loans.
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President Edward K. Graham engages planner John Nolen to study the campus
Urged by a faculty grounds committee of W. C. Coker, George Howe and Collier Cobb, formed in 1913, and after the trustees endorsed a full campus plan in spring 1916, Graham brought in the national planner John Nolen. Between 1917 and 1919 Nolen studied the campus and recommended building out the land south of South Building, the direction the 1920s expansion took.
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Students form volunteer companies and drill on Emerson Field
Before the university had a Reserve Officers' Training Corps unit, about five hundred students formed volunteer companies and drilled on Emerson Field with old Civil War rifles, some 250 of them lent by Julius Cone of Greensboro. In January Graham told the secretary of war that four hundred men were asking for a unit.
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Sturgis E. Leavitt teaches Spanish at the university
Leavitt came to the university in fall 1917 as assistant professor of Spanish, was named Kenan Professor in 1945, and retired in 1960.
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The Chapel Hill Community Club offers its women to the government for war work
Early in the summer of 1917 the Community Club offered itself to the federal government, through the county Council of Defense, as an organized body of women for war service. Over the next year it handed out Food Administration pledge cards across Chapel Hill Township, pushed gardening and canning, and canvassed for Liberty Loans.
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The Chapel Hill Red Cross gathers country women into auxiliaries across southern Orange County
Auxiliaries of the Chapel Hill chapter formed at Bethel Church, Calvander, Antioch, Williams Chapel, Smith Level, Mount Moriah, Union Grove, Damascus, Carrboro and Orange Church, and among Chapel Hill women who could not come to the workroom. They sewed hospital shirts and refugee garments, paid for supplies by selling eggs, jelly and apples, and passed magazines and papers to families who could not buy them; Mrs. H. C. Hogan of the Calvander circle made 100 hospital bed shirts in 100 days.
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The Colonial Movie Theatre on Weaver Street closes
The Colonial Movie Theatre, one of the frame businesses in the Weaver Street block facing the Alberta mill by 1914, closed around 1917, about when Carrboro's stores started moving to East Main Street.
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The extension bureau offers war courses and Greenlaw starts the Lafayette Association
University extension centers offered free month-long courses on the war and on European history, taught by faculty without extra pay, and mailed pamphlets explaining why the country was at war. Edwin Greenlaw's Lafayette Association sought to rally high schools around patriotic essays and pageants; Winston-Salem's center took its name.
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The university cancels its 1917 football season as students drill
With more than half the students in a new four-company training program under Captain J. Stuart Allen, a twice-wounded Canadian veteran, the Athletic Association called off intercollegiate football for the duration. Albert Coates, its president, took part in the decision.
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The university suspends intercollegiate football for the war
Intercollegiate football was dropped in the fall of 1917 as drilling men took over Emerson Field in the afternoons. Captain Allen took on the coach's duties, conditioning students with trench digging and mock attacks.
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W. H. Parker serves as Carrboro's first listed mayor
W. H. Parker heads the list of Carrboro mayors in 1917, four years after the mill town of Venable took the name Carrboro. He served again from 1937 to 1941.
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William D. Benton serves sixteen years as rector of St. Matthew's
William D. Benton was rector for sixteen years, the longest single tenure the book records after Moses Ashley Curtis. His wife directed the choir at the 1924 centennial.
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Students petition President Graham for military training
In January 1917, 344 of the 1,137 students registered that fall signed a petition asking that a military training course be set up on the campus. The Tar Heel under editor William Polk backed the drive.
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The faculty approves summer banking jobs for credit with National City Bank
The faculty approved a plan Graham arranged with New York's National City Bank to hire rising juniors for summer jobs that taught banking, with university credit for the work. Graham meant it as a first step toward a school of commerce and began recruiting Dudley DeWitt Carroll at about the same time.
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A graduate nurse starts a first aid class for the Chapel Hill Community Club
Early in February 1917 Mrs. K. J. Brown, a graduate nurse, began a class in first aid and surgical dressings at the request of the Chapel Hill Community Club. It met twice a week through the spring, and when the United States declared war its members moved to form a Red Cross chapter.
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The legislature passes a $3 million bond issue that funds university buildings
In the last hours of the 1917 session the house passed a $3 million bond issue, with only 14 of 120 votes against, for state institutions and public schools, giving the university $100,000 a year for five years for new buildings and repairs. Baptist leaders denounced the haste and the aid to state colleges.
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Township road inspectors classify the county's roads
The inspectors the board had named in each township reported 37 miles of central highways, 62.1 miles of Class A roads and 365.2 miles of Class B roads. The same year the board began paying for bridges, pipes and road tools from general county funds.
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Graham tells a Memorial Hall gathering how the university will serve in the war
Two weeks after the United States entered the war, more than a thousand people heard Graham in Memorial Hall urge students to stay in school until called. He promised military training on campus and a faculty program of instruction to aid the war effort.
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West Hill Baptist Church is organized in West Hillsborough
J. F. McDuffie and S. W. Oldham led the organization of West Hill Baptist Church, and Oldham became its first pastor. The book dates its building to May 1, 1920.
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Laura Hutchins Benson of Chapel Hill joins the Army Nurse Corps
Laura Hutchins Benson enlisted in the Army Nurse Corps on May 2, 1917, and served first at Walter Reed hospital. During the pneumonia epidemic in the camps in the winter of 1918 she went to Base Hospital No. 1 at Fort Sam Houston, where she became head nurse.
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Chapel Hill and Carrboro residents vote to form a Red Cross chapter at the Graded School
Dr. Louis H. Webb, charged with organizing chapters in his medical district, called a Monday night meeting of Chapel Hill and Carrboro people at the Graded School building on May 28, 1917, which voted almost unanimously for a full chapter rather than an auxiliary. Seventy-one people enrolled at the chapter's first meeting, which elected George Howe chairman and Alice Noble vice-chairman.
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Dr. Eric A. Abernethy leaves his Chapel Hill practice for the Army medical corps
Abernethy gave up his medical practice in Chapel Hill in May 1917 to enter the Army medical corps as a first lieutenant. He rose to lieutenant colonel, was wounded in Belgium in July 1918, and then commanded the 78th Division sanitary train in the St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne campaigns.
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Horace Williams's war remarks bring a trustee inquiry that clears the faculty
After the Charlotte Observer quoted philosophy professor Horace Williams in May 1917 calling the war a clash of national interests, critics questioned his loyalty, and trustee John Sprunt Hill pressed the matter. The trustees' visiting committee investigated and in June 1918 cleared Williams and the faculty of disloyalty.
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The Daughters of the Confederacy in Hillsborough move to start a Red Cross chapter
At its May 1917 meeting the Gen. George B. Anderson Chapter, United Daughters of the Confederacy, discussed the war, and presiding officer Rebecca Cameron named a committee to form a Red Cross chapter in Hillsborough. The committee wrote many letters for information, which led to the organizing meeting of June 1.
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The Spurgeon Building Company is chartered at Hillsborough to put up buildings
The Secretary of State chartered the Spurgeon Building Company of Hillsborough to buy and sell real estate and construct buildings, with $10,000 subscribed. Its incorporators were Dr. J. S. Spurgeon, J. H. Webb and a third man named Collins.
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Hillsborough residents meet at the Session House library to organize a Red Cross chapter
About thirty people met in the library at the old Session House on June 1, 1917, heard Sarah Cheshire of Raleigh explain Red Cross work with sample bandages, and joined the Red Cross. They chose J. C. Webb temporary chairman, Henrietta P. Collins secretary and Rev. T. M. Grant treasurer, and set a mass meeting for June 4.
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A Red Cross mass meeting at the Hillsborough court house enrolls new members
On the eve of draft registration, J. C. Webb presided over a mass meeting at the court house where Edward Bond of Edenton, a soldier back from the Mexican border, and Rev. Alfred S. Lawrence spoke, and Frank Nash introduced Mrs. Palmer Jerman of Raleigh on the purpose of the Red Cross. Six young women then enrolled members.
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Orange County men register on the first draft registration day
On June 5, 1917, 1,503 Orange County men registered for the draft. In Chapel Hill a Red Cross committee decorated the town with flags, pinned khaki bands on the registrants, and led a parade of the new registrants through the main streets afterward.
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Secretary of War Newton D. Baker gives the wartime commencement address
Baker spoke to an overflowing Memorial Hall hung with flags, the day after draft registration, warning that the war would be long and urging those who stayed to keep learning. Of the 161 graduates in the class of 1917, 65 were already in training camps, and all dances were canceled.
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A Sunday rally at the Hillsborough court house gives $400 to the Red Cross War Fund
After a week of canvassing by C. H. Robertson's membership committee, a Sunday afternoon service at the court house led by the town's ministers raised $400 for the national Hundred Million Dollar Red Cross War Fund and brought the chapter to 200 members. By July 1 the chapter reported 400 members to Atlanta.
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The Chapel Hill Red Cross chapter receives its papers and works from a Main Street store
By June 18, 1917 the Chapel Hill chapter had all its organization papers, with jurisdiction over the part of Orange County on its side of the railroad, and was making surgical dressings in a large store on Main Street lent by Mayor W. S. Roberson. The store served as its headquarters and workroom for six months.
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J. Cheshire Webb is appointed chairman of the Orange County Council of Defense
J. Cheshire Webb of Hillsborough was appointed chairman of the Orange County Council of Defense, with M. C. S. Noble, C. H. Robertson, Shepperd Strudwick, S. W. Andrews, John P. Hughes and P. C. Collins as members. He led the council through the war and the 1919 homecoming.
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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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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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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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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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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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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 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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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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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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Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 2, 2026.
