Chronology

Chapel Hill builds a new town hall with WPA help

The Works Progress Administration paid about half the cost of the town hall at 100 West Rosemary Street, on the site of the town's first town hall; it went into use in late March 1939. University architects Atwood and Weeks designed the two-story brick building in a Williamsburg-inspired Colonial style with a hipped slate roof, cupola and swan's-neck pediment.

Subject: Chapel Hill Town Hall (1938)

Chapel Hill voters approve bonds for the new town hall

The bond issue for the town's share of the town hall went to the voters in July 1938 and passed 211 to 27. The campaign drew the Weekly's first calls for more citizen part in town affairs.

Subject: Chapel Hill Town Hall (1938)

Daphne Athas's family moves to Chapel Hill

Athas came to Chapel Hill as a teenager in 1938 with her Greek family, who during the Depression traded a large Massachusetts home for a small house on Merritt Mill Road. She spent most of the rest of her life in Orange County.

Durham architects Hackney and Knott design Carl Pegg's house on Laurel Hill Road

A three-bay brick Colonial Revival house for Carl Pegg was designed by the Durham firm of Hackney and Knott in the district's second building period.

Eno Methodist Church is moved back from the road and remodeled

In 1938 the congregation shifted its frame church back from Eno Street and remodeled it.

Subject: Eno Methodist Church

F. Vernon Altvater restores the Faucett House and joins a moved early house to it as a wing

F. Vernon Altvater and his wife, who bought the Faucett House tract in 1937, restored the house between 1938 and 1940 and called it the Coach House. They took down the early 1800s Naile Johnson House from the St. Mary's Road area and rebuilt it as the rear wing.

Subject: Faucett Mill (Chatwood)

Piedmont Electric Membership Corporation is incorporated and energizes its first lines

Piedmont Electric, a rural electric cooperative formed under the federal Rural Electrification Administration loan program, received its North Carolina incorporation papers in 1938. In 1939 its first substation, in Hillsborough, energized lines to members' homes for the first time.

Subject: Piedmont Electric Membership Corporation

Professor Urban T. Holmes builds a painted-brick Colonial Revival house on Pine Lane

The deck-on-hip house, with a basement garage set into the slope, was one of two Pine Lane houses built before the war. The nomination takes the two late-1930s houses as proof that Pine Lane was part of Coker's original plat.

Robert Varley opens a men's clothing store on East Franklin Street

Varley's store took the space of Alfred Williams's stationery on the south side of the street.

Stacy Residence Hall is completed and named for Marvin H. Stacy

Stacy Residence Hall was finished in 1938 and named for Marvin Hendrix Stacy, the dean and acting president who died of influenza in 1919.

The Dr. Efland Forrest House is built at West King and North Wake streets

A two-story Neoclassical Revival house with a full-height Corinthian portico, one of few in Hillsborough, was built around 1938 at 202 West King Street; a sign in the yard names it the Dr. Efland Forrest House.

The Hillsborough Military Academy's brick barracks are torn down

The academy's three-story brick barracks, later used by the Farm Life School, were dismantled in 1938. Only the Commandant's House and a frame dining hall survive, with parts of the barracks foundation in the woods south of the hall.

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

The Neuse River Soil Conservation District is formed with Orange County in it

Created in 1938 under state enabling law, the district covered Durham, Johnston, Orange, Wake and Wilson counties. Orange later had three men on its board.

The Walker farm builds cinder-block chicken houses

In the late 1930s the Walker farm moved from dairying to poultry and put up several cinder-block chicken houses in 1938. The farm turned to beef cattle in the 1960s.

Subject: George Washington Walker Farm

The county begins small yearly grants to Hillsborough's Confederate Memorial Library

Even before state library grants were available, and at least as early as 1938, Orange County made small annual appropriations to the Confederate Memorial Library in Hillsborough.

Subject: Orange County Public Library

With its money gone, the Institute's first staff leave for state jobs

By 1938 the Cone gifts were spent and the staff had gone weeks without pay. Brandis became research director of the State Tax Commission, Dillard Gardner joined the state supreme court staff and Grice the state auditor's office, while two young assistants stayed on at reduced pay; the last regular monthly Popular Government went out in January 1938.

People: Albert Coates · Henry P. Brandis Jr.

Subject: Institute of Government

Chapel Hill rededicates its Daniel Boone Trail marker opposite the post office

At a town ceremony Ella Boone Dixon, a Boone descendant, placed a flag over the Boone Trail plaque and J. Hampton Rich explained its legend. Mayor John M. Foushee led the program.

People: R. E. Coker

UNC field work director George H. Lawrence reports the Efland Home's conditions as appalling

After a visit in April 1938, George H. Lawrence, field work director at the University of North Carolina, wrote to the state welfare director that the home was doing more harm than good and that the girls would be better fed in a county jail. Gifts from churches and neighbors had not kept up with the girls' needs.

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

State offers the three-county district $5,900 for venereal disease control

At a meeting of county commissioners in Chapel Hill, State Board of Health executive officer Dr. Carl V. Reynolds offered the Chatham-Orange-Person district $5,900 from the Smith Reynolds Foundation fund for venereal disease control, if the district matched it. The program called for examinations and clinics to bring every infected person in the district under treatment.

Durham Hosiery closes its last Carrboro mill

Durham Hosiery Mills dissolved its business at Mill No. 7 in June 1938 and laid off the workers, ending the company's operations in Carrboro.

John M. Booker offers to buy a Franklin Street lot for the new town hall

In a letter to the Chapel Hill Weekly, professor John M. Booker objected to the hurried choice of the old site and offered to buy and give a lot on Franklin Street, hoping it would start a civic center. Editor Louis Graves backed the idea and called for town planning.

People: Louis Graves

Subject: Chapel Hill Town Hall (1938)

Chapel Hill auctions off its old town hall to clear the site for a new one

With WPA money available for 45 percent of a new building, the town decided to rebuild on its own lot at Rosemary and Columbia streets. The old town hall, whose courtroom the Weekly called filthy, was sold at auction and hauled away.

Subject: Chapel Hill Town Hall (1938)

John Parker becomes the first Black Orange County farmer to get a Farm Security Administration purchase loan

Under the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act, John Parker borrowed $3,915 through the Farm Security Administration to buy a 145-acre farm, the first such loan to a Black farmer in Orange County. He paid it off in about six years on a 40-year note.

Coates clears the old Pickard Hotel and Ledbetter lots on Franklin Street for the Institute building

With the campus site no longer available, Coates arranged to buy two lots on the north side of Franklin Street facing Graham Memorial, the university-controlled Ledbetter property and the privately owned old Pickard Hotel property, for $8,700. In late September he borrowed to clear them; the old buildings came down, and the excavation filled with water through a wet winter until town officials called it a nuisance.

Subject: Pickard Hotel

Bowling Carolina opens a four-lane alley in the former Lyon Hardware store

John McCauley and J. B. Johns opened four regulation bowling alleys in the old Lyon Hardware store on East Franklin Street, selling sandwiches and soft drinks and inviting women bowlers in particular.

Nunn's Chapel Baptist Church is organized

W. N. Nunn and other ministers organized Nunn's Chapel Baptist Church, a Black congregation, which built a church in 1946.

The old Pickwick reopens as the Pick, a second movie house under the Carolina's management

After standing empty for several years, the remodeled Pickwick reopened as the Pick under the Carolina Theatre's management, planned for second-run, foreign-language and Western films.

Subject: Pickwick Theatre

Chapel Hill pharmacist Carl T. Durham is elected to Congress from the Sixth District

Durham, who had been named the Sixth District nominee, won the general election over write-in candidate Oscar G. Barker, and Chapel Hill voters gave him 703 votes to Barker's 57. He went on to serve 22 years in the House and retired in 1961.

A Cape Cod house is built at 698 Gimghoul Road

The story-and-a-half house with gabled dormers and a stone end chimney, dated to about 1939, sits at the head of the south side of Gimghoul Road.

Subject: Gimghoul Castle and neighborhood

A new movie theater for Black audiences, the Hollywood, opens on Main Street in Carrboro

In May 1939 an auction notice pointed buyers to a business lot on Main Street in Carrboro near 'the new colored theatre.' By 1940 the Weekly called it the Hollywood theatre, at the west end of Franklin Street.

Alexander Residence Hall is built and named for Eben Alexander

A men's dormitory built at the university in 1939 with funds from the New Deal's Public Works Administration was named for Eben Alexander, the former professor of Greek and first dean of the faculty.

Alpha Delta Pi moves into Blanche Patterson's former home on East Franklin Street

The sorority moved into the house Mrs. Fred Patterson had built in the late 1910s.

Alpha Gamma Delta moves into the old "Crystal Palace" on East Franklin Street

The sorority took over the house known as the Crystal Palace, once Algernon Barbee's home.

Architect Bradford Eddy designs James Clarence Andrews's house on Buttons Road

A two-story shingled Colonial Revival house for James Clarence Andrews was designed by Bradford Eddy, an architect who practiced outside North Carolina.

Architect William Van Sprinkle designs a brick house on Gimghoul Road for Benjamin Edkins

The two-story brick Colonial Revival house with a one-story side wing at 739 Gimghoul Road was built for salesman Benjamin Edkins and his wife to a design by Durham architect William Van Sprinkle.

Subject: Gimghoul Castle and neighborhood

Cedar Grove Methodist Church's stone building goes up

The stone church replaced earlier facilities serving the congregation. Masons laid its cornerstone in late November 1939 at the request of the pastor, S. F. Nicks.

Subject: Cedar Grove Methodist Church

Construction begins on the Institute of Government building on Franklin Street

A $10,000 gift from Will Reynolds, given after Congressman William Umstead won an IRS ruling that the Institute was a charity, paid for the land. Gifts from Gordon and Bowman Gray covered half of the $50,000 cost and Julian Price's Jefferson Standard Life lent the rest on Coates's signature, against more than half his salary, for a scaled-down Federal-style building of three floors over a raised basement.

People: Albert Coates · Gordon Gray · Bowman Gray · William B. Umstead

Subject: Institute of Government

Durham Hosiery Mills sells its Carrboro houses and land at auction

A year after its last Carrboro mill closed, the company auctioned much of its Carrboro property in 1939. Most houses went for $500 to $550, many to the families living in them, while Marvin J. Dawson of Chapel Hill, merchant Ernest Hearn, former foreman W. A. Riggsbee and Dick Andrews bought others as investments.

Edward Danziger opens Danziger's Old World Candy Shop on East Franklin Street

Edward Danziger, a Viennese confectioner who had left Austria, opened a candy shop at 153 East Franklin Street in the Sutton Building, selling homemade confections, pastries, coffee and sodas. It later grew into Danziger's Old World Restaurant and a gift shop.

Granville wilt first appears in Orange County tobacco

The bacterial disease known as Granville wilt showed up in the county's tobacco crop for the first time in 1939. Growers later turned to wilt-resistant varieties.

Jim Tatum returns to UNC as director of freshman athletics

After following Carl Snavely to Cornell as an assistant football coach and head baseball coach, Tatum came back to Chapel Hill in 1939 as UNC's director of freshman athletics.

People: Carl Snavely

Law students Terry Sanford and William Cochrane join the Institute's legislative team

Elmer Oettinger led the Institute's daily coverage of the 1939 General Assembly, mailing bulletins to a list that had grown to 7,000 names. Late in the session Cochrane recruited first-year law student Sanford, later governor, who came back to the Institute as an assistant director after the war.

People: Albert Coates

Subject: Institute of Government

Lenoir Hall is built as the new campus dining hall

Atwood and Weeks designed Lenoir Hall, a red brick dining hall with large windows near Wilson Library, completed in 1939.

Subject: Lenoir Hall

MacNider Hall is completed as the first building of the medical school complex

The first building constructed in UNC's medical school complex was completed in 1939 and named for MacNider, then dean.

Subject: UNC School of Medicine

Maurice Julian opens a shoe store on East Franklin Street

Julian started out selling shoes at 167 East Franklin, in the space James R. Ellis's dress shop had left.

Music department chair Glen Haydon builds a brick house on Laurel Hill Road

Glen Haydon, chair of the UNC music department, built a two-story brick and weatherboard Colonial Revival house with a stone retaining wall.

Public health dean Earl Brown builds a red brick house on Laurel Hill Road

The house of Earl Brown, described as dean of the UNC School of Public Health, is a two-story red brick house that mixes Colonial Revival and Cotswold features.

R. E. Coker is named a Kenan professor

The university gave Coker a Kenan professorship in 1939.

Sample and Ina Forbus make the old Morrow's Mill on Cane Creek their home

Sample B. Forbus, later director of Watts Hospital, and the writer Ina B. Forbus bought the 1878 grist mill on Cane Creek in 1938 and converted it into their permanent home in 1939, keeping its hand-hewn beams and setting millstones in the garden. The mill had run until 1930.

Soil Conservation Service work begins in Orange County

Federal soil conservationists started farm planning in the county in 1939, with R. L. Mohler as work unit conservationist. By June 1953 plans covered 1,265 farms and about 142,000 acres.

The Alumni Building's interior is renovated

The building had held the Atwood and Nash office during the 1920s campus campaign. A second renovation followed in 1973, and the two left little of that interior.

Subject: Alumni Building

The Bryan Building goes up on South Columbia Street as an apartment house

The two-and-a-half-story brick Colonial Revival building at 230 South Columbia Street, known as the Bryan Building, was built in 1939 as apartments.

The Durham Bank and Trust Company takes over the Farmers and Merchants Bank of Hillsborough

The Durham bank acquired Hillsborough's second bank, the Farmers and Merchants Bank, in 1939. From then on it ran a single Hillsborough branch.

The state casts a highway marker for Governor Thomas Burke's capture at Hillsborough

The North Carolina highway marker G-16, cast in 1939, stands on Churton Street in Hillsborough. It records that Governor Burke was captured in the town by David Fanning and his Tories on September 12, 1781, and taken to Charleston.

UNC Press editor William Couch builds a brick and stone house on Laurel Hill Road

William Couch, editor of the University of North Carolina Press and brother of botanist John N. Couch, built a two-story brick and stone Colonial Revival house with a two-story gallery, designed by William Sprinkle.

UNC Press publishes These Are Our Lives

The University of North Carolina Press at Chapel Hill published These Are Our Lives in 1939, life histories gathered by Federal Writers' Project workers in North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia, with a preface by W. T. Couch.

UNC tennis coach John Kenfield opens the Carolina Sports Shop

Kenfield started a sporting goods store on the north side of East Franklin. New owners bought him out in 1942 and made Henry Sawtelle McGinty manager.

Chapel Hill Methodists sell their parsonage and buy the Frink house

The Methodist church sold its parsonage to Marguerite M. Judson, mother of a university student, and bought the Frink house on Pittsboro Street as its new parsonage. By that September Mrs. Judson owned and lived in the old parsonage on Rosemary Lane near the Town Hall.

Subject: University United Methodist Church

A lent library truck carries books to schools and crossroads stores across Orange County

For May, June and July 1939 a bookmobile with a revolving shelved turret was lent to the county, run by Lucile McDade and her assistant Louise Carroll, who stopped at schools and crossroads stores. The county board of education and the Confederate Memorial Library in Hillsboro paid its operating costs, and the WPA and the Hillsboro library lent the books.

Subject: Orange County Public Library

The county board agrees to build an agriculture building at Aycock School

Aycock principal Mrs. V. L. Warren and the school committee asked the board for a two-room brick building for agriculture classes, and the board agreed to provide it.

Subject: Aycock School

North Carolina's first Boys State meets on the UNC campus

The Institute ran the week-long civics program for the state American Legion, modeled on one begun in Illinois in 1935. About 135 high school boys spent up to three hours a day in class on government besides sports, heard Governor Hoey and other officials, and elected Douglass Hunt their governor.

People: Albert Coates · Douglass Hunt · Clyde Roark Hoey

William S. Hogan is appointed Chapel Hill postmaster

President Roosevelt appointed Hogan, assistant postmaster, to succeed Robert A. Eubanks on the nomination of Congressman Carl Durham, and the Senate confirmed him. Durham waived an examination because Hogan had served in the office about twenty years.

Subject: Chapel Hill Post Office and Peace and Justice Plaza

A memorial tablet for Robert Bingham is installed in Memorial Hall

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

Subject: Memorial Hall

House Speaker William Bankhead dedicates the Institute of Government building

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

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

Subject: Institute of Government · Hill Hall

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

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

Subject: Institute of Government

Ralph H. Graves is buried in Chapel Hill

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

People: Louis Graves · Ernest Graves

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

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

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

People: Frank Porter Graham

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

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

Subject: UNC School of Pharmacy

Archie Royal Davis becomes architect for the University of North Carolina

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

People: George Watts Hill · Archie Royal Davis

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

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

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

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

Part of Farm labor in rural Orange County · 16 events

Crabtree Store No. 2 is built north of Cedar Grove

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

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

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

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

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

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Harvey's Chapel builds a frame church near Efland

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

Henry P. Brandis Jr. joins the UNC law faculty

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

Subject: Institute of Government · UNC School of Law

Hillsborough Methodist Church builds an educational wing

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

Subject: Hillsborough Methodist Church

Isaac Hall Manning retires from the medical faculty

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

Subject: UNC School of Medicine

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

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

Kennon Cheek dies at his home in Northside

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

Little River Presbyterian Church builds a brick church

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

Subject: Little River Presbyterian Church

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

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

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

Subject: The Chapel Hill Weekly

McDade and Laws stop functioning as crossroads communities

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

Orange County tobacco growers begin farming under acreage allotments

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

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

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

Subject: Hillsborough Methodist Church

St. Mary's Road is paved and straightened

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

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

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

Subject: St. Paul AME Church

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

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

The Carolina Inn completes the first of its rear additions

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

People: John Sprunt Hill · Arthur Cleveland Nash

Subject: The Carolina Inn

The Efland Knitting Company is started

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

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

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

Subject: Farmers Mutual Exchange

The James Hogg House on the Burnside grounds is torn down

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

Subject: Burnside

The University Laundry is built on West Cameron Avenue

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

The WPA rebuilds the Forest Theatre in stone

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

Subject: Forest Theatre · Battle Park

The William Whitted House becomes Hillsborough's American Legion post

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

Subject: William Whitted House

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

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

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

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

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

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

People: Frank Porter Graham

Thomas P. Lloyd opens the Carolina Pharmacy

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

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

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

Subject: UNC School of Public Health

UNC receives the Horace Williams tract by bequest

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

People: Henry Horace Williams

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

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

Wartime orders push the Eno Cotton Mill to about 600 workers

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

Subject: Eno Mill

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

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

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

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

People: William Donald Carmichael

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Subject: Alexander Dickson House (Johnston’s headquarters)

UNC offers its faculty and laboratories to the national defense

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

People: Frank Porter Graham

A Naval ROTC unit is established at the university

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

UNC makes physical training compulsory for every student

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

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

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

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Connor returns to the UNC faculty as Craige professor

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

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

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

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

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

People: Lillian Hughes Prince

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

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

Subject: Orange County Public Library

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

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

Subject: UNC School of Law

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

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

Subject: Home demonstration clubs

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

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

Subject: Weaver House

The county home closes

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

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

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

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

People: Frank Porter Graham

Subject: University Summer School

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

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

Subject: UNC School of Medicine

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

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

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

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

Subject: Merritt's Store and Grill

UNC junior Joe Felmet is elected executive secretary of the campus American Student Union

The Daily Tar Heel reported that Felmet, a junior from Asheville who had been active in the American Student Union for two years, was elected unanimously as executive secretary of the Carolina chapter after representing it at the group's national convention in New York. He took his A.B. at UNC in 1942.

Fire destroys the Bivins Basket Factory east of Hillsboro

A fire of unknown cause razed the Bivins Basket Factory on the Durham-Greensboro highway just east of Hillsboro. The plant had been used mostly for storage, and its owners called it a total loss.

Chapel Hill appoints its first town planning commission

After more than a year of urging by the Chapel Hill Weekly, the town named a five-member planning commission to review the design of new and remodeled buildings. It set the Colonial Revival look of downtown for the next decade.

People: William D. Carmichael Jr. · Herman G. Baity · Joseph Hyde Pratt · Clyde Eubanks

Chapel Hill's British war relief committee raises money for a mobile canteen in London

The local committee raised $1,160 to buy a mobile tea kitchen and a large stock of food for Londoners under German bombing.

Orange County sells the county home and its farm at auction

The county auctioned the old county home, its 241-acre farm, buildings, stock and tools, and a Forrest was the high bidder. Its last residents had been boarded with relatives and friends at county expense, which the welfare superintendent said cost less than half as much.

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

The livestock auction market at Hillsborough holds its first sale

The county gave the land, the town installed watering, and the Farmers Exchange built the barn for a livestock auction at Hillsborough. Its first sale was held November 6, 1941, and yearly sales grew from $150,000 to $1,100,000 by 1951.

Subject: Farmers Mutual Exchange

UNC forms the Carolina Volunteer Training Corps and opens a War Information Center

In the month of Pearl Harbor the university organized a volunteer military training corps for students and set up a War Information Center.

A filling station is built at 212 North Churton Street

A parapet-roofed filling station with garage bays goes up at 212 North Churton Street about 1942. Around 1980 it lost its tiled pent roof, was stuccoed and enlarged, and became the John Couch Oil Company.

A memorial to local Revolutionary War soldiers is placed at New Hope

In 1942 a monument honoring Revolutionary War soldiers from the neighborhood was set in the grounds of New Hope Presbyterian Church, beside its cemetery.

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

A state farm forester begins part-time work in Orange County

From 1942 Orange County farmers could call on a state forester part time for help with woodland management and timber sales. The 1947 forester, V. G. Watkins, reported on thinning demonstrations.

A. L. Stanback succeeds E. C. Hester as principal of Hillsborough's high school for Black students

Albert Leon Stanback, a teacher at the Hillsboro High School for Negroes, replaced its first principal, E. C. Hester, in 1942. The school took the name Central High School the next year, and Stanback later pushed for the Cedar Grove consolidated school to take the lower grades.

Subject: Central High and Central Elementary, Hillsborough

Akers is named dean of the School of Library Science, UNC's first woman dean

Akers, director of the school since 1935, was named dean, the first woman dean at UNC-Chapel Hill. She held the post until 1954.

Beta Theta Pi and other fraternity houses quarter Navy trainees

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

Subject: Beta Theta Pi Fraternity House

Coates trains as a civil defense instructor and Popular Government issues a defense number

Called to a War Department school in Texas in the summer of 1942, Coates returned to run civil defense training through the Institute, and that fall Popular Government published a 'Defense Issue' on espionage, water system protection, gas attacks and air raid warnings. In 1945 an Army Service Forces colonel credited the Institute with the plan for joining local and state forces with federal ones to defend the state.

Subject: Institute of Government

Douglas and Frances Hill buy the Cabe-Pratt-Harris House and add a large rear wing

The Hills bought the house and about 180 acres from the Harris family in 1942 and soon added a rear wing, removing the old boxed stair to the loft. The farm's later name, Riverbend Farm, dates from the twentieth century.

Geologist Joseph Hyde Pratt, first chairman of the Chapel Hill Planning Board, is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Joseph Hyde Pratt (1870-1942), professor of geology and the first chairman of the Chapel Hill Planning Board, was buried in the cemetery.

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Guion Griffis Johnson leads home-front work in Chapel Hill and Orange County

During World War II Johnson chaired the Community Service Committee of the Chapel Hill War Price and Rationing Board, was public relations officer for the Orange County Office of Civil Defense, and collected war records for Orange County.

James C. McFarling gives up dairying on the Bennett-McFarling farm on Erwin Road

McFarling, given the farm by an uncle, raised cotton on 170 acres and ran an 80-cow dairy with his wife Alice at the Triple-A farmhouse at 101 Erwin Road until he quit the dairy business in 1942. A milk house and cotton house were still standing in 1992.

James Collins buys the closed Black Presbyterian church and its lot

About fourteen years after the congregation disbanded, James Collins bought the church building and land on Orange Street.

James J. Freeland builds his first house at US 70 and Faucette Mill Road

Three years after marrying Maxine Hayes, Freeland built the family's first home where Highway 70 crosses Faucette Mill Road, next to land that became the Fairview subdivision the following year.

People: James John Freeland

Jim Tatum coaches UNC football for a single season

Tatum was UNC's head football coach for one year in 1942. He then joined the navy and learned the split-T formation as an assistant to its founder, Don Faurot, at Iowa Pre-Flight.

Maurice Julian opens The College Shop, a men's clothing store

Julian moved into the space Durham Dairy Products had left at 140 East Franklin and opened a men's clothing store he called The College Shop.

Orange County farmers bring in more than a hundred beef cattle

Over a hundred beef cows and heifers arrived in the county in 1942, and purebred bulls were placed as well. Fourteen 4-H boys bought Hereford heifers, and the Farmers Exchange Market bought the State Fair's first-place Hereford bull.

The Carolina Theatre is built on East Franklin Street to a Williamsburg design by Archie Davis

The new two-story brick theatre at 108 East Franklin Street, with a steep roof, dormers and brick pediments and arches, was the one building in the 100 block of East Franklin to follow the Williamsburg plan.

People: Archie Royal Davis

Subject: Carolina Theatre (1942)

The Institute of Government becomes part of the university

The Institute of Government, begun as a separate body, was made part of the university in 1942.

Subject: Institute of Government

The Janitors' Association reorganizes as a CIO union local

The Janitors' Association became Local 403-P of the State, County and Municipal Workers of America, a CIO union. Minutes of July 2, 1942 name pay as the most important matter, and laundry worker Rebecca Clark became a shop steward.

People: Rebecca Clark

The Methodist church annex on Franklin Street becomes a recreation center

The former Methodist church, kept as an annex when the new church went up in 1926, was converted into a recreation center.

The Paul Riley Store is built on Eno Street

A one-story brick store with a stepped parapet and inset entrance went up at 907 Eno Street, carrying the West End commercial style farther west. A longtime resident recalled it, with the nearby Methodist church, as a center of childhood life in West Hillsborough.

The old Carolina Theatre is renamed The Village

With the new Carolina Theatre open on the south side of the street, the 1927 house on the north side took the name The Village.

Subject: Varsity Theatre (the first Carolina Theatre)

UNC starts a pre-induction curriculum for students bound for the service

The university set up a course of study for all students entering military service; it later grew into the College for War Training.

Wilbur Kutz opens The Varsity, a clothing store with a basement soda fountain

Kutz's clothing store on the north side of East Franklin had a soda fountain downstairs that drew a crowd.

William Picard Jacocks retires to Chapel Hill

After about thirty years of public health work for the Rockefeller Foundation, much of it against hookworm in India and Ceylon, Jacocks retired and moved back to Chapel Hill, where he was active in alumni affairs.

Eleanor Roosevelt speaks at Memorial Hall to close a post-war planning conference

Eleanor Roosevelt spoke in Memorial Hall at UNC to a capacity audience of about 2,000 people, closing a two-day conference on post-war planning sponsored by the Carolina Political Union and the International Student Service. She warned the audience that there was no going back to normalcy.

People: Frank Porter Graham

Subject: Memorial Hall

German, Italian and Japanese aliens re-register at the Chapel Hill post office

All German, Italian and Japanese aliens over 14 living in Chapel Hill had to re-register, with three photographs, at the post office. Postmaster William S. Hogan and Assistant Postmaster Strowd ran the registration, following the procedure of one held there in 1940.

The Orange County Public Library bookmobile makes stops in Chapel Hill

In late February 1942 the Chapel Hill Weekly announced that the county bookmobile, with librarian Ernestine Grafton in charge, would park in front of the Texaco station from noon to 2 p.m. for browsers and borrowers. That spring the bookmobile offered a $5 prize to the school collecting the most waste paper, with the proceeds buying children's books, and a state aid increase let the library order books on readers' requests.

Subject: Orange County Public Library

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

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

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

People: Josephus Daniels · Oliver Owen Kessing

Subject: Navy Pre-Flight School

A wartime munitions plant opens in the former Mill No. 7

National Munitions Corporation converted the empty Mill No. 7 on Roberson Street into a shell-loading plant that pressed tetryl pellets for Navy anti-aircraft ammunition, growing from about 126 workers to more than 500; an explosion hit its pellet houses on September 6, 1942.

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

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

Subject: Swain Hall · Woollen Gymnasium

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

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

People: Arthur Cleveland Nash · Archie Royal Davis

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

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

People: Archie Royal Davis

Subject: Navy Pre-Flight School

Kenneth Tanner lends West House to the Carolina Volunteer Training Corps

Tanner gave the student officer-training corps the use of West House as its headquarters for the rest of the war. The corps then had 125 students in eight companies under Lt. Col. W. A. Raborg.

Fire destroys Orange Grove School

Fire destroyed Orange Grove School in December 1942. On December 6, 1943 the county board sought a $16,000 insurance settlement, and at the Orange Grove committee's request classes went on in the old Orange Grove building rather than moving to Hillsboro.

A Freewill Baptist church meets in a former store on South Nash Street

A small frame building at 219 South Nash Street, shown as a store on the 1911 and 1924 Sanborn maps and later a hot dog stand and a house, appears as the Freewill Baptist Church on the 1943 map. It keeps a small square steeple in its front gable.

Black shank disease first strikes tobacco in Orange County

A new tobacco disease, black shank, appeared first in 1943 and spread quickly through the tobacco belt. The book ranks it with wilt for damage and notes a partly resistant seed.

Daphne Athas graduates from UNC

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

People: Betty Smith · Phillips Russell

Dr. H. W. Moore restores the Hasell-Nash House with architect Archie Royal Davis

Dr. H. W. Moore restored the Federal-style Hasell-Nash House on West Queen Street with the help of architect Archie Royal Davis, who extended the rear of the two side wings around 1943.

People: Archie Royal Davis

Subject: Hasell-Nash House

Elizabeth Janet Gray wins the Newbery Medal

Gray received the 1943 John Newbery Medal for Adam of the Road, a story of 13th-century England, a decade after she left Chapel Hill. She was then living in the Germantown section of Philadelphia.

Engineer Thomas C. Atwood dies, ending the firm of Atwood and Weeks

Atwood's death in 1943 closed the partnership that had carried out much of the university's building since the 1920s.

Fairview is platted as a neighborhood for Black families north of US 70

The first of Hillsborough's mid-century African American subdivisions was laid out in 1943 along roads that were already there, with twenty-five-foot lots meant to be bought in combination. Local builder James J. Freeland, who owned land in Fairview, built many of its houses.

People: James John Freeland

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

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

Pre-meteorology and aviation training units arrive at UNC

In the first half of 1943 the university took in pre-meteorology and aviation training units, adding to the Navy programs already on campus.

Rachel Crook opens a fish and produce market on West Franklin Street

Crook made an old service station, lately a chicken house, into a fish and produce market.

Robert Rhinehart buys the Hill Bakery from Mrs. William Neal

Rhinehart bought the bakery that William Brumfield Neal's widow had run since his death in 1935.

St. Mary's School closes as its pupils are merged into the Hillsborough schools

Consolidation with the Hillsborough schools closed St. Mary's School in 1943.

Subject: St. Mary's School

The 1844 Orange County Courthouse is rehabilitated

The county rehabilitated its courthouse of about 1844 in 1943 and later added an annex, but the building stayed too small, and a new courthouse was finished just south of it in 1954.

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

The Black women's clubs pay off the last of the Efland Home's debt

Four years after the home closed, the North Carolina Federation of Colored Women's Clubs cleared its remaining debt on the Efland reformatory in 1943, the year the legislature voted $25,000 for a state-run training school for Black girls.

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

The Farmers Mutual Exchange builds a slaughterhouse on Occoneechee Farm

In summer 1943 the Exchange put up an abattoir next to the Hillsborough livestock market on Occoneechee Farm. Farmers could bring cattle and hogs for slaughter at cost and collect the meat the next day.

Subject: Occoneechee Farm · Farmers Mutual Exchange

The General Assembly passes a resolution commending the Institute of Government

Peyton Abbott, a Winston-Salem lawyer who moved into the Institute building on December 1, 1942, led its coverage of the 1943 session, winning a seat at the press table and a copy of every bill. Before adjourning, the legislature passed a joint resolution praising the Institute's service to it.

People: Albert Coates

Subject: Institute of Government

The Hillsborough High School for Negroes takes the name Central High School

Under principal A. L. Stanback, the school for Black students in Hillsborough changed its name to Central High School in 1943.

Subject: Central High and Central Elementary, Hillsborough

The McLartys sell the Berry Brick House to Mr. and Mrs. F. Ross Porter

In 1943 F. S. McLarty and his wife, who had bought the Berry Brick House in 1936 and added dormers, sold it to Mr. and Mrs. F. Ross Porter.

Subject: Berry Brick House

William Meade Prince becomes head of the university's art department

William Meade Prince took charge of the University of North Carolina's art department during World War II, while also making posters and drawings for wartime causes.