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Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1910s
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Edwin Greenlaw joins the UNC faculty
Greenlaw, a Renaissance scholar, came to the University of North Carolina in the fall of 1913 at the age of 39.
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Mebane Chapel is organized in Hillsborough
Mebane Chapel, a United Holy Church congregation in Hillsborough, was organized in 1913 and built a 250-seat church the next year.
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Moorefields is advertised for public sale and leaves the Moore family
After more than a century with Alfred Moore's descendants, Moorefields was advertised for public sale, and its later owners were not Moore relatives until 1949.
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R. B. Mason's land west of the Bellevue mill is platted as the West Hill Property
To meet the need for workers' housing near the two mills, Mason's holdings were laid out in 1913 as a grid of roughly equal lots, bounded by the Bellevue mill village, Eno Street and the railroad, West Hill Street, and Mount Willing Road (later King Street). Most houses there went up from the 1920s to the 1940s, and the section beyond West Hill Avenue was platted in the 1930s.
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Smallpox breaks out on the campus
In the last weeks of the 1912-13 term President Venable had to deal with an outbreak of smallpox at the university, one of the worries of the year that led him to seek leave.
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Strowd's Garage opens in Chapel Hill as the first garage in Orange County
A plate caption identifies Strowd's Garage in Chapel Hill, pictured about 1913, as the county's first garage.
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Swain Hall is built as the university dining hall
The university built Swain Hall in 1913 and 1914 as a dining hall on the site of the first president's house and named it for David L. Swain. It served as the dining hall until 1940 and later became the first home of the communications department.
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The Braxton Craig House on McCauley Street is sold to E. G. Norwood
In 1913 the builders of the house at 224 McCauley Street sold it to E. G. Norwood.
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The Cedar Grove pharmacy where Dr. C. M. Hughes practiced is moved beside his house
The early 1900s pharmacy building at the Cedar Grove crossroads, where Dr. Claude M. Hughes kept his medical practice, was moved in 1913 to the lot east of his new house so a three-story flour mill could go up on its site. The mill burned about 1931.
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The Chapel Hill Community Club runs an improvement contest in a Black neighborhood
Susan Moses Graham and the Community Club, with YMCA students under Frank Porter Graham, organized a project in an African American neighborhood at the edge of town, giving prizes for the cleanest house, the cleanest yard and the best fence.
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The General Assembly makes hazing a crime
After the outcry over Rand's death the 1913 legislature outlawed hazing; the same session gave the university enough to keep growing and money for a new dining hall.
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The School of Education is established with M. C. S. Noble as dean
The university formally established its School of Education as a professional school in 1913, with M. C. S. Noble as dean. He held the post until 1921 and kept teaching until he retired in 1934.
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The first president's house is moved off the Swain Hall site and becomes a private home
When Swain Hall was built in 1913 at Cameron Avenue and South Columbia Street, the 1795 house built for the university's president was moved from the corner and reused as a private dwelling.
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The new School of Education building is dedicated
Before the 1913 commencement Venable presided at the dedication of the building for the university's new School of Education, later called the Peabody Building.
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The university calls off its football game with A&M over eligibility
Disputes over A&M players who had played for Brown, Holy Cross and Georgetown and over paid assistant coaches on the field led Carolina to cancel the game, a step Graham accepted with reluctance.
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The university organizes a Bureau of Extension under Louis Round Wilson
Set up as Venable left for Europe in mid-1913 and run by university librarian Louis Round Wilson with no budget of its own, the bureau started programs to take the university's work into the state; the trustees endorsed it in January 1914.
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Venable is renamed Carrboro
A 1913 act of the General Assembly changed the name of the Town of Venable to Carrboro. Julian S. Carr, owner of the local mill since 1909, had asked UNC president Francis Venable's consent in January 1913, and the town's own history says Carr agreed to supply the community with electricity.
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The Lloyd yarn mill becomes Durham Hosiery Mill No. 7
The Thomas F. Lloyd Manufacturing Company mill was sold to Durham Hosiery Mills, which ran it as Mill No. 7 alongside Mill No. 4, the former Alberta mill.
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The Blanche Hosiery Mill Company is chartered again with $100,000 in authorized capital
Four years after Julian Carr's company bought the first Blanche mill, W. E. Lindsay, Blanche Gilbert Lindsay and W. S. Robertson took out a new charter for the Blanche Hosiery Mill Company. By late April its new plant was finished, with 58 knitting machines and work for about 40 hands.
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Three students are convicted in Hillsborough in Isaac William Rand's death
At the Orange County Courthouse one of the four defendants was freed after the first testimony, and a jury of Orange County farmers found the other three guilty within a few hours. The judge gave the minimum four months with the option of hiring them out, and their families paid the fees and took them home the same day.
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The Efland Hosiery Mills is incorporated at Efland
The Efland Hosiery Mills received a state certificate of incorporation with its principal office at Efland and an authorized capital of $50,000. By July the mill was reported nearly finished.
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Silent Sam
On June 2, 1913, the United Daughters of the Confederacy and UNC alumni dedicated a Confederate soldier statue in McCorkle Place, and Julian Carr's dedication speech boasted of whipping a Black woman. The monument drew decades of protest until demonstrators pulled it down on August 20, 2018.
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UNC's Confederate Monument is dedicated
On the second day of commencement Major H. A. London introduced Governor Craig; Mrs. London presented the monument to the trustees for the UDC, President Francis P. Venable accepted it for the university, and Julian S. Carr spoke for the students of 1861. Carr's speech, which praised the Confederate army and recounted his horsewhipping of a Black woman in the village in 1865, is the part now most remembered.
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Vice President Thomas R. Marshall gives the commencement address
Newly inaugurated with Woodrow Wilson, Marshall was the 1913 commencement speaker and stayed at the President's House because there was no decent hotel within fifteen miles of the campus.
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The Hillsboro Building and Loan Association is organized in the back of the West End Drug Store
Six incorporators put up $5,500 to start the Hillsboro Building and Loan Association, with Charles H. Robertson as president and druggist C. M. Andrews as secretary-treasurer. Andrews took members' payments at his drug counter until 1926.
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Acting president Graham pledges to carry the university to the whole state
In his University Day remarks in Memorial Hall, Graham said the new Bureau of Extension would put the university in close touch with every problem of North Carolina life, a break with Venable's narrower view, and he answered charges that students cared mostly for football. Raleigh and Greensboro papers praised the idea the next day.
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Eugene C. Branson shows students how to survey their home counties
During a five-day stay as Graham's guest at Bulrushes, the Georgia rural sociologist led classes and seminars and coached the Johnston County club on gathering facts about illiteracy, tenancy, crops and the tax burden, a report meant to serve as the model for the other county clubs.
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Orange County begins registering births and deaths
The county's birth and death records are complete from October 1913, when registration began. By the 1950s the district health officer served as registrar and sent copies to the register of deeds and the state Bureau of Vital Statistics.
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John Laws dies after more than sixty years as register of deeds
Laws served as register of deeds and clerk to the county board from at least October 1849, apart from 1853 to 1855, until his death at 92.
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Graham proposes a statewide civic service week in a Charlotte speech
Closing Farm Life Week in Charlotte, the acting president called for a day of community self-study across North Carolina a year later, and Farmers Union president Henry Q. Alexander drafted a resolution asking the governor to back it. The book treats the speech as the moment the university openly took up the cause of farmers and wage earners.
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The Corporation Commission orders three railroad underpasses for the Durham-Greensboro highway in Orange County
Ruling on a petition from the Orange County Good Roads Commission against the Southern Railway, the Corporation Commission ordered the county to lower the Durham-Greensboro highway at three railroad crossings and the two sides to build 26-foot underpasses there. The county was to pay half to two thirds of each, and the railroad the rest, including the widening of an existing underpass.
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A two-story brick movie theater is built at 122 West King Street
A brick movie theater with a cable-hung marquee across its front and an upstairs projection booth was built at 122 West King Street around 1914. It is on the 1924 Sanborn map.
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A. J. Blackwood recruits Cora Oakley's family from Burlington to the Carrboro mills
In 1914 A. J. Blackwood, a Burlington neighbor lately made superintendent of Mill No. 4, drew Cora Oakley and her large family to Carrboro with slightly higher wages and a ten-hour day. Durham Hosiery Mills hired many experienced hands away from Burlington-area mills in this way.
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About 250 county citizens meet at the Hillsboro courthouse for Community Service Week
As part of the university's Community Service Week, some 250 citizens gathered at the Orange County courthouse in Hillsboro to take up the county's needs and hear President Graham speak on community service.
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An I-house front is added to the Lloyd family's log house on Dairyland Road
About 1914 a two-story frame front was built onto an older log section on the Lloyd place. Lemuel and Ola Cheek owned it for most of the century and ran it as a dairy farm.
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Andrew Henry Patterson builds a house on East Franklin Street
Patterson was one of several faculty members and townspeople who built new homes in the East Franklin Street residential district in these years.
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Carrboro Methodists build their first church
Organized in 1910 as a mission of the Chapel Hill Methodists, the congregation met in the public school until early 1914, when it built a plain frame church on the large lot east of the school, later the Britt Building site. From about 1900 the town's Methodists had shared Union Chapel with the Baptists.
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Clyde Eubanks moves his drugstore into a building of his own on Franklin Street
Clyde Eubanks put up a new building on his own lot, about a hundred yards west of the Tankersley-owned store he had rented, and moved Eubanks Drug Store into it. Robert Foister's camera shop took the old space.
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Cora Zeta Corpening enrolls as the university's first woman candidate for a medical degree
When the 1914-15 session opened, Cora Zeta Corpening of Mars Hill became the first woman to enroll at the university as a candidate for a medical degree.
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Edward Kidder Graham is elected president of the university
The board of trustees elected Graham president by unanimous vote in 1914, succeeding Francis P. Venable. He had been at Chapel Hill since 1899, first as librarian and then through the English department to the deanship.
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Fire damages the Alumni Building
A fire probably started by Joshua Gore's X-ray machine in the basement did about $1,800 in damage to the Alumni Building.
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Historian J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton commissions a house on North Street from N. C. Curtis
In 1914 J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton, head of the UNC history department and later founder of the Southern Historical Collection, had N. C. Curtis design a one-story house with a pyramid roof at 517 North Street. Two rooms were added in 1924.
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Isaac Emerson gives $25,000 for a new athletic field and stadium
Isaac Emerson of Baltimore, an 1879 graduate who made his fortune with Bromo-Seltzer, gave $25,000 for an athletic field and stadium. The field was under construction when students returned in September 1914 and was named Emerson Field for him.
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James Finch Royster leaves the university for the University of Texas
Royster, who had been teaching the journalism course Edward Kidder Graham created, left Chapel Hill for the University of Texas, one of the faculty Graham could not keep during his year as acting president.
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Marvin H. Stacy becomes permanent dean of the College of Liberal Arts
Graham had made Marvin Hendrix Stacy acting dean of the College of Liberal Arts during Venable's absence and made the post permanent at his first faculty meeting as president. Stacy, a civil engineering professor, handled student discipline and worked to replace written rules with reliance on student honor.
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Mebane Chapel builds its church in Hillsborough under its first pastor, B. F. Alston
A year after the United Holy Church congregation organized, it put up its chapel, seating about 200, with thirty-five members and Rev. B. F. Alston as first pastor.
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S. Berman opens a department store at Franklin and Columbia streets
Newly arrived in Chapel Hill, S. Berman started a department store on the southeast corner of Franklin and Columbia, where J. T. Durham had kept a general store. Berman's stayed on East Franklin for decades.
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Six students and the track trainer are arrested in a Chapel Hill craps game
The authorities found the floating game when a loser wrote a bad check; a few townspeople were arrested too, the faculty suspended the students, and the trainer resigned.
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State Forester John S. Holmes builds a shingled house on Glenburnie Street
John Holmes's wood-shingled house at 204 Glenburnie Street, with bargeboards and diamond-pane sash, is the only example in Chapel Hill of the Shingle Style that McKim, Mead and White developed for Newport summer cottages.
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Students improve Franklin Street and Battle Park during Community Service Week
During Graham's first statewide Community Service Week, about a hundred students worked on Chapel Hill: one crew graded Franklin Street under Joseph Hyde Pratt with teams paid for by merchants and bankers, others cleared the grounds around Swain Hall, cleaned the Battle Park trails under the Rev. W. D. Moss and gathered trash from the alleys.
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The Bank of Chapel Hill moves into a new building on Franklin Street
Short of room, the Bank of Chapel Hill moved into a new building just west of Clyde Eubanks's new drugstore, and a barbershop took over the space it left.
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The Bureau of Extension begins correspondence courses for credit
Under Louis R. Wilson, the university's new Bureau of Extension began organizing correspondence courses for credit during the 1914-15 term. It had already widened its free advice for teachers to help town officials with water systems and streets.
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The Ruffin-Hill tract on St. Mary's Road is sold to A. S. Mitchell, who divides it
In 1914 the 47 1/2-acre Ruffin-Hill tract, long the home of Mary Ruffin Hill and her husband Thomas Hill, was conveyed to A. S. Mitchell, who subdivided the land.
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Venable Baptist Church becomes Carrboro Baptist Church
In 1914, the year after the town was renamed for Julian S. Carr, the Baptist congregation changed its name again, to Carrboro Baptist Church.
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White Oak Grove Baptist Church is organized
Charles Wells and William Thompson were leaders of White Oak Grove Baptist Church, a Black congregation organized about 1914.
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Trustees approve asking the Rockefeller Foundation for a student building
After a sharp debate the board agreed to seek $50,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation, to be matched by $25,000 raised at home, for a student center to replace the crowded YMCA quarters. The plan fell through when word reached the foundation that some trustees objected to tainted money.
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Trustees create a chair of applied economics and rural sociology for Eugene C. Branson
Graham won approval to hire Branson at the top faculty salary of $2,500 and promised him a large office in the Peabody Building; Branson said he would come that fall and proposed starting a study of Orange County right away.
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Trustees put athletic rules in the faculty's hands
At their winter meeting the trustees adopted Graham's view that the faculty alone should make and enforce athletic rules, turning aside coach Trenchard's lobbying for the board to overrule faculty eligibility decisions.
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The first Good Roads Institute meets at Chapel Hill
State geologist and faculty member Joseph Hyde Pratt chaired the first Good Roads Institute held at Chapel Hill. The institute later became part of the university's extension program.
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Francis P. Venable resigns the presidency from London
Writing to the trustees from London, Venable resigned on his doctor's warning against another breakdown and asked to return to teaching chemistry. His letter reached board secretary Richard H. Lewis about the same time Graham got a personal note, which Graham called a great shock.
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Edwin Greenlaw heads UNC's English department
Appointed chairman of the English department in June 1914, Greenlaw built it from eight faculty members to 37 by 1925, when he left for Johns Hopkins.
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E. C. Branson takes up rural economics and sociology and starts the North Carolina Club
Eugene Cunningham Branson arrived in Chapel Hill in September 1914 as Graham's new professor of rural economics and sociology. He at once gathered the students' county clubs into the North Carolina Club to study conditions back home.
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The university assigns each freshman a faculty adviser
President Graham began a system of faculty advisers to help new students settle into university life, and fall 1914 was its first year. Albert Coates's adviser was Oliver Towles of romance languages.
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Branson's University News Letter publishes its first issue
E. C. Branson's University News Letter, a weekly one-page sheet packed with facts about North Carolina gathered by him and his students, first appeared in mid-November 1914 with a run of four thousand copies. Its items were widely reprinted by the state's papers, and circulation grew to fifteen thousand.
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Graham reports enrollment passing 1,000 students
Graham told the trustees in December 1914 that enrollment would pass 1,000, against 512 in 1900, and that counting summer students the university taught 1,578. The campus had grown from ten buildings in 1900 to two dozen.
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Carr Methodist Church builds its Gothic Revival frame church
Two years after organizing, the Carr Methodist congregation builds a modest frame church with Gothic Revival touches on NC 49 at Carr.
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Claude and Ola Neville build a foursquare farmhouse on their dairy farm
Claude Neville, a farmer who also kept a grocery in Carrboro, and his wife Ola built a two-story frame foursquare on Old Greensboro Road. A pegged frame kitchen from an earlier house on the land still stands behind it.
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Collier Cobb develops Cobb Terrace, Chapel Hill's earliest planned development
On uneven land at the north end of Henderson Street, geology professor Collier Cobb brought in earth to partly level the site, designed a terraced development and built eleven houses, several of them Aladdin kit houses, as affordable rental housing for young professors. The houses went up between 1915 and 1927 and stayed rentals until Cobb's death in 1934.
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Contractor Charles Craige builds a gambrel-roofed bungalow for mason William Strayhorn
The house at 107 Jones Ferry Road was built for William and Margie Strayhorn beside the home of his father Toney, head of a family of brick masons. William died young in 1933; his daughter Laura and her husband Albert Reaves kept the house in 1983.
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Durham Hosiery Mills builds a house on West Main Street for its Carrboro superintendent
Some time between 1915 and 1925 the company built a one-and-a-half-story house with a tall hipped roof and Tuscan porch columns at 103 West Main Street for the head of its Carrboro mills; it was long thought the best house in town. Ralph Ward of Mill No. 4 lived there first and Floyd M. Durham of Mill No. 7 later, and Marvin J. Dawson bought it at the 1939 company sale.
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Durham Hosiery Mills builds its last group of mill houses on South Greensboro Street
Around 1915 carpenter John Squires built five houses on South Greensboro Street south of Carr Street, thought to be Durham Hosiery Mills' last housing project in Carrboro. The company then planted Lombardy poplars along the street, which was called Poplar Street until the diseased trees came down in the 1930s.
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Edwin Greenlaw becomes managing editor of Studies in Philology
Greenlaw took over the university's journal Studies in Philology in 1915 and reorganized it as a quarterly.
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Engineering professor T. Felix Hickerson builds a house on Battle Lane
T. Felix Hickerson, later author of a standard road-design textbook and the engineer who laid out Gimghoul and Laurel Hill, built a two-story weatherboarded house at 108 Battle Lane that pairs a classical entrance porch with a bay window and a sleeping porch.
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Eno Cotton Mill rents its village houses to workers for 25 cents a week
The Eno Cotton Mill, founded in 1896 by Allen J. Ruffin and James H. Webb Jr., built a company village for its fast-growing workforce, and by 1915 the company was renting the houses to employees for a quarter a week. The 1924 Sanborn map shows about 100 mill houses west and south of the mill.
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Flat Rock AME Church is organized
Flat Rock, an African Methodist Episcopal congregation, was organized about 1915 and built a 300-seat church in 1952.
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Flat Rock church builds its frame church at St. Mary's and New Sharon Church roads
Soon after the congregation formed in 1915, members of Flat Rock church built a one-story frame church in a plain Gothic style at the corner of St. Mary's and New Sharon Church roads, the center of one of two Black settlements that grew up along the road after emancipation.
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George Trice, who ran an oyster restaurant and shoe shop on Franklin Street, is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
George Trice (1838-1915), an African American businessman who kept an oyster restaurant and a shoe repair shop on Franklin Street, was buried in the cemetery's Black section.
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Graham launches an Alumni Loyalty Fund
After the class of 1905 gave $1,000, Graham asked the trustees to back an alumni loyalty fund and turned the gift into a nationwide appeal for small yearly gifts from the university's roughly six thousand living alumni. It was a new idea to seek private money for a state institution, and the hoped-for sums never came.
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Margaret Berry becomes the first woman to graduate from UNC's law school
Margaret Berry of the Hillsborough Berry family, who had finished her UNC undergraduate degree in 1913, graduated from the university's law school in 1915, the first woman to do so. That summer she passed the state bar examination, listed as Margaret Kollock Berry of Orange.
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Mill worker Jesse Riggsbee builds his own house on South Greensboro Street
Riggsbee and his wife both worked for Durham Hosiery Mills but chose to build rather than rent from the mill or a speculator, and two relatives later built on adjoining West Carr Street lots. A humidifier mechanic, he lived there until his death in 1946.
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Some 250 high school debaters come to Chapel Hill for state finals
About 250 high school students came to the campus for the final rounds of the university's statewide debating union, one of Graham's means of tying the university to towns across the state. Topics included woman suffrage and public ownership of railroads.
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Southern Power Company builds a steam plant on the Eno near University Station
Duke's Southern Power Company built a coal-fired steam generating plant beside the Eno near University Station, a backup for its hydroelectric stations, with Fiske-Carter Construction Company holding the contract in 1915. By July 1916 the Eno steam plant was sending current as far as Charlotte while flooding shut down the company's river stations. Its power went to Durham's factories, not to Orange County.
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St. Paul's A.M.E. Church widens its sanctuary by one bay
A growing congregation led to the widening of the 1892 frame church. Brick veneer went on in the 1950s, but the belfry and steeple kept their original look.
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Student engineers wire the first campus telephone network
The electrical engineering laboratory rebuilt used telephones salvaged from a Durham textile mill to link the Alumni Building offices of the president, business manager, treasurer and registrar. Student engineers also put a radio antenna on New East to receive baseball scores.
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The 1880 brick building on the southwest corner of Franklin and Columbia is torn down
Judged unsafe, the brick building put up in 1880 at the southwest corner of Franklin and Columbia streets was razed. The Baptists later built their church on this corner.
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The 1915 General Assembly raises the university's appropriation
Graham's first legislative campaign won $115,000 a year for operations, against $95,000 before and the $125,000 he sought, plus $60,000 over two years for permanent improvements. Much of the building money went to pay for the University Inn property on Franklin Street and the land under Peabody Hall.
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The Order of Gimghouls buys a 95-acre tract east of campus
The land took in the Prospect Point overlook prized by 1880s member Edward Wray Martin, who had dreamed of a stone castle there. The order traded about a third of it to the university, sold 35 acres, kept a wooded site for the castle and developed the rest as the Glandon subdivision, now the Gimghoul neighborhood.
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The University Gymnasium Association votes to give Old Commons Hall to the university
Stockholders of the association that had owned the old ballroom, gymnasium and dining hall since 1885 voted at a meeting in Dr. R. H. Lewis's office to deed the building to the university. It was then used for class basketball games and, in 1917, for military drill.
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The old Cedar Grove one-teacher schoolhouse is moved to serve Black children
When Cedar Grove's white pupils moved to the new high school, the one-teacher schoolhouse was hauled to Baxter Thompson's land and used as a school for Black children.
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The old Episcopal rectory is said to be cut into sections and moved to North Street
Local tradition holds that around 1915 the Episcopal rectory, a two-room house of about 1850 later enlarged into an H shape, was sawn into pieces and moved to North Street, where the parts became the small houses at 408, 410 and 412.
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UNC gives James Sprunt an honorary doctor of laws
The university, where Sprunt served as a trustee, awarded him an honorary LL.D.
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William Howard Taft gives the first Weil lectures on American citizenship
Former president William Howard Taft spent three days in Chapel Hill as Graham's guest, giving a series of lectures on politics and the presidency. A photograph caption identifies the visit as the inaugural Weil Lecture on American citizenship.
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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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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.
