Chronology

General Albert J. Bowley warns of campus radicals in a Memorial Hall address

Two weeks after he had berated extension director Chester D. Snell at a Raleigh luncheon, the commander of Fort Bragg spoke for nearly an hour in Memorial Hall on the occasion of Washington's birthday before a crowd of about 3,000. He repeated his charges that Soviet-backed agitators were working through colleges and welfare groups, and his closing call for an ROTC unit at the university drew long applause.

Subject: Memorial Hall

The county board moves $30,000 in building money to Efland and sets the order of its new schools

The board shifted $15,000 each from the White Cross and Caldwell building funds to Efland, reasoning that Efland had the greater need, a local tax with an eight-month term, and a paved road for school trucks. It then fixed the building order as Efland, White Cross, Orange County Training School, Orange Grove and Caldwell.

Subject: Orange County Training School / Lincoln High School · Efland schools

The rebuilt Pickwick Theatre opens on Franklin Street

S. J. Brockwell's new fireproof Pickwick, built on the site of the burned one, opened with seats for 750, and crowds were turned away from the first show. W. S. Roberson ran it under lease.

People: W. S. Roberson · Brodie Thompson

Subject: Pickwick Theatre

A new consolidated school for white children is built at Efland

The board let the Efland contract to A. R. Davis for $21,388, with steam heat by Dermott of Durham, placed the school east of the highway and made the contractor replace inferior brick. The board inspected and accepted the building in March 1925, and John Efland paid $1,135 for the old white schoolhouse.

Subject: Efland schools

A new consolidated school is built at Orange Grove

The board let the Orange Grove contract to A. R. Davis for $13,600 and set the school about half a mile from the old one on the road to Hillsboro. It inspected and accepted the building in March 1925.

A new consolidated school is built at White Cross on the Saxapahaw road

After neighbors rejected a site at the crossroads near Leuco Lloyd's, the board placed the new White Cross school on the north side of the Chapel Hill and Saxapahaw road and let the contract to A. R. Davis for $14,436. It accepted the building in March 1925 and sold the old White Cross schoolhouse to F. J. Eubanks for $250.

Subject: White Cross School

Trustees elect Merton L. Ferson dean of the law school

Ferson, an Iowan who had been law dean at Washington University in St. Louis, won with three times the votes of his nearest rival, ending months of resistance from trustees who wanted a North Carolinian.

People: Harry Woodburn Chase

Subject: UNC School of Law

The county board orders its first school buses

The board ordered ten trucks, six GMC, two Reo and two Chevrolet, with bus bodies from the Carolina Body Company of Greensboro, to carry children to the new consolidated schools. At an August hearing in the courthouse some residents urged the commissioners not to sign the notes for the buses, but no action was taken against them.

People: R. H. Claytor

Odum's Institute for Research in Social Science is organized at UNC

The Institute for Research in Social Science was organized at Chapel Hill on June 30, 1924, for the cooperative study of social problems arising from state and regional conditions. Odum founded it with help from the Rockefeller Fund, and it is now the Odum Institute.

Trustees overrule the faculty and give a diploma to a senior who took a drink

The faculty, bound by a trustee rule against any drinking, had denied a diploma to a senior who celebrated the end of exams with a drink or two. His class petitioned the trustees, who reversed the faculty, leaving professors feeling their disciplinary role undercut.

People: Harry Woodburn Chase

The Standard, a movie theatre owned by and for Black residents, opens on West Franklin Street

Chapel Hill's new movie house, owned by and run for Black residents, opened with two crowded shows. Its owners were tailor Durward O'Kelly, builder Charlie Brooks and brick mason Jesse Kirkland.

Henry and Matilda Guthrie's Franklin Street lot, with its moving-picture house, is advertised for foreclosure

A trustee advertised for public sale on August 16, 1924 the Franklin Street land of Henry and Matilda Guthrie, which held two houses, a building used as a moving-picture house, two stores and a garage. The Guthries had bought it from Mary McCauley Lindsay and D. McCauley and fallen behind on the note.

Engineering professor Ralph Trimble and his wife Hazel move into their new Gimghoul house

Ralph M. Trimble, the UNC engineering professor who surveyed the lots of the Gimghoul subdivision, and his wife Hazel move into one of its first houses, built by contractor Charlie Martindale on Glandon Drive.

People: Charlie Lee Martindale

Subject: Gimghoul Castle and neighborhood

The Orange Printshop moves into a new brick building off Rosemary Street

The Orange Printshop, which printed Louis Graves's Chapel Hill Weekly, moved into a new brick building made for it on the lot behind Patterson Brothers drug store. It added new presses and machinery with the move.

People: Louis Graves

Subject: The Orange Printshop

Chase opens the year with his address on the university's intellectual responsibility

Speaking to more than 2,200 students in Memorial Hall at the start of the fall term, Chase answered the university's critics without naming them: the attack on intellectual freedom fell on biology and the social sciences, and suppressing debate led to sterility. He offered a test for responsible free speech and defended the building program ahead of the legislature. The talk was printed more widely than any of his others.

Subject: Memorial Hall

Rameses, the live ram mascot, makes his debut for Carolina

Head cheerleader Vic Huggins won athletic department approval and $25 to buy a ram as a mascot. Rameses first appeared at the football game against the Virginia Military Institute, which Carolina won 3-0.

Christmas seal money pays for tuberculosis care and a free clinic in Chapel Hill

The Community Club's seal sale committee reported that seal money had sent an Orange County man to a sanatorium and paid $450 toward the nurse working among Black residents, who inoculated 68 people for typhoid and brought 36 patients to a free tuberculosis clinic.

The Gimghouls sell their old lodge lot on Rosemary Lane

W. S. Roberson bought the Gimghouls' lot at Rosemary Lane and Boundary Street, with the old lodge to stand until the order finished its new building at Piney Prospect. The old lodge had been torn down by July 1926, and John Lasley's family had moved into a new house on the lot by that September.

People: W. S. Roberson

Subject: Gimghoul Castle and neighborhood

The county board sells four rural schools closed by consolidation

Consolidation had emptied the Fairfield, Fairview, South View and Sunnyside schoolhouses, and the superintendent was ordered to sell them. Fairfield went to the trustees of Fairfield Presbyterian Church for $200 and Sunnyside to Ivan Lloyd for $115.

Subject: Fairfield Presbyterian Church

Fire on East Main Street in Carrboro leads to brick rebuilding

Early on December 3, 1924, a fire that started in Lueco Lloyd's boarding house burned five frame buildings on East Main Street in Carrboro before it was stopped at Marks's brick store. By late December Lloyd was preparing to put up two brick stores on the site, and the rebuilt block was brick.

A UNC study counts forty-seven rural schools and ninety teachers in Orange County

Nita Andrews's 1925 master's study of the county schools found forty-seven rural schools with ninety teachers, about half of them holding only elementary certificates, and five school trucks that cost $1,680.70 a year to run plus $783 for drivers.

A narrow brick store goes up at 106 East Main Street

The narrow unit at 106 East Main Street went up when the block was rebuilt in brick after the December 1924 fire; the 1983 inventory remembers it as built for the post office, though in December 1924 the burned-out post office was to move across the street into Mrs. Stone's new building. Beside it stood the R. H. Marks dry goods store, the town's first brick commercial building.

A two-story brick store block rises in stages at 114 to 120 East Main Street

Beginning in the mid-1920s brick buildings replaced the frame stores at the east end of the block, among them the two-story row at 114 to 120 East Main Street. Samply Merritt's drug store held the east end and Gurnie H. Ray ran the Melba movie theater at 118.

A. C. Howell serves as the university's first secretary of the faculty

Almonte Charles Howell, an English professor at the University of North Carolina, was the first secretary of the faculty, holding the post for twenty years.

Alfred Lawrence helps found the Chapel Hill School of Religion

Lawrence took part in organizing the Chapel Hill School of Religion in 1925-26; funded by the town's churches, it opened its first non-credit courses in the fall of 1926. His papers hold material on it from 1925 and 1926.

An Order of the Eastern Star chapter is established in Hillsborough

A chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star, the Masonic order open to women, was established in Hillsborough. Chapel Hill's chapter followed in 1947.

Arthur C. Nash renovates New East and New West

The two 1858-61 buildings were reworked under Nash, part of a series of renovations that left only the brick shells of the early campus buildings.

Black clubwomen open the North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls at Efland

After years of fundraising, the North Carolina federation of Black women's clubs led by Charlotte Hawkins Brown opened a home and school for Black girls on a 143-acre farm on US 70 at Efland. The state gave only occasional small grants; the federation's board voted in October 1938 to close within five months, and the home closed on March 15, 1939. The state later opened a training school for Black girls, first at Rocky Mount and then at Dobbs Farm near Kinston.

People: Charlotte Hawkins Brown

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

Brodie Thompson builds a house for historian Henry McGilbert Wagstaff

For Henry and Mary Wagstaff, Thompson built a two-story frame house at 206 North Boundary Street with a fanlit entrance, a porch with turned balusters, a high hipped roof and a long side porch toward Rosemary Street.

People: Brodie Thompson

Brodie Thompson builds a house on East Rosemary Street for George and Sarah Pickard

Contractor Brodie Thompson builds a two-story, five-bay Colonial Revival house for George and Sarah Pickard at the southeast corner of East Rosemary and North Boundary streets.

People: Brodie Thompson

Cameron MacRae builds the MacRae building at Franklin and Henderson streets

Cameron F. MacRae, son of Robert Strange MacRae, put up the MacRae building on the northeast corner. By 1928 it held Clarence Pickard's grocery, the Jefferson-Standard insurance office and a basement barbershop.

Charles Martindale builds a bungalow in the Gimghoul colony for attorney L. J. Phipps

Contractor Charles Martindale nears completion of a Craftsman bungalow in the Gimghoul colony for Chapel Hill attorney L. J. Phipps and his wife Vivian. Its floor-length windows and front terrace are noted in later surveys.

People: Charlie Lee Martindale

Subject: Gimghoul Castle and neighborhood

Dean James F. Royster refuses Shaw University debaters seats in the gallery

When the debate team of Shaw University, a Black college in Raleigh, asked only to sit in the gallery and watch Carolina's debaters meet Washington and Lee, Royster, dean of the College of Liberal Arts, said no, fearing it would reflect poorly on the university.

Fire destroys the building that housed Foister's Camera Shop

The building burned, and Robert W. Foister moved across Franklin Street, with a photo laboratory upstairs and a student supply and soda shop below. A new building on the site later held the University Cafeteria.

George Washington Carver speaks in Gerrard Hall

The Tuskegee scientist visited the campus, speaking from the platform of Gerrard Hall and showing a display at the YMCA, without the outcry that met James Weldon Johnson's classroom visits two years later.

Subject: Gerrard Hall

Hillsborough women organize the Hillsborough Garden Club

Twelve Hillsborough women met in an old school building in 1925 to form a garden club, and began by cleaning lots in the business district and planting crepe myrtles along the downtown streets. The club later sponsored the founding of the Orange County Historical Museum.

Subject: Orange County Historical Museum

Lueco Lloyd builds the brick store that houses Hearn's grocery

After the December 1924 fire that began in the Pendergraph boarding house, Lueco Lloyd put up a one-story brick building at 102 East Main Street as rental property, with T. C. Thompson as contractor. His only tenant was John Hearn, who had moved his grocery from Chapel Hill after World War I and ran what by 1983 was Carrboro's oldest business.

Nash designs Spencer Hall, the university's first dormitory for women

Spencer Hall, designed by Nash and under construction in 1924, opened in 1925 as the first dormitory for women at the University of North Carolina; the trustees gave it Cornelia Phillips Spencer's name in 1927. It was one of a series of dormitories he designed on the campus through the 1920s.

Orange County still runs twenty-one one-teacher white schools

Although buses and cars were making consolidation possible, Orange County still had twenty-one one-teacher schools for white children in 1925, and several for Black children.

Southern Railway adds a larger freight house at the Carrboro depot

In 1925 the railroad built a bigger freight house at the Carrboro station, following its 1913 depot and freight shed, to handle the growing traffic in goods for Carrboro and Chapel Hill.

The Bank of Chapel Hill buys the Peoples Bank

Chapel Hill's second bank, the Peoples Bank, ran from about 1912 under presidents Vernon Howell and J. D. Webb. The Bank of Chapel Hill bought its assets in 1925.

Subject: Bank of Chapel Hill

The Dialectic Society condemns the Glee Club for singing to a mixed audience at Hampton

The Dialectic Literary Society censured the university Glee Club for performing before Black and white listeners together at the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, a Black college in Virginia.

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

The Order of Gimghouls begins building its castle

Work on the Gimghouls' castle off the end of Gimghoul Road began in 1925: some 1,300 tons of stone were hauled to the site, stonemasons came from the Waldensian settlement at Valdese, and Chapel Hill builder Charlie Lee Martindale was general contractor. The order held its first gathering there in May 1926.

People: Charlie Lee Martindale

Subject: Gimghoul Castle and neighborhood

The four Bivins brothers start a woodworking plant in Hillsborough

The Bivins brothers opened a plant in Hillsborough in 1925 that first made tobacco baskets and later, as Orange Furniture Craftsmen, upholstered furniture. It became the White Furniture Company's Hillsborough branch.

The legislature puts university spending under the governor's budget control

Governor Angus W. McLean's plan, passed by the 1925 General Assembly, made the governor director of the budget and chair of a stronger Advisory Budget Commission. Moving money between accounts in an institution's budget now needed approval in Raleigh, and the university's budget stayed under review through the biennium. As both budget director and chair of the trustees, the governor gained far more say over the university.

People: Angus W. McLean

The new chemistry building, Venable Hall, is dedicated

The university dedicated its new chemistry building in 1925 and named it Venable Hall while Venable was still teaching there.

Subject: Venable Hall

The old Blanche Hosiery mill building on Lindsay Street is cut into two houses

Blanche Hosiery's small frame mill, about 50 by 24 feet, was already a dwelling by 1915. It was sawn in half to make the mirror-image cottages at 102 and 104 Lindsay Street, which stayed rental houses into the 1970s.

The state farm census records the Efland Home's first crops

The 1925 North Carolina farm census found the Efland Home's farm manager, staff and girls working 33 acres of corn, tobacco, wheat, cotton and Irish potatoes. Within a year the home was also keeping pigs, chickens and dairy cows for its own table.

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

Manning Hall is dedicated as the law school's new home

Supreme court justices, superior court judges, lawyers and alumni, 200 or more, came for the dedication and lunched at the new Carolina Inn with John Sprunt Hill as host.

People: John Sprunt Hill

Subject: UNC School of Law

J. Cheshire Webb takes options on the Hillsborough quarry farm that supplied stone for Duke

Webb showed geologist Jasper L. Stuckey the old quarry near Hillsborough that had supplied flagstones, and at the request of Duke's business manager Frank Brown he took purchase options on the quarry farm, signed January 31, 1925. The land was bought under the option for Duke University on March 31.

Brodie S. Carr opens a grocery in a small filling-station building north of Hillsboro

Out of work after losing his timekeeper job at Eno Cotton Mills, Brodie S. Carr opened a grocery in a small frame service-station building on the northern edge of Hillsboro. It grew into Carr's Super Market.

Subject: Carr’s Super Market

Bruce Strowd opens his new Ford dealership at Franklin and Columbia streets

Strowd Motor Company formally opened its new Ford sales and service building at 100 West Franklin Street, on the corner of Columbia, with a dance and contests. Chapel Hill's first automobile dealer had outgrown his quarters; the two-story brick building, one of the largest downtown, went up in 1924 on the old Carr place, with the showroom and service area below and a paint and body shop above.

People: Bruce Strowd

Chase speaks against the Poole antievolution resolution at a legislative hearing

At an evening hearing of the House education committee, moved to the packed House chamber, Chase was the only college president to speak. He argued for freedom of teaching under the state constitution and asked why evolution could be preached on Sunday but not taught on weekdays. The committee split 11 to 11, and chairman Henry G. Connor Jr. broke the tie for an unfavorable report.

The state House defeats the Poole antievolution resolution

After two days of debate, the House voted 70 to 41 against Henry Connor's compromise bill and then 67 to 46 against the minority report on David Scott Poole's resolution, which would have declared it harmful for any tax-paid teacher to teach human descent from lower life as fact. Former speaker Walter Murphy's speech was credited with settling the outcome.

Harmony School patrons protest a merger with Aycock School

A delegation from Harmony School went before the board to object to consolidating their school with the new Aycock School at Cedar Grove. The board told them no such step was planned, though Harmony was merged into Aycock six years later.

Subject: Aycock School

E. A. Brown sells his Chapel Hill furniture and hardware business to Pendergraft and McCauley

E. A. Brown sold his furniture and hardware business to Joseph W. Pendergraft, his assistant of seven years, and Thomas H. McCauley, who ran it as Pendergraft & McCauley.

The Mayo family's quarry land near Hillsborough is sold to Duke's land agent for $500

A deed at the Orange County courthouse records that Duke land agent Murray Jones paid the Mayo family $500 in March 1925 for land with a working stone quarry, the source of the stone for Duke's new campus. According to family accounts, George Mayo refused to sell until he was jailed and signed so his family would not go hungry.

Subject: Duke land purchases in Orange County · Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

Orange County joins neighboring counties in summer schools for its Black and white teachers

The board agreed to pay a share of a summer session for Black teachers held jointly with Durham and Person counties, and to send its white teachers to a session shared with Person. Pender, then a young teacher, attended the white teachers' session.

Lawyer J. Clyde Ray finishes a two-story office building with a restaurant on Churton Street

J. Clyde Ray built a two-story brick building, about $10,000 with its lot, with his law offices on one side of the ground floor and a restaurant run by Arthur Crabtree on the other. It also held six offices, a lodge room and a rest room for women shopping in town.

Patrick L. Clayton sells his farm northwest of Hillsboro to James B. Duke's agents for $4,000

The Chapel Hill Weekly reported that Patrick L. Clayton, who had paid $200 for a 70-acre farm about a mile northwest of Hillsboro twenty years earlier, had sold it to representatives of James B. Duke for $4,000 for its building stone. Architects and builders had judged the stone suitable for the new Duke University.

Subject: Duke land purchases in Orange County

The Farmers and Merchants Bank moves into a new building on North Churton Street

The Farmers and Merchants Bank moved into a new building of granite and brick on the east side of Churton Street, between the old bank building and Mitchell's hardware store. The building cost about $5,000.

The University buys the Chapel Hill Telephone Company

The University bought the Chapel Hill Telephone Company, reportedly for $25,000 to $30,000, to keep it from outside buyers. The exchange stayed for the time being on Henderson Street near the post office, with a later move planned to the old Strowd garage.

The old Caldwell schoolhouse is sold as a new consolidated school is built

When the county built a new consolidated Caldwell School in 1925, the board sold the old one-teacher schoolhouse and its site to R. E. Clements for $160 on May 4, 1925.

Subject: Caldwell School

The new Chapel of the Cross church is consecrated

The Upjohn building, from then on called the Church, was consecrated during Alfred Lawrence's rectorship. The parish timeline notes that male students in the campus ministry resisted including women students.

Subject: Chapel of the Cross

George Pickard's heirs sell their Columbia Street house and lot to Beta Theta Pi

The fraternity paid $25,000 for the late George Pickard's house and large lot, a private parcel off the university courts that later let it build a bigger house with a deep lawn.

Subject: Beta Theta Pi Fraternity House

Contractor James Henry Liner and others finish the Efland Home cottage

By May 1925, when the clubwomen marked its completion at their annual meeting in Wilson, a one-story weatherboarded cottage with a hip roof stood on the Efland farm, built for about $4,600 by contractors including James Henry Liner of Cedar Grove. It held a classroom-living room, dormitory rooms, matrons' quarters, dining room and kitchen; a Greensboro firm added a pump and Delco generator house, and Efland merchant S. C. Forrest drilled the well and held the mortgage.

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

Governor McLean cuts the university's appropriation by 5 percent

Facing a projected deficit, McLean as budget director cut all state appropriations for the coming year by 5 percent in mid-May. The cut erased the $25,000 increase the legislature had voted, and for the first time in the century the university faced a smaller state appropriation than the year before.

People: Angus W. McLean

S. J. Brockwell hires Brodie Thompson to build a Dutch Colonial house on Henderson Street

S. J. Brockwell and his wife let Thompson the contract for a two-story Dutch Colonial house on the west side of Henderson Street next to the W. P. Jordan home. The house at 211 Henderson Street was much enlarged in 1968.

Wake Forest president William Louis Poteat gives the McNair lectures

Poteat lectured on 'Can a Man Be a Christian Today?' and stayed with the Chases in the president's house; Chase introduced him as a defender of the faith. Days before, Chase had sought $6,000 a year for five years from H. Smith Richardson of Vick Chemical to bring Poteat to Chapel Hill as professor of moral philosophy, an offer Poteat declined.

People: Harry Woodburn Chase

The county board merges Little River Township's schools into a new Caldwell School

Little River patrons voted in March 1925 for a new school at Caldwell, the board let the building contract to B. F. Blanchard for $12,956.20, and C. S. Miller gave seven acres just beyond Caldwell for the site. In June the board consolidated every school in the township except Schley into Caldwell, which opened with 124 pupils.

Subject: Caldwell School

Edwin Greenlaw leaves the Graduate School deanship for Johns Hopkins

Greenlaw left after five years as dean, during which graduate enrollment had tripled to 346 students in eighteen departments. The Alumni Review said he was being driven from the state by tight budgets. James F. Royster followed him as dean.

People: James Finch Royster

Trustees raise tuition 20 percent after the governor insists on a balanced budget

At their commencement-week meeting the trustees split over what they read as a legislative order to raise tuition. Governor McLean told them they could keep tuition only by cutting the operating budget, and after three hours they voted 38 to 23 for a 20 percent increase.

People: Angus W. McLean

A Superior Court judge rules against the county school board in the Efland School site dispute

The county board of education had gone to court against Thomas Forrest and James O. Webb over the acre-and-a-fraction Efland School site. At a hearing in Graham the judge ruled against the board, which told its lawyers to appeal to the state Supreme Court.

Subject: Efland schools

Beta Theta Pi sells its Fraternity Row house to Delta Sigma Pi and moves into the Pickard house

The chapter sold its old house to Delta Sigma Pi and put twenty members in the Pickard house on Columbia Street while it planned a new building.

Subject: Beta Theta Pi Fraternity House

Chase tries a week of orientation for entering freshmen

At Chase's initiative, new students came to campus early for a full week of physical and academic testing, campus tours and preparation for the year. The book calls it an experiment that went well.

The university paves Cameron Avenue through the campus

Ziegler Brothers laid Kentucky asphalt on a six-inch concrete base along Cameron Avenue from the west gate to the east gate and up the Raleigh road to Franklin Street, part of a 1925 paving program with the town and the state highway commission.

University Day marks fifty years since the 1875 reopening

More than ninety representatives of American colleges joined a procession from the Alumni Building to Memorial Hall, where former commissioner of education Philander P. Claxton spoke. In his first address to the university, Governor McLean called it the head of the state's school system and asked it to help smooth religious and social divisions.

People: Harry Woodburn Chase · Edwin Anderson Alderman · Francis Preston Venable · Angus W. McLean

Subject: Memorial Hall

Three armed men rob the Bank of Efland

Three men held up the Bank of Efland in mid-morning, locked cashier Roberts Riley in the vault and drove off with a few thousand dollars. Two men were tried for the robbery at Hillsborough in March 1926.

Subject: Bank of Efland

Chase cancels all campus dances after reports of drinking at a Durham dance

After newspapers described liquor and broken fixtures at a German Club dance at Durham's Washington Duke Hotel following the 1925 Thanksgiving game, the club disciplined twenty-five students and alumni, and Chase called off all campus dances until Easter or later. He followed with a chapel talk urging students not to drink.

People: Andrew Henry Patterson

Dewey Merritt opens a filling station at Rosemary Lane and Columbia Street

Dewey Merritt, a mechanic at Strowd Motor Company, went into business for himself at the end of 1925 with a filling station at the corner of Rosemary Lane and Columbia Street, built with a roof extension to shelter cars. He also offered battery, generator and starter service.

S. A. Nathan resigns as Chapel Hill health officer and stays after a raise

Nathan handed in his resignation as the town's health officer in early December 1925 because of a better offer elsewhere. The board of health, which regarded his work as highly successful, arranged with the mayor and aldermen to raise his salary, and he stayed.

After its 1920s additions the Bellevue mill runs 10,740 spindles and 592 looms

The additions of the early 1920s more than doubled the mill's spindles and looms, and by 1926 the company's capital stock stood at $500,000. In 1919 it had still declared only its original $125,000.

Subject: Bellevue Mill

Alfred Lawrence publicly opposes fundamentalist attacks on teaching evolution

The Chapel of the Cross rector took a public stand against fundamentalist efforts to bar the teaching of evolution in public schools, introducing a diocesan resolution against limits on freedom of thought, teaching and research.

Subject: Chapel of the Cross

Chase keeps Albert Coates with a raise and tenure

After Coates collapsed from exhaustion in June 1926 and sent Chase a private resignation, Chase gave him a pay raise and tenure as professor of law, and Coates was teaching again that fall.

People: Harry Woodburn Chase

Subject: UNC School of Law

Chase keeps the University Press from publishing Collier Cobb's book on evolution

Geologist Collier Cobb had a manuscript on evolution in hand at the University of North Carolina Press. Chase wrote him that the book was good but that putting it out under the university's imprint would read to enemies as a challenge while the antievolution fight was still on. It was never published by the press.

People: Harry Woodburn Chase · Collier Cobb

Durham resident Southgate Jones builds a two-story log summer house on Windhover Place

Jones patterned the 25-by-30-foot house at 108 Windhover Place on log houses owned by his relatives. An amateur geologist, he gathered the ironstone and petrified wood for its fireplace surround on the site; a stone pumphouse was added in the mid-1930s.

Elizabeth Janet Gray joins the UNC library staff

Elizabeth Janet Gray, later Elizabeth Gray Vining, came to Chapel Hill in 1926 as an assistant cataloger at the University library, after library school at Drexel. Friends in town knew her as Betty Gray.

Subject: UNC Libraries

Five fraternity houses by Brodie Thompson form the Big Fraternity Court

Alumni gifts paid for the Big Fraternity Court on the first block of South Columbia Street: five Colonial Revival houses built by Brodie Thompson and set around a shared court, in the manner of the new campus quadrangles. A smaller court stands around the corner on Cameron Avenue.

People: Brodie Thompson

Former students place a memorial tablet to the Nash sisters and Sarah Kollock in the Presbyterian church

Students of the girls' school kept by Sally and Maria Nash and their relative Sarah Kollock put up a tablet in their memory on the wall of the Hillsborough Presbyterian sanctuary.

People: Sarah Kollock · Maria Nash

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

Hope Summerell Chamberlain's Old Days in Chapel Hill is published

Chamberlain's life and letters of Cornelia Phillips Spencer, illustrated with her own drawings, was published in 1926. The University of North Carolina Press was still advertising it in the Chapel Hill Weekly in 1927 and 1930.

People: Cornelia Phillips Spencer

Kay Kyser takes over the UNC campus band from Hal Kemp

Kay Kyser, a UNC student and cheerleader who could not read music, took over leadership of the campus dance band in 1926 when Hal Kemp graduated. The new band held its first rehearsal in Gerrard Hall.

Subject: Gerrard Hall

Mary Hyman becomes supervisor of the Orange County schools and brings in standardized testing

Mary Hyman of New Bern came to Orange County in 1926 as school supervisor. She pushed teaching by projects and units and was the first to give standardized I.Q. and achievement tests in the county schools, using the scores in promotion; after parent complaints she was not reelected when her five-year term ended in 1931.

Merchant Adam Kluttz dies, and a deathbed remark is later linked to the phrase "southern part of heaven"

Kluttz died in 1926. The book tells of a parson at his bedside likening heaven to Chapel Hill in spring and suggests this may be where the town's nickname began.

People: Adam Alexander Kluttz

Nash builds his own house in Chapel Hill

Nash designed and built a Colonial Revival house in Chapel Hill as his personal residence, at the address now numbered 124 South Boundary Street. The state listed it on the National Register on October 26, 2017 as the property most closely associated with his career.

Nash renovates South Building and adds its portico

Nash carried out the renovation of South Building and added the portico in 1926 and 1927, part of his remodelling of older campus buildings that also took in Old East, Old West and Gerrard Hall.

Subject: South Building · Gerrard Hall · Old East · Old West

Orange County builds a new jail

The county replaced its run-down jail with a $65,000 building, also used as a base for convicts on road work. Five years later the state took over most sentenced prisoners and the jail was often nearly empty.

Subject: Orange County jail, Hillsborough

Pi Kappa Alpha builds a $35,000 chapter house designed by Atwood and Nash

Pi Kappa Alpha put up a new house in 1926 for about $35,000, one of the fraternity houses drawn by the university's architects Atwood and Nash.

Robert B. House becomes the university's first executive secretary

The trustees created the post of executive secretary to carry part of the president's load, and House, class of 1916, came from the North Carolina Historical Commission to fill it. His first major task was a plan for better teacher training; he ran the office while Chase was abroad in 1927.

Subject: South Building

Sam Berman moves his department store into the old Pope Mattress building

Mr. Pope sold out to his partner John P. Crowder, who held a liquidation sale and sold the building to Berman. Berman then moved his store across Franklin Street into the much larger space.

T. Felix Hickerson publishes Highway Curves and Earthworks

UNC civil engineering professor Thomas Felix Hickerson, who laid out the curving roads of Rocky Ridge Farm, first published his road design text in 1926. Later issued as Route Location and Design, it was used in engineering programs at some 83 colleges.

The Order of Gimghoul completes its castle at Piney Prospect

The Order of Gimghoul completed a gothic castle at Piney Prospect, the spot where legend placed Dromgoole's fatal duel and burial.

Subject: Gimghoul Castle and neighborhood

The store bearing A. A. Kluttz's name closes

The Kluttz store shut, and Stetson D, a men's clothier, took its space. Its manager, B. Y. C. Buice, blamed too many like stores, cars and better roads drawing customers away, and credit buyers slow to pay.

People: Adam Alexander Kluttz

William R. Kenan Jr. gives $275,000 for a football stadium

Kenan announced a gift of 275,000 dollars to build Kenan Memorial Stadium in honor of his parents, William Rand and Mary Hargrave Kenan. Construction began in November 1926.

Subject: Kenan Stadium

William T. Couch joins the University of North Carolina Press as assistant director

Couch, who had moved to the Chapel Hill area in 1917, began at the press in 1926 as assistant director under Louis Round Wilson and took over as director in 1932.

People: Louis Round Wilson

Frank Graham leads a faculty resolution urging Chase to stay

While Chase was in Oregon being offered that university's presidency, Frank Porter Graham took the floor at a specially called faculty meeting and won adoption, without a word of dissent, of a resolution praising Chase and tying his staying to the cause of freedom and tolerance. It was wired to Chase in Portland.

People: Harry Woodburn Chase

Chase turns down the University of Oregon and stays at Chapel Hill

Oregon's regents had unanimously offered Chase their presidency at $10,000 a year. Back from a three-week trip west, he received a unanimous trustee resolution in Raleigh urging him to stay and said he would remain. He told Oregon that his staying had become tied in the public mind to liberal thought and teaching. In June the trustees raised his pay to $10,000.

Black farmers Joe B. Brooks and John W. Jones organize Jones Grove Missionary Baptist Church

African American farmers Joe Bethel Brooks and John William Jones founded the Jones Grove congregation north of Hillsboro. Its members were close to Lea's (now Lee's) Chapel Baptist Church at Cedar Grove, where the Brooks family lived.

People: Joe Bethel Brooks

Subject: Jones Grove Missionary Baptist Church

Mount Sinai Baptist Church raises money for the new church it is building

The Black congregation on Mount Sinai Road held a rally for the benefit of its new church, then under construction, asking men for $2.50 and women for $1.50.

Chapel Hill Methodists complete a Georgian Revival church by James Gamble Rogers

Replacing their older sanctuary at 150 East Franklin Street, the Methodists finished a red brick church with white trim designed by New York architect James Gamble Rogers. Its tall steeple rises above the nearby campus and business district.

Subject: University United Methodist Church

Commencement moves from midweek to a weekend

To draw more alumni, the 1926 exercises were shifted to the weekend for the first time, with a president's reception and an alumni ball added. The 366 graduates heard Richmond editor Douglas Southall Freeman, and Governor McLean received an honorary doctor of laws with a faculty citation that gently mocked his economies.

People: Angus W. McLean

Subject: Memorial Hall

The Efland Home takes in thirty girls in two years under matron Mary E. Hill

Juvenile courts had sent twelve girls to Efland by 1926. Between July 1, 1926, and June 30, 1928, matron Mary E. Hill, who had worked at the Virginia home for Black girls, cared for thirty; seven ran away and seventeen remained, more than the cottage's fifteen places.

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

The old Methodist church on Rosemary Street becomes a garage run by Montrose Tull

The long-closed 1853 Methodist church at Rosemary and Henderson streets was converted into an automobile repair station, the Club Service Motor Co., run by Montrose Tull. A platform was built from the rear door to Henderson Street for cars.

Subject: Old Methodist Church (Rosemary Street)

Bayard Wootten opens a Chapel Hill studio over Foister's store

Bayard Wootten arranged with R. W. Foister to use the upper floor of his store as a studio, making portraits there every Saturday and taking photographs in homes and outdoors. By 1928 the Wootten-Moulton Studio over Foister's was her Chapel Hill base.

Susie Sharp enters the law school as the only woman in her class

Sharp was the only woman among sixty first-year law students and met harassment in her early weeks. She later became the first woman superior court judge in North Carolina and chief justice of the state supreme court.

Subject: UNC School of Law

The Student Council removes the Carolina Magazine editors over the story 'Slaves'

Just as classes began, the council voted to remove the editor and assistant editor for printing a story with a hint of interracial sex. On appeal, a faculty committee Chase appointed called publication bad taste and poor judgment but not misconduct, and set the council's action aside. Durham textile executive Kemp Lewis protested; Chase defended the committee.

People: Harry Woodburn Chase

Damascus School burns over the Christmas holidays

A committee from the Damascus community told the board in January 1927 that their school had burned during the holidays and asked for a one-teacher school to replace it. The board voted to build and equip a new building for no more than $800.

A revived Poole antievolution bill dies in committee

Representative David Scott Poole brought his measure back in the 1927 General Assembly, and it died in committee. A university law student presented the institution's side, telling legislators the young cared more about where they were going than where they came from.

A two-story brick building goes up at 121-125 East Franklin Street

The building, called the Strowd Building in the survey text, was put up in 1927. After later damage it was rebuilt in its present form in the 1960s, with a balustraded roofline and hooded windows, and in 1992 it housed the Varsity Theatre.

Subject: Varsity Theatre (the first Carolina Theatre)

Annual benefit football games fund Chapel Hill's Black public health nurse

From 1927 a yearly football game played by Black teams on Fetzer Field, sponsored by the University YMCA, raised money for the public health nurse serving Chapel Hill's Black community, a project run by the Community Club. The 1941 game involved the Orange County Training School and raised $275 net.

Subject: Orange County Training School / Lincoln High School · University YMCA

Brodie Thompson builds a brick Colonial Revival house for banker Milton Hogan

At 104 North Boundary Street, Thompson built a two-story brick house for Milton and Carrie Hogan with a Doric-columned entrance, modillion cornice and one-story side porches.

People: Brodie Thompson

Carrboro organizes a fire department

Carrboro's fire department dates from about 1927, by the Weekly's count in 1954, when it described the department's 27-year history and its fourth fire truck.

Charles T. McCormick becomes dean of the law school

Merton L. Ferson had left in 1926 for the Cincinnati deanship, and the man Chase hired to replace him backed out months before the fall term. Chase then named McCormick, on the faculty only a year. The trustees consented but not unanimously, and James A. Gray Jr. moved that they be consulted before the next dean was chosen.

People: Harry Woodburn Chase

Subject: UNC School of Law

Chase has an institute researcher's study of Winston-Salem Black businesses destroyed

Robinson E. Newcomb, a Brookings graduate student working with the Institute for Research in Social Science, had pieced together Black wage data from pay stubs outside R. J. Reynolds plants. After trustee James A. Gray Jr., a Reynolds vice president, complained, Chase and Odum gathered every copy, and Chase assured Gray he had seen to the destruction of the draft and notes. One copy survived at Brookings.

People: Howard W. Odum

Guy B. Johnson joins the UNC faculty

After earning his doctorate at UNC in 1927, Johnson joined the university faculty, where he taught sociology and anthropology until 1969.

Hamilton announces plans for a manuscript collection at UNC

Hamilton announced plans for what he first called the National Southern Collection of manuscripts at the university. It became the Southern Historical Collection after Sarah Graham Kenan's gift in 1930.

Subject: UNC Libraries

Phi Kappa Sigma builds a $45,000 chapter house

Phi Kappa Sigma spent about $45,000 on a new house in 1927 during the fraternity building boom that also eased campus housing.

Samuel Selden joins the Carolina Playmakers as technical director

After five years in New York theater, including the Provincetown Playhouse, Selden came to the University of North Carolina in 1927 as technical director of the Carolina Playmakers.

Part of The Carolina Playmakers and the founding of UNC Press · 20 events

Subject: Carolina Playmakers

The Carolina Theatre and Jeff's Campus Confectionery open in the new Sorrell building

When W. B. Sorrell's building was finished, its first tenants were his optometry shop on the west, the Carolina Theatre in the middle and Jeff's Campus Confectionery on the east.

Subject: Varsity Theatre (the first Carolina Theatre)

The Esso company buys the Lockhart house at Churton and Tryon and moves its front half next door

About 1927 the Esso company bought the eighteenth-century Catherine Lockhart house at the northeast corner of Churton and Tryon streets. The front half was moved to the lot next door on East Tryon Street, and the corner became the site of a filling station.

The Fitch family buys out W. T. Riggs and the business becomes Fitch Lumber Company

The Carrboro yard had opened in 1923 as a branch of the Mebane firm Fitch-Riggs Lumber Company, run by R. B. Fitch Sr. In 1927 the Fitches bought Riggs's share and renamed the company; in 1983 it was Carrboro's oldest working industry.

The General Assembly votes $2,000 for the Efland home for Black girls

The 1927 legislature added $2,000 for the Efland school for delinquent Black girls to its appropriations bill on the House floor. The clubwomen had asked the state to take the home over entirely, which it did not do.

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

The Rice farm is divided in the settlement of Robert Rice's estate

In 1927 the 130-acre farm long tied to the log house was split in settling Robert Rice's estate. The house kept a 65-acre share, later owned by his grandson Joseph A. Rice.

Subject: Paisley-Rice Log House

The legislature allows $625,000 for a new university library

Plans had called for a library costing as much as $862,000. After Chase's pleading, the 1927 General Assembly provided $625,000, just over half of all the capital money for the campus. Robert B. House kept the project on schedule with the Advisory Budget Commission while Chase was abroad.

People: Harry Woodburn Chase · R. B. House

Subject: UNC Libraries

Three brick stores are built at 101-107 North Churton Street after a fire

After fire destroyed the Berry Building on North Churton Street, three brick stores went up on the site together. Plaques saved from the old building, crediting Captain John Berry in 1869, were set between the new storefronts with one reading 'Rebuilt 1927.'

William C. Coker plats the Laurel Hill subdivision

On his land southeast of the campus, Coker had T. Felix Hickerson lay out Laurel Hill Road along a ridge beside the golf course, with short cul-de-sacs and large lots. Coker approved every house plan and seems to have sent builders to Atwood and Nash; seven houses were built before the 1929 crash.

People: William Chambers Coker · Thomas Felix Hickerson

Subject: Rocky Ridge Farm Historic District (Laurel Hill)

William C. Coker's Rocky Ridge lot deeds restrict the race of residents

In selling the lots of his Rocky Ridge Farm development, Coker wrote covenants into the deeds that set the number of buildings, the cost of houses and, in the early deeds, the race of the residents. These private restrictions governed the neighborhood before Chapel Hill had residential zoning.

People: William Chambers Coker

Subject: Rocky Ridge Farm Historic District (Laurel Hill)

Zeta Psi moves into a new brick house on Cameron Avenue

The Zeta Psi chapter left its old hall on Fraternity Row for a new Colonial-style brick house on Cameron Avenue designed by Arthur Nash. Kappa Sigma and Kappa Alpha later built on either side of it to form a court.

Zeta Psi, Kappa Alpha and Kappa Sigma jointly buy the Patterson property on Cameron Avenue

The three fraternities bought the Patterson land together to lay out a second fraternity court; Kenneth Ellington later designed the Kappa Alpha and Kappa Sigma houses there with Arthur Nash's advice so they matched Zeta Psi.

Fire destroys the Phi Delta Theta fraternity house

A midnight fire destroyed the Phi Delta Theta house at the northwest corner of the campus, behind the library. Students on the upper floor jumped from windows, and firemen kept the flames from the Kappa Sigma and Sigma Delta Phi houses next door.

The county board auctions seven more schoolhouses closed by consolidation

Early in 1927 the board sold the Pleasant Green, Orange Chapel, Oaks, Union Grove and Meredith schools, most for between $60 and $150, and turned down the bids for New Bethel and Poplar Grove.

First-year law students protest Coates's failing grades

Coates failed fifteen of fifty-two students in personal property and gave seven more Es. Class leaders including Dan K. Moore pressed him to grade on a curve and talked of a boycott; he kept the grades but gave a new examination.

People: Dan K. Moore

Subject: UNC School of Law

Howard Mumford Jones opens the Bull's Head Bookshop in Murphey Hall

English professor Howard Mumford Jones announced the Bull's Head Book Store, a non-profit shop for modern novels and short stories in his office at 214 Murphey Hall. It later moved to the YMCA building, the ground floor of the university library and, in 1968, the Daniels Building.

Subject: UNC Libraries · University YMCA

UNC library worker Elizabeth Janet Gray sells her first book

Gray, a member of the University library staff, signed a contract with Doubleday, Page & Co. for Meredith's Ann, a story for girls set in the New Hampshire mountains. She went on to write several more books while living in Chapel Hill.

Subject: UNC Libraries

Joseph H. Jones deeds a quarter acre of his farm to the Jones Grove church trustees

John Jones's father, Joseph H. Jones, gave a quarter-acre of his farm to the trustees of the new Jones Grove congregation: his son John, Joe Brooks and Joe's brother William Brooks. The deed also marks the line of the Ridge Road School lot to the south.

People: Joe Bethel Brooks

Subject: Jones Grove Missionary Baptist Church

James Weldon Johnson speaks at the YMCA's Institute of Human Relations

Harry F. Comer's weeklong institute, approved by Chase, brought speakers on race, labor and world affairs. Johnson, NAACP executive secretary, spoke in Memorial Hall and met classes. History chair J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton walked out when Howard Odum introduced him as 'Mister Johnson' and protested to Chase, while a Tar Heel editorial by David Donald Carroll welcomed the visit.

People: Howard W. Odum · J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton

Subject: Memorial Hall · University YMCA

Chapel Hill Community Club women question local legislators on the women's bills

The Community Club's legislative committee asked the state women's lobby how Orange County's legislators had voted on measures backed by women's organizations, including the Australian ballot, child labor and the Efland school for Black girls, and then voted to write each legislator for a statement of his position.

W. B. Sorrell begins building a moving-picture theatre on Franklin Street

Contractor Charles Martindale began preparing the ground for the theatre on the north side of Franklin Street next to Berman's store. It was leased to Publix-Saenger Theatres and was expected to open in September 1927, with Sorrell's jewelry and optical shop in one of its two storefronts.

Contractor Brodie Thompson is elected to the Chapel Hill board of aldermen

In a light vote Zeb P. Council was elected mayor, and P. L. Burch with 127 votes, R. D. W. Connor with 121 and contractor Brodie Thompson with 117 were chosen councilmen. A petition had put Thompson forward as the only declared candidate for alderman.

People: R. D. W. Connor

Press governors object to Paul Green's introduction to Congaree Sketches

Called before Chase and the press's board, assistant editor William T. Couch heard Royster and the others condemn Green's introduction, which said neither race could leave the ditch until whites gave Blacks a hand. Couch pointed out that some 150 advance copies were already out, and the book went out as printed. Six months later, at Chase's order, unsold copies went to a commercial publisher, which reprinted it without Green's introduction.

People: William T. Couch · Paul Green · Harry Woodburn Chase · James Finch Royster

The Carolina Magazine prints an issue of work by Black writers, including Langston Hughes's 'Mulatto'

The student magazine's 'Negro Number' carried only work by African American writers. Hughes's 'Mulatto' drew none of the reaction that the story 'Slaves' had caused the fall before, though both dealt with the same subject.

Mack and Julie Rigsbee buy lots in the Bankhead Forest development

The Rigsbees bought lots 72 to 75 in Block D of the Bankhead Forest property east of Hillsborough in June 1927 and the adjoining lots 68 to 71 in April 1928. Their stone country house and its outbuildings went up on the combined lots.

Subject: Rigsbee’s Rock House

Trustees appoint Sallie Belle Marks and Cecilia Hatrick Bason, the first women on the faculty

With little discussion, the June trustees made both women assistant professors as part of a push to improve teacher training. Marks became supervising principal of the elementary grades at the university's training school in Chapel Hill; Bason worked for the Extension Division from Asheville. Once women were on the faculty, women graduates could join the American Association of University Women.

People: N. W. Walker

Trustees name the women's dormitory for Cornelia Phillips Spencer

At the same meeting that appointed the first women faculty, the trustees named the campus's one women's dormitory, in use for two years, Spencer Hall.

A temporary radio station, WKBG, begins a week of broadcasts from the Pickwick Theatre

A traveling station set up on a stage in front of the Pickwick screen to broadcast music and talks by students and townspeople for a week, opening with the village ministers on a Sunday evening.

Subject: Pickwick Theatre

The county board hires a rural school supervisor at the urging of Edgar W. Knight

After Edgar W. Knight explained the value of a rural supervisor, the board authorized one at $2,400 a year plus $600 for travel, provided the state paid half. Mary Hyman held the post by 1929 and was kept on in 1931 over some local opposition, but the board did not rehire her after her 1932 report.

People: Edgar Wallace Knight

Fire destroys the Everett building, a meat market on King Street

A fire that started soon after midnight destroyed R. O. Everett's two-story brick building on King Street, which held a meat market with roomers upstairs. A bucket brigade and fire trucks from Durham and Mebane kept it from spreading; the loss was put at about $5,000.

Orange County operates under a budget for the first time

After 175 years without a budget or central accounts, the county adopted its first budget for fiscal 1927-1928 under the new County Fiscal Control Act. That year it spent $3,363.21 on the county home and farm and $730.50 on outside poor relief.

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

Professor Ernest R. Groves buys the Marshall house in the Gimghoul colony

Ernest R. Groves, newly come to UNC's school of public welfare, buys the Marshall house in the Gimghoul colony. He and his wife Gladys Groves, both writers on marriage and the family, lived there into the 1930s and added a small stone library.

Subject: Gimghoul Castle and neighborhood

The Church of God of Carrboro is organized

C. T. Boyd and others organized a Church of God congregation in Carrboro and built a 450-seat church the next year.

Alexander H. Graham inherits Montrose on the death of his father, John W. Graham

When John W. Graham died in 1928, Montrose passed to his son Alexander H. 'Sandy' Graham, later lieutenant governor.

People: John W. Graham

Subject: Montrose

Black stonemasons build the stone walls of Rocky Ridge Farm

The curving walls of random-coursed stone that line Country Club Road, Laurel Hill Road and Laurel Hill Circle were built alongside the houses by local Black masons, among them James Blackwell and Jesse Jones.

Subject: Rocky Ridge Farm Historic District (Laurel Hill)

Botanist Henry Roland Totten builds a Tudor Revival house on Laurel Hill Road

Botanist Henry Roland Totten, a protege of W. C. Coker, and his wife built a stuccoed Tudor Revival house at 110 Laurel Hill Road, with one wing in stone. Plans were drawn in June 1928, the excavation was finished by early August, and the house was finished about 1929.

Botanist John Couch builds an Elizabethan Revival house on Ridge Road

Botanist John Couch, a colleague of Coker, built a dormered two-story frame house at 5 Ridge Road in Laurel Hill, its front wing lit by a broad bay window. The 1989 nomination credits the design to the Durham architect George Watts Carr.

Chapel Hill homes and businesses get street numbers for mail delivery

Numbers were given to residences and places of business on the street so the post office could deliver to them.

Contractor Charlie Lee Martindale opens an airfield north of Chapel Hill

Martindale bought a 50-acre plot from philosophy professor Horace Williams and laid out an airfield he called Martindale Field. By 1931 it was known as the Chapel Hill airport.

People: Henry Horace Williams

Subject: Horace Williams Airport

Don S. Matheson becomes Orange County's full-time farm agent

After years of on-and-off support for extension work, the county hired Matheson full time. Over the next quarter century he moved farmers from soil-depleting row crops toward grass and livestock.

Durham Hosiery Mills begins cutting back its Carrboro operations

With demand for cotton stockings sliding since silk hosiery came in during the mid-1910s, the company began curtailing work at its Carrboro mills in 1928. The 1929 crash deepened the slump, and Mill No. 4 shut in 1930.

Subject: Carr Mill

Fire destroys Ralph Pendergraft's Chevrolet agency on West Franklin Street

The frame building of the Chevrolet dealership Pendergraft had opened at Franklin and Roberson streets burned. A small brick building went up on the site and later housed a grocery and an auto service.

Gustav Harrer builds a shingled house on Laurel Hill Road

The Harrer house, a two-story, L-shaped Colonial Revival dwelling with shingle siding, is one of the first houses of Rocky Ridge Farm's opening building period, 1928-30.

H. Scott and Alice Cates build a stone house on South Hillsborough Avenue

A Colonial Revival house faced in rough-coursed stone was built for H. Scott and Alice Cates at South Hillsborough Avenue and West Margaret Lane. It is one of only two stone houses in Hillsborough.

Henry A. Bowden builds a bungalow farm on Bowden Road

Around 1928 the cotton and tobacco farmer Henry A. Bowden built a frame bungalow with three frame outbuildings of the same years off Jones Ferry Road.

Hillsborough's Black Presbyterian church closes

The small congregation had never been strong in numbers or money, and as its older members died there were too few younger ones to carry on. It closed about 1928.

John Maddry builds a bungalow on his Airport Road dairy farm

Maddry put up the story-and-a-half bungalow at 1500 Airport Road in place of an older house and milked 25 cows by hand. Eleven log and frame outbuildings, some older than the house, still stood in 1992.

Latin professor George Howe builds a Tudor Revival house on Buttons Road

George Howe's stuccoed house at 2 Buttons Road in Laurel Hill takes its medieval character from a steep hipped roof, dormers, front wings and casement windows.

People: George Howe

Rupert B. Vance joins the UNC sociology faculty and the Institute for Research in Social Science

After taking his doctorate at UNC in 1928, Vance was appointed to the staff of Howard W. Odum's Institute for Research in Social Science and the Department of Sociology. He was named Kenan Professor in 1945.

People: Howard W. Odum

The Lower Quad dormitories are finished and named

By September 1928 the four three-story red brick men's dormitories of the Lower Quad stood in Battle Woods, soon to be named Aycock, Graham, Everett and Lewis. The quad had gone up from 1924; Everett was not a later addition.

The fraternity slate wins 28 of 30 elected campus offices

In the fall 1928 elections the fraternity political machine carried twenty-eight of thirty posts, making its hand-picked "frame-up" slates impossible to deny; a backlash followed but the machine survived.

UNC lets fraternities pledge freshmen in their first weeks

Until 1928 students could not join a fraternity before their sophomore year; the new rule let houses pledge freshmen on arrival and strengthened the fraternity grip on campus elections.

W. C. Coker buys Dr. Jones's Gothic cottage, which becomes the Chi Psi fraternity house

In 1928 W. C. Coker bought the property at 321 West Cameron Avenue, and the 1850s Gothic cottage of Dr. Johnston Blakeley Jones became the Chi Psi fraternity's house.

People: William Chambers Coker

Fire destroys the Pickard Hotel on Franklin Street

A fire that started in the attic destroyed the old Pickard Hotel late on Saturday night, January 7, 1928, at a loss of about $20,000. Firemen thought they had put it out, but were called back to find the whole roof burning. The hotel, built by the Pickards, was then owned and run by Colonel Uzzell.

Subject: Pickard Hotel

Mason Toney Strayhorn and his grandson Alfred Barbee finish a stone dam across Morgan Creek

Toney Strayhorn, a formerly enslaved Carrboro mason and preacher, completed a thirty-foot-wide stone dam spanning Morgan Creek near University Lake with his grandson Alfred Barbee, whose first masonry job it was. Alfred and his brother Willis Barbee went on to build walls, dams and chimneys around Chapel Hill and Carrboro for sixty years.

People: Toney Strayhorn

White Rock Church is organized

Laura Atwater, Henry Thompson and others organized White Rock Church, a United Holy Church congregation, and built it the same year. R. C. Turner, pastor of the Temple of Truth, was also its first pastor.

Jones Grove Missionary Baptist Church dedicates its first sanctuary

Members and neighbors built a front-gable weatherboarded church, finished early in 1928, with Buck Jacobs giving a large cash gift, William Brooks the sand and Aldolphus Hester the logs; John Jones hauled lumber in a white neighbor's truck. Rev. Joe B. Brooks led the dedication.

People: Joe Bethel Brooks

Subject: Jones Grove Missionary Baptist Church

Chase's memorandum warns faculty against advocacy that embarrasses the university

Under attack from textile editor David Clark, Chase sent Howard Odum, Dudley D. Carroll and Frank Graham a discussion memo on proper activities for social scientists. Faculty whose causes involved colleagues in general embarrassment should leave, he wrote; in North Carolina such causes included certain taxes, labor organizing, racial equality and socialism.

People: Howard W. Odum · Dudley Dewitt Carroll · Frank Porter Graham

Fire guts the old Zeta Psi house on Fraternity Row

The old Zeta Psi house by the Mary Ann Smith dormitory caught fire from a chimney at about noon on a Sunday. The Phi Delta Thetas, renting it after losing their own house in 1927, were burned out a second time; damage passed $4,000.

The trustees name a Lower Quad dormitory Graham Residence Hall for John W. Graham

Meeting shortly after his death, the university trustees named the dormitory finished in 1924 on the Lower Quad for John Washington Graham, class of 1857 and a trustee since 1876. They praised his service at the 1864 Battle of Plymouth, where Confederate troops massacred Black soldiers and people who had fled slavery.

University trustees give Chapel Hill three more acres for the cemetery

Answering an aldermen's petition of June 11, 1928 about crowding, the trustees granted two acres on the east, laid out as Sections III and IV, and an acre on the south that extended the Black Sections A and B. Lot sales went into a maintenance fund overseen by a joint town and faculty committee.

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

A model law office and courtroom are fitted out in Manning Hall

Through the Law School Association, Coates had lawyers around the state pay for a model courtroom and a practice law office stocked with real forms, so students could join theory to practice. Coates had put $2,600 of his own money into the office over four years.

People: Albert Coates

Subject: UNC School of Law

Chapel Hill adopts its first zoning ordinance

The Board of Aldermen unanimously adopted an ordinance dividing the town into two residence zones and two business zones, with height limits, setbacks, yard rules and a board of adjustment. The published text makes no reference to race.

Meeting in the unfinished Graham Memorial, trustees add courses in religion

Chase seated the trustees on folding chairs in the empty lounge of Graham Memorial to shame alumni over the unfinished building. There they adopted the faculty's proposal for courses in the history and literature of religion with one dissenting vote, ending nearly ten years of debate.

People: Harry Woodburn Chase

Subject: Graham Memorial

A new pipe line to the town plant ends the Battle Park sewage plant

Under an agreement among the university, the town and the Gimghouls, a pipe line to the municipal plant in Strowd's lowgrounds was finished, and the park's disposal plant was abandoned so the woods could be restored.

Subject: Battle Park

The Southland Motor Company opens a Studebaker and Erskine agency on Rosemary Street

The Southland Motor Company, a Raleigh firm headed by J. F. Cooper, opened for business in the building near the fire station lately used by the Burroughs Motor Company, with Herbert Pendergraft in charge. It sold Studebaker and Erskine cars and ran a service station and repair shop.

George H. Lawrence becomes the county's first full-time welfare superintendent

The commissioners and school board, in joint session, elected Lawrence full time. For years he worked with only a part-time clerk, from an old university-owned house in Chapel Hill.

People: George H. Lawrence

Gilbert W. Ray becomes Orange County's first county accountant

Under the 1927 County Fiscal Control Act the county hired Ray as accountant and purchasing agent, and he set up its first working system of books and central buying. Ray stayed in the job until August 31, 1947.

People: Ira Ward

George Lawrence describes the county home near Efland in the Chapel Hill Weekly

George Lawrence described the county home two and a half miles north of Efland: two narrow brick buildings, probably of 1824, heated by fireplaces and lit by kerosene, with no plumbing. It held 19 residents and two prisoners, and white and Black residents ate in separate rooms.

People: George H. Lawrence

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

The university hosts a national conference on education in the South

More than thirty college and university presidents, a dozen state superintendents, librarians, governors and others met at Chapel Hill. The gathering tied the university to leading educators nationwide and supported its new emphasis on training high school teachers, principals and superintendents.

People: Harry Woodburn Chase