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Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1920s
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Paul Green wins the Pulitzer Prize for In Abraham’s Bosom
Paul Green received the 1927 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for In Abraham’s Bosom.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.'
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Kenan Memorial Stadium opens
Kenan Memorial Stadium, the gift of William Rand Kenan Jr., hosted its first event on November 12, 1927, when Carolina beat Davidson 27 to 0. It was formally dedicated before the Thanksgiving Day game against Virginia on November 24, when Governor Angus McLean accepted it for the state and the University.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Chase's annual report tallies a decade of growth at the university
More than $5 million in state money had built nine dormitories, five classroom buildings and laboratories. State operating funds had risen from $215,000 to $880,000; faculty above instructor from 66 to 158; the Graduate School from 40 to 205 students; and the library from 88,316 to 193,867 volumes. Enrollment had reached 2,825 and the press had issued fifty titles.
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Chi Psi announces a Norman-style house for West Cameron Avenue
Chi Psi announced plans for a $50,000 Norman-style stone house by the university architects Atwood and Nash on the old McCauley place on Cameron Avenue. The design broke with the campus's Colonial theme: steep slate roof, casement windows with stone trim, an arched entrance and a stone terrace. The old McCauley house, the chapter's home, burned on Christmas night 1929, and in November 1930 the chapter was still without a new house.
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A workmen's compensation law that Frank Graham and Harry Wolf helped write passes
Sixteen earlier bills had failed, but with Governor O. Max Gardner's backing the 1929 General Assembly passed a no-fault workmen's compensation act. Frank Graham lobbied for it, and he and economics professor Harry Wolf helped draft it; the governor's support kept textile interests from objecting to Graham's role.
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Cornelia Spencer Love designs and builds her own house in Laurel Hill
Cornelia Spencer Love, granddaughter of Cornelia Phillips Spencer, planned her own one-story frame house in Laurel Hill; the architect Arthur Nash contributed the flared roof ends and a little porch.
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Drama professor Preston Farrar builds a house with an outdoor stage on Laurel Hill Road
UNC drama professor Preston Farrar built a two-story stucco house in the manner of an English cottage. It had indoor and outdoor stages for rehearsals and small productions, including a stone terrace used as a theatre, and a specimen garden.
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Eben and Ruby Merritt open a gas station on the Pittsboro Road
Eben and Ruby Merritt began running an Esso gas station on the Pittsboro Road south of Chapel Hill in 1929 and kept it for nearly fifty years. It is the business that became Merritt's Store and Grill.
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Elizabeth Janet Gray marries Morgan Vining of the University Extension division
Gray married Morgan Fisher Vining, associate director of the University's Extension division, in Chapel Hill. The couple moved to New York in 1932, and he was killed in an automobile accident in 1933.
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Eno Cotton Mill installs new machinery and switches to combed yarn
New machinery went in at the Eno mill in 1929, and combed yarn replaced coarse carded yarn. Broadcloth shirting and corduroy became its main products.
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Gaines AME Chapel builds its church at Efland
The Black congregation of Gaines AME Chapel at Efland builds its church in 1929. It was covered in brick veneer in 1964.
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George Livas and James Gust go into partnership at the Carolina Confectionary
George Livas formed a partnership with James Gust in 1929 and began operating the Carolina Confectionary as a restaurant as well; it became the Carolina Coffee Shop.
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Herbert Ledbetter and Clarence Pickard open Ledbetter-Pickard Stationery
Ledbetter, a former clerk at Alfred Williams's stationery, and Clarence "Doc" Pickard, whose grocery had failed, opened the store in part of Foister's photo shop. It did well enough to move to a larger space in 1932.
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Kappa Alpha begins a new house on Cameron Avenue
Kappa Alpha, whose old hall stood on Fraternity Row, started a pink granite Colonial house on Cameron Avenue designed by Kenneth Ellington. With Kappa Sigma next door it flanked the Zeta Psi house to form a court.
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Mack and Julie Rigsbee build a white-quartz country house east of Hillsborough
Around 1929 the Rigsbees built a rambling story-and-a-half house faced with white quartz on two wooded acres east of Hillsborough, with a quartz wall, garage, pump house and swimming pool to match. Local stories say the couple sold whiskey and hid it in the roof.
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Mary Bayley Pratt, namesake of Chapel Hill's public library, is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
Mary Bayley Pratt (1874-1929), for whom the Chapel Hill public library of the time was named, was buried in the family plot she shares with Joseph Hyde Pratt.
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Odum's institute wins a $240,000 Rockefeller grant
The Institute for Research in Social Science secured $240,000 from a Rockefeller foundation for studies of social and child welfare, crime and justice, taxation, industry and cooperatives.
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Robert Oscar Cate builds a bungalow and dairy barn on his farm near Chapel Hill
In 1929 Robert Oscar Cate finished a large gambrel-roofed dairy barn and milk sheds on his farm near Chapel Hill and built a story-and-a-half bungalow on the rise above them. It is a clear case of a farm turning to dairying in the 1920s.
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Shepperd Strudwick resigns as president of Bellevue, and L. E. Beard takes over
After twenty-five years as president, Shepperd Strudwick stepped down in 1929, the year its stock value fell from $500,000 to $419,600. L. E. Beard succeeded him and his partner Norfleet Webb as president and treasurer.
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Sophia MacNider, who kept a boarding house and preparatory school on Franklin Street, is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
Sophia MacNider (1846-1929), who ran a boarding house and a preparatory school in her Franklin Street home, was buried in the cemetery.
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The Beta Theta Pi fraternity house is completed on South Columbia Street
The Beta Theta Pi house at 114 South Columbia Street, apart from the fraternity courts, is a brick house laid in Flemish bond with a slate roof and dormers, a Doric portico across the front and wings on each side, set back on a wide lawn.
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The Chapel Hill recorder's court is established
The new court heard all misdemeanors from Chapel Hill Township every Tuesday, with a judge elected by town voters and a clerk and prosecutor named by the aldermen.
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The Efland Home's farm cuts its yearly cost per girl
The home's 1928-1929 report showed the girls working ten acres, 24 fruit trees and a small stock of mule, cows, hogs and chickens, which helped bring the cost per resident down from about $598 in 1928 to $182.50 in 1929. That year fifteen girls were paroled and eleven placed in working homes; assistant matron Margaret Cromwell taught classes and Mebane physician Thomas David Tyson came when needed.
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The Gothic cottage serving as the Chi Psi house burns
Dr. Jones's board-and-batten cottage at 321 West Cameron Avenue burned in 1929, a year after it became the Chi Psi fraternity house. The fraternity's Tudor Revival house now stands on the site.
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The University Press publishes Harriet L. Herring's study of mill villages
Herring, a research associate of the Institute for Research in Social Science, had visited 322 of the state's roughly 500 mills after the manufacturers refused formal cooperation. It was the first systematic look at mill communities. Chase mailed copies to leading textile men, including Charles A. Cannon, as a model of social research.
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The university names Bingham Hall for Robert Bingham
In 1929 the university named Bingham Hall on its Chapel Hill campus for Robert Bingham, class of 1857, an alumnus who often spoke at campus events and helped reopen the university in 1875.
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The county board funds a two-room Morris Grove School, with Black families paying part
The school board approved a gable-roofed, two-room frame school at Morris Grove in Chapel Hill Township. Black residents gave $250 toward it and supplied the lumber, and Louis Webb and Labon Hogan built it; the building survives, long vacant.
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The university sets aside land on the Pittsboro highway for fraternity houses
The university set aside a strip on the west side of the Pittsboro highway for a new fraternity colony, taking fraternity lots on old Fraternity Row in exchange. Phi Delta Theta and Pi Kappa Phi began building there first and moved into their brick houses that fall.
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The Tar Heel becomes the Daily Tar Heel
The commencement issue of June 7, 1929, was the first published as The Daily Tar Heel, after a plan to turn the tri-weekly Tar Heel into a daily went to the Student Activities Committee. Regular daily publication began with the new volume on September 20, 1929.
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Trustees approve a library school paid for by a $100,000 Carnegie grant
At commencement Chase won the trustees' permission to set up a school to train librarians in the new library, with its first five years funded by a $100,000 grant from the Carnegie Corporation.
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Coates holds a Law School Association conference on criminal justice
About thirty lawyers, judges and state officials, including Attorney General D. G. Brummitt and Justices George W. Connor and Willis J. Brogden, met at the law school and split up sections of the American Law Institute model code to begin a new state code of criminal procedure.
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County welfare superintendent notes Orange has no health officer or public health nurse
In a letter to the Chapel Hill Weekly, county welfare superintendent George H. Lawrence wrote that Orange County had no county health officer, no county health department and no public health nurse, and that little preventive health work was being done. He contrasted Orange with Vance County, which had a health officer, a hospital and a tuberculosis sanatorium.
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The Daily Tar Heel counts 31 fraternities with over 900 members and $500,000 in property
By the end of the 1920s about a quarter of UNC students belonged to one of thirty-one national fraternities, whose houses and land were valued at around half a million dollars.
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Chase asks alumni to build a private endowment for the university
With state money in doubt, Chase broke with the unwritten rule that state schools left private gifts to the church colleges and asked alumni to build an endowment alongside tax support. The Durham Herald endorsed the appeal, but four weeks later the stock market crashed and little came of it.
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Chase refuses a mill official's demand that Frank Graham be fired
After the Southern Textile Bulletin wrongly placed Graham at a Communist Labor Day rally, an official of the company that owned Gastonia's Loray Mill asked Governor Gardner to have him dismissed. In the reply Gardner passed along, Chase said Graham had been in New York and that faculty had the same right as other citizens to form and voice opinions, and he would resist any censorship of those seeking change by lawful means.
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Chase seeks money for a school of public affairs to train state and local officials
Chase asked Governor Gardner to help find about $30,000 a year in private money for a school to train city and county officials, public health and public safety officers and others, saying none existed in the South. Albert Coates's Institute of Government soon took up the same mission.
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The new University Library, later Wilson Library, is dedicated
UNC dedicated its new University Library, designed by Arthur Cleveland Nash, on October 19, 1929, weeks after students began using the building that fall. It served as the main campus library for decades, was named for librarian Louis Round Wilson in 1956, and after a 1984 to 1987 renovation became the home of UNC's special collections.
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Will W. Alexander delivers the Weil Lectures at the University
Will W. Alexander, then with the Commission on Cooperation between the Races, gave the three Weil Lectures at the University. His announced topics were "Truth and Fiction about the Old South," "The New Rulers" and "The Older Values and the New Life."
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Marie Clay Clinton of Charlotte becomes interim superintendent of the Efland Home
Marie Clay Clinton, a Charlotte widow active in the federation's work but not a trained teacher or social worker, was named interim superintendent in December 1929. Her assistant Bertha Vincent, a Scotia Seminary graduate, taught the classes, and both women served as house mothers.
- 1930s
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A Phillips grandchild sets a headstone for Dilsey Craig
A small granite headstone was placed over the grave of Dilsey Craig, who died in 1894 after sixty years enslaved, mostly in the household of Professor James Phillips. Its inscription says a Phillips grandchild erected it, and its style suggests the 1930s.
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A brick building that housed the post office goes up at 118 South Churton Street
A one-story beige brick commercial building is put up about 1930 at 118 South Churton Street and is labeled post office on the 1943 Sanborn map. The post office moved to a new building farther down South Churton Street in 1958.
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A new Memorial Hall with a Doric portico replaces the Victorian auditorium
In January 1930 the university decided to raze Old Memorial Hall and build a larger auditorium to plans by Atwood and Nash. The new Colonial Revival hall, with three entrances under a monumental Doric portico facing Cameron Avenue, stood by early 1931, one of three buildings the university completed in the early Depression under Frank Porter Graham.
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Alexander H. Graham chairs the committee that chooses Frank Porter Graham as UNC president
Alexander H. Graham chaired the committee that hired Frank Porter Graham as president of the University of North Carolina in 1930. His papers hold the committee correspondence from February to May 1930.
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Alpha Tau Omega builds a Tudor Gothic house on East Franklin Street
Architect Courtland Curtis designed Alpha Tau Omega's house on East Franklin Street in Tudor Gothic, one of the few big fraternity houses of the era not in the Colonial Revival mode.
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An owner of Durham's Erwin Cotton Mill builds a log retreat above New Hope Creek
In the 1930s a log house was built on a steep ridge over New Hope Creek, reportedly as a getaway for Mr. Erwin of the Erwin Cotton Mill in Durham. Older log outbuildings, among them a tobacco barn, mark an earlier house site.
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Carrboro builds a small brick town hall and fire station at Lloyd and Cobb streets
Around 1930 a small one-story brick building went up at the corner of Lloyd and Cobb streets, east of the railroad, to house Carrboro's town hall and fire department.
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Census counts tenants on about a third of Orange County farms
Tenants operated 643 of 1,870 Orange County farms in 1930 (34.4 percent), 718 of 1,956 in 1935 (36.7 percent) and 687 of 2,043 in 1940 (33.6 percent). Of the 1940 tenants, 514 were share tenants and croppers.
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Clay Hogan builds a large dairy complex off Homestead Road
In the 1930s a notable group of frame dairy buildings went up for Clay Hogan on what is now Lake Hogan Farm Road. By 1992 the farmhouse had apparently been lost.
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Durham Hosiery closes Mill No. 4, the former Alberta mill
Durham Hosiery Mills stopped operations at Mill No. 4 in 1930 as the Depression cut into the hosiery business.
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Frank Graham circulates his Industrial Bill of Rights
Answering the 1929 Gastonia strike deaths, Graham gathered more than four hundred signers across the state, among them Odum, Branson, Poteat and Walter Murphy, though not Chase. He made it the theme of his mid-April 1930 address as president of the North Carolina Conference for Social Service, ignoring advice to soften it while the trustees searched for a president.
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Herman G. Baity serves as dean of UNC's School of Engineering
Baity, head of sanitary engineering since 1928, was dean of the School of Engineering from 1930 until 1936, when the sanitary engineering department moved to the School of Public Health. He chaired it there until 1955.
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James M. Pritchard and Thomas P. Lloyd buy the bankrupt Patterson Brothers drugstore
The Patterson Brothers drugstore failed in 1930, and Pritchard and Lloyd bought it from Wallace Durham Patterson. The maps then list it as the Pritchard and Lloyd Rexall store.
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Johnson-Moore Hardware goes bankrupt and Orange Hardware takes its place
The hardware store that had succeeded Chapel Hill Hardware failed in 1930, one of several Franklin Street businesses lost in the Depression, and Orange Hardware took it over.
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Kappa Sigma builds a $35,000 house on the Cameron Avenue fraternity court
Kappa Sigma's new house, designed by Kenneth Ellington to match its neighbors on the Cameron Avenue court, cost about $35,000.
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Miss Ruffin's will leaves Sans Souci to Samuel T. Latta
Under the will of Miss Ruffin, proved on March 16 of a year in the 1930s, Sans Souci and her other property went to Samuel T. Latta, who was living there in 1971.
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Nash retires and leaves Chapel Hill, staying on as consulting architect
Nash retired in 1930 and moved to Washington, D.C., but continued as the university's consulting architect until 1953, advising on later campus work.
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Numa Taylor builds a stuccoed block house on a lot he won in a raffle
Taylor built the one-story, hip-roofed house at 700 North Greensboro Street of cement block covered with stucco, with unusually tall windows. Martin and Myrtle Luther bought it about 1960.
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Orange County consolidates most of its small white schools
After a county survey by the Board of Education and Superintendent Claytor, most small white schools were merged by 1930, with buses provided. As late as 1925 the county still had 21 one-teacher white schools and several one-teacher Black schools.
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Postmaster, mayor and state senator William Pritchard is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
William Pritchard (1850-1930), Chapel Hill postmaster and mayor and a state senator, was buried in the cemetery.
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Russell Gruman builds a Dutch Colonial house on Laurel Hill Circle
A gambrel-roofed Dutch Colonial Revival house of rough brick and shingle, with a matching garage, went up for Russell Gruman at the close of the district's first building period.
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Students boycott the Carolina Theatre over ticket prices
University students stayed away from the Carolina Theatre on Franklin Street to push the price of admission down from forty cents to thirty.
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Texaco builds a service station at Franklin and Columbia after the town lets nine elms come down
To put a station on the southeast corner, Texaco needed nine old elms cut. The town agreed, with reluctance, once the company promised a tasteful yellow building with roses in the planting.
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The Black neighborhood on the Chapel Hill line spreads west into Partridge Field
In the late 1930s the African American neighborhood straddling the Chapel Hill and Carrboro line grew west into Partridge Field. Only then, the book says, was it readily counted as part of either town; segregation and the community's own sense of itself had kept it apart, with its churches and schools facing Chapel Hill.
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The Dubose estate builds Colonial Revival tenant houses near the Durham County line
In the 1930s the Dubose estate put up several Colonial Revival tenant houses along NC 54 Business just inside Orange County, joining older tenant dwellings from about 1910 and the late 1800s.
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The Efland Home's eighteen girls come from ten counties across the state
In 1930 the home held eighteen girls, all committed by juvenile courts, from Buncombe, Carteret, Durham, Forsyth, Guilford, Mecklenburg, Pasquotank, Robeson, Vance and Wake counties; Durham sent the most, five. It was then one of ten such institutions for Black girls in the United States.
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The Hillsborough Manufacturing Company builds a warehouse and woodworking shop on North Churton Street
Around 1930 the Hillsborough Manufacturing Company puts up a building supply warehouse at 503-505 North Churton Street and a woodworking shop next door at 507-513, both on the 1943 Sanborn map. The warehouse was made into two apartments in the 1950s and the shop into five apartments by the 1960s.
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The Martin School is consolidated into Pleasant Grove Union School
The Martin School, attended almost entirely by Indian children, was merged in 1930 with several other small schools to form Pleasant Grove Union School. The change was unpopular in the community because the school would no longer be exclusively Indian, though it brought better facilities and was in time accepted.
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The McClenan family builds a big gambrel-roofed dairy barn on Old Greensboro Road
In 1930 a very large gambrel-roofed barn was added to the McClenan farm, where an older log house lies inside a two-story frame farmhouse. The report rates the barn among the best of its type and uses the farm as its example of a dairy barn.
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The Mercantile Center building on North Churton Street is remodeled in the Spanish Mission style as a dime store
The two-story brick building at 121 North Churton Street, put up soon after 1911, is remodeled in the 1930s with a tiled pent roof on large brackets, apparently when it became the dime store. Its storefront dates from 1988.
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The Southern Historical Collection is established
In 1930 Sarah Graham Kenan of Wilmington gave UNC $25,000 to buy books, letters and diaries for the Southern Historical Collection being gathered by history professor J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton, who became its first director. Kept in the new library, it grew into a leading repository of manuscripts on the American South.
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The University gives up its Service Plants appliance business to two employees
The UNC Service Plants, which supplied water, power and laundry, had begun selling electrical goods. After the state barred the University from competing with private business, Harvey D. Bennett and Frank C. Blocksidge took over the shop in the same place.
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The county board approves H. F. Pickett as principal of Murphey School
The Orange County board approved H. F. Pickett as principal of Murphey School, which taught grades one through seven with three or four teachers, one of them doubling as principal. He is the first principal the record names.
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The university's Black janitors back John J. Parker's Supreme Court nomination
The Negro Janitors Association of the University of North Carolina, forty-six members, supported President Hoover's nomination of Parker, a UNC alumnus and federal appeals judge, which the Senate rejected amid opposition over his segregationist statements as a 1920 candidate for governor.
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Thomas Atwood's new firm, Atwood and Weeks, moves from Chapel Hill to Durham
With campus building stopped by the 1929 crash and Nash retiring, Atwood took H. Raymond Weeks as his partner and moved the practice to Durham. Weeks succeeded Nash as university architect, with Nash advising him until 1953.
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University students plant donated fruit trees and grapevines at the Efland Home
In the spring of 1930 Lindley Nurseries gave the Efland Home 75 fruit trees and 25 grapevines, and University of North Carolina students set them out on the farm.
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Chase resigns to become president of the University of Illinois
The evening before, a full-dress reception at the Carolina Inn marked ten years since Chase's inauguration, with Governor Gardner already holding his resignation. When the Illinois trustees elected Chase the next day, Gardner announced it from Raleigh. The Illinois post reportedly paid $20,000, twice his salary.
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The Daily Tar Heel raises a relief fund for Orange County's poor
As hard times reached the county, the student paper asked students and townspeople for gifts. From January 31 through May 12, 1930, it collected $202.73, enough to give food to more than forty families.
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UNC tears down the old Memorial Hall
The first Memorial Hall, closed in the fall of 1929 and declared unsafe in December 1929, was torn down in February 1930 after the trustees voted on January 28, 1930 to replace it with a new auditorium on the same site.
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Farmers of Durham and nearby counties organize the Farmers Exchange cooperative
About 400 farmers and farm leaders formed the Farmers Exchange in March 1930 to market farm products and buy supplies at cost. John Sprunt Hill of Durham backed it, and by 1952 it served about 4,100 members in five counties including Orange.
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Black janitors organize the UNC Janitors' Association
Facing a threatened 10 percent pay cut, janitors Kennon Cheek, Frank Hairston, Elliot Washington and Melvin Rich organized the Janitors' Association, with Cheek as its first president. Its early gains included a week's paid vacation and showers in the janitors' bathrooms.
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Howard Mumford Jones leaves Chapel Hill for the University of Michigan
Howard Mumford Jones, a member of the university's English faculty since coming from the University of Texas in 1925, left for the University of Michigan in 1930 and handed his syndicated book-review column, The Literary Lantern, to Paul Green and his wife.
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The Friendly Cafeteria opens on East Franklin Street in the old University Cafeteria space
The Webber brothers of High Point, who ran Friendly Cafeterias in several North Carolina cities, bought the fixtures of the failed University Cafeteria at auction and reopened the space as a Friendly Cafeteria able to serve about 200 people.
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The university loses 20 percent of its next year's state budget
A month after Chase warned Governor Gardner that the university was at a crisis, $175,000 was cut from its budget for the coming year, a 20 percent reduction deeper than any Chase had seen as president.
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Trustees elect Frank Porter Graham president of the university
Meeting in Howell Hall during commencement, the trustees voted without nominations. R. D. W. Connor led the first ballot 26 to 20, but Graham took a majority of 47 on the fourth, and the vote was made unanimous. Found walking by Battle Park and brought in, Graham asked that Connor be chosen instead, then accepted.
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Commencement is held outdoors at the Davie Poplar, and Chase receives an honorary degree
With Memorial Hall torn down, the 339 graduates received diplomas at a stage by the Davie Poplar, seated on the old hall's benches as loudspeakers in the trees carried John H. Finley's address. Honorary degrees went to Ellen Glasgow, Martha Berry, Francis P. Venable and Governor Gardner, and Gardner conferred one on Chase that the trustees had voted without consulting the faculty.
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The county board merges Chestnut Ridge, Jordan's Grove, Smith Level and Grover into larger schools
Over objections from families who wanted to keep neighborhood schools, the board sent the pupils of Chestnut Ridge to Gravelly Hill, those of Grover and Jordan's Grove to Aycock, and those of Smith Level to Carrboro. It then adopted a school budget of $180,849.25 for 1930-31.
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Alexander H. Graham builds a stone law office on Churton Street
Graham, a former speaker of the state House, tore down the small frame building that held his law office and began a one-story building of local stone with a columned front for himself and his new partner Bonner Sawyer. Its cornerstone reads "Graham Building 1930."
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Chapel Hill charity circle reports taking a patient to Lincoln Hospital in Durham
The Burden Bearers' Circle of the King's Daughters and Sons of Chapel Hill reported that it had taken a man to Lincoln Hospital in Durham for an operation and driven him back weekly for two months of treatment. The circle also made gowns for the hospital.
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An Efland merchant kills a robber outside the Bank of Efland
A holdup at the Bank of Efland failed when Mrs. George Shambley warned merchant Carl Forrest, a bank officer, who shot robber Bruce Carpenter of Durham as he came out. His partner escaped by car, and a coroner's jury found Forrest acted in self-defense.
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St. Mary's School burns and the county builds a new one
Fire destroyed St. Mary's School on November 3, 1930. With $2,500 from the county commissioners on top of $1,800 already set aside, the board let J. H. Liner of Cedar Grove build a new school for 84 children for $4,638.30 and received it on January 5, 1931.
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The old Carnegie Library is dedicated as the music building
After the library moved to its new building, the Carnegie Library was remodeled for the music department with an auditorium and a Reuter organ, most of the cost given by the Hill family. It was dedicated on November 14, 1930, and named Hill Music Hall by trustee resolution in the summer of 1931.
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The Bank of Efland fails and goes into receivership
Efland had its own bank for about ten years, with John L. Efland as president. In November 1930, days after a robbery in which a merchant shot the robber dead, the cashier, Roberts Riley, handed the state bank examiner the keys; the bank was found $15,000 to $40,000 short and put in receivers' hands, and Riley was jailed at Hillsboro.
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Albert and Gladys Coates mail the first issue of Popular Government
The seventy-page first issue, built on Coates's paper The Convict's Question, called for a scientific overhaul of the state's criminal justice system. The Coateses paid about $1,500 to print it and addressed some two thousand copies by hand at the Chapel Hill post office before year's end.
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A bungalow goes up on the old Bivins Basket Factory lot on South Occoneechee Street
By 1931 the Bivins Basket Factory, shown at South Occoneechee Street and West Margaret Lane on the 1924 Sanborn map, had left the site, and a bungalow was built there. The factory's small office may have been moved next door when the house went up.
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A second storefront is built beside the old general store at 115 West King Street
A new brick store went up on the west side of an 1880s general store building, the two were joined inside, and the older store got a new front. The pair later housed the Dual Supply hardware store.
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Addie Williams Totten organizes the Chapel Hill Garden Club
Addie Williams Totten, who had lived in Chapel Hill since her 1923 marriage to botanist H. R. Totten, organized the Chapel Hill Garden Club in 1931. It joined the state federation in 1932, and she was again its president in 1958.
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Albert Coates establishes the Institute of Government
UNC law professor Albert Coates began building the Institute of Government in 1931, with police schools that September and a Carolina Inn planning meeting in December, and the Institute was formally organized and named in May 1932. Working with his wife, Gladys Hall Coates, he ran it as a private enterprise until it became part of the University in 1942; it is now the UNC School of Government.
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C. B. and Myrtle Ray Stanley's house is built on Allen Ruffin Avenue in West Hillsborough
The house at 406 Allen Ruffin Avenue was built for Charles B. and Myrtle Ray Stanley in the Eno mill neighborhood of West Hillsborough. Charles Stanley died at home there in 1958, and his funeral was held at the nearby Eno Methodist Church.
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Graham Memorial is completed as the university's student union
The building named for Edward Kidder Graham was completed in 1931 and served as the student union, holding the Horace Williams Library, a barber shop, a bowling alley, a game room and offices for student publications.
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John Henry Blue and his wife take charge of the Efland Home
John Henry Blue and his wife ran the Efland Home in 1931-1932 with a second matron. The farm then had forty acres in cultivation and supplied beef, pork, chicken, eggs, milk, butter, fruit and vegetables.
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Mack and Julie Rigsbee lose their Rock House after defaulting on the mortgage
About two years after moving into their white flint house, the Rigsbees defaulted on the mortgage in 1931, and the place passed through a series of owners. Court records later tie Mack Rigsbee to whiskey convictions in Durham and Granville counties.
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Phillips Russell returns to Chapel Hill to teach creative writing
After years as a newspaperman in New York and London, Russell came back in 1931 and taught writing at the university for twenty-five years, first in the English department and then in the School of Journalism. The Atlantic Monthly called his class, often held outdoors under the trees, one of the four best in the country.
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The Christian church congregation near Mebane builds a brick church
The congregation now known as Mebane United Church of Christ builds a cross-gable brick church near Mebane in 1931.
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The Weldon Riley House is built on Eno Street
The one-and-a-half-story bungalow at 811 Eno Street, with a gabled dormer, knee brackets and a wide engaged porch, is judged the best Craftsman house in West Hillsborough.
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The last known burials are made at Margaret Lane Cemetery
Margaret Lane Cemetery, begun as a burial ground for enslaved people before 1852, was used until 1931, according to the plaques placed in 1987. The oldest legible stone is for George W. Hill (1844-1900).
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The legislature creates a commission on improving the state's laws, with Coates as secretary
The 1931 General Assembly set up a commission of justices, judges, lawyers and law school representatives to recommend changes to the laws, with Albert Coates as executive secretary and a report due in 1933.
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The state takes over Orange County's roads and most of its prisoners
The 1931 act moved every public road outside town streets to state upkeep and made the state responsible for longer-term prisoners, ending one of the county's oldest duties. The Gardner survey had found Orange spent $48,076 on its 412 miles of roads in 1929.
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UNC establishes its School of Library Science
A School of Library Science was added at Chapel Hill in 1931, early in Frank Porter Graham's presidency.
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University Lodge buys Chapel Hill's old Baptist church for its hall
University Lodge No. 408 bought the old Baptist church building on Franklin Street and made it into its lodge hall.
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Townspeople and faculty form the Battle Park Association at Joseph Hyde Pratt's home
A meeting at Colonel Pratt's home launched a volunteer group to restore Kemp Battle's paths and bridges in Battle Park. By the end of 1931 it had cleared old walks, opened about three miles of trail and rebuilt the bridges.
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Contempo and the Intimate Bookshop begin in Chapel Hill
Milton Abernethy, Anthony Buttitta and three other young men distributed the first issue of Contempo, a four-page review of ideas and personalities, in Chapel Hill on April 27, 1931. They also ran the Intimate Bookshop from a dormitory room; by June it had moved above the Cavalier Cafeteria, and Contempo was later headquartered there.
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Breeze School is merged into Aycock and later becomes a tobacco pack house
On June 15, 1931 the county Board of Education merged Harmony and Breeze schools near Caldwell into Aycock School. By 1938 the Breeze building was being used to store tobacco.
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The county board merges nine more rural schools into larger ones
At a special meeting on reorganizing the schools, the board sent Merritts to Chapel Hill, Damascus to Carrboro, Tom's Creek and Rock Hill to Orange Grove, Union and Rehobeth to Efland, and Harmony with others to Aycock, leaving few one-teacher schools for white children.
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The county board sets bus driver pay and a one-mile limit on walks to the bus
The board paid student drivers $10 a month and adult drivers $20, and told the superintendent to lay out truck routes so that no child walked more than a mile to a bus. A few weeks later the state told the superintendent that $15 a month was the most a driver could be paid.
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Coates opens his first statewide school for law officers in Manning Hall
About fifty police chiefs, sheriffs, prosecutors, clerks and judges, growing to seventy-five or more, met for three days under the police chiefs' association, the first meeting of city, county, state and federal officers under one roof. Governor Gardner called it the most promising movement the university had begun.
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