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U.S. Department of Agriculture Extension Service, Orange and Lee Counties, North Carolina, Demonstrate How Neighborhood Leaders Can Help in Securing Participation of Rural Families in Agriculture's Wartime Programs, Extension Service Circular 387 (1942).Open the sourceAll sources
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Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
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The 1940 census counts 2,043 farms and 11,322 farm residents in Orange County
Census figures given in the 1942 extension report put Orange County at 2,043 farms in 1940, averaging 86 acres with 23 acres in crops, a farm population of 11,322 and tobacco as the main cash crop.
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Orange County farm leaders divide the county's rural communities into neighborhoods for wartime work
At ten community meetings, selected farm leaders split Orange County's rural communities into neighborhoods and put forward names for neighborhood leaders, the first step in the extension service's wartime neighborhood-leader system. The report's map shows 10 communities and 39 white neighborhoods.
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Woodward Byars serves as Orange County's home demonstration agent
In 1942 Miss Woodward Byars was Orange County's home demonstration agent, alongside farm agent Don S. Matheson and assistant agent Joe N. Howard. She handled publicity for edible soybeans, worked the wartime programs through the home demonstration clubs and wrote on the new crop for the county papers.
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Thirty-nine neighborhood meetings in Orange County choose wartime neighborhood leaders
During the week of January 12, 1942, thirty-nine meetings explained the neighborhood plan and picked leaders, drawing 1,677 people in all, about 43 a meeting. Discussion covered bonds and stamps, more food, nutrition, machinery repair, scrap iron and a camp survey; a typical neighborhood of 45 white families got five leaders.
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Neighborhood leader training starts the Victory Garden program in Orange County
In the week of February 2, 1942, a training meeting was held in each of Orange County's 39 neighborhoods, where 163 of the 272 leaders made family lists, split the families among themselves and took instructions for the Victory Garden campaign. Leaders called on their neighbors that month with a garden leaflet and went back in March to leave a poster with each family that had planted.
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Three farm machinery repair meetings in Orange County draw 160 people
As part of the wartime push to keep farm equipment working, Orange County held three machinery meetings on February 26 and 27, 1942, with 160 attending. Neighborhood leaders handed out a repair checklist that farmers filled in and took to their dealers.
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Orange County's Black farm neighborhoods are mapped and elect their own neighborhood leaders
In March 1942 the neighborhood plan was carried to Black rural families: Black neighborhoods were laid out, leaders were elected and family lists drawn up. The report's map shows 27 Black neighborhoods, worked by county agent M. C. Burt and home agent Ruby Crews.
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Orange County counts 272 wartime neighborhood leaders
On April 1, 1942, Orange County's neighborhood-leader system had 117 white men, 78 white women, 54 Black men and 23 Black women serving as leaders, 272 in all.
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Orange County is picked as one of four counties in the nation to test the neighborhood-leader plan
On April 18, 1942, the federal and state extension services invited Orange County to show how well neighborhood leaders could reach every rural family with wartime programs, and the next day the agents met the chairman of the county defense council. The county's letter to farm families credited the choice to their response to the earlier scrap iron, Victory Garden and machinery repair drives.
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Orange County's neighborhood leaders meet at the Hillsborough courthouse to launch the wartime test
The county-wide training meeting on the afternoon of April 28, 1942, drew 265 people, among them 149 of the 195 white and 66 of the 77 Black neighborhood leaders. A. H. Graham, general chairman of Orange County defense, spoke after a chorus from the Black high school sang; other speakers took up war bonds, the Farmers Exchange's "Buy a Bond Pig" offer, salvage, gardens and edible soybeans, which the crowd tasted afterward.
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Neighborhood leaders ask Orange County farm families to pledge a pig or an acre for war bonds
In the same canvass, leaders took pledges under the "Buy a Bond Pig" and "Buy a Bond Acre" plans, in which a family promised the sale price of a pig or an acre of crops toward war bonds and stamps; the Farmers Mutual Exchange Livestock Market supplied pigs to families who could feed them out. In the June survey 58 percent of white families and 30 percent of Black families had bought or pledged bonds and stamps.
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Neighborhood leaders introduce edible soybeans to Orange County farm families
On their scrap calls, leaders gave a half-pound package of edible soybean seed to each family that agreed to collect scrap and sent others to stores stocking the seed, promoting the bean as a protein food that could take the place of meat. By the June survey the program had reached 96 percent of 269 families, and 78 percent had planted it.
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Neighborhood leaders run a scrap metal and rubber drive across rural Orange County
From April 29 to May 9, 1942, leaders called on farm families asking them to gather scrap iron, old rubber, rags and worn-out bags for the county war fund, listed pickup points for WPA trucks and hauled some scrap to dealers themselves. Of 269 families surveyed in June, 93 percent had heard the appeal and 76 percent had turned in scrap or had it ready.
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The Chapel Hill Weekly prints a special edition for the farm war campaign, sent to every rural family
On May 8, 1942, the Chapel Hill Weekly put out a special edition backing the county's neighborhood-leader campaign, and a sample copy went to every rural family in Orange County. Stories in the county's papers that spring covered the leaders, edible soybeans, scrap and war bonds; the Mebane Enterprise printed the leaders' names on April 30.
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Orange County home demonstration clubs take up the whole wheat and enriched bread program
During May 1942 every home demonstration club in Orange County worked on the whole wheat and enriched bread program, which Lee County ran through its neighborhood leaders. Of the 183 surveyed Orange families who bought wheat bread or flour that month and had not already used it, 9 percent bought whole wheat or enriched bread or flour for the first time.
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Orange County rural families pledge $50,000 in war bonds and stamps for
The spring 1942 canvass ended with the county's rural families pledged to buy $50,000 worth of war bonds and stamps during the year, and 200 families signed up to raise a "Bond Pig."
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The federal extension service publishes its report on the Orange and Lee County neighborhood-leader test
In June 1942 the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued Extension Service Circular 387, prepared by Barnard Joy and J. P. Leagans, tracing step by step how Orange and Lee counties had organized neighborhood leaders and what the June survey found. It concluded that trained leaders chosen by their neighbors could carry wartime messages quickly to nearly every rural family.
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Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 4, 2026.
