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Charles H. Herty

Charles Holmes Herty (1867–1938), a chemist born in Milledgeville, Georgia, taught at UNC from 1905 to 1916 as Smith Professor of General and Industrial Chemistry, was dean of the School of Applied Science from 1908 to 1911 and served on the athletics committee. He later showed that newsprint could be made from pine pulp.

Source: NCpedia: Herty, Charles Holmes (Maury York, Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, 1988)

Also found in catalogs as Charles H (Charles Holmes) Herty.

1867–1938 · Dates from the Library of Congress · Library of Congress authority record ↗

2 works about Charles H. Herty are indexed here.

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Life and Orange County connections

Storylines this person is part of, in date order. Each has its own page.

StorylineChapel Hill's public school becomes a graded district, 1900–19091900–1909 · 6 events · Chapel Hill's public schooling began the decade as a contract with two private teachers and ended it as a graded school district run free of the Orange County board. In 1900 the school board ruled that the Canadas' school was not a public school, since the teachers had not met the school law, and withheld their pay; John W. Canada's school closed in 1901. In 1903 the commissioners called a special school tax election in the district, and the school committee later bought the old Canada building. An act ratified in February 1909 created the Chapel Hill Graded School District, with a special school tax and six trustees, subject to the voters' approval in May. StorylineLocal school taxes come to Orange County, 1903–19091903–1909 · 10 events · Between 1903 and 1910 Orange County's school districts voted one by one on whether to tax themselves for better schools, and the votes went both ways. Caldwell District approved a local tax for a rural graded school in 1903, while Elm Grove rejected one that October. After a 1904 election the Mebane district followed, and in 1905 the commissioners levied special school taxes in both. In 1907 Superintendent John C. Hocutt said he meant to campaign for local taxes. In 1908 the Hillsboro district defeated a school tax while Fairfield carried one, and in 1909 the legislature created the Chapel Hill Graded School District with a special tax. By 1910 special school taxes were collected in six districts. StorylineThe county road bonds of 1911–19121911–1912 · 6 events · Orange County's first bonds, $250,000 to build roads, passed narrowly in 1912 and left a debt not cleared until 1953. Support built through 1911, with delegates to a state good roads convention and a talk to farmers by State Geologist Joseph Hyde Pratt, but the commissioners put off a bond election until spring. In February 1912 a Chapel Hill meeting named a citizens' committee to work for the bonds, and on March 19 the county voted 919 to 831 to borrow the money, with a good roads commission to pick the roads. Work waited while Frank Nash made up a case on the county road law for the state Supreme Court. The bonds sold about a year after the vote.

Dated events connected with this person, in date order. See these 11 dated events in the chronology →

  1. Chemistry professor Charles Baskerville builds a Queen Anne house at 524 East Franklin Street Charles Baskerville's house on East Franklin Street, going up in March 1896, hides two full stories behind a large polygonal entrance bay with a pyramid roof, trimmed with a turret, a balconied dormer and a gabled vent. Little calls it the most playful Queen Anne house in town. Baskerville bought the lot outright in 1905 and sold the house that year to chemist Charles Herty. People: Charles Baskerville, Charles H. Herty Place: 524 East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill · Also mentions: East Franklin StreetSearch the index · NC Digital Collections: M. Ruth Little, The Town and Gown Architecture of Chapel Hill, 1795-1975 (2004), p. 40 · Also: The Tar Heel, March 21, 1896, p. 3
  2. Charles H. Herty teaches chemistry at the university Charles H. Herty, a Georgia chemist who had already devised a new way of gathering turpentine from pine trees, came to UNC in 1905 as Smith Professor of General and Industrial Chemistry. He stayed until 1916, serving as dean of the School of Applied Science from 1908 to 1911 and on the athletics committee. Place: Chapel HillSearch the index · NCpedia: Herty, Charles Holmes (Maury York, Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, 1988)
  3. Chemist Charles H. Herty buys Charles Baskerville's new house Charles Baskerville, who had built a house on the southwest corner of Boundary and Franklin streets in 1897, sold it in 1905 to the chemist Charles H. Herty, who joined the university faculty that year and was later known for a process that made newsprint from southern pine. People: Charles Baskerville, Charles H. Herty Place: Baskerville-Herty house, East Franklin Street at Boundary Street, Chapel HillSearch the index · NC Digital Collections: M. Ruth Little, The Town and Gown Architecture of Chapel Hill, 1795-1975 (2004), p. 40 · Also: Bernard Lee Bryant Jr., Occupants and Structures of Franklin Street, Chapel Hill (1998; Chapel Hill Historical Society, 1999), scan
  4. The new chemistry building is completed and Person Hall goes to medicine The university spent $45,000 of the state grant on a chemistry building that held three times as many students as the old one. The rest refitted Person Hall, the old chemistry building, for the Medical Department and New East for biology. People: Charles H. Herty Place: Chapel Hill · Also mentions: Person HallSearch the index · Documenting the American South: Kemp P. Battle, History of the University of North Carolina, vol. II (1912), p. 658
  5. Faculty members organize the Chapel Hill Country Club About forty-five people, mostly university faculty, organized a country club and rented a house and several acres at the edge of Chapel Hill, laying out golf links and tennis courts. Joseph Hyde Pratt chaired its board of governors. People: Joseph Hyde Pratt, Archibald Henderson, Charles H. Herty Place: Rented house and grounds at the edge of Chapel HillSearch the index · The Tar Heel, January 16, 1908, p. 1
  6. The university creates a School of Applied Science with Charles H. Herty as dean At the 1908 commencement President Venable announced that the trustees had made Charles H. Herty dean of the School of Applied Science and James E. Latta professor of electrical engineering. People: Francis Preston Venable, Charles H. Herty Place: Chapel Hill · Also named: James E. LattaSearch the index · Documenting the American South: Kemp P. Battle, History of the University of North Carolina, vol. II (1912), p. 681
  7. The legislature creates the Chapel Hill Graded School District An act ratified February 26, 1909 created the Chapel Hill Graded School District, with a special school tax and six trustees, among them Charles H. Herty and N. W. Walker, who ran its schools free of the Orange County board. Voters had to approve it in May; the city school system dates its founding to 1909. People: Charles H. Herty, N. W. Walker Place: Chapel HillSearch the index · Private Laws of the State of North Carolina, Session of 1909, chapter 2, pp. 7-11 (Internet Archive)
  8. A Chapel Hill good roads meeting names a citizens' committee for the road bonds A good roads meeting at Chapel Hill passed a resolution for a citizens' committee to work for good roads ahead of the county's $250,000 road bond vote. The chairman named 39 men to it, with George Pickard as chairman and Joseph Hyde Pratt and Charles H. Herty among the members. People: Joseph Hyde Pratt, Charles H. Herty Place: Chapel Hill · Also named: George PickardSearch the index · The News (Chapel Hill), March 14, 1912, p. 5
  9. The 1914 Yackety Yack is dedicated to chemistry professor Charles H. Herty The editors of the university yearbook dedicated the 1914 Yackety Yack to Herty because he stood for service to his region. Colleagues recalled that he urged students to use chemistry to do something for the state or the country. Place: Chapel HillSearch the index · Carolina Story: Virtual Museum of University History: Charles Holmes Herty (1867-1938)
  10. The university gives Charles H. Herty an honorary Doctor of Laws UNC conferred an honorary LL.D. on Charles Holmes Herty at its commencement in Kenan Stadium on June 6, 1933, seventeen years after he left its chemistry faculty to work in industrial chemistry. He was one of four honorary degree recipients, with Thurman D. Kitchin, Walter Lee Lingle and John Sprunt Hill. Place: Chapel Hill · Also named: John Sprunt Hill · Also mentions: Kenan StadiumSearch the index · UNC Libraries, North Carolina Miscellany: Honorary Degrees Awarded by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1799 to present · Also: Chapel Hill Weekly, June 9, 1933, p. 1
  11. The American Chemical Society holds its national meeting in Chapel Hill About 2,155 chemists and guests from 38 states, Hawaii and seven foreign countries came for the society's annual meeting, the first it had held on a Southern college campus and, the Weekly said, the largest gathering of professional people ever held in the state. The University put off its spring vacation to house visitors in the dormitories, about 500 were lodged in village homes, papers were read in campus classrooms, and Duke University was host for an afternoon and evening. People: Russell M. (Russell Marvin) Grumman, Charles H. Herty Place: University Library and campus, Chapel HillSearch the index · The Chapel Hill Weekly, April 16, 1937, p. 1

People named in the same events

People named in the same dated entries as Charles H. Herty, those sharing the most entries first. Each line links one of the shared entries in the chronology, where its source is cited. A shared entry shows these people in the same event, not how well they knew each other.

Indexed works

Works about or by Charles H. Herty. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it. Background reading appears below.

Patterson's General Store Ledger

Store, Patterson's General · 1910

Account ledger of Patterson's General Store in Chapel Hill for 1910 to 1911, recording what customers owed. Accounts run from townspeople and the university Athletic Association to figures such as Kemp Plummer Battle, Edward Kidder Graham, Collier Cobb, Horace Williams and Louis Round Wilson, and firms including the Bank of Chapel Hill, Odell Hardware, Standard Oil and the Southern Railway. Part of North Carolina Memory.

Included because: Catalog heading in the DPLA record: Herty, Charles H. (Charles Holmes), 1867-1938.

DigitalNC DPLA

Crusading for chemistry : the professional career of Charles Holmes Herty

Reed, Germaine M., 1929- · 1995 · Forest History Society ; University of Georgia Press

Germaine M. Reed wrote this biography of the chemist Charles Holmes Herty, 1867 to 1938, whose career included work in the Department of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Published in 1995 at Durham by the Forest History Society with the University of Georgia Press, xiii and 474 pages with six pages of plates.

Included because: Catalog heading in the Library of Congress record: Herty, Charles H (Charles Holmes), 1867-1938.

UNC Library of Congress

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Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange, Orange County GIS, OpenStreetMap and a few other published sources named on each site’s page; town and community pins show approximate locations.

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