Local figure
As a UNC student in 1893, William Rand Kenan Jr. helped chemistry professor Francis Venable demonstrate calcium carbide in Person Hall. In 1926 he gave 275,000 dollars to build Kenan Memorial Stadium in honor of his parents, and the William Rand Kenan Jr. Laboratories of Chemistry were dedicated in 1973.
Source: UNC Libraries, History on the Hill: Chronological List of Events
Also found in catalogs as William Rand Kenan.
1872–1965 as the Library of Congress records it · Library of Congress authority record ↗
12 indexed works are connected with this person.
Works in the index that concern this person directly, or were written by them. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it; background reading with wider context sits further down.
Benjamin Joseph Downs traces the money behind Kenan Memorial Stadium at Chapel Hill from 1926 to 1962, an article running pages 276 to 304, published in 2019 by the Historical Research Office of the state Office of Archives and History. Topics include William Rand Kenan Jr., university endowments and the finance of college sports. Illustrated with portraits.
Report from the William R. Kenan, Jr. Chemistry Department Endowment Committee to the Kenan Charitable Trust, accounting for the endowment that supports chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Recorded from 1974 and issued as a continuing series of 28 cm volumes.
Memoir by William Rand Kenan, Jr., 1872 to 1965, the donor of Kenan Memorial Stadium at Chapel Hill. Written at intervals between 1949 and 1951 and privately printed at Lockport, New York, in 1952, it follows first and second editions of 1946 and 1949. Eighty-five pages with illustrations, touching the Kenan family and Kenansville as well as the university.
Program of the exercises held in 1927 when Kenan Memorial Stadium was presented to the University of North Carolina, given by William Rand Kenan, Jr. in memory of his parents, William Rand Kenan and Mary Hargrave Kenan. Eighteen unnumbered pages with illustrations and a portrait, printed at Chapel Hill.
Photographs made by Roland Giduz between 1947 and 1970, about 19,000 items across eleven linear feet in the North Carolina Collection at UNC. Topics include university buildings, commencements, drama productions, faculty and alumni, and baseball, basketball and football, along with the Carolina Inn and Kenan Memorial Stadium, and named figures including Frank Porter Graham, Gordon Gray and John F. Kennedy.
Kenan Memorial Stadium in Chapel Hill on a 1929 postcard from the university's Book Exchange. The caption describes the stadium sitting in a natural bowl ringed by pines, dedicated in 1927 as the gift of alumnus William Rand Kenan, Jr., of New York, in memory of his father.
Graycraft Card Co. postcard of the field house at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill. William R. Kenan Jr., an 1894 UNC graduate, gave the money for the stadium and its field house in 1926, so the card dates from after that gift. Black and white, divided back, from the Ellen Payne Odom Genealogy Library Postcard Collection.
Autograph book kept by Daniel Lindsay Russell (1845 to 1908), governor of North Carolina from 1897 to 1901, as a member of the University of North Carolina class of 1863 to 1864. It carries the signatures of 70 schoolmates from the wartime classes at Chapel Hill, most of whom went to war, 1861 to 1863.
A fiftieth anniversary history of the William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust, published by the trust in North Carolina in 2018, with contributions from Bridget Booher, Walter E. Campbell and Joseph Garcia and a design by Richard Hendel. Topics include endowments and trusts in North Carolina and the United States, including the trust's endowments at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 94 pages.
Walter E. Campbell wrote this biography of William Rand Kenan, Jr., 1872 to 1965, a businessman, dairy farmer and philanthropist and donor to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Published by UNC Press in 1996, the volume runs to xvi and 417 pages with illustrations and a map.
Proposal the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill put to the trustees of the William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust in 1966, the year after Kenan's death. Twenty-one unnumbered pages with illustrations in a large 35 cm format.
Business and philanthropic papers of Frank Hawkins Kenan, 1937 to 1996, 33,500 items across 38.5 linear feet in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 5078. Subjects include Kenan companies in oil and transport, the Kenan-Flagler Business School and the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, the William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust, the Duke Endowment and the North Carolina Global TransPark, with Kenan listed as a Chapel Hill alumnus and benefactor.
Books in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection whose titles, catalog subjects, or descriptions match this person. The Friends’ recommended starting points are labelled.
Dated events connected with this person, earliest first. See these 5 dated events in the chronology →
Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows them all.
Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange and OpenStreetMap; town and community pins mark the middle of their mapped buildings.
The index lists works with an Orange County connection. To find everything else about William Rand Kenan Jr., search these catalogs.
Searched with the Library of Congress heading Kenan, William Rand, Jr., 1872-1965, so the results are about this person and not others with the same name. Each link opens that catalog’s own results in a new tab. The Friends have not reviewed what they return.
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Picture: William Rand Kenan Jr., Yackety Yack, 1927. Public domain. Yackety Yack, 1927 (University of North Carolina yearbook); via the Internet Archive
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