Fetter house (East Franklin Street)

In the chronology

1. January 27, 1869 Manuel Fetter and his daughters leave Chapel Hill at midnight for Durham Turned out with the old faculty, professor Manuel Fetter crossed the street at midnight to give Spencer the key of his empty house and a last candle, then drove off to Durham with his three daughters. People: Cornelia Phillips Spencer Hope Summerell Chamberlain, Old Days in Chapel Hill (1926), scan p. 167
2. 1891 Laura Phillips sells the old Fetter house to Sarah Welling After Charles Phillips died, his widow Laura sold off much of the family's property, including the old Fetter house on East Franklin Street, which went to Mrs. Sarah Welling of Warwick, New York. Professors John Manning, Edwin A. Alderman and Edward Vernon Howell lived there in turn over the next years. People: Charles Phillips, John Manning Bernard Lee Bryant Jr., Occupants and Structures of Franklin Street, Chapel Hill (1998; Chapel Hill Historical Society, 1999), scan p. 159
3. By November 24, 1904 Edward Vernon Howell owns Chapel Hill's first automobile Pharmacy dean Edward Vernon Howell, then living in the old Fetter house on East Franklin Street, became the first in town to own a car, a one-cylinder Oldsmobile, which he brought over from Durham. A New York Times despatch from Chapel Hill dated November 24, 1904, reprinted in the Weekly in 1931, told how it set Dr. Charles S. Mangum's horse bolting, how neighbors begged him to keep it off the street, and how the university president passed on a petition asking him not to drive it by day. Howell later told Louis Graves he brought it in 1905, and Bryant gives 1903; both are later accounts. The car so frightened horses and mules that he got rid of it and went several years before buying another. Bernard Lee Bryant Jr., Occupants and Structures of Franklin Street, Chapel Hill (1998; Chapel Hill Historical Society, 1999), scan p. 179 · Also: Chapel Hill Weekly, February 10, 1928, p. 1; Chapel Hill Weekly, April 24, 1931, p. 3

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