Storyline · 1940–1941
Chapel Hill and the University were preparing for war and sending aid to Europe well before Pearl Harbor. In February 1940 twenty University students began flight training, and in May President Frank Graham offered the University's faculty and laboratories to the government. In June a Chapel Hill branch of the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies was organized, the American Legion post asked Congress for conscription, and citizens signed an appeal urging the United States into the war beside Britain. Relief committees sewed, shipped clothing and raised money for a mobile tea kitchen for England. Within days of Pearl Harbor, armed sentries guarded the airport, the University Lake dam and the power plant.
In February 1940 twenty University students began Civil Aeronautics Authority flight training at the Chapel Hill airport, and on February 16 William T. Couch was named to lead a Chapel Hill drive for Fighting Funds for Finland. In May President Frank Graham telegraphed Washington offering the University's faculty and laboratories to the government. In the first week of June a Chapel Hill branch of the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies was organized with Archibald Henderson as chairman, and on June 4 the American Legion post asked Congress for conscription. By late June the Red Cross chapter under Col. Joseph Hyde Pratt had raised $1,488 for refugees in Europe, and a group of citizens had signed an appeal urging the United States into the war beside Britain. On July 23 the Committee on War Relief opened a sewing room in the University dining hall. In September a Naval ROTC unit began classes and physical training became compulsory for all men undergraduates. The British War Relief committee shipped a box of clothing in November and in April 1941 raised the money for a mobile tea kitchen for England. Within days of Pearl Harbor, Mayor John Foushee called for hundreds of civilian-defense volunteers, and armed sentries guarded the airport, the University Lake dam and the power plant.
Every statement above comes from these dated entries in the chronology. Each links to its source.
Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows the 2 with a known location.
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.
People with a page of their own whom the dated events above name, those named most often first.
No indexed work is about this storyline itself yet. These are about the sites and people its dated events name, those named most often first, so they may discuss the storyline only in part. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.
An inspection report from the North Carolina Department of Insurance, issued at Raleigh in 1935, on two buildings at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The report condemns Gerrard Hall for structural damage and directs that the gymnasium known as the Tin Can be cleared of equipment unrelated to athletics and used only for the purposes its original plans set out.
Gerrard Hall, an ivy-covered building on the University of North Carolina campus in Chapel Hill, on a 1915 Albertype Co. postcard.
Eight photographs of Gerrard Hall on the UNC campus, dated 1890. Views include three men near the hall, one with a tennis racket, students around the building, a delivery truck at its side, and a view toward South Building and the YMCA. From the UNC Campus binder, Prints and Photographs Collection (CHHS.002).
Kenneth Joel Zogry's history of the Carolina Inn, the hotel that has stood beside the University of North Carolina campus since 1924. Six chapters run from the alumnus who built it, through the New Deal and Navy years of the 1930s and 1940s, postwar redecoration and Cold War politics, the changes of the 1960s and 1970s, and the challenges of the 1980s and 1990s. Published 1999 by the university, 149 pages with photographs, color illustrations and plans.
The Carolina Inn at Chapel Hill reopened after restoration in 1995, and the Herald-Sun of Durham marked it with an eight page illustrated supplement dated October 1 that year. Topics include the inn and the historic buildings of the town. It belongs with the other printed material generated by the 1995 reopening of the hotel.
An 11-page guide to the historic furnishings and photographs displayed at the Carolina Inn, the university-owned hotel at the edge of the Chapel Hill campus, issued by the inn in 2001. It includes a floor plan for locating the pieces. It concerns the buildings of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
A half hour videocassette of the narrated slide show 'The Carolina Inn', presented when the inn reopened in October 1995 at an event hosted by the Chapel Hill Preservation Society. Bitty Holton, Linnie Green, Judy Kramer and Betty Cloutier narrate. Topics include John Sprunt Hill and the Hill family, whose name is attached to the inn's founding.
Orvin Lee Shiflett's biography of William Terry Couch, 1901 to 1988, the editor who built up UNC Press at Chapel Hill over four decades in publishing, with a subtitle that calls his career a lightning rod for controversy. Chapters treat culture in the South, a case history in book publishing, objectivity and social science and 'The Sainted Book Burners'. It bears on scholarly publishing and university presses in the twentieth century. McFarland, 2015, 268 pages with illustrations.
The University of North Carolina Press listing every book it issued between 1923 and 1945, published at Chapel Hill in 1946 with 206 pages of entries behind a twenty five page introduction. Louis Round Wilson, who founded the press, and William T. Couch, who directed it, are both represented, and the volume is a publisher's catalog of the first two decades.
Two hundred items in 2.5 linear feet make up the papers of the literary scholar J. O. Bailey (1903-1979), covering 1924 to 1976, part of the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 4113. Topics include science fiction criticism, the work of Thomas Hardy, the play 'Strike song: a play of the Southern mills' and Loretto Carroll Bailey, with further material on William T. Couch and the Friends of the Library at Chapel Hill.
Publishing records of the University of North Carolina Press from 1922 to 2015, approximately 121,400 items in 158.5 linear feet, in the University Archives at UNC, collection 40073. Subjects include the editor William T. Couch and figures connected with the press, among them Paul Green, Bernice Kelly Harris, Howard W. Odum, Rupert B. Vance and Josephus Daniels, along with the journal 'Social forces' and the Federal Writers' Project in North Carolina.
George Watts Hill (1901-1993), Durham banker and philanthropist, interviewed by James Leutze on January 30, 1986 for the Southern Oral History Program, over seven hours in all. Hill grew up in Durham, entered UNC in 1918 and describes student life in Chapel Hill in the early twentieth century before leaving in 1924 with two degrees. He also discusses banking, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, dairy farming, the Duke family, his father John Sprunt Hill, the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, and Research Triangle Park.
Craig Phillips, C. D. Spangler and George Watts Hill Sr., left to right, seated in the stands on 3 December 1986, probably at a UNC-Chapel Hill men's basketball game. Spangler was then president of the UNC system. Hugh Morton photograph.
Frank H. Kenan and George Watts Hill Sr. together at an unidentified event, probably at UNC in Chapel Hill and likely in the 1980s. Both men were North Carolina business leaders. 35 mm black-and-white negative by Hugh Morton.
Frank H. Kenan in the center and George Watts Hill Sr. at far right, with Jeanelle Coulter Moore at front left, at an unidentified gathering, probably at UNC-Chapel Hill, likely in the 1980s. Hugh Morton black-and-white 35 mm negative.
Francis Nash's history of Hillsborough in colonial and Revolutionary times, first published in 1903 and reprinted in 1953 by Edwards & Broughton with an index and a sketch of the author. Topics include the Regulator Insurrection of 1766 to 1771, the Revolution and local genealogy.
Anne R. Keene's history of the Cloudbusters, the baseball team of the Navy Pre-Flight School at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill during the Second World War, on which Ted Williams played in 1943. The chapters move from a batboy's trunk of keepsakes through the pre-flight training program to the players' lives after the war, and Keene's own family is part of the story. Published by Sports Publishing in New York in 2018, 340 pages with sixteen pages of plates.
William Edward Fitch's account of the Regulator movement and the Battle of Alamance of 1771, which his subtitle calls the first battle of the American Revolution, published by Neale in 1905 in a second edition. Hillsborough, the Orange County seat, was the scene of the Regulators' 1770 courthouse riot and of the hangings that followed Alamance. 307 pages with nine leaves of plates, folding maps and a portrait.
Ernest Dollar examines the mental toll of the Civil War's last weeks in North Carolina on Confederate and Union soldiers and on civilians, using letters, diaries and later accounts. After chapters on each group, the narrative follows the days from April 10 to early May 1865 as Sherman's army moved through the central counties, Chapel Hill and Hillsborough among them; an epilogue considers how the trauma colored later memory of the conflict's end. Published 2022, 265 pages.
Reviewed in Civil War Book Review (2023).
A congregational history of New Hope Presbyterian Church in Orange County, written by Barbara A. Murphy and published in 2006 by Chapel Hill Press. Chapters take up the five successive church buildings, the land itself, the ministers who served, the cemeteries, members who went to war, the church's organization, its music, gifts and memorials, and its outreach to the surrounding community. It also covers Presbyterian experience of the Civil War. 126 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Alex Albright's history of the B-1 band, the group of Black musicians drawn largely from students and graduates of North Carolina A&T who became the first Black sailors of the modern Navy to serve above the rank of messman, and the first of more than a hundred Black Navy bands in wartime. The band was posted to the Navy Pre-Flight School at Chapel Hill, the book's Orange County link. Published by R.A. Fountain in 2013, 194 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Numbered dispatches 59 through 67 from Governor William Tryon to the Earl of Hillsborough, with enclosures about the Regulators, whose protests broke into riot at Hillsborough in 1770. Reproduced by Adam Matthew Digital in 2019 from Colonial Office CO 5/302. The papers touch on the council and assembly, naval stores and trade, oaths, militia and provincial troops, judges, sheriffs and juries, voting, currency, Cherokee affairs, clergy, quitrents and land, and name officials such as Richard Caswell, Richard Henderson, Maurice Moore and Hugh Waddell.
Governor William Tryon's correspondence with the Earl of Hillsborough for the months from October 1768 to May 1769, just after Tryon marched militia to Hillsborough to protect the court from the Regulators. Adam Matthew Digital reproduced the file, Colonial Office CO 5/301, in 2019. Topics include legislation, Anglican clergy, soldiers' wages, sheriffs, land and quitrents, trade and currency, taxes and education, the Catawba and the boundary line, roads, a murder case, punishment and prison, and people such as Richard Caswell, James Hasell and John Rutherford.
Letters from Governor William Tryon to the Lords Commissioners in London, with enclosed legislation and the accounts of the ship Brigantine Fox, reproduced by Adam Matthew Digital in 2019 from Colonial Office file CO 5/300. They show the range of a governor's business: council appointments, judges and courts, assembly acts, cotton manufacturing, poverty, naval stores, rice, tobacco and indigo, currency, the Tuscarora, education, marriage, debt and customs. Hillsborough is among the places named, and people include William Johnston, Richard Henderson, Cornelius Harnett and Samuel Strudwick.
Stewart E. Dunaway's account of the Battle of Lindley's Mill, fought in September 1781 after the Loyalist David Fanning raided Hillsborough and carried off Governor Thomas Burke. Burke, Fanning and the Lindley family, whose mill gave the fight its name, are the people at its center, with the Revolutionary campaigns in North Carolina as the frame. Published in 2009.
Stewart E. Dunaway's transcription of letters exchanged between Jesse Benton and Thomas Hart from 1780 to 1790, concerning Hart's affairs at Hartford, his place at Hillsborough. The letters concern the economic and social conditions of Hillsborough in the eighteenth century and the Revolution in North Carolina. Self-published through lulu.com in 2009, 68 pages with illustrations and facsimiles, and part of the library's Wall Local History Collection.
Suzy Barile's account of Eleanor Hope Swain, daughter of the University of North Carolina's president, and Smith D. Atkins, the Union general whose troops occupied Chapel Hill in April 1865; the two married later that year. Published by Eno in Hillsborough in 2009, 237 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Each dated event above names its source, the place to start. For finding more on an event across newspapers, records and histories, see the research guide Follow an event across several accounts. Ask at the North Carolina Room of the Orange County Public Library for help with local sources.
Friends of the Orange County Public Library. “Chapel Hill before Pearl Harbor, 1940–1941.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/before-pearl-harbor-storyline-1940/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
