Storyline · 1897–1964
Clyde Eubanks, a Chapel Hill druggist since 1892, bought the drugstore when Dr. Roberson died in 1897. In 1901 he moved it into a new building he had put up, and in 1914 into another on his own lot about a hundred yards west. Carl Durham went to work at the store in 1913 and came back as a pharmacist after serving in the Navy Hospital Corps. In 1949 the North Carolina Pharmaceutical Association gave Eubanks its Mortar and Pestle Award. He sold the property to North Carolina National Bank and in 1964, on the eve of his retirement at 93, was named Merchant of the Year. Ben Courts then took over the store.
In 1897, when Dr. Roberson died, his druggist Clyde Eubanks bought the drugstore and kept it in the Central Hotel on Franklin Street until 1901, when he moved it into a new building he had put up on the west corner of the Tankersley property. Carl Durham, born in the White Cross community in 1892, went to work at the store in the summer of 1913, studied pharmacy at UNC, served in the Navy Hospital Corps in 1918 and came back to Eubanks as a pharmacist. In 1914 Eubanks put up a building on his own lot about a hundred yards west and moved Eubanks Drug Store into it. In March 1949 the North Carolina Pharmaceutical Association gave Eubanks, a Chapel Hill druggist since 1892 who had served 25 years as alderman and was president of the Bank of Chapel Hill, its Mortar and Pestle Award, with Congressman Carl T. Durham among the speakers. Eubanks sold the store property to North Carolina National Bank, and on January 27, 1964, on the eve of his retirement at 93, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Merchants Association named him its Merchant of the Year for 1963. Druggist Ben Courts took over the store under a six-month lease, and Bryant's history of Franklin Street says Benjamin and Ellyn Courts renamed it Courts' Drugs.
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 1 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.
Left front view of the Central Hotel in Chapel Hill with people standing outside and a church steeple rising behind. Undated, from the Chapel Hill Historical Society's photographs of town businesses.
Two 1928 images of the Bank of Chapel Hill: an interior view of the teller desks and a bank advertisement printed alongside one for the telephone directory.
Newspaper clippings, photocopied articles and a report with notes on the Bank of Chapel Hill, undated, from the Businesses series of the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Vertical File Collection.
Newspaper clippings and a report on Clyde Eubanks of Chapel Hill, in an undated folder from box 3 of the Individuals and Families series of the Chapel Hill Historical Society's vertical files.
A 1967 audiocassette about earlier Chapel Hill, concerning town history and social life. The people identified with the recording are Congressman Carl Thomas Durham, Samuel Huntington Hobbs and university chancellor Robert Burton House.
Scrapbook following the construction and launch of the S.S. Chapel Hill Victory, a Second World War cargo ship that carried the town's name, launched on 4 December 1944. Baltimore figures in the story, as do Congressman Carl T. Durham and Robert W. Madry. From the North Carolina Memory collection.
Photographs of the Army-Navy E ceremony in Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill, on 22 January 1943, the first such award in North Carolina during World War II. They show officers of the Pre-Flight School and of National Munitions Corporation, the audience and the presentation. Governor J. Melville Broughton, Josephus Daniels, Carl T. Durham and Frank Porter Graham are among those pictured.
A cassette recording of Carl Durham speaking with the Chapel Hill Historical Society in 1972. Part of its CHHS.012 Audiovisual Materials Collection.
Edward G. Danziger's memoir of love and cooking, published by J. F. Blair in 1967. Danziger (1893 to 1972) ran Danziger's Old World Restaurant in Chapel Hill, and the book tells his life as a restaurateur in the town.
William M. Rohe's history of Research Triangle Park and the region around it, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2011. Topics include regional planning and the economic and social conditions of the Research Triangle Park region, one corner of which is Chapel Hill and the university. 298 pages with illustrations and maps.
Herbert G. Gutman's 1976 history of African American families from 1750 to 1925, published by Pantheon Books in New York, 664 pages with 38 leaves of plates. Its Orange County connection is the Bennehan and Cameron family plantations, Stagville and Fairntosh: the book discusses the people enslaved by Richard Bennehan (1743-1825) and the Camerons, and follows family ties among them under slavery and after emancipation. Subjects include African American families and enslaved persons in Orange County.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (1977), The William and Mary Quarterly (1977), The American Historical Review (1977), Journal of American History (1977), The History Teacher (1977), Political Science Quarterly (1977), Journal of Black Psychology (1978), Journal of Social History (1978), Civil War history (1978), Signs (1978).
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.
Albert N. Link's early history of Research Triangle Park, published in 1995 by the Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina. Topics include research parks, research institutes and industrial research in the state, with the park's own history at the center. 149 pages with illustrations and maps.
Annette Marie Council's book about her family and Mama Dip's Country Kitchen, the Chapel Hill restaurant, published by NP Press in 2005. Subjects include African Americans in Chapel Hill, the restaurant's history and family biography. Fourteen introductory pages and 223 pages of text with illustrations, part local history and part family account.
Albert N. Link's history of the Research Triangle Park, the research park founded to draw on the universities at Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh, published in 2002 by the Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina in 278 pages with illustrations. Topics include research parks, research institutes and industrial research in North Carolina and the history of the park itself.
Charles X. Larrabee's history of the Research Triangle Institute over its first thirty one years, published in 1991. Topics include research institutes and research parks in North Carolina and the history of Research Triangle Park, the research district that lies between Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh.
Alex Sayf Cummings's 2020 book on the knowledge economy of the Research Triangle, technology research and the history of Research Triangle Park. Chapel Hill and its university form one corner of the Triangle.
A tour guidebook prepared for the 2016 Vernacular Architecture Forum conference in Durham, leading visitors through buildings in Orange and Caswell counties. It takes in the architecture of the bright leaf tobacco economy and the work of Thomas Day, the free Black cabinetmaker of Caswell County who worked in the middle of the nineteenth century.
Account of student protest in 1960s Chapel Hill, published by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2007 with illustrations. It draws together the civil rights movement and segregation in the town, discrimination in restaurants, academic freedom and university autonomy, protest against the Vietnam War, Students for a Democratic Society and the Black Student Movement on campus.
Maxine Freeland's biography of James John Freeland (1918-1999), a Hillsborough man of the twentieth century, compiled in 1999.
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. “Eubanks Drug Store, Chapel Hill, 1897–1964.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/eubanks-drug-storyline-1897/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
