Storyline · 1935–1940
At State Health Officer Carl Reynolds's urging, medical school dean Charles Mangum reached out to Milton J. Rosenau of Harvard. Under a December 13, 1935 agreement among the university, the State Board of Health and the Public Health Service, the medical school opened a Division of Public Health under Rosenau as the training center for an eight-state sanitary district. In the summer of 1936 Herman G. Baity joined the division as professor of sanitary engineering, and forty-six students enrolled that fall. The division became the School of Public Health in 1940, and that year Rosenau offered the headship of a new Department of Public Health Nursing to Ruth Hay.
At State Health Officer Carl Reynolds's urging, medical school dean Charles Mangum reached out to Milton J. Rosenau, long a Harvard professor of preventive medicine. Under a December 13, 1935 agreement among the university, the State Board of Health and the Public Health Service, the medical school opened a Division of Public Health under Rosenau as the training center for an eight-state sanitary district. Rosenau was announced as its head in January 1936 and was living in Chapel Hill by the end of the month, with his office first in Caldwell Hall. Four health officer trainees enrolled for the winter quarter, and fifty-one health workers had registered by March 28. In the summer of 1936, after the trustees voted to move the School of Engineering to State College, Herman G. Baity resigned as state director of the Public Works Administration and joined the division as professor of sanitary engineering, keeping his assistants, his laboratory and the right to grant advanced degrees. Forty-six students enrolled when classes began that fall. The division became the School of Public Health in 1940. That year Reynolds asked the school for a nursing course, and Rosenau offered the headship of a new Department of Public Health Nursing to Ruth Hay of the University of California.
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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.
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.
Robert Korstad's history of the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina over its first fifty years, 1939 to 1989, published by the university in 1990. It runs 192 pages with illustrations.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
William Fred Mayes traces the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and its response to a changing society, with emphasis on the 1960s. The title page describes the account as selective and interpretive rather than complete. Published by the school in 1975, 68 pages with illustrations. Topics include schools of public health in Chapel Hill and their history.
John Andrew Kairalla's 2002 survey of the people who earned the bachelor of science in public health in biostatistics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill between 1978 and 2001. It reports on graduates of the Department of Biostatistics and on the graduate teaching of biometry in Chapel Hill. Sixty four leaves with illustrations and a short bibliography.
Dorothy M. Talbot's seventeen page account of the public health nursing program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, dated October 1995. It traces the Department of Public Health Nursing and its place in the School of Public Health across the twentieth century.
History of the Department of Medicine at the UNC School of Medicine, compiled by William W. McLendon and published by the department in 2012. After a section of historical perspective, the book covers the deans, founding faculty and department chairs, then the subspecialty divisions, offshoot departments, teaching and research, with appendices. Much of it is biographical, profiling the physicians who built clinical medicine in Chapel Hill. 478 pages with illustrations.
Mary Jane Kagarise's history of the Department of Surgery at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill across its first four decades, 1952 to 1993, with biographies of the surgeons on its faculty. Published by the department in 1997 in a first edition of 461 pages with illustrations, some in color. Topics include surgery and medical colleges in Chapel Hill and biography of the department's faculty.
Reviewed in The American Journal of Surgery (1998).
Illustrated look back at fifty years of North Carolina Memorial Hospital and the UNC School of Medicine, with stories by Dick Broom edited by Lynn Wooten. Published by the Medical Foundation of N.C. in 2002, 93 pages with color illustrations and portraits.
Departmental history of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill covering its first fifty years, published by the department in 2000. The history covers medical schools, medical education and the teaching of obstetrics in North Carolina. First edition, xvii and 366 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Records of the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1930 to 2007, roughly 93,000 items in 123 linear feet, in the University Archives as collection 40120. Topics include graduate curricula and the history of health occupations schools in the state, the teaching of environmental health, and named entries for Milton J. Rosenau, Quentin Young, and Jewish physicians in Germany.
Photographs gathered by Bailey Daniel Webb, about forty one items dated circa 1885 to 1973 with most from 1937 through the 1940s, in the North Carolina Collection at UNC. The work describes public health and rural health work in North Carolina, medical care for African Americans, nurses, women physicians, and faculty and students at the University of North Carolina, with Milton J. Rosenau among the names.
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.
Alice Noble's history of the School of Pharmacy at the University of North Carolina, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1961. It runs 237 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Two volumes collecting the Norma Berryhill Lectures, an annual address at the UNC School of Medicine named for the wife of its long-serving dean, W. Reece Berryhill. Volume one gathers the lectures from 1985 to 1999, edited by Floyd W. Denny, Jr., William B. Blythe and William W. McLendon; volume two, edited by McLendon and Elizabeth B. Dreesen, continues through 2008. Published by the Medical Foundation of North Carolina, with illustrations and portraits.
Annie Sutton Cameron compiled this account of Orange County's part in the First World War in 1919 as historian for the county's Council of Defense, at the request of its chairman J.S. Webb. It covers the Council and the Home Guard, drives for war bonds and overseas relief, Red Cross work, patriotic observances, the influenza epidemic and women's war work, with registers of the county's soldiers. Published online in 2002 by the UNC library in Documenting the American South's North Carolinians and the Great War.
Summary of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's twelve-volume institutional self-study, edited by C. Hugh Holman and dated January 15, 1974, issued in 1975. Topics include the university's accreditation, history and statistics, including the School of Public Health. ix and 546 pages with charts, some folded.
Selections from the essays and addresses of William de Berniere MacNider, pharmacologist and physician at the University of North Carolina, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1953, two years after his death. Includes a portrait and a list of his publications.
An illustrated online timeline of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Nursing, issued by the school in 2025. One page with portraits.
Lynn Roundtree covers the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill between 1957 and 1972 through its three chancellors, William Brantley Aycock, Paul F. Sharp and J. Carlyle Sitterson, set against the student movements of those years. Part of the Coates university leadership series, published by the author in 2024 and running to 926 pages. It is twentieth century campus history.
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. “Founding the University's public health program, 1935–1940.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/unc-public-health-program-storyline-1935/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
