Storyline
How the University turned Chapel Hill’s small airfield into the Horace Williams Airport: the 1940 purchase and Williams’s land gift, the civilian pilot training, the WPA grading, the hangar fire of 1941, the new road from North Columbia Street and the wartime flights over the field.
In briefIn 1940 the University bought the Chapel Hill airport that Charlie Martindale had opened in 1928 and planned a field named for Professor Horace Williams, who gave more than 200 acres. University students began Civil Aeronautics Authority flight training there that February. WPA workers began grading in January 1941 on a project costing about $200,000, and that month fire destroyed the hangar and seven training planes. By mid-October crews had finished rough grading for the runways, and that fall University and Duke students began joint pilot training. In 1942 the federal government paid for a new road to the field because of its military value, and in March 1943 paratroopers from Fort Bragg dropped on the airport.
Read the full storyRead the 17 eventsAll storylines
Read the events and sources below.
No works in the index are currently linked directly to this storyline. The works below provide background on Wars & Military Service.
In 1940 the University bought the Chapel Hill airport that Charlie Martindale had opened in 1928 on land bought from Professor Horace Williams. By February 16 twenty University students had begun Civil Aeronautics Authority flight training there. By August 9 the trustees had set aside $15,000 for land, the University had agreed terms with Martindale and neighbor Fred Sparrow, and Williams had given more than 200 acres for a field to bear his name. By September 20 the University had four planes and a wider course under instructor William Mann. WPA workers began grading the airport in January 1941 on a project costing about $200,000. On January 11 fire destroyed the hangar and seven training planes, and instructors flew in five new Piper Cubs two days later. In July the WPA approved money to finish the field, and by mid-October crews had finished the rough grading for one runway of 5,000 feet and two of 4,000 to 4,500 feet. That fall University and Duke students began joint pilot training there. On June 15, 1942 the State Highway Commission let the contract for a new road of about two miles from North Columbia Street, the federal government paying for construction because of its military value. On March 9, 1943 six planes from Fort Bragg dropped 120 paratroopers on the airport.
Events in this storyline, in date order. See these 17 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 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.
Background reading on Wars & Military Service. These works cover the broader subject and may not discuss this storyline. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.
A picture book set in the Eno River valley of Orange County in 1776. Four red wolf pups are born in a woodland den and spend their first summer and fall learning to hunt and howl with their family, while nearby a young widow, Sally Few, keeps her household going as the Revolution unsettles the countryside. Eileen Heyes wrote the story, published in 2025 by the North Carolina Office of Archives and History with color illustrations and maps, 42 pages.
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.
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.
Suzanne Adair's 2011 mystery, one of her Michael Stoddard novels, set in Hillsborough during the Southern campaign of the American Revolution and written as a historical thriller. Adair is a North Carolina author.
Letters of the Sparrow family, including Thomas Sparrow and George Attmore Sparrow, gathered and published in 2011. The correspondence includes material associated with the Hillsboro' Military Academy, which opened in Hillsborough in 1859, and combines family and military history.
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.
Civil War letters of Colonel Frank Schaller of the 22nd Mississippi Infantry, combining personal narrative with regimental history. Schaller was associated with the Hillsboro Military Academy in Hillsborough. Published by the University of South Carolina Press in 2007. 185 pages with six pages of plates and illustrations.
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.
The Rev. Charles M. Jones (1906-1993), minister of Chapel Hill's Presbyterian church in the late 1940s, and his wife Dorcas talk with John Egerton in a Southern Oral History Program interview recorded July 21, 1990. Jones spends most of the hour on the disputes his stand on race provoked, when the regional presbytery objected to his conduct of the church, and his dealings with university president Frank Porter Graham. Published online in 2006 by the UNC-Chapel Hill Library in Documenting the American South.
Guion Griffis Johnson (1900-1989), a historian of the antebellum South, talked with Jacquelyn Hall and Mary Frederickson in August 1974 for the Southern Oral History Program. She recalls her training, her years at the Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina, the standing of women historians in higher education, and the research behind her study of antebellum North Carolina society. Running about an hour; electronic edition issued by the UNC library in 2006 through Documenting the American South.
Sources and research tools for this storyline. Research guide: Follow an event across several accounts.
More to discover
The Friends connect people with new library materials, local writers and publishers, and resources documenting Orange County.
