Chapel Hill Memories is for anyone who wants to relive and help preserve memories of Chapel Hill. We welcome your recollections of any subject related to Chapel Hill and The University Of North Carolina in written, photo, audio, and video form. We have the ability to scan and transfer photos, audio, and video if you do not. We do not charge for this, and will return your materials within a week.
Send your memories, ideas, photos, and questions to CHMemories@gmail.com.
If you need to mail us something let us know, and we will send you our mailing address.
Chapel Hill's Most Unnoticed Monument
by Charly Mann
As one enters the Coker Arboretum from the northwest entrance next to the Chapel of the Cross there is a monument that has gone unnoticed and unused for almost fifty years. It is a horse watering trough that was built as a memorial to Susan Williams Graham, wife of former University President Edward Kidder Graham for whom the Graham Memorial Building is named.
Susan Williams Graham horse watering trough at northwest entrance of arboretum. It is often unnoticed and long neglected. We hope a sign will be erected explaining its history.
Well into the third decade of the twentieth century horses were the primary means of transportation in Chapel Hill. Even as a handful of automobiles began appearing on the poorly maintained dirt streets of town around 1910, there would be still be hundreds of horses every day coming down Franklin Street pulling carts of goods and carriages with professors and merchants. In 1918, the automobile in Chapel Hill seemed more like a novelty, and the Susan Williams Graham large horse trough was erected in the center of the town's business district in front of the University Methodist Church. There, horses drank water while their owners conducted business.
There were several horse stables in Chapel Hill into the late 1920's. The two most popular were behind the downtown Post Office and across the street from where the sundial is located.
By 1956, horses had disappeared from downtown and the trough stood abandoned and daily scratched by parked cars whose fenders protruded over its edge. In November of that year the University Buildings and Grounds committee headed by botany professor H.R. Totten decided to move the trough to the rear entrance of the Episcopal Church where Mrs. Graham had been a devoted member.
The University Methodist Church at 150 East Franklin Street Chapel Hill, NC. From 1918 to the late 1940's as many as three hundred horses a day would drink water from the water trough in front of the church.
The inscription on the trough reads: "The waters of truth run freely; drink when and where you may." Today only birds drink from the trough after it rains.
Comments:
Lauren Cooper
5:01 PM Wed 9/23/2009
I'm a 2nd year law student and walk past that trough almost everyday. I always assumed it was just a decorative sculpture.
Cary Kohn
2:07 PM Wed 9/23/2009
I look forward to looking at this the next time I venture into the arboretunm.
Check out our other website:
Investment strategies and advice about Apple Inc. and related technology companies by Charly Mann. www.appleinvesting.com
Investment strategies and advice about Apple Inc. and related technology companies by Charly Mann. www.appleinvesting.com
Chapel Hill is located on a hill whose only distinguishing feature in the 18th century was a small chapel on top called New Hope Chapel. This church was built in 1752 and is currently the location of The Carolina Inn. The town was founded in 1819, and chartered in 1851.
What is it that binds us to this place as to no other? It is not the well or the bell or the stone walls. or the crisp October nights. No, our love for this place is based upon the fact that it is as it was meant to be, The University of the People.
-- Charles Kuralt
Dark Side of the Hill -- Pink Floyd, the creators of the most popular album in history, Dark Side of the Moon, took the second half of their name from Floyd Council, a Chapel Hill native, and great blues singer and guitarist. He once belonged to a group called "The Chapel Hillbillies".
Check out Charly Mann's other website:
Oklahoma Birds and Butterflies
http://oklahomabirdsandbutterflies.com
Oklahoma Birds and Butterflies
http://oklahomabirdsandbutterflies.com
There would probably be no Chapel Hill if the University of North Carolina Board of Trustees in 1793 had not chosen land across from New Hope Chapel for the location of the university. By 1800 there were about 100 people living in thirty houses surrounding the campus.
The University North Carolina's first student was Hinton James, who enrolled in February, 1795. There is now a dormitory on the campus named in his honor.
The University of North Carolina was closed from 1870 to 1875 because of lack of state funding.
William Ackland left his art collection and $1.25 million to Duke University in 1940 on the condition that he would be buried in the art museum that the University was to build with his bequest. Duke rejected this condition even though members of the Duke Family are buried in Duke Chapel. What followed was a long and acrimonious legal battle between Ackland relatives who now wanted the inheritance, Rollins College, and the University of North Carolina, each attempting to receive the funds. The case went all the way to the United States Supreme Court, and in 1949 UNC was awarded the money for the museum. Ackland is buried near the museum's entrance. When the museum first opened, in the early sixties, there were rumors that his remains were leaking out of the mausoleum.
The official name of the Arboretum on the University of North Carolina campus is the Coker Arboretum. It is named after Dr. William Cocker, the University's first botany professor. It occupies a little more than five acres. It was founded in 1903.
Chapel Hill's main street has always been called Franklin Street. It was named after Benjamin Franklin in the early 1790s.
Chapel Hill High School and Chapel Hill Junior High were on Franklin Street in the same location as University Square until the mid 1960s.
The Colonial Drug Store at 450 West Franklin Street was owned and operated by John Carswell. It was famous for a fresh-squeezed carbonated orange beverage called a "Big O". In the early 1970s, I managed the Record and Tape Center next door, and must have had over 100 of those drinks. The Colonial Drug Store closed in 1996.
Sutton's Drugstore, which opened in 1923, has one of the last soda fountains in the South. It is one of the few businesses remaining on Franklin Street that was in operation when I was growing up in the 1950s.
Future President Gerald Ford lived in Chapel Hill twice. First when he was 24, in 1938, he took a law couse in summer school at UNC. He lived in the Carr Building, which was a law school dormitory. At the same time, Richard Nixon, the man he served under as Vice President, was attending law school at Duke. In 1942, Ford returned to Chapel Hill to attend the U.S. Navy's Pre-Flight School training program. He lived in a rental house on Hidden Hills Drive.
Use Coupon Code chapelhillmemories to receive a $9.94 discount!
I get confused with a Graham Memorial and a Frank Porter Graham Student Union Building at UNC. At least I now know Graham Memorial is named after a different Graham. Were they related?