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The Best and Worst of Times for Chapel Hill Women
by Charly Mann
In the spring of 1935 the male to female student ratio at the University of North Carolina was more than 16 to 1. Carolina men have always enjoyed the company of women and the University and many of its social organizations sponsored an array of dances, banquets, teas, and formal balls for the two sexes to mix. In order to accommodate the demand for women, the Chapel Hill Town Girl’s Club was formed to allow all single girls of dating age to participate in the social functions at UNC. If you were looking for a husband with a good education, Chapel Hill was a wonderful place for a girl to grow up in during the majority of its history.
1949 Chapel Hill Town’s Girl’s Club
First Row: Katherine Hogan, Becky Huggins, Mary Mae Kear, Carolyn Guthrie, Pat Winslow, Dot Sloan, Frances Greene / Second Row: Betty Sue Jacobs, Janet Ellington, Mary Deane Williams, Elizabeth Heller, Jane Sparrow, Phillis Ferguson, Preston Westcoat, Elizabeth Lyons, Katherine Thompson, Barbara Garrett / Third Row: Madeline Jennings, Pat Sullivan, “Bootsie” Taylor, Jean Cashion, Jeanne Vashaw, Madge Crawford, Betty Heath, Jo Bissell
Madeline Jennings (back row far left) was one of my favorite Chapel Hill human beings. She was eighteen when this picture was taken. Soon after this she was engaged to a dashing UNC graduate student. She lived in Chapel Hill her entire life raising four children, and was married to local dentist Tom Darden. She died in December of 2008 after living a truly wonderful life.
Most of the women at the 1935 May Frolics were town girls and not coeds.
By 1952 the ratio had lessened to four males for every female, and coeds voiced their displeasure about how much harder it was to find a good man in a series of articles in the Daily Tar Heel. However, as a young male growing up in the fifties and early sixties in Chapel Hill, I recall thinking when I was about twelve that it would be very hard to ever get a college aged girl interested in me. UNC men actually acted quite desperate in these days. Panty raids of girl's dorms by more than a hundred men at a time became a common occurrence in the early fifties, and was a major concern of town and campus law enforcement.
Coeds and town women often had six or more offers for dates to the many baquets and dances at Carolina from 1927 to 1965.
Tea Dances were very popular at UNC in the 1920s, 30's, and 40s. This one is from 1939.
Today the odds have been reversed to 6 women for every four men. Now coeds report that they often have to offer a lot in return to get a man to show any interest in them. Dating in a conventional sense has become uncommon, and casual sex is now the norm. Several female students I recently spoke to say it is the lack of men that is changing the moral conventions about relationships. They think things would improve if there were at least an even number of both sexes. To them the current ratio is ridiculous, and only favors the few men lucky enough to be enrolled at Carolina. Some believe UNC discriminates against men in their admissions. Others say men just are not as academically gifted as today's women. Some say we need an affirmative action style program to bolster male enrollment, though many women would likely complain that their places would be taken in order to reach sexual parity.
UNC Sophmore Hop 1936
Comments:
Beverly Little
2:27 PM Wed 5/13/2009
I would have loved to have been a coed at UNC when there were sixteen men for every female. It must have been a real Blue Heaven for girls in those days.
Carolyn Joyner
8:05 PM Mon 5/11/2009
Thanks for the piece on the Chapel Hill Town's Girl Club. My mom was a member, and met my Dad through it. Both my parents, sadly, are gone. I'm sure my mom knew most of the women in your photo.
Joyce, Class of 2007
5:10 PM Mon 5/11/2009
I started at Carolina in the fall of 2003. By then there were far more girls than guys at UNC. I lived for three years at Spencer, and my best friend was at the Tri-Delta house. We both went to a lot of parties and certainly socialized often with the opposite sex, but neither of us ever had a formal date.
My Dad went to Duke in the 70's and said that the dating ritual was still going strong in those days.
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.
My nephew sent me this picture and I am on the right in the back row. Those were "the good old days" in the village of Chapel Hill.