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.
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1950's Easter Sunday in Chapel Hill
by Charly Mann
Ann Long inside her house on McCauley Street in Chapel Hill on Easter Sunday, April 18, 1954
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My Favorite Chapel Hill Christmas Morning
by Charly Mann
There is nothing like the excitement and anticipation of Christmas morning when you are kid. On Christmas morning in 1957 I was 8 years old and living with my family on Old Mill Road in Chapel Hill. The night before I had hardly slept anticipating what presents Santa might have left for me under our tree. I have always been an early riser, and that morning I got up at 5:00 AM and began creeping down the long hallway from my bedroom past the rooms of my siblings and my parents before I reached our large living room where our tree was located. Bleary-eyed, I entered the darkened room from the opposite side of where the tree and presents were located, and was amazed that there was something covering the floor directly in front of me. As I looked down my eyes began to focus on a large miniature castle filled with an assortment of knights. It was one of the most indelible and incredible sights I have ever beheld. I could never have imagined such a marvelous thing, and somehow Santa had not only brought me the best present ever, but he had set it up with great care. I stood motionless for several minutes absorbing every detail of the large castle and the dozens of knights, some even on horseback, converging near the drawbridge.
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Fall - The Best Time of Year In Chapel Hill
by Charly Mann
Chapel Hill has four distinctive seasons and Fall is always the best time of the year to live there. The temperatures begin to cool and an array of brilliant colors decorates the abundant hardwood trees in town.
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1977 Chapel Hill Hippie Thanksgiving
Down a long, winding, rugged, and sometimes impassable road off Old 86 about half-way between Chapel Hill and Hillsborough sat the homestead of the family of Kenny Mann Sr. who was the cook at the famed Rathskellar for fifty years. Between 1972 and 1978 Mann allowed local artisan Rick Hermanson and Ed Funk to live out there rent free with often with several other friends who would be described as hippies. In return for this privilege they did a few odd jobs at Kenny's house in Chapel Hill, but spent much of their spare time renovating the cabin they lived in that Mann called "The Ponderosa".
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Chapel Hill's 1964 Tribute to John Fitzgerald Kennedy
by Charly Mann
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Chapel Hill on the day President Kennedy Died
by Charly Mann
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Apple Chill Festival 1972-2006
by Charly Mann
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First Cold-Blooded Murder in Chapel Hill
by Charly Mann
Starting in 1964, when I was 14, I used to produce my own semi-weekly newspaper called The News Of Chapel Hill. I sent it out to family members who lived in California and South Carolina. It was usually two or three large newspaper sized pages. I usually put it together late Sunday and Wedeneday night, and mailed it out Monday and Thursday mornings. I have a number of the "mock-ups" that I would copy from, with improvements, for the final version. My spelling and grammar were certainly lacking in those days, but the final versions would have been better than these rough drafts of the paper.
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InformZoo
A Year of Charly Mann’s Thoughts
(August 2009 to August 2010):
http://www.informzoo.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.
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