UNC, Chapel Hill, and Carrboro History

[donbosco]

It is DexFest this weekend...a commemoration of the Life and Times and Music of Dexter Romweber, perhaps Chapel Hill/Carrboro's greatest musical savant among so very many.

From 'The Carrboro Citizen' in 2012..."It wasn’t long ago that a walk through downtown was nearly impossible without taking in some kind of performance. You might see Dexter Romweber singing the blues out in front of The Hardback Cafe or The Chicken Wire Gang harmonizing near the entrance to Pepper’s Pizza. There’d be a guy playing sax in the alley and a couple of avant-garde fellow travelers making notes ring in the Rosemary Street Parking Deck. A lot more places had music outdoors as well, or would at least open up the windows and let the sound pour out into the street."

BIG CITY: More music, more life – The Archive of The Carrboro Citizen

Dexter Romweber Lives - Orange Co. Arts Commission

—David Menconi, Down on Copperline Dexter Romweber died over a year ago, at the way-too-young age of 57. But traces of the late great roots-music giant remain around his... Read More →

artsorange.org

 

[donbosco]

Mayor Barbara Foushee will host our annual gathering of community members for the annual Community Reading of Frederick Douglass' essay, "The Meaning of the Fourth of July for the Negro." The reading occurs in the Carrboro Century Center's Century Hall at 2 p.m. on July 4th.

 

[donbosco]

This gem of historical narrative (with many links) by Matt Barrett Econopouly deserves a posting here...it is as rich in Chapel Hill music history as Tom Maxwell's book...probably even richer to be honest.

The Golden Age of North Carolina Music by Matt Barrett

1978 to the mid-eighties might have been the most creative period in NC music history with bands like Arrogance, Let's Active, the Dads, the Fabulous Knobs...

www.mattbarrett.net

 

[donbosco]

This gem of historical narrative (with many links) by Matt Barrett Econopouly deserves a posting here...it is as rich in Chapel Hill music history as Tom Maxwell's book...probably even richer to be honest.

The Golden Age of North Carolina Music by Matt Barrett

1978 to the mid-eighties might have been the most creative period in NC music history with bands like Arrogance, Let's Active, the Dads, the Fabulous Knobs...

www.mattbarrett.net

Some people might remember Matt's mom, Reba, long-time waitress at The Continental Cafe near Hector's.

 

[donbosco]

There’s some history…

 

[donbosco]

Story here too…

 

[donbosco]

Chapel Hill has been Musically Hip longer than most people realize - indeed, the nation turned its ears to ‘The Southern Part of Heaven’ during The Great Depression right through the dark days of World War II for a bit of tuneful uplift. During those years a raucous Rocky Mounter, Carolina Man, and Tar Heel born was Nationwide!



Kay Kyser is little known in North Carolina today but once that name echoed across the country on radio--"The Ol' Perfessor of Swing" was a favorite of Hipsters (Original) and Lovers of Silly alike. In the late 1930s through 1950, when he abruptly quit show business, Kay Kyser was a phenom...with eleven #1 records and 35 in the Top Ten, a radio show, "The Kollege of Musical Knowledge" that was among the most popular, appearances in motion pictures, and during WWII, the first orchestra to go abroad to entertain the troops.



And bet on it - Kay Kyser of Rocky Mount and Chapel Hill was an Anti-Fascist. He worked with everyone...Sinatra, Barrymore, Berle, even Batman (in a 1949 issue of the comic). He was a cheerleader at Carolina and when Hal Kemp, a fellow student and leader of the campus Carolina Club Orchestra, asked him to take over the band when he graduated, Kyser said yes...he was the emcee of emcees, singing a bit, dancing some, but mainly making his way with his wits and characterizations.



Without a doubt he played up his North Carolina accent but not, to my ears, in a degrading sort of way. Perhaps he paved the way for Andy Griffith and other Tar Heel voices that have become nationally beloved (Ava Gardner, Zach Galifianakis, Carl Kassell, Charles Kuralt, Billy Graham, and David Sedaris to name a few). He certainly did not try and hide that unique patois (listen/watch the links provided at the end of the essay to see/hear what I mean).



In 1950 Kyser quit entertainment, bought a house at 504 East Franklin Street, and began to study his newfound interest, Christian Science. He eventually worked to help establish North Carolina Public Television but he never returned to the limelight. He passed on in 1985 while working in his office. He was 80 and serving as the President of the Worldwide Church of Christian Science. He's buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery on the campus of his alma mater, UNC.



#OTD in 1985 (July 23) Kay Kyser died. (Born 1905 in Rocky Mount). https://www.ncdcr.gov/.../01/24/kay-kyser-radio-personality



Kay Kyser & His Orchestra performing,

“Like The Fellow Once Said” from the film “You’ll Find Out,” 1940:

https://youtu.be/Ynm3fat4adk



“Playmate,” early 1940s - https://youtu.be/2aI9T-4Qk_w The Professor of Swing & His Kollege of Musical Knowledge.



See here too for a Timeline of his life. https://www.kaykyser.net/kay.html

 

[mpaer]

His wife was quit the mover and shaker in the Ida Friday community do good society

 

[donbosco]

His wife was quit the mover and shaker in the Ida Friday community do good society

I've heard a lot of stories about both their presences in the "Town/Gown" equation. You're lucky to have grown up in Chapel Hill IMO.

 

[donbosco]

Spanning Time: The Story of the Bynum Bridge

There’s an old bridge in Bynum, North Carolina, that doesn’t carry cars any longer. It just carries people—barefoot kids with Popsicles, old folks walking slow, teenagers with dreams bigger than the river below. Some say the bridge is retired. But if you ask around, folks will tell you: the Bynum Bridge simply got promoted.

Built back in 1923, she was a modern marvel in her day—all concrete and steel, stretching long over the wide Haw River. She was part of a new kind of road, one that promised to connect even the smallest mill towns to the rest of the world. For decades, she held the weight of school buses and trucks and folks going to work at the mill.

But time has its own way of wearing on things, and by the end of the century, some men in an office in Raleigh decided she wasn’t safe for cars.

That could’ve been the end of it. Another forgotten relic with wild vines creeping in. But Bynum doesn’t let go that easy.

After the traffic stopped, the people kept walking. They walked with strollers and guitars and leashed-up dogs. They walked to see the sunset, to spot the eagles, to clear their heads. Artists hung prayer flags and poems along the rails. Kids chalked up the pavement with rainbows and rockets. On Halloween, the bridge turned into a glowing pumpkin path. On Sunday mornings, you might catch someone doing yoga out there, eyes closed, arms to the sky.

It became less a bridge and more a kind of altar. A place to breathe.

Now, the Bynum Bridge is on the National Register of Historic Places. That’s a fancy way of saying folks finally put on paper what this community already knew deep down: that she mattered. Not just for the way she was built—though she’s the longest unaltered tee-beam bridge left in the whole state—but for the way she held us.

She held our history. And she still holds our hearts.

So if you find yourself near Bynum one evening when the sun is soft and the river is singing its slow song, take a walk out on that bridge. You might hear laughter echoing or a banjo strumming somewhere in the distance. You might feel something settle in your bones.

That’s the bridge doing what she’s always done—carrying us home.

~ Bynum Front Porch

 

[Zoo_View]

His wife was quit the mover and shaker in the Ida Friday community do good society

Their daughter, Carol (or Carole), taught a lot of cooking classes in Chapel Hill in the ‘70’s (maybe beyond the ‘70’s)……she was part of the foodie set in Chapel Hill that helped Bill and Moreton Neal put La Rez on the map; Bill launch Crooks into the culinary stratosphere; Michael Barefoot at A Southern Season…..and more.

 

[mpaer]

Their daughter, Carol (or Carole), taught a lot of cooking classes in Chapel Hill in the ‘70’s (maybe beyond the ‘70’s)……she was part of the foodie set in Chapel Hill that helped Bill and Moreton Neal put La Rez on the map; Bill launch Crooks into the culinary stratosphere; Michael Barefoot at A Southern Season…..and more.

Nice

 

[donbosco]

Artifact of the Week: Keg Tap (2445a2942)

This brass keg tap was recovered from the site of the Eagle Hotel during RLA excavations in 1993 and 1994. The Eagle Hotel once stood on the east side of McCorkle Place, near the current site of Graham Memorial Hall. Constructed in the late 1790s, the building was first operated as a tavern by John “Buck” Taylor, UNC’s first steward. Ann Segur Hilliard, known affectionately as Miss Nancy, became the building's proprietor in the 1830s, eventually transforming it into the Eagle Hotel.

Miss Nancy not only rented rooms to university students, but also housed UNC trustees, travelers, and even U.S. President James K. Polk, who attended UNC's graduation ceremony in 1847. From the 1830s to the 1850s, the Eagle Hotel served as the epicenter of campus social life. In the years following the Civil War, the hotel's popularity waned, leading to its demolition in the 1890s.

The RLA excavated the site as part of an archaeological field school to celebrate UNC's bicentennial. Archaeologists and students uncovered the building's dry-laid masonry foundation and unearthed artifacts from the cellar and adjacent yard. Most of the objects recovered from the site – like the keg tap shown here – reflect the building’s glory days as UNC's social hub, where much drinking, eating, and revelry took place during the first half of the 19th century.

Keg tap dimensions: length, 66.4mm; width, 35.8mm; thickness, 18.6mm

For more info, visit:
Keg Tap (2445a2942) - Download Free 3D model by RLA Archaeology (@rla-archaeology)
The Graham Memorial Site | Ancient North Carolinians
https://bit.ly/uncatoz
The Eagle Hotel, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Sources:
Davis, R. P. S., Jr. (2015). The Hidden Campus: Archaeological Glimpses of UNC in the Nineteenth Century. Gladys Hall Coates University History Lecture, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, April 14, 2015.

Davis, R. P. S., Jr., P. M. Samford, and E. A. Jones (2015). The Eagle and the Poor House: Archaeological Investigations on the University of North Carolina Campus. In Beneath the Ivory Tower, edited by Russell Skowronek and Kenneth Lewis, pp. 141-163. University Press of Florida.

#archaeology #unc #3d #culturalheritage

 

[mpaer]

Artifact of the Week: Keg Tap (2445a2942)

This brass keg tap was recovered from the site of the Eagle Hotel during RLA excavations in 1993 and 1994. The Eagle Hotel once stood on the east side of McCorkle Place, near the current site of Graham Memorial Hall. Constructed in the late 1790s, the building was first operated as a tavern by John “Buck” Taylor, UNC’s first steward. Ann Segur Hilliard, known affectionately as Miss Nancy, became the building's proprietor in the 1830s, eventually transforming it into the Eagle Hotel.

Miss Nancy not only rented rooms to university students, but also housed UNC trustees, travelers, and even U.S. President James K. Polk, who attended UNC's graduation ceremony in 1847. From the 1830s to the 1850s, the Eagle Hotel served as the epicenter of campus social life. In the years following the Civil War, the hotel's popularity waned, leading to its demolition in the 1890s.

The RLA excavated the site as part of an archaeological field school to celebrate UNC's bicentennial. Archaeologists and students uncovered the building's dry-laid masonry foundation and unearthed artifacts from the cellar and adjacent yard. Most of the objects recovered from the site – like the keg tap shown here – reflect the building’s glory days as UNC's social hub, where much drinking, eating, and revelry took place during the first half of the 19th century.

Keg tap dimensions: length, 66.4mm; width, 35.8mm; thickness, 18.6mm


Davis, R. P. S., Jr. (2015). The Hidden Campus: Archaeological Glimpses of UNC in the Nineteenth Century. Gladys Hall Coates University History Lecture, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, April 14, 2015.

Davis, R. P. S., Jr., P. M. Samford, and E. A. Jones (2015). The Eagle and the Poor House: Archaeological Investigations on the University of North Carolina Campus. In Beneath the Ivory Tower, edited by Russell Skowronek and Kenneth Lewis, pp. 141-163. University Press of Florida.

Davis presumably being Dr Steve Davis, University Archaelogist for years
A really cool guy

 

[donbosco]

 

[donbosco]

ACID

I was affiliated.

 

[donbosco]

A song deeply embedded in Chapel Hill Music History (though here performed in Raleighwood).

 

[donbosco]

From the Bynum Front Porch Facebook Page:

"The Day Bynum Made History - A River Town’s Long Walk Home to Itself
It didn’t start with a parade or a headline. It started like most things in Bynum do—with a quiet murmur on a porch, a pot of coffee between friends, and someone saying, “Something’s gotta be done.”
Back in January of 2023, word started swirling through the gravel paths and garden gates of this little mill town. Change was coming. Not the slow kind, like honeysuckle creeping up a fencepost, but the bulldozer kind. The kind that flattens and forgets. Folks worried—not just about losing land, but about losing something harder to name. The soul of the community. The parts of Bynum that don’t show up on a zoning map: the stories, the front porch shows, the art nailed to fences and the way neighbors look out for one another without needing to be asked.
So one neighbor stood up. Then a few more. The idea was simple and bold—get Bynum on the National Register of Historic Places. Not to freeze it in time, but to wrap it in the kind of care that might give it a fighting chance to stay itself.
⸻
The Gathering
The first step was the “study list”—an invitation to be considered. But it came with strings: forms to fill, archives to hunt, maps to unearth, elders to visit. So they gathered stories. They dug out old photos from drawers that hadn’t been opened in years. They remembered the smell of cotton dust and river mud, the clang of the mill, the way music used to spill out of windows on summer nights. They remembered and they wrote it down.
In March, a representative from the State Historic Preservation Office came to visit. Chairs were set out in the community center. Folks brought casseroles. They asked questions like, “Will we still be able to paint our houses purple?” (Yes.) And then someone said, “I just want my grandkids to know what it felt like to grow up here.”
That was the heart of it.
⸻
The Long Haul
Getting on the list was just the beginning. Next came the price tag: over $30,000 to hire a consultant to write Bynum’s story in the language the state could hear. That kind of money doesn’t just lie around in a place where bake sales pass for grant writing. But in Bynum, folks don’t back down just because the odds are long.
They made a GoFundMe. They wrote letters. They knocked on doors, not with desperation, but with hope. By spring of 2024, the money was in. Grants, donations, county support—it all came together like it always does in small towns that believe in each other.
One neighbor said, “It felt like quilting—we all stitched in our piece.”
⸻
The Heart of It
They hired a firm out of Durham who knew mill towns and the people who built them. The consultants came out with notebooks and soft footsteps. They walked the streets. They listened. They didn’t just document homes; they listened for heartbeat. They heard about the old mill whistle, the way the river rises after a storm, and how the general store now sells ice cream bars and soul-healing music on Friday nights.
They put it all down on paper, and by June 2024, the formal nomination was sent.
⸻
The Waiting
January 2025 brought another gathering. Cold outside, but warm inside. SHPO came back to explain what came next. And people came, not out of obligation, but because it mattered. Because their parents had lived in those houses, and their children were growing up beneath those same pecan trees. Because the past was not a museum—it was a living, breathing thing.
And then they waited.
⸻
The News
On February 13, 2025, the advisory committee said yes.

And on April 15, it became official. A letter from the National Park Service arrived: “The Bynum Historic District has been added to the National Register of Historic Places.”

There were tears.
Not big sobs, but quiet ones. The kind that come when something inside you softens because it knows it has been seen. The kind that rise up when you realize the old stories didn’t get washed away—they got written down.
⸻
What It Means
It doesn’t mean everything stays the same. You can still plant sunflowers in your yard. You can still raise chickens and paint a mural on your shed. But now, there’s a layer of protection, a recognition. Now, there’s a sign that says: This place matters.
It’s a way of holding hands across generations—from the mill workers who came before, to the barefoot kids playing tag on music nights, to the future neighbors who might just stumble across this place and decide to stay a while.
Bynum didn’t just make history. It remembered who it was. And in doing so, it made a promise—to keep singing by the river, to keep gathering under the stars, to keep being the kind of place that proves small things are worth fighting for.
That’s how Bynum does it.
With heart. With neighbors. And just enough stubbornness to turn memory into legacy.

 

[Zoo_View]

A song deeply embedded in Chapel Hill Music History (though here performed in Raleighwood).

Is that Arrogance way, way, WAY back when?

The shorts on the performers and “wearing” the guitar/bass below the genitals looks like 1970-1974ish.

 

[donbosco]

Is that Arrogance way, way, WAY back when?

The shorts on the performers and “wearing” the guitar/bass below the genitals looks like 1970-1974ish.

Don Dixon (as it says in the title) with Parthenon Huxley (AKA Rick Rock) and on drums, Rob Ladd (of Pressure Boys/Red Clay Ramblers fame)