University of North Carolina Chapel Hill - Yackety Yack Yearbook (Chapel Hill, NC)

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Chapel Hill There ' s a spot in Carolina where the skies are ever fair, Where magnolias waft their fragrance through the soft and balmy air, Where the roses and the lilies in their lavish beauty bloom, And the clamb ' ring honeysuckle lends the breeze its rich perfume. There the trees are green in summer and in Autumn crimson-gold, And in winter b o ■n leaves rustle to the wnd-swept, silent wold. And through everj ' changing season fairest beauty changeless dwells, In the meadows and the woodlands and the quiet, shady dells. Circled round that charmed spot the hills in loving shelter stand. Shutting out all woe and turmoil from that fair, enchanted land. Shutting in the peace and beauty that forever tranquil reigns. Rapturous peace, bewitching beauty, foes to want and care and pain. Chapel Hill! What glamour lingers round thy ever blessed name. In thy loveliness al)iding through all changing years the same; How the thought of thee forever thrills with fondest love and pride All thy loyal sons and daughters, thousands scattered far and wide. Stately hills and spacious campus pass before fond memory ' s eyes; Cherished faces unforgotten gleam from out the years gone by. Chapel Hill! with clinging memories, ever blessed, ever dear. Long the thought of thee shall hallow every fleeting, changing year. Alice Harper

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President Edward Kidder Graham

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The University Site CHAPEL HILL and vicinity has been an interesting place since the world began. Several ages ago, when dodoes were mere casualties, Piney Pros- pect (a corruption of Point Prospect) was a headland jutting out into the bay that stretched from Georgia to Maine. Three miles to the west is an innocent looking hillside cow pasture that once bellowed forth lava and ashes. There is a black streak of very brittle rock that crosses the Durham road at the top of the hill the other side of the first bridge going toward Durham, that marks the pres- ence of a once dangerous fissure in the volcanic days of geologic youth. The first inhabitants were, naturally, Lidians, and a very sorry lot they were too. From the numerous relics, it is plain that they were a rougher and less advanced tribe than their neighbors. The almost total absence of tools of culti- vation seems to indicate that they depended almost entirely on hunting and fishing as a means of livelihood. Arrow heads are a common find on the athletic field; so it is plain that the Indians also recognized the value of this location as a place to teach the young how to fight. These Indians disappeared long before the arrival of the whites, because they were probablj ' too weak to resist the competition of their more advanced neighbors. A majority of the first white settlers of Orange County were of plain, honest, unambitious stock, who had here sought peace from the Indian wars and worries of Pennsylvania. A large percentage of the present inhabitants of this vicinity are the descendants of these people. Practically every name on a certain petition sent to the Oeneral Assembly from this neighborhood some years before the Revo- lutionary War is a familiar Chapel Hill name today. Most of them have represent- atives present in large numbers. Samples are Pendergraph, Lloyd, Blackwood, Pope, Clark, and Neville. These people are largely farmers of the conventional easy-going type. The soil is very poor, being in the main decayed lava and old sea bottom, but it is well drained, there being no swamps or low, wet places of any kind. On November 1, 1792, six men, commissioners from the trustees of the as yet unborn University of North Carolina, set out to choose a site for the institution. Their instructions were to take Cyprett ' s Bridge as a center and to select any location they saw fit within a fifteen-mile radius of this spot. The only restriction