Local History To Come Alive In Talks, Films And Tours
Thursday, October 4, 2001
DURHAM, N.C. -- A short history of the tobacco trade, a new pictorial history of African Americans in Durham and a geologist's perspective on our region are among the topics of talks and tours offered by the Duke Institute for Learning in Retirement (DILR) Oct. 15-19.
"Snapshots: A Week of Local History" will introduce participants to some of the influential people and events that formed the Triangle as we experience it today. The focus of the 15 fall break offerings will be the early years of Durham, Orange and Chatham counties.
"DILR has many participants who have moved to this area in retirement," said DILR director Sara Craven. "They are eager to become acclimated and to feel a part of the community, and a good way to begin is to delve into the history. These short lectures introduce people to a variety of topics, which they can pursue at greater length on their own or in other DILR classes."
Leonard Rogoff, an author and historian, will give a talk Oct. 16 titled "North Carolina: A Southern Jewish Homeland." For more than four centuries, North Carolina has experienced a small but persistent Jewish immigration, noted Rogoff, who is the author of the recently published Homelands: Southern Jewish Identity in Durham and Chapel Hill.
In the antebellum years, German Jewish peddlers and storekeepers settled in hamlets and towns across the state, Rogoff said, noting that Jews proved their Southern loyalty by fighting for the Confederacy. With the rise of a New South, German Jewish immigrants provided valuable commercial services to the mill and market towns that were rising across the landscape. Towns like Statesville, Charlotte, Goldsboro, Asheville, Tarboro, New Bern and Wilmington developed Jewish communities. The state's first synagogue was dedicated in Wilmington in 1876.
"Today, agrarian communities are struggling and dying," Rogoff said. "While synagogues closed in communities like Tarboro, Goldsboro and Wilson, the Sunbelt centers of Charlotte, the Triad and the Triangle are experiencing unprecedented Jewish growth. The Jewish doctor, engineer and entrepreneur is welcomed today as the peddler and merchant were a century ago."
William B. Coman, a Durham native and a past president of the Historic Preservation Society of Durham, will lead on Oct. 15 a leisurely guided walk on the winding paths of Maplewood Cemetery, established in 1872. Coman said the history of Durham as a world center of tobacco manufacture may be read on both sides of Kent Street, which traverses the cemetery. The dominant granite Duke mausoleum is situated on the highest knoll in the cemetery. Other family names you will see are Wright, Mangum, Holt, Blacknall, Markham, McMannen, Morehead, Southgate, Hill, Christian, Watts and Carr -- leaders in industry, education, medicine and civic life. The Durham Hebrew Cemetery adjoins Maplewood.
Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans will talk Oct. 17 about the origins of the Duke dream for the university that bears her family's name and the extension of that dream through the following generations, including the importance of women in the family picture and the lasting influence of her grandfather, Benjamin Duke, the brother of university founder James B. Duke. Semans, who received her undergraduate degree in history from Duke, has been a tireless champion for Duke University and the arts. There is no charge for her 11 a.m. talk, "The Lengthening Affair Between the Duke Family and Duke University," but people need to register in order to attend.
Other events during the local history week include:
Oct. 15 -- "The Contact Era in Carolina: From Roanoke Island Through the Regulation," a talk by historian Tom Magnuson; "James Iredell Waddell: The Confederacy's Terror of the Arctic Seas," a program presented by museum curator Fred Vatter; and "A Pictorial History of African Americans in Durham," a presentation by archivist and author Andre D. Vann.
Oct. 16 -- "Movers and Shakers of Chapel Hill," geography professor Douglas Eyre's look at the town's transition from a relatively poor village before the 1960s to the prosperous city of today; "Chapel Hill: Charms and Challenges of Two Centuries," a talk by historian and author Elizabeth Shreve Ryan; "A Tale of Two Plantations (Stagville and Prestwould)," a talk by the Herald-Sun's Jim Wise; and "Let's Go the Movies," a potpourri of historical films that will be screened at The Bishop's House on Duke's East Campus.
Oct. 17 -- "A Short History of Tobacco" will be taught by Duke alumnus Billy Yeargin, a historian of American tobacco heritage; and "The Last Days of the Civil War in North Carolina," a lecture and guided tour of Bennett Place by Durham native Ernest Dollar.
Oct. 18 -- A walking tour of Chapel Hill and the UNC campus; and "The Shape of the Land: Regional Geology" by Duke geology professor emeritus Duncan Heron.
Oct. 19 -- "The History of Chatham County: Lecture and Tour."
For more information or to register for any of the history events, call Pat Green, DILR program assistant, at 681-3476 or visit www.learnmore.duke.edu/dilr.