Chatham County Historical Association

EVENTS & ANNOUNCEMENTS


Looking for Courthouse
Photos & Videos

 

Chatham County is looking for pictures and videos of events in and around the courthouse over the years.  These are not pictures of the fire but of happenings in prior times.  Of special interest are trials, marches, rallies, parades, speeches and other events large or small.  Also of interest are are interior photographs including those of architectural elements.  The county plans to create a short documentary about Chatham's Historic Courthouse.
 
If you have any photos or videos you would be willing to let the county use, contact Debra Henzey at 542-8258 or Lisa West at 545-8483 or by email at debra.henzey@chathamnc.org or lisa.west@chathamnc.org.
 

Special Newsletter
on the Courthouse Fire

(Click above link to open PDF document)


Fred Vatter receives a copy of his book, Tales Beyond Fried Chicken

Copies of Tales Beyond Fried Rabbit  are now available for sale through our web orders page.

Fred Vatter’s delightful saunter into some of the many corners of Chatham County’s past tell us of old houses, aged country stores, church yards with intriguing gravestones, and venerable public buildings; settlements and cemeteries now lost due to dams and other effects of progress; ordinary people who know the county’s past and would love to tell you about it, as well as prominent civic leaders now long dead.  Order Form



Click here to see what's happening at the Manly Law Office.
 


Join CCHA NOW!
Please send your 2010 dues to
CCHA, PO Box 93, Pittsboro NC  27312. Membership form


Individual or family $12.00
Student $10.00
Patron $35.00
Corporate $50.00

Donations in addition to these rates are greatly appreciated.
 


The census of The Cemeteries of Chatham County is available online. Census of cemeteries in surrounding counties are also online.


Virtual Tour of Historic Chatham County - Over the coming months and years, CCHA will be developing an online "virtual tour" of sites West Chatham Veterans Memorialof interest in Chatham County. The first installment features two Veterans' Memorial Sites, with photography by Barbara Pugh.


CCHA has pledged $25,000 to the Chatham Community Library to build and furnish an area in the new library devoted to county history, heritage and genealogy. Details


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FEATURE ARTICLE
Features Archive

Most months, we feature an article and or photograph. If you have an article or photograph which you would like considered for use as a feature on this website, please send it to history@chathamhistory.org. 

How Farm Tenants Lived in Chatham County

After the Civil War, tenant farming and sharecropping became a way of life for the vast majority of Southern farmers.
Chatham County was no exception. Most freed slaves were without resources or access to credit to purchase land, and
many became sharecroppers. Many small landowning white farmers also lost their land in the South’s devastated
economy in the years following the Civil War. Many landless farmers—renters and sharecroppers—could not hope to
escape from landlessness, debt, and poverty.

As the number of farm tenants increased in the first three decades of the 20th century, southern farm tenancy came to be
viewed by many as a problem—not only for the tenants who were mired in poverty but also for the larger society. Southern
farm tenancy was characterized by a single cash crop agricultural system which resulted in ever poorer land and
insufficient production of food for the farmer. More than in other regions, southern farmers faced a high cost of credit for financing farm operations. And the tenant system provided relatively little opportunity for rising up the economic scale. Indeed, many small landowners were just one bad crop away from landlessness.

Concern about the problem of farm tenancy inspired a number of studies in the 1920s and 1930s as policy-makers struggled with the question of what to do about the inefficiency in farm operations and the poverty among farming families
that it produced. One of those studies, carried out in 1922 by the North Carolina Tenancy Commission, focused on the
living conditions of both farm owners and tenants in two Chatham County townships which were chosen to represent the
piedmont section of the state. The researchers interviewed almost every farmer—owner, renter, and sharecropper—in Baldwin and Williams townships and asked more than 700 questions covering a variety of topics. These included the economic situation of the families, their education, how much of their own food they produced, what their homes were like, their
health status, religious practices, and opinions about various public and community improvements. The study also looked at the degree to which tenants were able to improve their situations. Because two Chatham townships were included in the 1922 Tenancy Commission study, we have access to an unusual amount of data about that part of the county at that point
in time—a fascinating snapshot of a time and topic about which little is documented at the local level.

CCHA members Jim and Beverly Wiggins stumbled across the reports and have summarized the study in the paper “How
Farm Tenants Lived in Chatham County, NC in 1922.”
The Wiggins say that they learned a lot about tenant farming in Chatham County from the study. “Clearly, farming in general, not just tenant farming, was a hard way to make a living here in 1922,” said Jim Wiggins. For example, none of the tenant homes in the townships studied had bathtubs, indoor toilets, or electric lights. In this respect, farm owners fared not much better—fewer than 2% of the homes of farm owners had bathtubs, fewer than 1% had an indoor toilet, and none had electric lights—indicating that rural living in Chatham in 1922 was still a rustic business. The Wiggins’ paper, in PDF format, also provides links to the original reports for those who wish to read further, and a brief discussion, based on other sources, of what brought the widespread practice of tenant farming to an end throughout the South.


Lange, Dorothea, photographer. House of Negro tenant family. Pittsboro, North Carolina. July 1939. Library of Congress.

Read the full study by clicking HERE
 


This Month in
Chatham History:

 

 

 

 

 

 

GOOD NEWS!
A NEW HOME FOR CCHA

CCHA has been given a new location where we now have a display and 
sales area and some office space.  The CCHA's new homeaddress is 184 East Street (also known as Hwy 64 East), a little yellow house two blocks east of  the courthouse on the south-side of the street.

We are very grateful to Elizabeth Anderson, formerly with Heartwood 
Realty, now with Coldwell Banker/Howard Perry Walston, for this generous offer of her conference room and another office.

We are keeping our regular Wednesday from noon to 3 p.m. hours and  will continue to be open on First Sundays through the summer and  fall.  We’ll hang our “Open” sign out when we’re there at other times working.

Drop in to see us.


MUSEUM ARTIFACTS AND DOCUMENTS SAVED

On Sunday, March 28, less than three days after fire that devastated the Court House (see below), salvage crews and Pittsboro Police with help from some of our members removed our archives and materials from the Chatham Historical Museum.  Everything was placed in a rented truck to be be unloaded into space in Pittsboro where decisions will be made on what needs to be shipped to a conservator and what just need wiping down.  CCHA President Barbara Pugh wrote late last evening, "The truck is full of our museum items, some are wet, some are dry, and the condition of the materials is unbelievable." 

 
"Can you believe that the Masonic Apron in the glass case is fine.  The computer is dry; some of the pictures didn’t even fall off the walls; [there is] water damage and there were some ceiling tiles that had fallen out of their frames onto the cabinets and floor.  It is amazing," she continued.
 
In addition to CCHA's belongings we have two benches from the Courtroom, old benches that were on the front porch, and a couple of the old benches that sat inside.  County Manager Charlie Horne has the weathervane made by John Amero.  Every saved bit is now a precious piece of history.
 
We thank all the firemen who labored for so many hours to put out the fire, and the Pittsboro Police, salvage crew and CCHA volunteers who retrieved our museum holdings from the building. 


First item out of the museum:
the Masonic apron


Remains of our "Chatham People" exhibit.  It isn't as bad as it might have been.

Click HERE to enlarge photos.


Tragedy Strikes the Historic Chatham County Courthouse

Late Thursday afternoon, March 25, fire broke out in the court house in the circle in Pittsboro.  Most of the roof and much ofCourthouse Fire Photo Gallery the building's interior were destroyed before the fire was contained.  Built in 1881, the building has undergone several additions and renovations.  At the time of the fire the building was covered with scaffolding so that the windows could be replaced and parts repaired and repainted.  In addition to the loss of the court room, judges' and other offices, belongings of employees and some court materials, the Chatham County Historical Museum was located there.  The extent of the damage to the Museum collection is not yet known, although most items have now been recovered from the building and officials are increasingly optimistic.

      Video           Photo Gallery

 

Special Newsletter
on the Courthouse Fire

(Click above link to open PDF document)

 

 

Last modified: 07/30/2010

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