Duke University’s quarry still produces vibrant building stones

It was crystal clear that the first project to be funded by The Duke Endowment in 1924 would be the transformation of Trinity College into Duke University in Durham, N.C.

Founder of the endowment James B. Duke announced: “I want the central building to be a great towering church”…one that…“will dominate all of the surrounding buildings, because such an edifice would be bound to have a profound influence on the spiritual life of the young men and women who come here.”

 

Among the original Duke campus buildings, “the Duke Chapel was planned first and built last,” a university spokesperson said. 

James Duke requested that the best stones coming out of the Duke Stone Quarry in nearby Orange County be reserved for the chapel. “The selection featured 17 shades of colors including deep blues, rich browns, dusty grays and fiery ochres,” said Stephen Schramm, a senior writer at Duke. 

The late Dr. Robert F. Durden, a Duke University history professor, wrote extensively about the Duke family. He said: “James Duke took a special interest in the design of Duke’s Gothic campus.”

 

Dr. Durden

That was apparent even on his deathbed in 1925. Suffering from pernicious anemia, James Duke told his nurse just days before he took his last breath: “Don’t disturb me now; I am laying out the university grounds. I am looking to the future, how they will stand and appear a hundred years from now.” 

“The Duke stones used to build the Duke Chapel are of varying sizes, but much longer than they are tall, giving the walls graceful horizontal lines,” Schramm reported. 

The Rev. Dr. Luke Powery, who is the Dean of Duke University Chapel, said: “To me, every stone represents a human hand. It represents people. A human being had something to do with every single piece of stone.”

 

The chapel’s style is neo-Gothic English. Its architects were from Philadelphia, Pa. – Horace Trumbauer and his chief designer, Julian Abele. (Abele was America’s first African-American architect of renown.) Built between 1930-35, the chapel has wooden pew and chair seating for 1,600 people.

 

Today, about 100 buildings and walls across the university campus and within the Duke University Health System feature Duke stone. The famed quarry, which straddles the Eno River just west of Hillsborough, is still producing. 

Schramm said the quarry sits on the eastern edge of the “Carolina Slate Belt,” which runs north-south through the North Carolina Piedmont. “The quarry’s stone was formed by the flows of ancient volcanic activity. Over time, consolidation and metamorphism led to the rock taking on characteristics of slate, leaving it streaked with irregular seams. This means the stone has the combination of being both strong and unpredictably brittle.” 

Cleve Wagstaff, who owns a stone masonry business in Roxboro, is a Duke stone expert. Wagstaff’s company has been involved in Duke building projects for more than 40 years.

“It’s not a very friendly stone to work with,” he said. “Most stone masons shy away from it. But with the shades of blues and browns, it’s just a beautiful stone. It’s not like much of anything else you’ll see in North Carolina.” 

The staff at the Duke Facilities Management Department “are still struck by the magic of Duke stone,” Schramm commented. “When the sun hits the chapel tower in the late afternoon, at certain times of the year, the stone turns gold,” one architect said. “Sometimes you forget how beautiful this place is.”

The Oriental dragons welcome visitors to town

Did you know that Oriental in Pamlico County, N.C., is sanctuary for dragons? 

The town’s love affair with dragons began with the arrival of seasonal residents Joe and Besty Cox in the early 1960s. They were attracted to the sailing that the area offers.

The town government’s webmaster said Joe Cox was a famous artist and an art instructor at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. 

Joe had the bright idea that a place named “Oriental” should celebrate New Year’s Eve with a dragon like those used to celebrate “Chinese New Year.” He set out to design and construct one that was 40 feet long.

Every year since on New Year’s Eve, the streets of Oriental fill up with people who come to watch the “Running of the Dragon.” It’s a noisy crowd, banging big spoons on pots, beating drums, blowing whistles, honking horns, hollering, whatever it takes to convince the spirit of the dragon to keep their new year safe and secure.

Nowadays, visitors delight in finding dragons all over town in all seasons. There’s one that lives at the Duck Pond near the town harbor, and it’s not uncommon to see a great blue heron standing on the dragon’s head to get a better view of the fish in the pond.

 

An ultra-secret Dragon Protection Society oversees the dragons’ lairs, making every effort to keep them safe from harm. 

The town provides courtesy bicycles for tourists to seek out several “nesting areas” for baby dragons. The eggs are brightly colored and appear to be hard as rocks. 

One of the highlights of summer in Oriental is the annual Oriental Dragon Boat Race & Festival on the Neuse River on Aug. 11-12. Teams of 20 paddlers race in custom-built boats that feature dragonheads to raise money for their favorite charities.

 

Several thousand spectators are anticipated. For details, go online to orientaldragonboat.com. 

Extend your weekend in Oriental by laying over to attend the Aug. 13 watermelon cutting on the lawn, hosted by Fay Midyette Bond and her family. It’s free and open to the public. Everyone is invited to stop by the house at the corner of Neuse and Ragan streets at 4 p.m. 

Enjoy a slice or two of watermelon and partake in the fellowship and conversation. The watermelon cutting is a family tradition that began in 1969. Folks love to chat a bit with the family matriarch. Fay Bond is creeping up on her 100th birthday this September. 

Fay is full of spunk…and is still winning medals in Pamlico County’s Senior Games, according to Lorraine Yaeger, public relations coordinator for Century 21 Sail/Loft Realty in Oriental.

 

“Fay enjoyed working for Sail/Loft Reality with Joe Gwaltney, founder of the business,” Yaeger said. “She would show people homes and then bring them back to the office where Joe would ‘close the sale.’ Fay could always tell who was going to be happy in Oriental and who wouldn’t be.” 

Everyone in town refers to Fay Bond as the “Turtle Lady,” because she regularly feeds the snapping turtles who live in the creek that runs alongside her house. There might be 50 of them that swim up when she rings the dinner bell and beckons: “Turtle, turtle, turtle.” 

But why? “I feed ‘em to keep ‘em away from my garden,” she laughingly told a television news reporter.

The turtles are in for a big treat after the watermelon cutting. They will get to feast on all the watermelon rinds after the big party on the lawn…just like they do every year.

State ferry service ‘connects’ the Crystal Coast to Oriental

North Carolina’s Cherry Branch-Minnesott Beach ferry run observes it 50-year anniversary in 2023. The service in a vital link between the riverfront community of Oriental in Pamlico County and the Crystal Coast of Carteret County in North Carolina. 

Since the free state ferry began operating in 1973, the drive from Morehead City to Oriental has been reduced to about 40 miles. Including a 20-minute ferry ride across the Neuse River, it’s just about an hour-and-15-minute journey between the two towns.

 

Oriental is a nice addition to our vacationers’ itinerary, making it an easy daytrip adventure. The laid-back community of Oriental is widely known as the “sailing capital of North Carolina.” It’s strategically situated where the Neuse River opens up into the spacious Pamlico Sound.

 

Oriental has more boats than people. Oriental’s human population bounces around 900, but there are some 3,000 boats parked along the river and up a bunch of creeks that dump into the Neuse.

 

Kenneth Lambert Midyette Sr., 85, a native of Oriental, explained that “each boat serves a different purpose,” and in his case, it’s driven by his passion for fishing.

Kenneth Midyette is in the East Carolina University Athletics Hall of fame as an All-American diver on the championship swim and dive teams from 1956-59.

He’s got a pontoon boat, Ms. Midge, for recreational fishing with friends; a sit-on-top Hobie kayak for casting light tackle on still waters; and the 23-foot cuddy cabin, Wee Chablis, for serious fishing in the sound and on the river. 

From the Wee Chablis, Midyette reeled in his first Atlantic tarpon in 1993, fishing while dang near naked. (It was a pretty big deal. The complete “G-rated” story is available on the town website.) 

Kenneth Midyette is a descendant of Oriental’s founder, Lewis Brason Midyette, who “discovered” this place quite by accident. 

Lew Midyette hailed from Roanoke Island. Although just a teenager in 1872, Midyette was working as a commercial fisherman. He made regular deliveries of fish to markets in New Bern, trading for dry goods. 

One night, a gale forced him to anchor his sailboat in protected waters at the mouth of the Neuse on the northern side of the river. Storytellers claim: “The next morning Lew went ashore and climbed a tree. He was captured by the beautiful landscape and all of the waterfront created by the many creeks.” 

Upon his return home, Lew persuaded family members to relocate to the land he had discovered. 

Their settlement along Smith Creek caught hold, and by 1878 a post office was established for the new fishing village of Smith’s Creek. That name didn’t sit too well with Lew’s wife, Rebecca “Becky” Wise Midyette, however. 

She reportedly found a nameplate that had washed up from an ocean vessel named Oriental. The ship had run aground off Bodie Island in the northern Outer Banks and sank during the Civil War in 1862.

 

The ship was practically brand new – a 218-foot steel steamer built in 1861 by Neafie, Levy & Co. in Philadelphia, Pa. It was designed as a merchant ship to transport sugar from Cuba into the United States, but the vessel was one of the first boats “drafted” to build up President Abraham Lincoln’s Union navy. 

Oriental historian Lou Ostendorff said the vessel “was hastily converted to a troop carrier/cargo ship” and was sailing from New York City to Port Royal in Beaufort County, S.C. Miraculously, all passengers and crew were rescued.

 

The wreck lies about 100 yards offshore at a depth of about 20 feet directly across from the Pea Island Visitor Center. 

Becky Midyette got her way. Smith’s Creek became Oriental in 1886. There’s so much more to learn about this place….

Duke Endowment helped build a great university in Durham

James Buchanan “Buck” Duke became a very wealthy North Carolinian. He also held a deep religious conviction to the Methodist Church. Many people remember his wry sense of humor and his stellar performance as a philanthropist.

 

James Duke once confessed: “I am going to give a good part of what I make to the Lord, but I can make better interest for Him by keeping it while I live.”

 

James Duke was still very much alive, however, in 1924 when he set aside $40 million from his personal fortune to create The Duke Endowment. He may have mellowed a bit, but yet he gave the foundation trustees very specific orders about how to spend his money. 

Per his instructions: 46% is earmarked for higher education; 32% goes to nonprofit hospitals; 12% is reserved for rural Methodist churches as well as pensions for their retired ministers; and 10% is devoted to orphan care. 

Washington Duke, who was James Duke’s father, was largely responsible for moving Trinity College from Randolph County to Durham in the early 1890s, but the school remained a small Methodist college well into the 1920s. 

“I want it to become a great university,” James Duke confided in Judge William Robertson Perkins, his personal legal counselor. 

With funding from The Duke Endowment, Trinity College was renamed Duke University in 1924, as a lasting tribute to Washington Duke.

 

Judge Perkins said his client had some thoughts about the curriculum. “I advise that the courses of this institution be arranged, first with special reference to the training of preachers, teachers, lawyers and physicians, because these are most in the public eye, and by precept and example can do most to uplift mankind,” James Duke said. 

James Duke and Dr. William Preston Few, the college president, saw eye to eye on the academic mission, so James Duke delved into designing the physical aspects of a new campus.

 

Dr. Few

He hired a famous architect to design the new buildings of Duke University – Horace Trumbauer of Philadelphia, Pa.

 

Horace Trumbauer

James Duke’s dream was for Duke University to be perceived “as one of the nation’s elite institutions,” reported Stephen Schramm, a senior writer at Duke. 

As such, Duke University “needed to echo the older, more well-known northeastern universities that featured Gothic buildings of earthy, multi-hued stone,” James Duke stated. 

But James Duke was frugal. He didn’t want to pay the freight to transport stones from quarries several states away, Schramm reported. That would be too expensive.

James Duke tasked one of the college professors – Dr. Frank Clyde Brown – to “find a more reasonable” source for “Duke’s stones.”

Dr. Brown

 

Dr. Brown’s area of expertise wasn’t geology. He taught English literature and “excelled as an interpreter of Shakespeare to generations of students,” Schramm said. 

As a rock hound, Dr. Brown became a quick learner. He was led to find the ideal stones on the hillside of a 72-acre farm near Hillsborough, about 14 miles away from the campus site. 

“James Duke was thrilled with the appearance of the stone, its proximity to campus and the price of obtaining it – around $3.50 a ton, roughly a fifth of the cost of the stone used at Princeton (N.J.) University,” Schramm noted. 

Dr. Brown boasted that the Duke stone is “very much more attractive” than the stone used by Princeton. 

A smiling James Duke responded by buying the entire parcel with its prized quarry for $4,000 from farmer Patrick L. Clayton. A railroad line was quickly built to transport the stones to the Durham campus site.

Duke Endowment: Making a difference for nearly a century

One of America’s most highly esteemed philanthropic initiatives was created 99 years ago in North Carolina. It is The Duke Endowment.

 

The foundation was established in 1924 by James Buchanan Duke of Durham, N.C., who was associated with Duke Power, Duke University and America’s tobacco industry.

 

James Duke started The Duke Endowment with an initial gift of $40 million. (That is the equivalent of about $694.3 million in today’s dollars.)

 

Now, as it approaches its centennial anniversary, the Duke Endowment has assets of nearly $6 billion. In nearly a century of giving, more than $4.3 billion has been distributed in grants to support what was near and dear to James Duke – namely higher education, health care, orphan care, rural Methodist churches and pensions for their preachers.

 

The focus has always been on making investments that benefit the people of North Carolina and South Carolina.

 

Mr. Duke was quite a guy, according to Judge William Robertson Perkins, who was James Duke’s personal legal counselor and drew up the language of The Duke Endowment Indenture.

 The text of a speech delivered by Judge Perkins in 1929 in his hometown of Lynchburg, Va., was preserved as part of a collection obtained by the Carteret County Historical Society. Perkins’ remarks are included within an 89-page booklet about The Duke Endowment.

 

As the youngest son of Washington and Artelia Duke, James Duke grew up on a farm. He recalled: “My old daddy always said that if he amounted to anything in life it was due to the Methodist circuit riders who frequently visited his home and whose preaching and counsel brought out the best that was in him.”

 

Judge Perkins said James Duke “invariably added: ‘If I amount to anything in this world, I owe it to my daddy (Washington Duke) and the Methodist Church.’”

 

Washington Duke was a pioneer in the manufacturing of tobacco products. In 1874, he formed W. Duke, Sons and Company in Durham. Both James Duke and an older brother, Benjamin Newton Duke, were involved in the business.

Washington Duke

Brothers James Duke (left) and Ben Duke

 

With James Duke at the helm, the Duke family business grew to become the nation’s largest cigarette manufacturer. The Dukes joined with four other leading manufacturers to form the American Tobacco Company in 1890, At age 33, James Duke became president of the trust.

 

Ben Duke took the leading role to diversify the family’s portfolio by investing in the textile industry; Ben eventually would serve as president of Erwin Mills, which was headquartered in Durham.

 

Washington Duke turned to other pursuits. A chief project was to bring Methodist-supported Trinity College from Randolph County to Durham. Washington Duke offered $85,000 cash and 60 acres of land in 1890, and the trustees accepted. Trinity College was up and running on its new Durham site by 1892.

 

In order to expand the Duke family’s textile empire, Ben and James Duke saw the importance of hydroelectric power. They launched the Southern Power Company in 1905. This was the same year that Washington Duke died.

 

Ben Duke took over the responsibility as the family’s chief liaison with the college, while James continued to pursue industrial opportunities.

 

Coinciding with the establishment of The Duke Endowment in 1924, James Duke agreed to allow Trinity College to be rechartered as Duke University in honor of his father, Washington Duke. 

This is an older photograph of Washington Duke.

James Duke possessed a “great heart” for education, Judge Perkins said. James Duke once commented: “I recognize that education, when conducted along sane and practical, as opposed to dogmatic and theoretical, lines, is next to religion, the greatest civilizing influence.” 

There’s still more to see and do in Rose Hill, N.C.

Welcome back to Rose Hill in Duplin County, N.C. The place was named for an abundance of wild roses that grew along the hillsides that were noticed when the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad came through in 1840.

A railway depot was located here to serve the region’s tar, turpentine and timber industries. Soon thereafter, a general store, hotel, church and a few homes sprung up. A post office at Rose Hill was established in 1872, and farmers started bringing crops and produce to the railroad platform, most notably strawberries. 

“In those days, about a third of North Carolina’s tart, red berries shipped through Rose Hill,” reported Bryan Mims, a contributor to BusinessNC magazine.

 

Townspeople pay tribute to a different type of fruit nowadays. Acres and acres of muscadine grapes go into the making of assorted sweet wines that are produced at the famous Duplin Winery.

 

The Bistro at Duplin Winery in Rose Hill enhances the visitation experience. The eatery is open six days a week for lunch, serving culinary fare perfectly paired with a favorite Duplin wine. Chef Bert Fussell offers an array of choices for your palate.

 

Sample several as you savor his luncheon entrée specials. Just the other day, he featured crispy fried chicken and decadent waffles, drenched in warm maple syrup. A glass of sparkling “Summertime Strut” sounded nice.

 

Each September, Duplin Winery welcomes the public to attend its annual Grape Stomp Festival. The event is billed as an afternoon of fun with live music, wine and food. Purchase a ticket to take a turn at stomping grapes. VIP hospitality tents with additional amenities are available but sell out quickly. 

Overall, Duplin Winery is doing well. The company has recently expanded operations into the tourism hot spots of Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Panama City, Fla. Could we interest them in a Bogue Sound vineyard as well? Imagine a muscadine and watermelon flavored wine. 

Back in Rose Hill, visitors can enjoy a traditional down-home breakfast, lunch or dinner. Just follow North Carolina’s celebrated food expert Bob Garner to the legendary Rose Hill Restaurant.

 

Garner is a television personality and restaurant reviewer with a magnetic personality. Since 1994, he’s been getting paid to “eat his way across North Carolina”…again and again.

 

Donald and Ruth Buckner opened the Rose Hill Restaurant in 1957, specializing in pit-cooked barbecue pork and chicken. Over time, the restaurant expanded from 36 seats to 400, with the addition of several dining room extensions running off the “main house.” 

The place resembles a museum; it’s walls are decorated with historical photographs of Rose Hill. The pictures document the county’s first school bus, the old Overbrook Hotel and even the old railroad produce platform. 

Fuzzy Buckner, son of the founders, runs the restaurant now. He has learned to expect a visit from Garner between May and July, when blueberries are in season and the Rose Hill Restaurant is serving up its signature dessert, lemon-blueberry pie.

 

The last time Garner dined at the Rose Hill Restaurant, he ordered the jumbo fried seafood platter (flounder, oysters, shrimp and scallops) with a crab cake, slaw, fries and hush puppies. 

Then, he enjoyed a slab of country ham with sides of beets and potato salad. Garner topped off the main courses with a heaping plate of chopped pork barbecue. 

Garner was joined at the table by Charlie Albertson, a retired state legislator from Duplin County. A country musician on the side, Albertson raved about his plate of Rose Hill Restaurant’s fried chicken – “as good as you’ll find anywhere.”