When you live in one town for 66 years, you get to know it pretty well. Especially when you grow up next door to a man who used his ever-present camera to document town life for more than 40 years. So it’s not surprising that when Arcadia Publishing came looking for someone to do a book on Carrboro as part of their Images of America series, they contacted Carrboro native Richard Ellington.
Ellington, who’d been entrusted with the Mack Watts photo collection after his neighbor passed away, was working in information technology at UNC at the time, and initially felt too busy to take on the project. But the situation changed after Arcadia talked to Dave Otto, whose work with the Friends of Bolin Creek had made him deeply curious about the history of the town he’s called home for 15 years.
Since Otto had recently come to the end of a 35-year career in environmental-health research at UNC, writing a book sounded to him like a good way to spend his retirement. And when Ellington agreed to be co-writer, Carrboro was born. The book Otto describes as an “annotated picture book†had its launch at Flyleaf Books this past Sunday, appearing just in time for Carrboro’s 2011 centennial celebration.
Though the town was incorporated 100 years ago, and has been named Carrboro for only 98 of those years, it has a written history that predates the Revolutionary War. Carrboro has families that stretch back several centuries – the Lloyds, the Morgans and the Hogans, among them – who had land granted to them from the English lord, Lord Granville. The story Otto and Ellington tell of those families, and others who have shaped the town of Carrboro, provides a wealth of insight into local matters.
There’s the first Thomas Lloyd, who as sheriff of Orange County arrested 15 Regulators for their part in the tax rebellion that began in Hillsborough in 1770. Lloyd’s loyalty to the crown led the state of North Carolina to punish him after the war ended by taking his land grant away and giving the deed to his son Stephen.
A century later, Thomas Lloyd’s descendant and namesake built what’s probably the town’s most iconic building. The Alberta Cotton Mill (which eventually became Carr Mill Mall) housed a manufacturing plant that produced textiles on and off over a period of almost 70 years. That mill and another one on Roberson Street (since demolished) at one time employed more than 500 people, many of whom lived in the mill houses that are such a beloved part of downtown Carrboro today.
Another Lloyd descendant, Frances Lloyd Shetley, helped shape the face of present-day Carrboro with her service on numerous town advisory boards, and the Carrboro Board of Aldermen, during the 1980s and ’90s. The bikeway that connects Shelton and Greensboro streets is named in Shetley’s honor.
Because the publisher limited Otto and Ellington to 18,000 words – about a chapter’s worth – much of the books’ information is conveyed by pictures. There are pictures of Nellie and Toney Strayhorn, former slaves who became the first blacks to settle in what’s now Carrboro, and of the Jones Ferry Road house their descendant Dolores Clark still occupies. There’s the Lincoln High School graduating class of 1952. There are early pictures of Main Street, a row of spinning machines inside the textile mill, the Carrboro railroad crosstie market, a hot summer day at Sparrow’s Pool … and much more. Anyone with an interest in how the town of Carrboro has changed over the years will find Otto and Ellington’s book invaluable.
For certainly the town has changed – from a mill town at the turn of the last century to something of a cultural mecca. And Richard Ellington has been around for much of that evolution. Some of the changes he welcomes, some he regrets: He laments, for instance, the fact that the town’s growing popularity is making it unaffordable for the blue-collar workers who were the town’s mainstays for so many years. But Ellington does get a chuckle when he hears about the locavore movement that’s so popular now. Because when he was growing up, everybody in Carrboro had a garden and a chicken coop in their backyard.
“We were right all along,†he says.
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Local locavores will want to pick up a copy of Diane Daniel’s Farm Fresh North Carolina, a guidebook to farms and farm-related activities published by UNC Press. A great way to do so is to head over to Flyleaf Books at 7 p.m. on March 8, when Daniel will have a conversation, titled “From Farm to Fork,†with Panciuto chef Aaron Vandemark, Helga MacAller of Four Leaf Farm and Ben Bergmann and Noah Ranells of Fickle Creek Farm. Nibbles and a book signing will follow.
If that date doesn’t work for you, you can catch Daniel’s talk and book signing at McIntyre’s Fine Books at 11 a.m. on March 19.
And if you should find yourself in need of ways to work off all that local food, Joe Miller has some great ideas for you. He’ll be at Flyleaf with his new book, Backpacking North Carolina, at 7 p.m. on March 23. Miller also will visit McIntyre’s at 11 a.m. on March 26 to read from the book.