Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2007 17:18:54 -0400
From: “Will Sexton”
Subject: A Rabbit (Not a Pet)
To the people of the Chatlist —
Begging your indulgence for a few remarks on the following centennials:
August 23 of this year marked 100 years since the unveiling of the Confederate memorial that stands over what’s now the Pittsboro traffic roundabout. One hundred years ago September 2, someone mysteriously defaced the statue with shoe polish.
Lee County was formed from parts of Chatham and Moore counties 100 years ago this past July. In the spring of 1907, the General Assembly set a July 11 date for a referendum to be voted on by the people living in the area to comprise the proposed county. That referendum passed and Chatham gave up its land south of the center of the Deep River.
March of this year marked a century since the first automobile appeared in Pittsboro.
Over the summer I started doing some background research on a documentary project related to the development boom in Chatham County. I visited UNC’s North Carolina Collection one day with what I thought was a simple research question to be answered by consulting microfilm of the Chatham RECORD. But the old issues of the paper drew me in, and I began systematically reading large chunks of it, then following up in other documentary resources. Rather than drive my family and friends nuts babbling on about this or that obscure mention of a bridge on the Deep River or a mail route from Pittsboro to Silk Hope, I decided to start posting to a blog called Chatham Rabbit: http://chathamrabbit.blogspot.com/
If you’re interested in these topics, please visit and offer commentary as you see fit. If you’re not, I’m surprised you read even this far! Please observe as well that there are other, far more capable organizations and people engaged in the study of history of the county, including but not limited to the Chatham County Historical Association (
http://chathamhistory.org/) and the Col. John Randolph Lane Society
(http://www.lanesociety.org/index.htm).
I started the Rabbit blog because I enjoy telling stories, but rely heavily on research and outreach done by such groups.
Chatham County has a fascinating and rich history that tends to get overshadowed by the powerful institutions residing in the counties surrounding us. But the county is changing rapidly, as we all know, and as I delved into the source material I started to ask myself how the old stories lead into the new and ongoing. Thus the Chatham Rabbit blog.
And did you know, by the way, that a century ago, the sight of a deer in the county was unique enough to merit a headline in the paper? Rabbits on the other hand … well that’s another story.
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