Family Doesn't Want Dr. Bartlett Durham's Body Moved, March 12, 1295

Oppose Removing Durham’s Body. . . Relatives of the Founder of the City Are Not Friendly to the Idea. . . Cannot Identify Grave

The kinfolks of Dr. Bartlett Durham, who founded the city of Durham and at his death 65 years ago was buried in a metal casket in the Antioch church section, are not friendly to the proposal to remove his body to Durham.

This removal was first suggested a few years ago. The matter was dropped, but last week the suggestion was revived, and it was said that a committee of Durhamites wanted to come over to the burying ground west of Chapel Hill, disinter the body, carry it to the city for reburial, and erect a monument over it.

Three quarters of a century ago, when a farmer in the path of the North Carolina Railroad would not let the railroad pass through his property, Dr. Bartlett Durham paid him $500 for a strip of land and gave the land to the company for a right of way. That is where the railroad passes through the city of Durham today. And when he died, the doctor, who was childless, bequeathed more land to the city—which had not become a city then but was nothing more than a few frame houses straggling along the railroad.

In Chapel Hill and in the country roundabout there are today scores of kinsmen and kinswomen of Dr. Bartlett Durham. He was the uncle of the grandfather or Carl Durham, assistant in the Eubanks drugstore. Moody Durham and numerous other Durhams are of the tribe; and Mrs. S.J. Brockwell and the Paul Lloyds out at Sunnyside, and many others.

“I don’t know that any official kick has been made against the removal of the body,” said one of Dr. Durham’s kinsmen yesterday, “but we don’t care for the idea. All of the kin with whom I have talked seem to be against it. If the city wants to erect a monument to its founder, all right; but there doesn’t seem to be any good reason for taking his body away from the family burying ground.

“One reason for not trying to do it is that nobody knows exactly which one of the graves is his. It has no tablet over it and it is one of a row of graves, all of which are unmarked. I talked this thing over with Gen. Julian S. Carr a year or so before he died, and we agreed that there was no way of being sure which was Dr. Bartlett Durham’s grave.

From the front page of the Chapel Hill Weekly, Thursday, March 12, 1925

newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073229/1925-03-12/ed-1/seq-1/