DURHAM -- A white doe that roams the Eno, a terra cotta bear that "protects" a female figure as well as quirky aspects of Durham's history are some of the responses to a call for oddities in Durham and Orange counties.
Readers were asked to respond as a follow-up to a July story about how Durham resident Roger Manley and Mark Sloan were looking for material for their upcoming book, "Weird Carolinas: Your Travel Guide to the Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets of North and South Carolina."
A number of people within the past year have seen a white doe on the Eno River in Durham. Former Herald-Sun reporter Paul Bonner called to give his account.
One morning about six years ago, he had been walking on the Eno with his dog, Jazz, when the dog got off the leash and took off after what Bonner figured must be a deer. Before he knew it, he heard something headed toward him.
"Both of them (the dog and a doe) ran right towards me," Bonner said. "I got a good look -- the deer was a few feet away. I could see it was pure white."
The doe kept running and Jazz tore after her. Bonner figured Jazz would never catch the deer and come back to the house when she tired. Yet, he lingered a bit in the woods and that's when he heard the voice. "I could swear I heard a woman's voice calling my name," Bonner said.
She called only once.
Bonner said he figured it was his wife concerned because he was out longer than usual. So, he walked quickly back to his house and found her asleep, just as he'd left her. When he told her about it, she had an explanation. " 'Oh, yeah, that's Virginia Dare.' "
Then, Bonner recalled the legend about Virginia Dare, first English child born in the New World on Roanoke Island on North Carolina's Outer Banks in the late 16th century. Legend has it she was turned into a white doe. This explains what happened to her, but not the fate of her mother and other colonists left behind while others returned to England for supplies. The fate of the colony, known as the Lost Colony, remains one of America's oldest mysteries.
"That's the only reason I could figure the white doe would call my name," Bonner said.
"I think it's all the same one. She's immortal," he added, when asked about other white doe sightings in the state, including on Mason Farm in Chapel Hill as well as on Roanoke Island.
John Schelp shared some oddities about Durham's past, including the fact that Elvis Presley had lived incognito in a caboose behind Erwin Mills on Ninth Street while on the Duke Rice Diet.
History about his adopted town -- Schelp has lived in Durham since 1992 -- has become a passion for Schelp, who has compiled a "Self-guided Walking Tour Around East Campus" posted on the Old West Durham Neighborhood Association's Web site: http://www.owdna.org/tour.htm. Schelp is president of the association and lives on Rosehill Street.
Included on the tour is the fact that the oval drive in front of Baldwin Auditorium roughly follows the shape of the horse race track used until 1892 and part of Blackwell Fairgrounds. "A horse raised here named Baxter took third place in the Kentucky Derby," Schelp writes.
In fact, said Schelp, it had been the fairgrounds' owner Julian Shakespeare Carr's offer of the land to Trinity College (now Duke University) that had helped persuade the college to locate in Durham instead of Raleigh. Wood from the racetrack's grandstand had been used to build the East Campus structure called The Ark because only two students could walk the gangplank entrance into the building, Schelp said.
"Everything's connected in history -- especially in Durham," Schelp said.
On Saturday, Schelp and Duke professor Robert Healy will be leading a walking tour of East Campus and surrounding neighborhoods for Duke freshmen. Schelp said he had put the tour together four years ago after a Duke senior had told him her only regret was that she had not gotten to know Durham better.
There's lots of lore about Durham's founder, Bartlett Durham, a physician, including reports that when his body was exhumed from the Snipes family graveyard near Antioch church in Orange County and moved in 1934 to a grander gravesite in Maplewood Cemetery, he was found to be in a perfect state of preservation after 75 years in the ground.
Schelp said he had spoken with an eyewitness, John McDonald, of McDonald's Drug Store on Ninth Street, who as a young man had attended the reburial ceremony. McDonald told him that he and a number of people viewed Durham's face through a glass plate in the coffin and that his features were perfectly preserved, Schelp said.
Durham gets credit for the "founding" of Durham because he gave four acres of land to the North Carolina Railroad in the early 1850s for a depot between Morrisville and Hillsborough. That depot became know as Durham Station, and a town grew up around it.
In another Durham oddity, a voodoo symbol for an African love goddess, Erzulie Freda Dahome, sits atop the former St. Joseph's AME Church, now part of the Hayti Heritage Center. No one knows for sure how the symbol, two intersecting hearts and a staff pointed heavenward, came to be on the church steeple.
Durham resident Connie Troutt called to tell of a birthmark on the inside of her right ankle. She's had it since childhood, but in recent years she's noticed that the birthmark's shape has changed and resembles Jesus praying. When Troutt, 65, came to the newspaper on Tuesday to have the birthmark photographed, sure enough, you could see a figure kneeling, hands together in prayer. But because the mark was so light, it did not photograph well. Troutt, who describes herself as modest, said she has only shown it to a couple of women at her church. She said she finds comfort in the birthmark.
"I feel more spiritual because of it. I feel special because it's there," Troutt said.
Durham resident Ruth Bardon wrote about a statue she discovered in a yard.
"We saw this for the first time one night around Halloween, a few years ago, and were all fairly freaked out," Bardon writes.
Located outside a home on West Woodridge Drive in Durham, the terra cotta statue stands about 8 feet tall and depicts a bear, whose hollowed-out form "shelters" a female figure. Homeowners Kathy and Rich Bruch said they had purchased the statute about 10 years ago from Michigan artist Mark Chatterley after their daughter had seen it in a show at Somerhill Gallery in Chapel Hill.
"We see it as protective," Rich Bruch said of the statue.
While response from others has been mostly favorable, when they first put the statue in their yard, a neighbor had called to say the bear was looking in her window and frightened her and asked them what they planned to do to make it more attractive, Kathy Bruch said.
Orange County has a notorious claim to fame because America's first-known serial killers, the Harpe Brothers (actually cousins Micajah and Wiley Harpe) were born to Scottish immigrants in Orange County, N.C., in the 18th century. They later went on a killing rampage in Tennessee and Kentucky and are credited with killing more than 13 strangers as well as some of their own infant children.
On a less serious note, there's a place on the UNC campus -- the center of the plaza where the flagpole stands in front of the old Wilson Library -- where the bell tower resembles a dunce cap on top of the library. Legend has it that this was due to a dispute between UNC librarian Louis Round Wilson and UNC alumnus John Motley Morehead III (Class of 1891), a businessman and philanthropist. The two had faced off because Morehead had wanted to put the bell tower on top of the library but Wilson had already envisioned a dome on the building.
Did Morehead have the last laugh?
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