About the club

This maintains membership of men and women from age 26-86 and serves in many different aspects through our community and within our school system. We meet every Tuesday, noon, at Jim's Famous BBQ - MAP.

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Seventy-five years ago Chapel Hill was a village of 2,500 people, a figure that had increased over the 1,495 reported in the 1920 census. The village community was contained on the hill.

In the period of time between 1924 and 1928, the road to Sanford by way of Pittsboro had been paved, as had the road leading to Hillsborough by way of Carrboro and the road to Durham. Franklin Street, which had had an 18-foot strip of pavement down the middle of the road with mud on either side to the curbs, was being paved for the full width of the road. The enrollment of the University had doubled following the First World War from approximately 1,500 to approximately 3,000. The village community was still contained on the hill

At this time, civic clubs were being established across the state. (The Durham Kiwanis Club was established in 1920.)  In this village environment, both the Rotary Club and the Kiwanis Club were founded in the summer of 1928.

According to The Chapel Hill Weekly there was consideration of organizing a Kiwanis Club in 1924. Later, The Weekly reported that the club held its organizational meeting in the social room of the Chapel Hill Baptist Church on Monday night, July 23, 1928, held its first dinner meeting on Tuesday of the following week in the dining room of the Methodist church, and was hosted by the Rotary Club on Wednesday evening of the same week. Two months later, the newspaper observed under a large headline that,

[a]bout 200 people, more than half of whom were visitors to the village, gathered at a dinner in the Baptist church social rooms Tuesday evening, September 28 for the presentation of a charter to the Kiwanis club of Chapel Hill.

The Club was sponsored by the Kiwanis Club of Durham.

There were 39 members of the Club when it was chartered and it met in the Methodist, Christian, and Baptist churches, where meals were prepared by the ladies of the church. Eugene Olive, pastor of the Baptist Church, was the President of the Club for the first two years. » Read More