Earlier this year, UNC announced the purchase of the Dobbins property, one of the largest and most attractive residential tracts available in the Cameron-McCauley historic district west of the Carolina Inn and Pittsboro Street.

The property had undergone many uses and changes over a period of more than 80 years, most made by the original owner, UNC professor James Talmage Dobbins.

Dobbins was born in 1888 to Nathan and Suphonia Reece Dobbins in Boonville, a farm community near Yadkinville in central North Carolina. While both parents were of farmer stock, his father made his living by the operation of a roller gristmill. Recognizing his son's budding intelligence, Dobbins improved his son's elementary and college preparatory schooling by moving the family to Yadkinville.

When James entered UNC in 1907, his main interest was pharmacy, but he switched to chemistry and completed three degrees in it: a bachelor's (1911), master's (1912) and doctorate (1914). His doctoral studies were under noted chemistry professor Charles H. Herty, who left UNC in 1917 for even greater success in applied chemistry.

Dobbins taught at N.C. State (then N.C. College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts) for four years, then returned to Chapel Hill in 1918 to a faculty position in chemistry at the time of the terrible postwar flu epidemic. He was promoted to full professor in 1930 and reached retirement in 1960.

During his long academic career, he usually taught qualitative analysis to freshmen and quantitative analysis to sophomores. His lectures were noted for their clarity and homely guidelines. Students and the classroom took most of his time, yet he published a popular textbook on semi-micro qualitative analysis.

He married Lila Shore of Yadkinville in 1917, and they rented quarters near the UNC campus before buying part of a large piece of undeveloped land on the south side of Cameron Avenue that lay between what is now Wilson Street and the Chi Psi fraternity lodge. It extended from Cameron Avenue to the east-west rail line that linked the UNC power plant and main campus. In 1919 the owner of the land used a 30-foot strip along its eastern edge to open Wilson Street, then divided the rest of the land into three large housing lots.

The Dobbins bought the first lot (301) next to Wilson Street in October 1919 and built their house on it two years later. It was of modified arts-and-craft design with a front porch that wrapped around one other side of the house and was supported by square pillars. It stood out from other houses in the vicinity in its early use of brick instead of wood. Carpenters were brought from Surry County to do the framing and interior trim, but the new type of glazed, variegated brick selected made it necessary to hire masons sent by the South Carolina brick supplier.

In 1923 the Dobbins bought the adjacent 205 lot from C.L. Lindsay and built a conventional frame rental house upon it. The combined size of the two lots was about 2 acres. Both houses had a garage, but many years later they were replaced by a three-car garage with a rental apartment above it. This was a busy period in the family history, marked further by the birth of daughter Christine Marie in 1919 and son James Jr. in 1926.

Dobbins created a mini-farm across the mid-section of both lots. On it he grew a full range of vegetables and fruits that were consumed fresh or were canned. A flock of 50 chickens supplied meat and eggs, and near the rear of the lots a pasture supported two milk cows. Food surpluses and flowers grown by his wife were shared with friends and neighbors. He gardened until stopped by old age a few years after retiring.

Three major real estate improvements were made after new town ordinances forced Dobbins to get rid of his cows. He built two brick rental cottages in their pasture facing inner Wilson Street. The first, at 216 Wilson in 1933, was initially to provide housing for a new Baptist preacher, Olin T. Binkley.

The other cottage, at 218 Wilson in 1934, was rented first by Edwin S. Lanier, director of the Depression era Self-Help Program at UNC and later mayor of Chapel Hill and North Carolina insurance commissioner in Raleigh. After him for the next 50 years was James E. Wadsworth, UNC director of housing for about 30 years and well-known for his record of volunteerism in charitable causes and public service.

The final property addition was the former Bruce Strowd house and land at 307 Cameron, bought in 1977 as another rental unit.

Dobbins and his wife were life-long pillars of University Baptist Church and were widely know for their generosity. He served several terms on the town's Board of Aldermen (now Town Council) and 15 years on the Board of Adjustment. Both of their children attended Chapel Hill public schools and UNC, which were within easy walking distance from their home. Christine received a UNC degree in music with an organ specialty. James Jr. followed his father's footsteps at UNC with a bachelor's degree (1947) and doctorate (1958) in chemistry.

In 1951 James Jr. married Jacqueleene "Jackie" Bowen, who had completed a bachelor's in chemistry at University of Mississippi and was in a master's degree program in chemistry at UNC. During a three-year stay in Tokyo, Japan, while working with a research group, their first son, James III, was born in 1956. Returned to Chapel Hill, James Jr. received a doctorate and they moved to Winston-Salem for him to begin a 31-year career with R.J. Reynolds. Younger son Steven was born in 1961.

Jackie taught physics and chemistry at Salem College and Salem Academy over a 26-year span. She retired in 1981, one year after her husband. James III received a bachelor's in physics from UNC and a doctorate in medical physics at University of Wisconsin and is on the Duke University Medical School faculty. Steven received a bachelor's degree from UNC and is the senior member in length of service in UNC's undergraduate advising group.

After the death of professor James Dobbins in 1972, his widow remained in the family home at 301 Cameron with live-in care until her death in 1989. In a rare display of devotion, James Jr. drove from Winston-Salem to see her every Sunday during her final 17 years. Faced by his aging properties and the demands of absentee management, James Jr. decided in 1999 to remove 301 and 305 Cameron and 216 Wilson. Only 307 Cameron and 218 Wilson remain in park-like surroundings to face an uncertain future under UNC ownership.

Sources: James Jr.'s four-page handwritten family and neighborhood memories of his Chapel Hill youth, soon to be placed in the Historical Society files, and related conversations. His father's UNC career is traced in detail in Maurice M. Bursey, "Carolina Chemists" (1982).