Minister Robert Campbell - Buildings constructed by family (clip)
Interviewed by George Barrett and Kathryn Wall on October 28, 2022
Robert Campbell: There are several homes, if you take the long journey around. There are some houses on Jones Ferry Road. It all depends on what end of Jones Ferry Road you start on. If you start over there by Terry’s Creek, you’ll see some of his handiwork. But over here in Chapel Hill there’s several stone houses that are still standing. And the combination of my grandfather and his sons and some of the other craftsmen in Chapel hill. Some of the housing work of Mr. Jeter Neville and Mr. Vance Thomson; Mr. Jojo Farrington and Jojo Farrington’s father Rufus and his brothers, basically were carpenters. And their handiwork was in some of those houses, based on the designs of my grandfather. But also Mr. Riggsbee also – he was not just a plumber, he was an electrician and so his handiwork is in some of those houses. But then as you go down Franklin Street, where…I think the restaurant now is 7…11…right there beside McDonald’s.
George Barrett: 411 West?
RC: Some of his brickwork along with Handy and Jacob and Leo helped build that building. Then you go on down towards…as we go to Eastgate, the old Eastgate building, believe it or not Alfred Parrish, Jr. helped build that, but he was trained by my grandfather in how to lay bricks. But he ended up doing most of his work for the Sparrow brothers. The Sparrow brothers, believe it or not, they learned how to lay bricks under the tuteralge of my grandfather and Handy and Leo Campbell. But I think the tallest building that’s probably still standing is probably the old part of the Memorial Hospital. My uncles and my grandfather also helped do that. But then as you take a journey around the UNC campus, there are stone walls that they helped put together, especially the ones that you see that are attached to what we call the hand stacked walls. Those are the ones that does not have the mortar mix to hold the stones together. But most of those that have the mortar mix and the grapevine joint on them, my grandfather and his sons and his brothers-in-law helped do that.
Kathryn Wall: And what is a grapevine joint?
RC: A grapevine joint…it looked like a bead.
KW: Ok.
RC: And then you had what you call the caulk where it shapes around the rock to give the rock more standing in the rock wall itself. One of the notable ones if you’re coming off campus and your going towards Pittsboro, right there on Purefoy Road just past Merritt’s grocery store, there is an apartment complex there to your right and there is a rock wall as you pull up into the parking lot. My Uncle Bill, Uncle Walt, Uncle William, Henry, Handy, and myself and I’m thinking…
