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A family heirloom recalls the early years of UNC Asheville

By UNC Asheville

March 1^st, 2023

Although UNC Asheville has been at its current North Asheville location since 1961, the University’s history dates back nearly a century. Part of the story recently came to light in the form of a class ring discovered by Kim Holthaus.

The ring belonged to William Weaver Mears, who attended UNC Asheville (then called Biltmore Junior College) from 1931-1934. William Weaver was the nephew of William C. Mears, Holthaus’ great-grandfather. According to Gene Hyde, university archivist at Ramsey Library, William Weaver Mears withdrew in 1933 for a while, then re-enrolled for the 1933-34 year.

“The Great Depression threw everything off,” Hyde says of Mears’ leave of absence. He was born in 1913 to a family in Leicester, just outside of Asheville. His father, Samuel Mears, was listed in the 1920 U.S. census as a farmer, so it’s possible that William took time off to help on the farm.

UNC Asheville’s Origin Story

The earliest iteration of UNC Asheville predated Mears’ attendance by four years. The school “can trace its origins to Monday, September 12, 1927, when 85 students enrolled at Buncombe County Junior College,” wrote Colin Reeve in a Special Collections article. The junior college, the result of a push to provide post-secondary education for young men and women in Buncombe County, was established in the basement of the former Biltmore High School on Hendersonville Road. (The building is now home to medical offices.)

High school, at that time, only went to 11th grade. That meant graduates were just 16 or 17 years old — not mature enough to enter the workforce or attend a four-year college away from home. And, as Hyde points out, during the Depression, many people couldn’t afford pricier colleges outside of Asheville, so the junior college provided a cost-effective option: For its first few years, it was free.

The Biltmore College Class of '34. William Weaver Mears is the third from the right in the back row.

So popular was the idea that for a brief time, there were two junior colleges in Asheville. In the autumn of 1928, the College of the City of Asheville opened within the newly constructed Asheville High School. But it closed after only two years, due to the economic fallout from the stock market crash of 1929.

In the summer of 1929, the first class of Buncombe County Junior College graduated. Roy A. Taylor — who went on to be elected as a Democrat to the 86th Congress and served in the House of Representatives from 1960-1977 — was the student speaker.

In 1930, Buncombe County Junior College was renamed Biltmore Junior College, and a $100 annual tuition was established. But the fee didn’t hurt attendance: 75 students graduated that year. During 1933-34, when Mears was enrolled, there were 44 women and 73 men.

“Frustratingly, our official records from 1927-1940 are very incomplete,” says Hyde. “Given that there weren't formal policies for archiving materials back then, it's a wonder that we have anything at all from the earliest years.”

David Millard High, the home of UNC Asheville’s predecessor institutions, Biltmore Jr. College and Asheville-Biltmore College, from 1934-40.

The Evolution of a University and Its Students

One remaining record is the literary magazine Bluets, featuring excellent student writing.

“The leading literary person to attend Asheville-Buncombe College [as the institution was known from 1936 until it became the University of North Carolina at Asheville in 1969] was Wilma Dykeman,” wrote William Highsmith — UNC Asheville’s first chancellor — in his book, The University of North Carolina at Asheville: The First Sixty Years.

“Oh God, Thou hast made too beautiful a Spring, / In all the world around me is no imperfect thing, / My very heart must leap, burst forth, the song that it would sing,” Dykeman wrote in Bluets in 1938.

“After graduating from Asheville-Biltmore College, she went on to write radio scripts, short stories, magazine articles, and books, including The French Broad and The Tall Woman,” explained Reeve in a Special Collections article.

During the 1930s, according to Highsmith’s account, the publication took first place for three years in a row in a Southeastern Junior College Association competition.

Also in the 1930s, Biltmore Junior College moved to the David Millard High School campus on Oak Street. Publication of The Summit, the college’s yearbook, began in 1939 and the same year, Asheville-Biltmore College (as it was known by then) was accredited by the N.C. Department of Education. Tuition rose to $110 per year, which is $2,191 in today’s money.

William Weaver Mears, the owner of the Biltmore Junior College class ring, went through his own evolution during the 1930s. On June 13, 1936, he married Hazel Ford, and two years later they had a son, Stanley. By the 1940 census, William was listed as a beverage salesman. He and his young family lived on Summit Street that year — less than a mile from his alma mater.

As for the class ring, Holthaus says she doesn’t yet know if other family members may be interested in keeping it, but she’s excited to know more about her family history.

To learn more about the history of UNC Asheville, visit Special Collections & University Archives.

Footnotes

Photos courtesy of University Archives and Special Collections. Story by Alli Marshall.

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FootNotes

Photos courtesy of University Archives and Special Collections. Story by Alli Marshall.

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