Chronology

William Few attends a school opened in his Eno neighborhood

A schoolteacher came to the Few family's neighborhood on the Eno in 1760 to teach local children, and William Few Jr. attended. He later recalled the school with pleasure.

Henry Pattillo keeps a classical school in his Orange County home

While pastor of the Hawfields, Eno and Little River churches, Pattillo began a classical school for men in his home.

The new state constitution provides for public schools and a university

Section 41 of the constitution adopted at Halifax, modeled on Pennsylvania's, told the legislature to establish schools and to promote learning in one or more universities. Orange's delegates voted on it, and it became the legal basis for chartering UNC.

People: Thomas Burke · Nathaniel Rochester · John Butler

Rochester serves as clerk of the Orange County court

Rochester resigned his seat in the first General Assembly of the state to become clerk of court. He was also commissioned to supervise the building of a new courthouse and to help establish an academy in the Hillsborough area, and he gave up the clerkship in 1778 because its fees did not cover the expenses of the office.

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

General Assembly charters an academy near Hillsborough named Science Hall

Meeting at Halifax, the General Assembly passed an act to establish an academy in the neighborhood of Hillsborough, naming William Hooper, Thomas Burke, Nathaniel Rochester, James Hogg and others as trustees. The act named the school Science Hall and gave its trustees the same powers as those of Liberty Hall in Mecklenburg County.

People: Alexander Martin · Nathaniel Rochester · Thomas Hart · James Hogg · Thomas Burke · William Hooper · William Johnston

Subject: Hillsborough Academy

Hillsborough Academy opens in the old Anglican church

The school chartered as Science Hall opened as Hillsborough Academy in the old Anglican church, which an act of the 1784 Hillsborough session had ordered repaired for a school and a free meeting house. It never thrived and closed in 1790.

Subject: Hillsborough Academy

Joseph Dunn Hughes keeps a school in the Eno Church community

Pender lists a school run by Joseph Dunn Hughes near Eno Presbyterian Church in 1785, the earliest of the Hughes family schools that later produced Cedar Grove Academy.

Subject: Hughes Academy (Cedar Grove Academy)

Richard Stanford opens an academy in the Hawfields

Richard Stanford, who had come to the Hawfields district of Orange County from Maryland in 1789, opened an academy there. Thomas Hart Benton was among his early pupils.

The trustees elect David Ker presiding professor of the university

Balloting on January 10, 1794, the trustees elected David Ker, who had come from Fayetteville, the university's first professor, with the title of presiding professor. He took charge at the opening in January 1795, lived in the house meant for a future president and held the post until July 1796.

A school begins to be kept at New Hope church

Thompson urged the congregation to take up schooling, and after his time the church generally kept a school for many years. His successor James H. Bowman is said to have taught school there while supplying the pulpit.

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

Walter Alves serves as a university trustee and board treasurer

Walter Alves of Orange County was a trustee of the University of North Carolina from 1795 to 1813 and treasurer of its board from 1795 to 1799.

Charles Wilson Harris joins the new university as professor of mathematics

Harris joined the faculty in March 1795, weeks after the university opened, as professor of mathematics. On June 3, 1795 he organized the students into the debating club that became the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies.

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Harris sets up a small store of medicine for students and neighbours

Writing from the university on June 1, 1795, Harris told his uncle, a physician, that with no doctor nearer than Hillsborough he would keep a small stock of medicine for students and the neighbourhood, at cost. He enclosed a plan of the university lands and village.

People: David Ker · Charles Harris

UNC’s Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies take shape

UNC students held the first recorded meeting of a Debating Society on June 3, 1795, and voted on July 2 to split in two, the new body being the Concord Society. They took the names Dialectic and Philanthropic in late August 1796 and for over a century served as debating clubs, student government and keepers of large libraries.

Part of The founding of the University and Chapel Hill, 1789–1795 · 37 events

People: Hinton James · Charles Wilson Harris

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Trustees vote to build a house for the university's grammar school

With Old East crowded and many students too young or unprepared for college classes, the board ordered a separate preparatory school building with lodging rooms, in the woods south of Rosemary Street. Richard Sims, an advanced student, seems to have been its first master.

Subject: Old East · University grammar school (Preparatory School)

Trustees adopt William R. Davie's plan dividing the university into a preparatory school and professorships

Davie's plan put English at the center, let French stand beside the classics and set up chairs of moral and political philosophy, natural philosophy, mathematics, chemistry with agriculture and the mechanic arts, and languages. The board elected Samuel McCorkle a professor, but he declined when refused extra pay in place of the president's house.

People: David Ker · William Richardson Davie · Samuel Eusebius McCorkle

Subject: University grammar school (Preparatory School)

Charles Wilson Harris acts as presiding professor

After David Ker resigned under pressure from the trustees in the summer of 1796, Harris acted as presiding professor until his own resignation that December. He had persuaded Joseph Caldwell to join the faculty in October 1796.

People: David Ker · Joseph Caldwell

Joseph Caldwell arrives in Chapel Hill as professor of mathematics

Joseph Caldwell, a Princeton graduate and tutor, moved to Chapel Hill in October 1796 to teach mathematics at the new university. He became presiding professor the next year.

People: Charles Harris

James Smiley Gillaspie is made principal of the university

To keep Joseph Caldwell, who meant to leave rather than carry the executive duties, the trustees elected Gillaspie professor of natural philosophy with the title of principal. Caldwell stayed as professor of mathematics and taught French in the preparatory school.

People: Joseph Caldwell

Archibald D. Murphey graduates from the university and joins its faculty

Archibald D. Murphey graduated with honors from the University at Chapel Hill in 1799 and was hired at once as a tutor. The next year he became professor of languages, one of three faculty members, and also served as librarian before resigning to study law in Hillsborough.

Students rise against the faculty and beat principal Gillaspie

In the term before the 1799 commencement students beat Gillaspie, waylaid and stoned tutor William E. Webb and threatened Caldwell and Archibald Murphey, and for a week exercises stopped. Three leaders were dismissed and the faculty offered to resign, and by that November Caldwell was chosen again to head the university.

People: Joseph Caldwell · Archibald D. Murphey

The university builds a house for its Grammar School

Six years after the trustees ordered it, a one-story frame schoolhouse for the university's preparatory Grammar School was built in 1801. John M. Goodloe was paid about $320 for the work; until then the boys had been taught in a rented building.

Subject: University grammar school (Preparatory School)

Hillsborough Academy reopens for boys and girls under Andrew Flinn

The academy's trustees announced that it had reopened on a larger plan for youth of both sexes under the Rev. Andrew Flinn, teaching Latin, Greek, English, mathematics and bookkeeping.

People: William Kirkland · Duncan Cameron · William Cain Sr. · Walter Alves

Subject: Hillsborough Academy

Archibald D. Murphey marries Jane Armistead Scott and settles at the Hermitage

After leaving the University to read law in Hillsborough under William Duffy, Murphey married Jane Armistead Scott on November 5, 1801, and made his home at the Hermitage, her father's farm on Great Alamance Creek about eighteen miles west of Hillsborough, in the part of Orange County that is now Alamance. He built his law practice around the Hillsborough courthouse.

Cameron becomes a trustee of the University of North Carolina

Cameron joined the board of trustees of the University of North Carolina in 1802, while he was practicing law at Hillsborough.

William Norwood gives $100 toward finishing South Building

William Norwood of Hillsborough contributed $100 toward finishing South Building at the university.

Subject: South Building

Hillsborough Academy trustees engage Thomas Baron after George Johnston fails to arrive

The academy trustees, Walter Alves among them, announced that George Johnston had not taken charge as promised and that they had engaged Thomas Baron, a Harvard graduate, to teach languages, arithmetic, geography and mathematics.

People: William Kirkland · Duncan Cameron · George Johnston

Subject: Hillsborough Academy

Joseph Caldwell is elected the first president of the university

When the trustees created the office of president in 1804 they elected Caldwell to it unanimously. He resigned the presidency in 1812 to teach and returned to it a few years later, holding it until his death in 1835.

Richard Henderson becomes head of Hillsborough Academy

In 1804 Hillsborough Academy announced Richard Henderson, formerly a professor at the university, as its head.

People: Richard Henderson

Subject: Hillsborough Academy

Pleasant Henderson writes to trustee Walter Alves about a student secession at the university

Pleasant Henderson wrote to Walter Alves that about 45 students had left the university in protest over the trustees' rule requiring student monitors to take an oath, and urged Alves and the board to act.

People: Pleasant Henderson

Frederick Nash is elected a trustee of the University of North Carolina

Nash was elected a trustee of the University of North Carolina in 1807 and remained an active supporter of the university. It awarded him an LL.D. in 1853.

Saddler James Phillips builds a brick kitchen on the school-house lot on East Tryon Street

James Phillips, a Hillsborough saddler, buys the old school-house lot at the east edge of town and builds a two-room brick kitchen beside the house, where he lives until 1847. The kitchen, with his name scratched in a window pane, still stands beside BelleVue.

Subject: BelleVue (Phillips-Hill-Webb House)

Grammar school under William Paisley opens west of Hillsborough

A grammar school under the Rev. William Paisley was announced to open in January 1809 about ten miles west of Hillsborough, teaching Latin, Greek, geography and philosophy for sixteen dollars a year.

William R. Davie receives the university's first honorary Doctor of Laws

The University of North Carolina awarded William R. Davie an honorary LL.D. in 1811, the first Doctor of Laws it conferred; honorary master's degrees had gone to Joseph Caldwell and others in 1799. Davie had sat on the board of trustees from 1789 to 1807.

Archibald D. Murphey serves Orange County in the state senate

Archibald D. Murphey was elected to the legislature from Orange County in 1812 and sat in the state senate until 1818. There he proposed a publicly financed system of schools in a report he finished on November 29, 1817, and in 1819 he followed it with his memoir on internal improvements.

John H. Pickard is principal of Hawfield Academy

Hawfield Academy, about ten miles west of Hillsborough, had John H. Pickard as principal from 1812 to 1814. The school had earlier been led by William Paisley.

Rev. William Bingham takes charge of Hillsborough Academy

The trustees announced that the Rev. William Bingham had taken charge of Hillsborough Academy, with exercises to begin on February 3 and Elizabeth Russell in charge of a female department.

Subject: Hillsborough Academy

Hillsborough Academy is rechartered

Hillsborough Academy received a new charter from the General Assembly in 1814.

Subject: Hillsborough Academy

A Mr. Graham and Miss Farley take charge of Hillsborough Academy

After William Bingham left in 1815, Hillsborough Academy was run for a time by a teacher named Graham, with Miss Farley presumably over the female department.

Subject: Hillsborough Academy

William Bingham runs his school at Mount Repose northwest of Hillsborough

After leaving Hillsborough Academy, the Rev. William Bingham kept his own academy at Mount Repose, in a house on Back Creek about ten miles northwest of Hillsborough. His son William James Bingham closed it in 1826 when he took over Hillsborough Academy.

People: William James Bingham

Senator Archibald D. Murphey of Orange moves for a legislative committee on public schools

Following Governor Miller's 1816 message, Orange County senator Archibald D. Murphey won a joint committee to study public education. Its report led to a second committee, also under Murphey, whose plan Pender credits as the groundwork of the later state school system.

William Norwood becomes a trustee of Hillsborough Academy

William Norwood was a trustee of Hillsborough Academy by 1816 and chaired its board in 1826.

Subject: Hillsborough Academy

Witherspoon takes charge of the Hillsborough Academy

Returning to Hillsborough at twenty-five, Witherspoon took a double charge: the pastorate of the newly built Presbyterian church and the principalship of the closely allied Hillsborough Academy. He gave up the academy sometime after 1819.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Hillsborough Academy · Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

Archibald D. Murphey submits his Report on Education to the General Assembly

While state senator for Orange, Murphey laid before the Assembly a plan for primary schools, academies and more state support for the university. The book calls it the first definite plan for public education offered in North Carolina.

Dr. James Webb deeds land for Polly Burke's log schoolhouse

On November 6, 1817, Dr. James Webb deeded to his neighbor Mary W. Burke a strip of his lot on East Queen Street, where a log schoolhouse was built for her to teach the Webb children. Known as Miss Polly Burke's School, it took neighborhood children from about 1818 to 1834 and is cited as a forerunner of the Burwell School.

People: James Webb

Subject: Burwell School

Mary Mendenhall keeps Union School near Woody's Ferry on the Haw

In 1818 Union School, about a mile south of Woody's Ferry on the Haw River in Orange County, was in the charge of Mary Mendenhall.

Hillsborough Academy publishes its rules for students

Under principal John Witherspoon, Hillsborough Academy printed its rules of conduct in the Raleigh Register. Students had to attend daily worship, stay out of stores and taverns, avoid liquor, and keep the Sabbath.

People: John Knox Witherspoon

Subject: Hillsborough Academy

Denison Olmsted begins teaching chemistry at Chapel Hill

Appointed in November 1817 to the university's new professorship of chemistry, Olmsted spent a year studying with Benjamin Silliman at Yale and began teaching at Chapel Hill in the fall of 1819. He stayed until the end of 1825, when Elisha Mitchell succeeded him.

Elijah Graves announces Mrs. Graves' Female School at Long Meadows

In 1819 the Rev. Elijah Graves announced Mrs. Graves' Female School at Long Meadows, six miles northwest of Hillsborough.

The university closes its grammar school and makes Hillsborough Academy its preparatory school

When Abner W. Clopton gave up the grammar school the university dropped it. Caldwell arranged for Hillsborough Academy, under John Witherspoon with John Rogers teaching, to prepare boys for the university, whose faculty could attend its examinations and admit its top pupils on certificate.

People: Abner Wentworth Clopton · John Knox Witherspoon · Joseph Caldwell

Subject: Hillsborough Academy · University grammar school (Preparatory School)

Eagle Lodge votes money toward a male academy in Hillsborough

A year after its revival, Eagle Lodge voted to put money toward building a male academy in Hillsborough.

Subject: Eagle Lodge · Hillsborough Academy

Chapel Hill Academy prepares boys for the university under James A. Craig

James A. Craig announced that the Chapel Hill Academy would begin its session on June 20, 1820, with a course arranged as preparation for the University of North Carolina and sessions matching the university's.

Tavern keeper William Adams builds the house that became the Burwell School

William Adams, a Hillsborough tavern keeper and businessman, builds a two-story house with two rooms on each floor facing West Union Street in 1821. Those rooms survive as the south rooms of the Burwell School.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Burwell School

The university rents the empty Grammar School house to hunter Peyton Clements

Two years after closing its preparatory school, the university let the building on the Grand Avenue ground to Peyton Clements, a hunter who supplied game to the college and the village boarding houses.

Subject: University grammar school (Preparatory School)

William H. Adams buys the lots that became the Burwell School site

Hillsborough sold lots in the old North Town Commons pasture, advertising the town as a healthy place to live and to school children. In November 1821 William H. Adams took the deed for lots 152 and 153, an acre each, for $216.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Burwell School

John Rogers runs Hillsborough Academy

John Rogers ran Hillsborough Academy from 1822 to 1826, when W. J. Bingham succeeded him.

People: William James Bingham

Subject: Hillsborough Academy

Hugh Waddell begins practising law in Hillsborough

Waddell, an 1818 graduate of the university, began to practise law in Hillsborough and Orange County in 1823 and kept his practice there until 1867, when he moved to Wilmington.

Sarah Grove buys lots 152 and 153 for $800

Adams sold the two lots to Sarah Grove for $800, a rise that suggests he had built the first four-room house and its outbuildings. About eighteen months later she sold them to the attorney Nathaniel J. Palmer for $1,200.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

The Orange County Sunday School Union asks the Assembly to fund its schools

The Orange County Sunday School Union petitioned the General Assembly for 25 cents a year per pupil for its 22 Sunday schools, which taught 800 to 1,000 children, many from poor families, to read. John Scott of Hillsborough presented it in the House of Commons, which turned it down.

People: James Webb · William Kirkland · William Norwood · John Knox Witherspoon · Dennis Heartt

Trustees adopt by-laws creating a resident superintendent and a student uniform

On Bartlett Yancey's motion the trustees created a superintendent of university property living at Chapel Hill, who was to receive and pay out all student money, and they prescribed a plain uniform dress and forbade boots. Chapel Hill merchant Thomas H. Taylor was appointed; in January 1829 the office passed to the faculty, who chose Elisha Mitchell.

People: Elisha Mitchell

Hillsborough Female Seminary opens under Lavinia Brainerd

A female seminary opened in Hillsborough on August 1, 1825, taught by Lavinia Brainerd under the supervision of the Rev. William M. Green. DNCR says the Hillsborough Female Academy had been incorporated apart from the male academy in 1824.

People: William Mercer Green

John Witherspoon opens a private boarding school

The Raleigh Register announced the Rev. John Witherspoon's Private Boarding School for opening in 1826. The school seems to have run until 1830 or later.

People: John Knox Witherspoon

Nicholas Marcellus Hentz becomes the university's professor of modern languages

Hentz took the chair of modern languages at the university, the first professor at Chapel Hill whose duties were to teach French and Spanish regularly. While there he also studied spiders and published on them in scientific journals.

Rev. William Bingham dies at his Mount Repose academy

The Rev. William Bingham, who had kept an academy at Mount Repose northwest of Hillsborough for years, died after a few days' illness in his 73rd year. His son William J. Bingham carried on and in 1827 moved the school to Hillsborough.

William James Bingham becomes principal of Hillsborough Academy

After John Rogers resigned, the trustees engaged William James Bingham as principal of Hillsborough Academy, where he taught until he moved his school to the country in 1844.

People: William James Bingham · John Rogers

Subject: Hillsborough Academy

Archibald D. Murphey gives the first commencement-eve oration in Person Hall

On June 27, 1827, the day before commencement, Murphey delivered an oration in Person Hall at Chapel Hill under the appointment of the Dialectic Society. Addressing the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies, he argued that a college course only prepared the mind for later learning; the speech was printed and reissued in 1843.

Subject: Person Hall · Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Bethlehem School on Cane Creek offers college preparation under George W. Morrow

Bethlehem School, on Cane Creek twelve miles from Hillsborough, offered studies to prepare boys for college under George W. Morrow in 1829.

Elijah Graves opens a female school at Walnut Grove

In 1829 Elijah Graves advertised a school for girls that he would run at Walnut Grove, near the Pittsboro road and twelve miles from Hillsborough.

Orange Methodist Church is organized at the Davis School House

Alexander Gattis and neighbors organized Orange Methodist Church in the Davis School House near the Wash Fowler home. The congregation built its first church about 1838.

People: Jones Watson

W. Anderson opens a female boarding school near Hillsborough

In 1830 W. Anderson announced Anderson's Female Boarding School within a mile of Hillsborough. It took a limited number of pupils and ran at least through 1836.

Hentz leaves the university and Chapel Hill for Kentucky

Hentz left the university in 1831. The local Presbyterian community had frowned on his Roman Catholic upbringing and suspected his politics, and after he left French was dropped from the curriculum.

People: Caroline Lee Hentz

John DeBerniere Hooper teaches at the university as tutor and professor

After graduating in 1831 Hooper stayed in Chapel Hill as a tutor in languages, became professor of modern languages in July 1836 and professor of Latin in 1838. He and his wife left Chapel Hill in 1848 to teach and farm near Littleton.

Friends of education organize the North Carolina Institute of Education at Chapel Hill

During commencement week a meeting adopted a constitution on Benjamin M. Smith's motion, elected Simmons J. Baker president and made professors Elisha Mitchell, William Hooper and James Phillips its executive committee. The Institute met at the next few commencements and enrolled about 130 members before it lapsed.

People: Benjamin Smith · Elisha Mitchell · James Phillips

William Mercer Green delivers the literary societies' oration before commencement

On June 22, 1831, the day before commencement, William Mercer Green delivered an oration at Chapel Hill on the influence of Christianity upon the welfare of nations, under the annual appointment of the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies. Dennis Heartt printed it in Hillsborough the same year.

People: Dennis Heartt

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Orange County counts twenty-one academies

By 1832 Orange County had twenty-one academies, among them Hillsborough Academy, the Bingham school and Cedar Grove Academy, a pace of school founding somewhat ahead of the state as a whole.

The university sells the old Grammar School house and grounds

Thirteen years after the Grammar School closed, the university sold its empty schoolhouse and lot. In the meantime the house had been left vacant and then lived in by a hunter's family.

Subject: University grammar school (Preparatory School)

James Phillips is licensed to preach and later serves New Hope Presbyterian Church

Mathematics professor James Phillips joined the Presbyterian church in 1832 and was licensed to preach by Orange Presbytery in 1833. He was later ordained and installed as minister of New Hope Presbyterian Church, about seven miles outside Chapel Hill, and shared the university chapel work with Elisha Mitchell.

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

Witherspoon ends seventeen years as pastor at Hillsborough

Witherspoon severed his connection with the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church and moved to Camden, South Carolina. His advocacy of religious education, Sunday schools and preaching for enslaved people had strained relations with his congregation.

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

Polly Burke leaves Hillsborough for Alabama

In August 1834 Mary W. Burke sold most of her household goods and moved to Greensboro, Alabama, with her niece's family, part of a wider migration of Hillsborough people to Alabama. After her nephew-in-law died there she settled in Marion, where she taught again for many years.

People: George Mulholland Johnston

Robert Burwell becomes pastor of the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

Burwell began a thirteen-year pastorate, and he and his wife opened a school for young women whose income let him serve the church on a small salary. He returned for a second term in the 1850s.

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

James Phillips opens a female school in Chapel Hill

In 1836 mathematics professor James Phillips announced Phillips' Female School in Chapel Hill. Mrs. Phillips and a teacher from Emma Willard's seminary at Troy, New York, did most of the teaching.

People: James Phillips

David L. Swain moves to Chapel Hill as university president

Chosen to succeed the late Joseph Caldwell, former governor David L. Swain moved to Chapel Hill in January 1836 to become president and professor of national and constitutional law. He stayed at the university for the rest of his life, the longest term of any of its presidents.

People: Joseph Caldwell

Hillsborough Presbyterian Church buys the house as its manse

The church's trustees bought lots 152 and 153 in January 1836, renovated the house, and gave it to their minister, Robert Armistead Burwell, and his family, who had arrived from Virginia late the year before.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

People: Robert Armistead Burwell

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church · Burwell School

Dr. James Webb builds a house around Polly Burke's log schoolhouse

About twenty years after the one-room log schoolhouse went up on his East Queen Street land, Dr. James Webb built a house around it, with the log room as its living room.

William Mercer Green leaves St. Matthew's to become university chaplain and professor

William Mercer Green accepted a post at the University of North Carolina as chaplain and professor of belles lettres and resigned from St. Matthew's in Hillsborough the following year. The Hillsborough congregation had grown from seventeen communicants in his first year to sixty-seven when he left.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

Anna Burwell opens a school for girls in Hillsborough

Anna Burwell advertised that she would open a female school in Hillsborough on July 17, 1837, teaching the usual English branches, with music available. She and her husband, the Rev. Robert Burwell, ran it in their home until 1857.

People: Robert Armistead Burwell · Margaret Anna Burwell

Subject: Burwell School

Mount Pleasant Academy, later Junto Academy, operates under Daniel W. Kerr

Daniel W. Kerr ran an academy in northern Orange County, advertised as Mount Pleasant Academy in 1837 and by 1838 as Junto Academy, twelve miles northwest of Hillsborough and six miles south of Mason Hall.

James P. Clark opens Fairfield School northwest of Hillsborough

In 1838 James P. Clark gave public notice of Fairfield School, which lay six miles northwest of Hillsborough.

Thomas W. Holden opens Holden's English School

In 1838 Thomas W. Holden gave public notice of Holden's English School, kept at his home in Orange County.

John R. Holt opens Union Academy in western Orange

In 1839 John R. Holt gave public notice of Union Academy, a school in western Orange County.

Maria L. Spear becomes principal of Hillsborough Female Seminary

After William M. Green's last announcement in 1838, the seminary's trustees named Maria L. Spear principal in 1839.

People: James Strudwick Smith · Cadwallader Jones · Hugh Waddell · Stephen Moore · William Mercer Green

Orange County voters approve the new state public school plan

When the 1839 school law put tax-supported common schools to a vote in each county, Orange approved. Approving counties raised $20 per district, matched two to one from the Literary Fund.

A Female School House is built for the Burwells' school

As the school grew, subscribers in town paid for a 36-by-20-foot schoolhouse north of the Burwell home, built by the carpenter George A. Faucette.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Burwell School

A one-room log school is built beside St. Mary's Chapel

In the 1840s a one-room log schoolhouse went up next to St. Mary's Chapel. The brick St. Mary's School of 1931 was later built on the same site.

Subject: St. Mary's School

Orange County receives its first state Literary Fund money for public schools

The earliest record of a Literary Fund allotment to Orange is $670.14 in September 1841, the year the county first had school officials. By 1853 the allotment was $2,543.

Hugh Waddell opens a school for law students in Hillsborough

In 1842 Waddell opened a school in Hillsborough to prepare young men for the bar.

William Horn Battle moves his family to Chapel Hill and buys a house beside the campus

Judge William H. Battle moved his family from Raleigh to Chapel Hill in 1843 so his sons could attend the university. He bought a house near the campus and enlarged it, adding quarters for the people the family enslaved.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle

Subject: Senlac (Battle house)

The Union Church is moved off Franklin Street and becomes a school

When the university sold the Grand Avenue ground to Andrew Mickle and Richard James Ashe and the Presbyterians, the little Union Church was moved away from Franklin Street and later used as the village school.

People: Andrew Mickle

The county counts 57 common schools for white children in the 1844-45 term

In the 1844-45 term, 60 teachers at 57 Orange County common schools taught 1,347 boys and 945 girls, all of them white. The schools had been set up after the county board of superintendents divided the county into districts.

David L. Swain organizes the Historical Society of the University of North Carolina

In January 1844 President David L. Swain announced the Historical Society of the University of North Carolina, with himself as president and the whole faculty as its executive committee. It set out to copy colonial records in British repositories and to collect North Carolina books, newspapers and papers at the university.

Charles Phillips returns to Chapel Hill as a tutor of mathematics

Phillips accepted a call from President David L. Swain in July 1844 to return to the University of North Carolina as his father's assistant. He held the post of tutor of mathematics until 1853.

People: David L. Swain · James Phillips

William James Bingham opens his school at the Oaks

William James Bingham gave up Hillsborough Academy after its spring 1844 session and in May announced a select classical and mathematical school twelve miles southwest of Hillsborough, to open that November on the Oaks tract he bought the same year. It became known as the Bingham School and stayed at the Oaks until December 1864.

People: William James Bingham

Subject: Hillsborough Academy · Bingham School

Hillsborough citizens pay to refit the academy building for the Caldwell Institute

Townspeople paid for the repair and enlargement of the Hillsborough Academy building so that the Caldwell Institute could move in from Greensboro. The older school was absorbed into the institute under Alexander Wilson.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Hillsborough Academy · Caldwell Institute

Richard Mayo, a free cabinetmaker of color, buys three town lots

Richard Mayo paid $200 for three lots on Occoneechee Street between West Tryon and West Queen streets, and in 1849 gave them to Levi McCollum to settle a debt. His brother William later waited tables at the Burwell School.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Burwell School

William Horn Battle becomes the university's professor of law

After teaching law from his office in Chapel Hill, Battle was professor of law at the university by 1845, and the university began offering the bachelor of law degree.

Subject: UNC School of Law

Samuel Wellwood Hughes opens a classical school for boys near Cedar Grove

Samuel Wellwood Hughes opened his own academy in northern Orange County in January 1845. First called Cedar Grove Academy and later Hughes' Academy, it offered classical and mathematical courses modeled on the Bingham School and ran until his death in 1884.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Bingham School · Hughes Academy (Cedar Grove Academy)

Caldwell Institute reopens in Hillsborough after leaving Greensboro

The Orange Presbytery's Caldwell Institute, founded at Greensboro, moved to Hillsborough and began its first session there on July 9, 1845, with Alexander Wilson as president. It used the Hillsborough Academy building and absorbed that school.

People: Alexander Wilson

Subject: Hillsborough Academy · Caldwell Institute

Andrew Mickle turns the log schoolhouse at Highlands into a house

The log school built south of the Eno around 1844 was converted to a residence, and Andrew Mickle added a three-bay, two-story side-hall section in 1846. Paul C. Cameron enlarged it again in 1857.

People: Andrew Mickle

Subject: Highlands (Paul Cameron house)

James Phillips buys the Village Chapel lot for the Presbyterian church

Professor James Phillips, as trustee, bought for $200 the lot where the Union or Village Chapel stood, as a site for the Presbyterian church, on condition that no burials be made there. The old chapel was moved a few hundred yards north, enlarged, and long served as the village public school.

Subject: University Presbyterian Church

Mitchell asks the Burwells to sell his wife Mary Ann with him

Mitchell, an enslaved man who had run from his owner, came to Robert Burwell asking that he and his wife Mary Ann, enslaved in the Burwell household, be sold together. He worked at the house for a week; then Burwell told him to go back to his master, and he left on February 17.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

People: Robert Armistead Burwell

Smallpox at the Turner house sends students out of town

Anna Burwell wrote that William Turner had caught smallpox from the clothes of a brother back from medical lectures in Philadelphia. Twenty or thirty students of the Institute left town, and both Burwell boarders went home, though no second case followed.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

A boys' preparatory school meets in Samuel Phillips's law office

Samuel Phillips's small stuccoed law office on East Franklin Street reportedly housed a preparatory school for boys in 1847. Later in the century William Horn Battle taught law classes in the same building.

People: William Horn Battle

Caldwell Institute enrollment peaks at 100 in Hillsborough

Under Alexander Wilson the school reached a peak enrollment of 100 students in 1848. Attendance fell back to 68 the next year, and in 1850 the trustees voted to discontinue it.

Subject: Caldwell Institute

Robert Burwell buys the house and has John Berry enlarge it

Burwell resigned his pulpit and bought the two lots from the church for $800 and back pay. The builder John Berry added a central hall and two rooms and turned the house to face Churton Street. A deed of trust of July 16, 1850 shows Burwell still owing Berry $2,500 and the church trustees $800, secured on the lots and on enslaved members of the household.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

People: Robert Armistead Burwell · John Berry

Subject: Burwell School · Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

Sarah Kollock becomes the Burwell School's teacher of French and drawing

Sarah Kollock, one of the Burwell School's first pupils, had helped teach the younger children and in 1848 became its full-time teacher of French and drawing. By September 1851 Molly Burwell had taken her place and she was in Oxford.

Subject: Burwell School

Solomon Pool studies at the university in Chapel Hill

Solomon Pool entered the University of North Carolina in 1849 at the age of seventeen and graduated in 1853 as the second honor student in a class of fifty-nine. He was a member of the Philanthropic Society while in Chapel Hill.

Caldwell Institute closes in Hillsborough

The Caldwell Institute ended in 1850 after five years in Hillsborough.

Subject: Hillsborough Academy · Caldwell Institute

Orange County has 15 academies with 470 pupils

The count for 1850 found fifteen private academies in the county, teaching 470 students.

The old Burwell schoolroom is said to be moved to West Orange Street during John Berry's work on the Burwell School

The west wing of the bungalow at 114 West Orange Street is reputed to be the old Burwell schoolroom, moved there in 1850 while John Berry was renovating the Burwell School. The house around it dates from 1922.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

People: John Berry

Subject: Burwell School

Samuel W. Hughes is named to Orange County's first board for examining teachers

On March 12, 1850, Samuel Wellwood Hughes was appointed to the first Orange County board to examine teachers for the common schools. In February 1852 he was also appointed to the county Board of Superintendents of Common Schools.

Robert Burwell pledges Mary Ann and her children against his building debts

A deed of trust set out Burwell's debts of $2,500 to the builder John Berry and $800 to the Presbyterian trustees, and offered as security the enslaved seamstress Mary Ann, her four children and any children born to her, and a girl named Ann.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

People: Robert Armistead Burwell · John Berry · Thomas Webb

Hillsborough Academy is revived under Benjamin Huske and Ralph Graves

After the Caldwell Institute closed, Benjamin R. Huske and Ralph Henry Graves revived the Hillsborough Academy, which ran until 1858.

People: Ralph Henry Graves (1851-1889)

Subject: Hillsborough Academy · Caldwell Institute

Legislature transfers the university's escheats to the common schools

The General Assembly took the right to escheats from the university and gave it to the public schools. Friends of the university soon won repeal, and the Supreme Court later held that the university, as a part of the state, was subject to such legislation.

Orange County seats a Board of Superintendents for its common schools under William H. Brown

A nine-man county Board of Superintendents, chaired by William H. Brown, oversaw the common schools in 1852. That year a new state law obliged such boards to name committees to examine would-be teachers rather than merely allowing it.

People: Samuel Wellwood Hughes

Orange County's first recorded public school report counts 51 districts

The first written record of Orange's public schools, for 1853, shows 51 districts with schools in all but one. Of 4,447 children, 2,507 attended, and 36 men and one woman were licensed to teach.

Solomon Pool becomes tutor of mathematics at the university

Pool was appointed tutor of mathematics at the University of North Carolina in December 1853, months after his own graduation. He received an honorary alumni master of arts degree in 1856.

James Phillips keeps weather records at Chapel Hill

From 1854 to 1862 Professor James Phillips kept weather records at Chapel Hill. They survive in the Southern Historical Collection alongside Chapel Hill records kept from December 1879 to 1882 by Professors W. B. Phillips and Francis Preston Venable.

People: Francis Preston Venable

School for the Application of Science to the Arts opens

Under a trustee resolution of 1852 the university opened a scientific school with departments of civil engineering, under Charles Phillips, and of chemistry applied to agriculture and the arts, under Benjamin S. Hedrick, with a laboratory in the basement of Smith Hall. Its students could earn a Bachelor of Science in about two and a half years.

People: Charles Phillips · Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick

Subject: Smith Hall (Playmakers Theatre)

Mary Burwell marries Frederick Nash Strudwick

Mary Susan Burwell, one of her mother's first pupils and later a teacher at the school, married the neighbor Frederick Nash Strudwick in Hillsborough, with the Rev. F. K. Nash officiating, joining two families who lived a town lot apart.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

People: Frederick N. Strudwick

Aunt Fariby saves Jane from burning

Jane, a young enslaved servant at the Burwell School, caught fire. Anna Burwell wrote that she would have burned to death but for Aunt Fariby, who saved her life.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Burwell School

The university dismisses Benjamin S. Hedrick over his Free Soil views

In 1856 faculty member Benjamin S. Hedrick admitted and defended in the newspapers his preference for the Free Soil party. President David L. Swain disapproved of his speaking out, and the trustees' executive committee dismissed Hedrick; Swain objected only that the committee had taken authority belonging to the full board.

People: Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick

The first through trains run on the finished North Carolina Railroad, with mail trains at Hillsborough

The North Carolina Railroad was finished on January 29, 1856, when the last rail was laid about four and a half miles west of Greensboro. Two days later the regular mail and passenger trains made their first through run from Charlotte to Goldsboro, with a westbound train due at Hillsborough each morning and an eastbound one before dawn, replacing the coach connection that had carried the Burwells' letters to their daughter Fanny in New York.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: North Carolina Railroad

The Burwells resolve to sell their cook Hannah

Hannah, who had come from Virginia with the family and cooked for the school, had been drinking heavily through 1855. Anna Burwell wrote to her daughter Fanny that she had made up her mind: Hannah would be sent to Richmond to be sold.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

People: Robert Armistead Burwell

Subject: Burwell School

Fanny Burwell dies aboard the steamer Jamestown as her parents bring her home to Hillsborough

Fanny Burwell had gone to New York to complete her music education, but fell ill with erysipelas in early March. Her mother went north to nurse her, and she died at dawn on the steamer Jamestown between New York and Norfolk with both parents beside her, in her eighteenth year; her body was brought home to Hillsborough for burial.

People: Robert Armistead Burwell · Margaret Anna Burwell

Anne Call Cameron, piano teacher to Burwell School students, dies

A widow known as Nancy, she gave piano lessons at the Burwell School to help pay for the care of her daughter Anna McKenzie Kirkland, whose illness followed her husband's death in 1843. She died in Hillsborough in June 1856.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Burwell School

A Black child and then a student die of illness at the Burwell School

Writing to her mother, the student Lizzie Glass mentioned a small Black boy who had died at the school the previous day, at a time when Nannie Burwell and three of the Burwell children lay sick. Within a few weeks Lizzie Glass herself died at the school.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Burwell School

Burwell School closes as the Burwells move to Charlotte

The Burwells closed their Hillsborough school in 1857, the same year they took charge of a girls' school in Charlotte.

Part of The Burwell School and the Burwell household · 37 events

People: Robert Armistead Burwell · Margaret Anna Burwell

Subject: Burwell School

Charles Phillips serves as stated supply for the Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church

Phillips was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Orange in December 1857 and served as stated supply for the Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church from 1857 to 1868. He taught and superintended the church Sunday school and with his wife started a Sunday school for Black residents.

Subject: University Presbyterian Church

Paul C. Cameron enlarges Highlands, the former log schoolhouse south of the Eno

Paul C. Cameron added two bays to Highlands, giving it the center-hall plan it keeps. The house had begun about 1844 as a log school and was made a dwelling by Andrew Mickle in 1846.

People: Andrew Mickle

Subject: Highlands (Paul Cameron house)

The Baptists build a schoolhouse, and the lane beside it becomes Church Street

A schoolhouse went up next to the new Baptist church on West Franklin Street, and the dirt road just east of the two buildings took the name Church Street.

Robert Bingham becomes a partner in his father's school at the Oaks

After graduating from the University of North Carolina in 1857, Robert Bingham was admitted in July as junior partner in his father's school at the Oaks, which took the firm name W. J. Bingham and Sons. His brother William was also a partner.

People: William Bingham (1835-1873) · William James Bingham

Subject: Bingham School

A marble monument to Joseph Caldwell is dedicated in McCorkle Place

A marble obelisk to Caldwell was dedicated north of the Davie Poplar. Its inscription names the President of the United States, the Governor and other alumni as donors and praises his advocacy of common schools and internal improvements. Caldwell and his wife still lay by the old sandstone shaft near New West; their remains, with her son's, were moved to the monument's east base in July 1904.

Subject: McCorkle Place (with the Davie Poplar)

Charles Tew chooses a site west of Hillsborough for a military academy

In late July 1858 Charles C. Tew, with Moses A. Curtis and A. S. Galliard, searched Hillsborough for a school site and settled on a 40-acre tract about a mile and a half west of town near the new North Carolina Railroad. They engaged the Columbia architect John A. Kay, and local builders John Berry and Henry Richards built the barracks and commandant's house.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

People: John Berry · Moses Ashley Curtis

Subject: North Carolina Railroad · Hillsborough Military Academy

Masons lay a cornerstone at the Hillsborough Military Academy

A delegation from Eagle Lodge took part in a Masonic cornerstone ceremony at the Hillsborough Military Academy in 1859.

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy · Eagle Lodge

The Nash and Kollock School turns the old Nash law office into a music room

After Chief Justice Frederick Nash died, his daughters Sally and Maria Nash and their cousin Sarah Kollock began holding their school's music lessons in his former law office on Margaret Lane.

People: Sarah Kollock

Subject: Nash and Kollock School · Nash Law Office

Samuel Wellwood Hughes opens his own school near Cedar Grove

After fourteen years as founder and principal of Cedar Grove Academy, Samuel Wellwood Hughes opened his own classical school five miles northwest of Hillsborough, its first session beginning on the second Monday of January 1859. He taught there until his death in 1884; the surviving schoolhouse, dated about 1862, was later moved to Hillsborough and restored.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Hughes Academy (Cedar Grove Academy)

The Hillsborough Military Academy commandant's house is ready to live in

The academy's neo-Gothic commandant's house, with turrets and crenellations along the roofline, was far enough along to be occupied by March 1859, though interior work may have continued for years.

People: John Berry

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

Nash and Kollock School for young ladies opens in Hillsborough

After Chief Justice Frederick Nash died in 1858, his daughters Sarah and Maria Nash and their cousin Sarah Kollock opened a select boarding and day school for girls in the Nash home.

People: Sarah Kollock

Subject: Nash and Kollock School

Orange County teaches 57 district schools

In 1860 Orange County taught fifty-seven district schools with forty-five licensed teachers, on about $7,400 in state school money and $1,800 in county taxes, in terms of about four months, two decades after the state's first public school law. The 1860 census, counting differently, listed 25 public schools with 2,163 pupils.

William H. S. Burgwyn enters the University of North Carolina

Burgwyn entered the University of North Carolina as a freshman in 1860, after schooling near Baltimore and at Horner's School in Oxford. He left in 1861 because of illness.

Walter Clark enters Colonel Tew's military academy in Hillsborough

Walter Clark, then fourteen, enrolled at Colonel C. C. Tew's Military Academy in Hillsborough. He left for Confederate service after the war began.

People: Charles Courtenay Tew

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

George Attmore Sparrow is a cadet at the Hillsborough Military Academy

Sparrow, the teenage son of the Washington lawyer Thomas Sparrow, was enrolled as a cadet at the Hillsborough Military Academy in 1861 and 1862. He wrote home to his father from the academy through that period.

People: Thomas Sparrow

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

Solomon Pool is promoted to adjunct professor of mathematics

Pool was promoted to adjunct professor of mathematics in 1861 and held the position for six years. In 1866 he took leave to become a United States deputy appraiser in North Carolina on the understanding that the university need not reemploy him until it had need of him.

William H. S. Burgwyn enrolls as a cadet at the Hillsborough Military Academy

Later in 1861 Burgwyn entered the Hillsborough Military Academy as a cadet. By the autumn he had been appointed drill master of the camp of instruction near Raleigh, and he was then elected a lieutenant in the Thirty-fifth North Carolina Regiment.

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

George Attmore Sparrow leaves the Hillsborough academy to join the Confederate army

Writing from the academy on 21 July 1862, Sparrow told his father he had approval for his discharge and would leave with other cadets when the session ended on 31 July. He was in camp with the Army of the Pamlico by 1863.

Part of Orange County during the Civil War, 1861–1865 · 42 events

People: Thomas Sparrow

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

The Collins family buys the former Burwell School and calls it the Beehive

Members of the Collins family of Somerset Place, who had left Union-held eastern North Carolina, paid Robert Burwell $3,500 for the house and four lots. By 1863 about forty family members and enslaved servants lived there, and the family named it the Beehive.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

People: Robert Armistead Burwell

Subject: Burwell School

Two rooms are added to the Nash law office for music practice and Sarah Kollock's lodging

Two rooms were built onto the west side of the old Nash law office to give the Nash and Kollock School more practice rooms and to house Sarah Kollock.

People: Sarah Kollock

Subject: Nash and Kollock School · Nash Law Office

Walter Clark resigns his Confederate commission and graduates first in his class at the university

When his regiment came back to North Carolina in February 1863, Walter Clark resigned his commission as a Confederate officer and went to the university, where he studied under David L. Swain and William H. Battle. He graduated first in his class in June 1864.

People: David L. Swain · William Horn Battle

The county school board names committeemen for all 53 districts in wartime

The Board of Superintendents appointed school committeemen for each of Orange County's 53 districts, a sign the public schools stayed open during the war. That month W. H. Brown's examining committee also called would-be teachers to the courthouse in May.

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

William Bingham takes over the family school at the Oaks and incorporates it

With his brother Robert in the army and his father in declining health, William Bingham was running the school at the Oaks by 1864. That year he incorporated it as the Bingham School, a military and classical academy, and in December moved it to Mebaneville.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

People: William James Bingham

Subject: Bingham School

Bingham School moves from the Oaks to Mebaneville

William Bingham and Robert Bingham, sons of William James Bingham, moved the school that December to a site east of Mebane's Station on the North Carolina Railroad, after the legislature incorporated it in 1864 as a military and classical academy. The highway marker's 1865 may be when classes began at the new site.

People: Robert Bingham · William Bingham (1835-1873) · William James Bingham

Subject: Bingham School · North Carolina Railroad

Wilson Caldwell walks out with President Swain under a white flag to meet approaching Union troops

When Union troops approached Chapel Hill in 1865, Wilson Caldwell walked out under a white flag with President David L. Swain, Judge W. H. Battle and others to meet the incoming cavalry and seek protection for the town and the university.

People: William Horn Battle · David L. Swain

Hillsborough Military Academy sends its cadets home at the end of the Civil War

The academy, reopened in 1862 under Maj. William Gordon after Tew left for the war, dismissed its students in May 1865 after the surrender at Bennett Place. Raleigh Edward Colston reopened the campus in 1866 as the North Carolina Polytechnic and Military Institute.

Part of Orange County during the Civil War, 1861–1865 · 42 events

People: Charles Courtenay Tew

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

Job Berry calls a fair to buy a building for a Black school

The Hillsborough Recorder printed Job Berry's notice that the colored citizens of Hillsborough would hold a fair on September 23 to raise money for a school building. The school later met in the old courthouse at Queen and Churton streets.

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

General Colston takes charge of the reopened Hillsborough Military Academy

After closing at the end of the war, the academy reopened with General R. C. Colston as superintendent. In 1868 he signed a lease with Col. Tew's widow to live in the superintendent's house, but his family later moved to Wilmington.

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

The Collins women sell their shares of the Beehive to Dr. Thomas D. Warren

After the war the Collins relatives who had lived at the Beehive left Hillsborough, and the women sold their shares of the house to Dr. Thomas D. Warren, who had married Elizabeth Alethea Collins.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Burwell School

Rev. Job Berry and the Philadelphia Friends open Hillsborough's first school for Black children and adults

Job Berry, who had advertised a fair in September 1865 to raise money for a school, worked with the Friends of Philadelphia to buy the former Orange County courthouse on Queen Street for twelve hundred dollars and open a freedmen's school in it on June 5, 1866. More than three hundred children and adults learned to read and cipher there.

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

Sarah J. Woodson teaches at the freedmen's school in Hillsborough

Sarah J. Woodson, an Oberlin graduate from Ohio, was principal of the school for Black children in Hillsborough, which she taught with V. S. Williams. The Freedmen's Bureau's report of January 1868 named it among the large, well-run schools in North Carolina.

Part of Freedom, schools, and Black community-building after emancipation · 45 events

James Phillips dies in the college chapel

On the morning of March 14, 1867, James Phillips went early to the college chapel to lead morning prayers and was found dead on the rostrum as the bell rang. He had taught at the university since 1826 and was buried in the Chapel Hill Cemetery.

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery · Gerrard Hall

Trustees adopt an elective system of ten schools

Over William A. Graham's dissent, the trustees voted 18 to 3 for Kemp P. Battle's committee plan to replace the fixed four-year course with ten independent schools, from political science to modern languages, beginning in fall 1868. After the new state constitution put the university under a new board, the old trustees on June 4, 1868 reappointed Swain and the faculty and rescinded the plan.

People: William A. Graham · Kemp Plummer Battle

Charles Phillips is dismissed from the university faculty

When the state's Reconstruction government reorganized the University of North Carolina in 1868, Phillips was dismissed from the faculty. He took a professorship at Davidson College in February 1869.

Part of The university closes and reopens · 46 events

Six freedmen's schools are running in Orange County

By 1868 six schools for freed people had been set up in the county, paid for mostly by the Freedmen's Bureau and Quaker missions, with Black families giving what they could.

People: Robert G. Fitzgerald

Robert G. Fitzgerald comes to Hillsborough to teach a freedmen's school

Fitzgerald, a Union Navy and cavalry veteran who had taught freedpeople in Amelia County, Virginia, came to Hillsborough through the Friends' Freedmen's Association of Philadelphia to teach at a new school for Black students.

William H. S. Burgwyn graduates from the university with first honors

After the Civil War Burgwyn re-entered the University of North Carolina as a sophomore and graduated in June 1868 with first honors, delivering the Latin salutatory address. He was a member of the Philanthropic Society.

David L. Swain dies after a buggy accident

Weeks after the Reconstruction board of trustees accepted his resignation, David L. Swain was thrown on August 11, 1868, from a buggy pulled by the horse General Sherman had given him. He seemed to be recovering but died on August 27 and was buried on August 29 in the garden of his Chapel Hill home; Charles Phillips preached his funeral sermon.

People: Charles Phillips

The new county commissioners name school committees for all 53 districts

Working from Silas Link's report, which listed the school districts in each new township, the board named three committeemen for every one of the county's 53 districts. Presumably they were meant to hold office until the townships could elect their own.

A school report finds 43 schoolhouses for nearly 6,000 children

A. Hooker, late chairman of the common schools board, counted 3,667 white and 2,235 Black children in the county and only 43 schoolhouses, most run down, to serve both races. He put the need at 63 new buildings of about $100 each.

Alexander McIver joins the reorganized faculty as professor of mathematics

McIver, a Moore County native who had graduated first in the class of 1853 and taught briefly as a tutor, came from Davidson College to teach mathematics on the Republican faculty that reopened the university under Solomon Pool.

People: Solomon Pool

Solomon Pool accepts the presidency of the university

Pool accepted the presidency of the University of North Carolina in 1869 at a salary of fifteen hundred dollars and was permitted to keep his federal appraiser post at the same time. Governor William W. Holden had taken charge of the board of trustees to secure a president with Republican affiliations.

Part of The university closes and reopens · 46 events

People: William W. Holden

The sheriff auctions the former Burwell School to David C. Parks

Dr. Thomas D. Warren was deep in local debt, and the Orange County sheriff sold the house at auction to David C. Parks for $600. Parks and his brother Charles traded the property between them for the next quarter century.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

People: David C. Parks

Subject: Burwell School

Wilson Caldwell resigns from the university and founds a school for Black children

In 1869 Wilson Caldwell, who had worked at the university as an enslaved servant and janitor, resigned and started a school for children of color in Chapel Hill.

People: Wilson Swain Caldwell

Thomas Fitzgerald buys Woodside, where his son Robert builds a freedmen's school

Thomas Fitzgerald, whose son Robert had persuaded the family to move from Pennsylvania, bought Woodside, a 158-acre plantation six miles east of Hillsborough, from Robert J. Jeffreys for $1,200 in April 1869, with Robert writing the deed. Robert built a freedmen's school on the property, and the family also farmed and ran a tannery and brick making there.

Robert G. Fitzgerald marries Cornelia Smith of Chapel Hill

Fitzgerald married Cornelia Smith, a niece of Mary Ruffin Smith, the Chapel Hill benefactor of the university. Their granddaughter Pauli Murray later told the family's story in Proud Shoes.

People: Pauli Murray