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- Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
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William A. Graham establishes a law practice in Hillsborough
Graham read law with Thomas Ruffin of Orange County and, having taken his county and superior court licences, had established a practice among the Hillsborough bar by March 1828. He kept a law practice until his death and in time owned three plantations worked by enslaved people.
People: Thomas Ruffin
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Planter William Cabe dies and is buried in the family graveyard on the Eno
William Cabe, who held 1,389 acres of corn and wheat land on the Eno, died without a will. His marked stone is one of two legible among twelve graves in the Cabe family cemetery south of the house.
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Thirty students walk out of Sunday worship in the chapel
One Sunday morning thirty students left divine service in the chapel one by one. The faculty examined each; thirteen gave acceptable excuses and the other seventeen denied any plan, so the case was dropped.
People: Cadwallader Jones
Subject: Person Hall
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William Cabe's estate offers his residence and 14 or 15 enslaved people for sale
After a sale of Cabe's household goods, stock and crops set for October 22, 1828, a December notice in the Hillsborough Recorder offered his late residence together with 14 or 15 enslaved people.
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An Orange County mass meeting calls for state aid to roads and river navigation
A county meeting chaired by James Webb, with Dennis Heartt as secretary, adopted an address to the people of Orange in favor of internal improvements and had 500 copies printed for circulation in the county.
People: James Webb · Dennis Heartt
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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.
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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.
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Eliza Hasell sells her West Queen Street house to Samuel Simpson for his daughter and son-in-law Henry K. Nash
In 1829 Eliza Hasell and her new husband, the Rev. William S. Plumer, sold the house to Samuel Simpson of New Bern, who bought it for his daughter Mary and her husband Henry Kollock Nash. The Nashes lived there until their deaths in 1897, and their daughter Annie Nash kept it until 1919.
Subject: Hasell-Nash House
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George Moses Horton publishes The Hope of Liberty
George Moses Horton’s The Hope of Liberty was published in Raleigh, with supporters hoping sales could finance his freedom.
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Presbyterians begin worshipping together in Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill's Presbyterians began meeting about 1829 in homes and university buildings, with university faculty serving as ministers, according to the church's own history. The congregation's surviving session records begin in 1845, the year Lefler and Wager give for its formal organization, on June 8. Its first sanctuary on Franklin Street was dedicated September 23, 1849, and the congregation took the name University Presbyterian Church in the 1960s.
Subject: University Presbyterian Church
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Students organize a temperance society
Some students formed a Temperance Society in the summer of 1829, and Battle credits it with reducing drinking of spirits at the college. At its request Elisha Mitchell gave an address on intemperance in 1831 that was printed.
People: Elisha Mitchell
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Thomas Ruffin issues the State v. Mann decision
Thomas Ruffin of Hillsborough, newly seated on the North Carolina Supreme Court, wrote the opinion in State v. Mann, overturning the conviction of John Mann of Edenton for shooting Lydia, an enslaved woman he had hired, as she fled a whipping. Ruffin held that a master's power must be absolute, and abolitionists later cited the ruling widely.
People: Thomas Ruffin · Lydia
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Commissioners divide William Cabe's 1,389 acres among his heirs
Court-appointed commissioners split Cabe's land into nine lots. Lot three, 160 acres where the Cabe-Pratt-Harris House stands, went to his daughter Jamima, then married to Jehu Brown.
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The county court levies a tax on Black polls to pay for the patrol
Along with its taxes for county costs and the poor, the August 1829 court ordered ten cents collected on each Black poll to pay the patrol, the county's slave patrol.
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Thomas Clancy advertises Lucy and her five children for sale
Pressed for money, Clancy offered a woman named Lucy and her five children, the eldest about thirteen, saying he preferred to sell the family together to a buyer in or near Hillsborough.
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James, an enslaved college servant, escapes from Chapel Hill
Samuel M. Stewart advertised a $20 reward in the Hillsborough Recorder for James, who had worked four years as a college servant at the university. Stewart thought he was headed for Norfolk or Richmond to reach the free states or Africa through the Colonization Society.
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A log homestead is built on the later William Couch farm
About 1830 a log house was built on the Cornwallis Road land where William Couch later put up his two-story frame house. It still stands next to the frame house with four log outbuildings.
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A two-story frame farmhouse is built on the land later called Webb's Happy Acres
The one-room-deep house with a pegged frame, log sills and end chimneys may have been built by Carolina Kirkland and her husband or by earlier owners. Her grandson J. Richard Webb and his wife moved in about 1954, restored it and named it Webb's Happy Acres.
Subject: Webb's Happy Acres
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Anne Royall publishes a hostile account of Chapel Hill
The traveling writer Anne Royall visited Chapel Hill in 1829 and in her Southern Tour, published in 1830, charged that the president's wife, Helen Caldwell, ruled the university. Battle answers with the faculty's account of the student she defended, who had been dismissed for disorder at a Sunday service.
People: Joseph Caldwell
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Caldwell builds the first college observatory in the United States
Caldwell began an astronomical observatory on the campus in 1830 and finished it in 1831, paying more than 400 dollars himself, to house instruments he had bought in Europe in 1824. The DocSouth biography calls it the first American observatory built for teaching.
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Dr. Edmund Strudwick builds a medical office on West King Street
Dr. Edmund Strudwick put up a one-story, two-room frame office at 139 West King Street, on the site of Edmund Fanning's law office. Dr. W. F. Strudwick later practised there and Robert Strudwick used it as a law office.
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Frances Blount buys the Hawks house and the lot beside it
Walker Anderson, acting for Francis L. Hawks, sold the house to Frances Blount, who is thought to have been renting it. She also bought the neighboring lot 180 that year.
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Frances Blount enlarges the house to a center-passage plan
Soon after buying it, Frances Blount added two rooms to the east side of the one-and-a-half-story house, turning its side-hall plan into the center-passage form it keeps today.
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Fred Hartgrove, a free Black man, holds three enslaved people
The 1830 records show Hartgrove holding three people and Lucy Peters, also free and Black, holding one. No free Black resident of Orange held anyone in 1860.
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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
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Professor James Phillips hires David Barham from his owner as a college servant
In 1830 Professor James Phillips hired David Barham from William Barham to work as a college servant. A university account book page from the same year shows students paying a two-dollar fee to compensate the slaveholders whose people were hired as servants.
People: James Phillips
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Robert Donaldson has A. J. Davis design a campus hall for the Philanthropic Society that is never built
In the 1830s alumnus Robert Donaldson, by then living in New York, hired Alexander Jackson Davis to design a hall for the Philanthropic Society on the campus. It was not built, but Donaldson kept up a correspondence with President Swain about gardens, architects and furnishings that led to Davis's later work at Chapel Hill.
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The census finds Orange County's enslaved population at its peak
The 1830 census counted 7,339 enslaved people beside 15,918 white residents, a little under 31 percent of the county. The number fell afterward through sales, migration, manumission and the loss of territory to new counties.
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The census lists the Texas community families as free Negro heads of household
The 1830 federal census for the North District of Orange County listed the Whitmores, Jeffrieses, Corns, Burnettes, Haithcocks and Joneses among free Negro heads of household. Through the nineteenth century county and federal records almost always classed these families as free colored or mulatto, and almost never as Indian.
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The core of the Huskey House is built on East Rosemary Street
The heavily altered house at 215 East Rosemary Street probably dates from the 1830s; only its Greek Revival doorway still shows its age. It is named for a later resident, village blacksmith John Huskey.
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The legislature elects Willie P. Mangum to the United States Senate
Mangum, then a Jacksonian Democrat, was chosen senator in 1830. He broke with Jackson over the bank deposits and resigned when a Democratic legislature instructed him to vote to expunge the censure of Jackson.
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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.
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Trustees meet in emergency session over the university's debts
With debts of about $37,500 and only some 82 paying students, a special meeting of trustees at Chapel Hill on June 21, 1830 called the whole board to Raleigh on July 19. There a committee under James Iredell reported on the finances, and the board adopted a memorial drawn by Thomas Ruffin asking the General Assembly for relief.
People: Joseph Caldwell · Willie P. Mangum · Thomas Ruffin · William Gaston
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Trustees refuse a state loan tied to legislative control of the university
The General Assembly answered the trustees' memorial with an act having the Literary Board lend $25,000 for five years, but only if the loan became a lien on all university property and the trustees agreed that the legislature could take over the charter. The trustees unanimously rejected it and borrowed $4,000 from the Bank of the United States branch at Fayetteville.
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Giles Mebane stays at Chapel Hill as a university tutor
After graduating from the University of North Carolina in 1831, Giles Mebane remained in Chapel Hill as a tutor before starting to practice law.
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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
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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.
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Schoolmaster William J. Bingham builds a house at Churton and Union streets
William James Bingham, then head of the Hillsborough Academy, builds a one-and-a-half-story house at the southeast corner of North Churton and East Union streets and lives there until 1845. Later owners included the Methodist church, which used it for a time as a parsonage.
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Trustees offer the university's Chapel Hill lands for sale
Pressed by debt, the trustees named William Polk, James Mebane and James Webb to offer the unimproved university lands around Chapel Hill for sale. Only a small sum came in, from the sale of the Preparatory School acre; that school had been closed for more than ten years.
People: William Polk · James Webb
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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
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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
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Godfrey and Isabella marry at St. Matthew's
The Rev. William Mercer Green married Godfrey and Isabella, the first couple in St. Matthew's register of people of color. Their infant son Milton Alexander was baptized there in November 1835.
People: William Mercer Green
Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church
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A year-long revival at New Hope adds at least seventy communicants
Under the evangelists Daniel L. Russell, John S. McCutcheon and Philip Pearson, families built tents on the church grounds and lived in them for weeks to attend the meetings. The session record shows at least seventy people admitted to communion.
Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church
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A small nondenominational Union Church goes up on the Grand Avenue ground
After the university sold the old Grammar School property, a small church open to all denominations, called the Union Church or the Village Chapel, was built on the Grand Avenue plot facing Franklin Street.
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Benton Utley buys the Hogg house and opens a dry goods store
Gavin Hogg sold the family house to Benton Utley, who shared it with James Hogg and built a dry goods store beside it. The store failed, and Utley sold house and stock to Zachariah Trice in 1837.
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Cadwallader Jones graduates from the University of North Carolina
Jones, the son of Cadwallader and Rebecca Edwards Long Jones of West Hill near Hillsborough, took his degree at Chapel Hill in 1832.
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Fannie Breeze is born enslaved in the household of Samuel Breeze
Fannie Breeze was born in 1832, enslaved in the household of Samuel H. Breeze, a farmer and member of Pleasant Green Methodist church in what was then eastern Orange County. She joined Pleasant Green before the Civil War and later worked as a midwife along the Eno.
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Judge William Gaston predicts the end of slavery in a UNC commencement address
Gaston told the university's graduates and guests that slavery would be overthrown. The book says the audience applauded the speech but rejected its antislavery message.
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Mary W. Burke deeds her Queen Street house to George Johnston, keeping one room
Governor Thomas Burke's daughter Mary W. Burke sold her East Queen Street house and lot, later called Heartsease, to George Johnston for one dollar and kept the use of one room for herself. The next year Johnston gave up his claim for the same sum.
People: George Johnston
Subject: Heartsease
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Mount Zion Christian Church is organized
Thomas Reeves led the organization of Mount Zion Christian Church and built its first church in 1833.
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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.
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Pleasant Green Methodist Church is organized
Pleasant Green Methodist Church was organized about 1832 by a group of local families.
Subject: Pleasant Green Methodist Church
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The Recorder shop prints Letters on Popular Education
The Hillsborough Recorder office printed Letters on Popular Education Addressed to the People of North Carolina in 1832.
People: Dennis Heartt
Subject: Hillsborough Recorder
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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.
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Archibald D. Murphey dies in Hillsborough
Archibald D. Murphey died in Hillsborough, then his home, on February 1, 1832, after years of rheumatism and debt, and was buried in the town graveyard a few feet from the door of the Presbyterian church. No monument marked his grave when the memoir in his published papers was written.
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Five elders are ordained at New Hope during the revival
William Brown, Alexander Strain, Samuel Hart, David Hart and Allen Petty were added to the session. The two Harts were grandsons of Gilbert Strayhorn, and Strain was a son of the earlier elder Alexander Strain.
Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church
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White Cross Church, later an AME congregation, is organized
The church list dates the White Cross congregation and its first building to May 1832. It was rebuilt in 1921 and was an African Methodist Episcopal church by 1953.
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The Institute of Education names Gaston to a committee to petition the legislature on popular education
At its second meeting, held during the 1832 commencement, the North Carolina Institute of Education voted to memorialize the General Assembly on popular education and named William Gaston, Frederick Nash and David L. Swain to the committee.
People: Frederick Nash · David L. Swain
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Cedar Grove Methodist Church is organized
The Cedar Grove Methodist Episcopal Church was organized on July 23, 1832.
Subject: Cedar Grove Methodist Church
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English Record Commission sends its publications to the university library
Between 1833 and 1841 the British government's Record Commission gave the university 83 folio and 24 octavo volumes, among them a printing of the Domesday Book, with twelve books and many pamphlets by its secretary, Charles Parton Cooper.
Subject: UNC Libraries
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Isaac J. Collier and Jones Watson open a cabinetmaking business
The two men started making furniture on Franklin Street in 1833. After the partnership dissolved in the later 1830s, Collier kept the business going.
People: Jones Watson
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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
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Peter Dromgoole disappears from Chapel Hill
Peter Pelham Dromgoole came to Chapel Hill in January 1833, failed the university's entrance examination and studied under a tutor. That spring, after bitter letters with his father, he vanished from his lodgings, leaving most of his belongings and a debt to a Chapel Hill merchant.
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Pleasant Henderson leaves Chapel Hill for Tennessee
Still deep in debt, the former steward and storekeeper moved west. His son Dr. Alexander Martin Henderson secured the family home on Franklin Street, and the store on the property was advertised that year as Norfleet and Henderson's.
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The house of tinner Josiah Turner Sr. is built on North Churton Street
The Turner house at 404 North Churton Street is built about 1833 on a five-acre lot bounded by Churton, Orange and Union streets. It appears on John L. Bailey's 1839 map and was the home of Josiah Turner Sr., a tinner, and his family.
Subject: Turner-Strudwick House
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Thomas Ruffin becomes Chief Justice of North Carolina
Ruffin, elected an associate justice in 1829 after putting the state bank back in order, became Chief Justice in 1833 and held the post until he retired to his farm in 1852.
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Trustees name the new chapel Gerrard Hall
The trustees sold Major Charles Gerrard's 2,560-acre service tract in Tennessee for $6,400, voted $2,000 of it toward finishing the new chapel that had stood unfinished since about 1824, and resolved that the building be known forever as Gerrard Hall in his memory.
People: George E. Badger · William Polk · William Gaston
Subject: Gerrard Hall
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William A. Graham represents Hillsborough and then Orange County in the House of Commons
Graham was borough representative from Hillsborough in the legislatures of 1833, 1834 and 1835. After the constitutional reforms of 1835 he represented Orange County in the House of Commons in the 1836, 1838 and 1840 sessions, and he was speaker in the last two.
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William D. Kirksey advertises as the village blacksmith
After Christopher Barbee's death, his corner blacksmith shop passed through his son William, and by 1833 William D. Kirksey was advertising as Chapel Hill's blacksmith. Maps show Kirksey's shop on the corner through 1843.
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New Hope elects George W. Ferrill as pastor
The congregation unanimously elected Ferrill pastor, and he was installed soon after. The pastoral relation was dissolved in July 1836.
Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church
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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
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Isaac C. Partridge publishes The Harbinger
Isaac C. Partridge's weekly The Harbinger, one of the county's first literary periodicals, began at Chapel Hill on August 27, 1833, after a prospectus that January, and ran for about a year. It covered the sciences and arts and leaned on professors Elisha Mitchell and William Hooper for its contents.
People: Elisha Mitchell · William Hooper
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Job, later Rev. Job Berry, is baptized at St. Matthew's
Job, enslaved by George W. B. Burgwyn, was baptized at St. Matthew's Episcopal Church by William Mercer Green and confirmed the next April. As Job Berry he later led Hillsborough's first Black congregation.
People: William Mercer Green
Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church
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Students win the use of Steward's Hall for the commencement ball
A committee chosen by a mass meeting of students, with Christopher C. Battle as its writer, petitioned the trustees on November 6, 1833 for a room in Steward's Hall for the commencement ball, and the trustees agreed. The ball managers then invited leading men of the state, among them Governor Swain.
People: David L. Swain
Subject: Steward’s Hall
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Trustee committee advises against moving the university to Raleigh
On James Iredell's motion, Governor Swain named fifteen trustees, none from Orange County, to consider moving the university to the capital. In December 1833 they reported removal inexpedient, and the question never came before the board again.
People: David L. Swain
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Trustees make the senior professor Caldwell's deputy and add an adjunct professor
When Caldwell's illness first forced him to ask for help, the trustees gave the professor of longest standing, Elisha Mitchell, power to act in the president's place and created an adjunct professorship of natural philosophy and astronomy, filled by Walker Anderson. Mitchell served as acting president until Swain arrived.
People: Elisha Mitchell
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Cedar Grove Methodist Episcopal Church builds its first church
The congregation put up a small frame sanctuary facing east on what is now Efland-Cedar Grove Road, on land given by Joseph Allison and John Kelly. It was enlarged on the south side in 1876 and later torn down; its site lies just east of the 1939 stone church.
Subject: Cedar Grove Methodist Church
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Dr. Walter A. Norwood closes his medicine shop and moves to Hillsborough
Norwood gave up his Franklin Street shop and left for Hillsborough. Elisha Mitchell owned the land and building by the end of the year and soon sold them on credit to Isaac Partridge for a hotel.
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Duncan Cameron of Orange is elected president of the state Colonization Society
Cameron, a leading Orange planter and banker, took the presidency of the North Carolina branch of the colonization movement in 1834.
People: Duncan Cameron
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Fairfield Presbyterian Church is organized
Fairfield Presbyterian Church was organized with Samuel Paisley as its first pastor.
Subject: Fairfield Presbyterian Church
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Former sheriff Thomas D. Watts takes over Alsobrook's hotel
Thomas D. Watts, once sheriff of Orange County, took charge of the hotel on Lot #13, which became known as Watts's hotel. His widow Lucy bought the property in 1839 and ran it until 1846.
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Lemuel Lynch sets up as a silversmith and jeweler in Hillsborough
Lemuel Lynch, who learned his trade from William Huntington and had kept shops in Greensboro and Concord, begins working in Hillsborough, where he stayed for the rest of his life.
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Samuel Hancock goes bankrupt and Dr. James Webb buys his house and the enslaved man Abram
In 1834 Samuel Hancock went bankrupt. Dr. James Webb bought the Hancocks' house and lot, their furniture and Abram, a man they enslaved, and rented all of them back to Hancock for $1 a year.
People: James Webb
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A notice offers Christopher Barbee's livestock and household goods for sale at his late home
Two years after Christopher Barbee died, a public notice offered his horses, cattle, corn, farm tools and household and kitchen furniture for sale at his late residence on The Mountain. His son William, the executor, had his own plantation and a house in the village, and no Barbee seems to have lived there afterward.
Subject: The Mountain (Christopher Barbee plantation, now Meadowmont)
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Six enslaved women are baptized into Hillsborough Presbyterian Church
The Rev. S. J. Price baptized six women held by the Nash, Watters, Scott and Waddell households, and Frederick Nash and William J. Bingham received them as members. In the twenty years that followed under Robert Burwell, the church took in only one communicant of color.
People: Frederick Nash · William James Bingham · Hugh Waddell
Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church
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Members of Cane Creek organize Mars Hill Baptist Church
Members of Cane Creek Baptist Church organized Mars Hill Baptist Church, near the old Eno Quaker burying ground off the Hillsborough-Schley road.
Subject: Mars Hill Baptist Church
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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
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Duncan Cameron gives his son Paul C. Cameron forty-one enslaved people
Duncan Cameron deeded his son Paul C. Cameron forty-one enslaved people, with any children the women would bear: Gabriel, Mima, Simeon and Sarah in Orange County, and families at the Mill Quarter plantation in Person County, among them Phillip and Jenny and their children Randol, Jim, Ellen, Nancy and Phill. Cameron acknowledged the deed before Justice William Gaston at Raleigh on January 1, 1835.
People: Duncan Cameron · Paul C. Cameron · William Gaston
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I. C. Patridge opens the University Hotel in Chapel Hill
Patridge advertised in December 1834 that he had opened a public house at Chapel Hill across from Watts' Hotel, with new stables and an ostler.
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A. Mickle serves as Orange County's register of deeds
Lefler and Wager's list of Orange County registers of deeds gives A. Mickle in the office from 1835 to 1849, between J. McKerall and John Laws.
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Dialectic Society prints a catalogue of its library
The Dialectic Society's printed catalogue of 1835 listed 2,954 bound volumes and ten maps, the largest groups being novels and romances, periodicals and history. With the Philanthropic library about the same size, the two societies held some 6,000 books.
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Dr. James Webb builds the Presbyterian Sessions House in the Old Town Cemetery
In 1835 Dr. James Webb took a ninety-nine-year lease on the southeast corner of Hillsborough's Old Town Cemetery lot and built a frame Sessions House with a bell tower there. It served as the Presbyterian Sunday school room and later as a public library until 1934.
Subject: Old Town Cemetery, Hillsborough · Hillsborough Presbyterian Church
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Dr. William Montgomery of Orange is elected to Congress
Montgomery, a Jackson Democrat and longtime state senator for Orange, defeated Daniel A. Barringer, carrying his home county 1,501 to 900. He served three terms.
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Elizabeth Hobbs is brought to Hillsborough in the household of Robert and Anna Burwell
When the Reverend Robert Burwell became minister of the Presbyterian church in Hillsborough, he moved his household from Virginia, bringing the enslaved Elizabeth Hobbs, later Keckly. By her own account she was nearly eighteen.
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Harmony Primitive Baptist Church is organized
Harmony Primitive Baptist Church was organized about 1835. By 1953 it had three members.
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John A. Pettigrew sells the former Paisley farm to Lemuel Pettigrew
By 1835 the log house tract had passed to John A. Pettigrew, who sold it that year to Lemuel Pettigrew. Lemuel later sold it to (John) Elkins Pettigrew, a small farmer whose farm the 1860 census valued at $500.
Subject: Paisley-Rice Log House
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Orange County sends physicians William Montgomery and James S. Smith to the 1835 convention
Ten men were put forward at meetings around the county, and the voters chose two physicians, William Montgomery and James S. Smith. Each sided with the majority that abolished borough seats, which cost Hillsborough its own member in the House of Commons.
People: Thomas Ruffin · Frederick Nash
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Orange County votes overwhelmingly for a constitutional convention
Orange voted 1,648 to 111 for calling a convention to reform representation, and Hillsborough, which stood to lose its borough seat, voted 228 to 23 in favor.
People: Dennis Heartt
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Paul C. Cameron builds Burnside on the foundation of Thomas Ruffin's old house
Paul Cameron built the town house he named Burnside on South Cameron Street, on the stone foundation of his father-in-law Thomas Ruffin's earlier house. Enslaved workers from Cameron's Fairntosh plantation built it under his master carpenter Jack, and John Berry laid the brick.
People: John Berry · Thomas Ruffin
Subject: Burnside
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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
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Slave trader George Lewis advertises in Hillsborough to buy 100 young people
Lewis, a commercial trader visiting the town, announced he would pay cash for one hundred young Black people.
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St. Matthew's adds a gallery for Black worshippers under William Mercer Green
In 1835, during William Mercer Green's rectorship, a gallery was added to St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough to seat Black worshippers. Green also held monthly services at Duncan Cameron's Salem Chapel, where he gave instruction to enslaved people.
People: Duncan Cameron
Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church
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The Rev. Ira Ellis builds Little Ayr Mount, a two-story brick house west of Hillsborough
The Rev. Ira Ellis, who bought 300 acres on the Eno west of Hillsborough in 1835, built the plain two-story brick house later called Little Ayr Mount about that time. With Ayr Mount it is one of the few masonry houses the county survey found from the early nineteenth century.
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The Rev. Ira Ellis buys 300 acres on the Eno near Hall's Mill Road
Ira Ellis, a minister and farmer then in his fifties, bought 300 acres on the Eno River and added 184 more four years later. His three-part Federal brick house, later called Little Ayr Mount, is usually dated to this purchase, and local tradition holds that it took in stagecoach travelers.
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Thomas H. Taylor trades his Franklin Street house to the university
Taylor exchanged Lot #17 and his house for university land in Tennessee and left Chapel Hill. The university gave the Tom Taylor house to its new president, David L. Swain, whose wife disliked the old Caldwell house.
People: David L. Swain
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University trustees pay for a stone wall around the Chapel Hill graveyard
By 1835 about six more marked graves had joined George Clarke's, among them society members James Neal and James Smith, and the trustees set aside $64.41 to enclose the burying ground with a stone wall.
Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
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Trustees create an executive committee to run the university
At Duncan Cameron's instance the board placed management in a seven-member executive committee including the governor, with the powers of the land, appointments and building committees and the right to change studies and dismiss faculty. The first members were Cameron, George E. Badger, William McPheeters, Charles Manly, Frederick Nash, William A. Graham and Governor Swain.
People: Duncan Cameron · David L. Swain · George E. Badger · William McPheeters · Frederick Nash · William A. Graham
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President Joseph Caldwell dies
The university's first president died after years of a painful illness and was buried in the Chapel Hill village cemetery. The trustees' executive committee adopted a tribute on February 6, 1835, and the students resolved to wear badges of mourning.
People: Haywood Williams Guion
Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
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Trustees sell off the university's Tennessee lands
On resolutions drafted by Duncan Cameron, the executive committee sent Charles Manly to Tennessee to close out the lands with agent Samuel Dickens, and 42,345 acres plus the 20,000 Smith acres went to Orme and Gifford of Boston for $56,345.83. Manly's report of November 21, 1835 counted assets of $171,658, which he reckoned would carry the university's yearly costs with a surplus.
People: Duncan Cameron · David L. Swain
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James S. Smith of Orange moves to abolish borough seats at the 1835 convention
At the state constitutional convention in Raleigh, James S. Smith, one of Orange County's two delegates with William Montgomery, moved on June 11, 1835, to abolish borough representation entirely; the motion failed 61 to 67. The convention's committee later recommended taking the House seat from Hillsborough, Halifax and Salisbury while keeping it for four other towns.
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The Recorder prints a county meeting's warning to abolitionists
An Orange County meeting adopted a report warning "northern fanatics" not to stir up the enslaved and predicting lasting hostility between the sections if abolitionists pressed on. Its fourteen-man committee included Frederick Nash, William A. Graham, Hugh Waddell, John U. Kirkland, Dr. Edmund Strudwick and the paper's own editor, Dennis Heartt, as a secretary.
People: Frederick Nash · William A. Graham · Hugh Waddell · John U. Kirkland · Edmund Strudwick · Dennis Heartt
Subject: Hillsborough Recorder
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Philanthropic Society has a cast made of Caldwell's features
In November 1835, at the Philanthropic Society's request, Caldwell's body was taken up so that the artist Alfred S. Waugh could make a plaster cast of his face. The bust made from it stands in Gerrard Hall.
Subject: Gerrard Hall · Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies
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Clover Garden Methodist Church puts up its building
The Methodist congregation at Clover Garden, organized some time before, erected a church in 1836 with seats for about 150.
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County voters defeat a plan to form a new county from western Orange
After more than ten years of agitation by residents of the industrial west, a county referendum rejected the proposal by a wide margin. Alamance County was not created until 1849.
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Hugh Waddell of Orange serves as Whig Speaker of the state Senate
Waddell, who represented Orange in the Senate for three sessions between 1836 and 1846, presided over the Senate as its Whig Speaker in the 1836-1837 session.
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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
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John H. Rhodes advertises a barber shop beside the hotel
Barber John H. Rhodes advertised that his shop stood next to the hotel on Lot #13. The frontage maps show a Rhodes barber shop beside the hotel from 1838 to 1848.
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John Norwood begins forty-eight years as clerk of the Hillsborough Presbyterian session
John Norwood kept the session records from 1836 to 1884, one of the two longest terms in the church's history.
Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church
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Jones begins practicing law at Hillsborough
Jones began his legal career in Hillsborough in 1836 and practiced there until he moved his family to a cotton plantation near Rock Hill, South Carolina, in 1857. He sat in the House of Commons for the 1840, 1842, 1848 and 1850 sessions and became solicitor of the Fourth Judicial District in April 1843.
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Orange County's Jacksonian majority narrows as leading men turn Whig
After many county leaders broke with Jackson, Orange gave Martin Van Buren 1,103 votes to 905 for the Whig Hugh L. White. From then until the Civil War the county's presidential majority went to the Whig candidate.
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Schoolmaster William J. Bingham repeatedly beats Elizabeth Hobbs at Anna Burwell's urging
Anna Burwell had William J. Bingham, the Hillsborough schoolmaster, flog Elizabeth Hobbs over a period of weeks in an attempt to break her spirit. Her memoir says Robert Burwell also beat her, and that she was eighteen at the time.
People: Elizabeth Hobbs Keckly · Robert Armistead Burwell · William James Bingham
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William Kirkland dies, leaving Ayr Mount to his widow
William Kirkland died in 1836 and left his estate to his wife, Margaret Scott Kirkland; their son John Umstead Kirkland later acquired Ayr Mount from her estate. The inventory taken after his death lists twenty enslaved people, some of whom worked at his store, tannery and other businesses in Hillsborough.
People: John U. Kirkland
Subject: Ayr Mount
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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
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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
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Henry Harris, held as a suspected runaway, is charged with burning the Orange County jail
At the spring term of Superior Court the case against Henry Harris, a man of color charged with setting fire to the county jail, was moved to Caswell County for trial. He had been jailed as a runaway because he could not prove his freedom, and he escaped soon after.
Subject: Orange County jail, Hillsborough
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James Phillips begins nearly thirty years as stated supply at New Hope
The university professor began preaching at New Hope in August 1836 and served it until December 1865, longer than any other minister. Because Chapel Hill long had no Presbyterian church, New Hope heard him almost every Sunday for years.
Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church
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A trustee committee under William Gaston makes the faculty's liquor rule a university by-law
In 1837 the faculty made it a dismissable offence to bring liquor into the college buildings or to be publicly drunk. A trustee committee chaired by William Gaston recommended that the rule become a by-law of the university.
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Alexander McKenzie Kirkland subjects Elizabeth Hobbs to about four years of sexual coercion
Alexander McKenzie Kirkland, a white man from a prominent Hillsborough merchant-planter family, repeatedly sexually assaulted Elizabeth Hobbs over about four years. In her memoir she did not name him and wrote that a white man pursued her for four years.
People: Elizabeth Hobbs Keckly
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Alfred Moore the younger dies and leaves Moorefields to Francis Nash Waddell
On the death of Alfred Moore the younger, Moorefields passed to his son-in-law, Francis Nash Waddell.
Subject: Moorefields
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Burwell School for young women operates
Robert and Margaret Anna Burwell operated their Hillsborough school for girls from 1837 to 1857.
Part of The Burwell School and the Burwell household · 37 events
People: Margaret Anna Burwell · Robert Armistead Burwell · Elizabeth Hobbs Keckly
Subject: Burwell School
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Dr. Edmund Strudwick buys Archibald Haralson's house on West Queen Street and enlarges it
Dr. Edmund Strudwick bought the house from Archibald Haralson in 1837, enlarged it, and is thought to have built the brick kitchen that still stands in the rear yard. The house became known as the Haralson-Strudwick House.
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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.
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Edwin Michael Holt builds a cotton mill on Alamance Creek, then in Orange County
During the panic of 1837 Holt opened a cotton mill on Alamance Creek, run as Holt and Carrigan and starting with 528 spindles. The book calls it the first cotton mill in the county, in country that became Alamance in 1849.
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Enslaved plasterers, masons and laborers work on South Building's new roof
Thomas Waitt's bill for 1837 work on South Building, including its tin roof, lists wages for enslaved plasterers and masons Stewart, Chester, Peter, Calvin and Evans and laborers including Lewis, Tom, Redin, Abraham and Jordan.
Subject: South Building
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George Moses Horton's The Hope of Liberty is reprinted in Philadelphia and Boston
The 1829 collection by the enslaved Chapel Hill poet came out in a second edition in Philadelphia in 1837 and a third in Boston in 1838.
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Gerrard Hall is finished and holds its first commencement
Gerrard Hall, the new chapel begun more than a decade earlier, was completed in 1837 under carpenter Thomas Waitt, and that year's commencement was held in it. The Raleigh Register described a roomy building with large galleries, and the old chapel, Person Hall, was soon given over to classrooms.
Subject: Gerrard Hall · Person Hall
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Isaac C. Partridge leaves Chapel Hill and his struggling University Hotel
Partridge, whose newspaper The Harbinger had already failed, ran off to New York and left the hotel, still unpaid for, in the hands of Elisha Mitchell.
People: Elisha Mitchell
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John Berry completes a stone jail at Hillsborough
Building commissioners named in 1836 planned a two-story prison forty-five by twenty-four feet at a cost of no more than $4,000, and Berry won the contract.
Subject: Orange County jail, Hillsborough
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Paul C. Cameron moves to Fairntosh to manage the Cameron plantations
Paul C. Cameron gave up the bar and moved with his wife, Anne Ruffin Cameron, from Burnside in Hillsborough to Fairntosh to manage the Cameron plantations with his uncle Thomas D. Bennehan. They lived there until 1856.
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Polly Burke's Queen Street house passes to Dennis Heartt's family
On May 4, 1837, Mary W. Burke, then living in Alabama, gave Dr. James Webb power of attorney to dispose of her remaining Hillsborough property. Her East Queen Street house was sold that year to the family of Recorder editor Dennis Heartt, who named it Heartsease and added a Greek Revival wing about 1840.
People: James Webb · Dennis Heartt
Subject: Hillsborough Recorder · Heartsease
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The Burwell School and the Burwell household
Anna Burwell opened a school for girls in Hillsborough in 1837 that ran until the family moved to Charlotte in 1857. In the same household Elizabeth Hobbs, later Elizabeth Keckly, was enslaved from 1835, beaten at Anna Burwell’s urging and subjected to years of sexual coercion before being sent back to Virginia in 1842; she bought her freedom in 1855.
Subject: Burwell School
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The Cane Creek Farmers and Mechanics Company starts a cotton mill
In 1837 the Cane Creek Farmers and Mechanics Company of Orange and Chatham Counties set up a cotton mill in southern Orange County, giving local farmers a place to have their raw cotton spun for sale.
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Trustees put the endowment into Bank of the State stock
After paying pressing debts the trustees bought 100 state certificates of $1,000 each and in 1837 exchanged them for 1,000 shares of the Bank of the State of North Carolina. The dividends, about eight percent, with tuition made up the university's income until the Civil War.
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Trustees raise a sandstone monument to Caldwell on the campus
The trustees adopted a design by Thomas Waitt, the master mechanic in charge of university repairs, for a shaft of local sandstone cut by J. B. Turney. It soon crumbled, and the marble slab meant for its Latin inscription arrived so badly cut that it was smashed, so the monument never bore a name.
People: Frederick Nash · William McPheeters
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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
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Orange County citizens gather at Mount Willing each January to celebrate Jackson's New Orleans victory
Citizens met at the Mount Willing crossroads in western Orange County on January 7, 1837, to mark Andrew Jackson's 1815 victory at New Orleans with toasts, cheers and gunfire. The Recorder called the gathering an annual custom by 1842, when about 200 attended, and reported it again in 1844 with a procession from the crossroads.
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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
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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.
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Caldwell's abandoned observatory is burned
The observatory, stripped of its instruments and judged not worth repairing, was set on fire, by a student according to tradition. President Swain reported it to the executive committee in December 1838 and asked whether to bring a criminal prosecution; the sound bricks went into a kitchen for Swain.
People: David L. Swain
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Elisha Mitchell builds stone walls around the campus
To keep out the cattle that ran at large, Mitchell, who had charge of the grounds, began in 1838 to quarry stone on university land and build rock walls around the campus buildings. By about the end of 1843 he had put up 212 rods of wall, and the trustees settled his account in 1844. Professors and villagers copied the walls around their own lots.
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Henry H. Prout becomes minister at St. Matthew's
Henry H. Prout took charge at St. Matthew's after William Mercer Green left for Chapel Hill. The parish's unbroken run of vestry records begins the same year.
Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church
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Isaiah Spencer builds the Hillsborough inn later called the Colonial Inn
Isaiah Spencer built the two-story inn on West King Street in 1838. Known locally as Spencer's Tavern and advertised as the Orange Hotel, a name it kept for fifty years, it was later the Occoneechee Hotel, the Corbinton Inn and, from 1946, the Colonial Inn. Local lore and a 1953 plate caption put it in the eighteenth century.
Subject: Colonial Inn
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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.
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Senior tutor becomes the university's librarian
Until 1838 the faculty chose a librarian every half year; after that the senior tutor held the office, and in 1838 Tutor William H. Owen, librarian since 1836, was voted a salary of $100 a year. Owen had counted about 1,900 books in the library in December 1836.
Subject: South Building · UNC Libraries
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Students' Ugly Club raids the campus at night
On the first Saturday night of the 1838 session a group calling itself the Ugly Club rang the college bell and made a din with horns and tin pans; nineteen were caught and made to sign pledges. That summer members blacked with lampblack insulted villagers, threatened faculty and damaged private property, and their leader was dismissed.
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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.
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Elizabeth Hobbs writes to her mother from Hillsborough
Elizabeth Hobbs wrote to her mother Agnes Hobbs in Virginia asking for news of home and saying she did not expect to see her family again. She wrote that Anna Burwell planned to go to Petersburg without her and that she had been told she would belong to Elizabeth Burwell once that daughter married. She also wrote that she had been a bridesmaid at Ann Nash's wedding a week before Christmas 1837.
Part of The Burwell School and the Burwell household · 37 events
People: Anna Burwell
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Frances Armistead Burwell is born to Robert and Anna Burwell of Hillsborough
Frances Armistead Burwell, called Fanny, was the fourth of the twelve children of Robert and Margaret Anna Burwell.
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Paul Cameron sells Burnside to Cadwallader Jones Jr.
Paul Cameron sold Burnside, his three-year-old Hillsborough house, to Cadwallader Jones Jr. for $2,000. Jones sold it back to Cameron in the 1850s when he ran into money trouble.
People: Cadwallader Jones
Subject: Burnside
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Navy captain Jesse D. Elliott gives Greek and Egyptian antiquities to the university
Writing from the USS Constitution at Norfolk, Elliott presented a piece of a column from Marathon and the top of a sarcophagus from Memphis, collected on his Mediterranean cruise, sent by the hand of Sailing Master William P. Muse.
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Trustees split ancient languages into separate chairs of Greek and Latin
In August 1838 the professorship of ancient languages was abolished and separate chairs of Greek and Latin created, with Manuel Fetter in Greek and John DeBerniere Hooper in Latin, while modern languages became a chair of French taught by Charles Marey. The faculty were also told to introduce civil engineering, which was not done.
People: Manuel Fetter · John DeBerniere Hooper
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The Hillsborough Recorder argues against dividing Orange County
The paper held that a large county was harder for any family, town or company to control and would keep the tax rate low.
Subject: Hillsborough Recorder
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Commissioners seek bids to repair the Eno bridge at Hillsborough
John U. Kirkland was one of five commissioners, with Cadwallader Jones, Edmund Strudwick, Josiah Turner and Catlett Campbell, who advertised for proposals to repair the bridge over the Eno at Hillsborough, with bids due in November.
People: Edmund Strudwick · Cadwallader Jones · Josiah Turner Jr.
Subject: Eno River road bridge, Hillsborough
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Seceders try to form a third literary society, the Delphian
Members who had left the Dialectic Society, joined by one from the Philanthropic, asked the trustees on November 29, 1838 to recognize a Delphian Society and give it a third of the society rooms. In January 1839 the trustees found a third society inexpedient, and after a hearing at Chapel Hill and an appeal by Charles Manly the Delphians disbanded.
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Alexander Dickson becomes owner of the house later called the Alexander Dickson House
Around 1839 Alexander Dickson acquired the late-Georgian frame farmhouse of about 1790 that stood near the later junction of Interstate 85 and NC 86 outside Hillsborough. Joseph E. Johnston used it as his headquarters in 1865, and it was moved to 150 East King Street in 1983.
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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.
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Lucy Watts buys the hotel on Lot #13
Lucy Watts, widow of Thomas D. Watts, bought the hotel lot and the western half of Lot #15 from Dr. James Webb and kept the house open as the Watts Hotel until 1846.
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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
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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.
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Sidney Mulholland Barbee and L. S. Tower buy Zachariah Trice's store
After Trice, like Utley before him, failed as a storekeeper, he sold the store and house to Barbee and Tower. Barbee moved into the house and the partners made the business pay, the start of Barbee's run as one of the street's main merchants.
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Faculty appoints the first chief marshal of commencement
For the commencement of June 27, 1839, attended by every living former governor but one, the faculty named the first chief marshal, Thomas Davis Meares, who had led the Delphian seceders. The choice of marshal soon passed to the students.
Subject: Gerrard Hall
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Elisha Mitchell preaches the university's first baccalaureate sermon
At the 1839 commencement Mitchell, chosen by the faculty, preached the first of the baccalaureate sermons to the graduating class. The choice of preacher was later given to the senior class.
Subject: Gerrard Hall
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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
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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
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A second stone chimney dated 1840 is added to the Strayhorn log house
The log house on the later Blackwood Farm has two stone chimneys side by side, a large one carved 1827 and a smaller one carved 1840, marking an enlargement of the house.
Subject: Blackwood Farm
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A stage inn, later the Snipes House, is built near White Cross
The Snipes House near White Cross began in the 1840s as a stagecoach inn, with paired chimneys at each end. It has since been altered.
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Dennis Heartt's family adds a two-story wing to Heartsease
After buying Polly Burke's Queen Street house in 1837, the family of Recorder editor Dennis Heartt named it Heartsease and built a two-story Greek Revival wing on its west side about 1840.
Subject: Heartsease
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Faculty keeps students out of the Log Cabin campaign
During the 1840 presidential campaign the faculty asked the county candidates not to speak at Chapel Hill and forbade three students chosen to manage a Whig dinner in the village to serve.
People: David L. Swain
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Fresh Treat riot and a textbook rebellion bring dismissals
In the fall of 1840 a drinking feast paid for by new students turned into a riot in which tutors' windows were broken, faculty were stoned, classrooms were wrecked and professors' horses were ridden, and soon after all the blackboards were burned. Several students were dismissed, three more for defying James Phillips's rule against books in recitation, and the trustees approved a faculty resolution to prosecute serious outrages in the courts.
People: James Phillips · David L. Swain · Elisha Mitchell
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Henry Evans, a free cabinetmaker of color, buys a shop lot on Churton Street
Evans paid $265 for old lot 6 on Churton Street, across from the courthouse then being built, and made furniture there, including chancel pieces for St. Matthew's, where he was baptized in 1842. The Bailey map marks his workshop.
Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough · St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church
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Hillsborough counts about 787 people, 333 of them enslaved
Reading the 1840 census against William Bailey's sketch map of the town in 1839, the Task Force counted about 787 people in the mapped households: 434 white, 333 enslaved and 20 free people of color. Dr. James Webb's household was the largest, and Dr. James S. Smith held the most people, 41.
People: James Webb · James Strudwick Smith
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Historic Rogers Road neighborhood
The Rogers-Eubanks area grew from Black-owned farms and sawmills after emancipation, and in 1972 the county landfill was placed beside it. Residents organized through RENA and the Rogers-Eubanks Coalition from 2007, the landfill closed in 2013, and the neighborhood won a community center in 2014 and the sewer extension in 2019.
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Jesse Hargrave opens a general store whose upstairs room serves the Methodists
Jesse Hargrave, in Chapel Hill since 1835, had a general store on Franklin Street by 1840. The Methodists, who had no church yet, held services in a second-floor room of the store. Hargrave bought the Yancey house the same year.
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John Berry adds a rear ell to Peter Brown Ruffin's house on West King Street
Builder John Berry added at least one two-story rear ell, with a Federal-style stair typical of his work, to the 1820s house that Peter Brown Ruffin owned in the 1840s. The house's first owner is unknown.
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Jones serves as a trustee of the University of North Carolina
Jones was a trustee of his own university from 1840 until 1857, the years he was practicing law at Hillsborough.
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Orange County's free Black population reaches 631
Free people of color in Orange grew from 101 in 1790 to 631 in 1840, the most of any Piedmont county, before hostility toward free Black residents cut the number to 481 or 487 in 1850.
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Swain asks architect David Paton about coating the college buildings
In 1840 President David L. Swain wrote to David Paton, the Scottish architect then finishing the State Capitol in Raleigh, about covering the brick college buildings with a tinted mix of cement, lime and water. The coating began the stucco finish the campus buildings wore for the rest of the century.
People: David Paton
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The Hogan-Rogers House was built on the Hogan plantation on Purefoy Road
The two-story frame house on Purefoy Road, on land now owned by St. Paul AME Church, dates to the 1840s or 1850s; the 1992 township survey recorded it as the Lloyd-Rogers House at 1612 Purefoy Road, the only house in the township on a raised basement. A fireplace in that basement led the Preservation Society's director to conclude that enslaved people on the Hogan plantation probably lived and worked there. INDY Week reported in 2012 that many Rogers-Eubanks residents descend from people held on the plantation.
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The Morris Lloyd family builds its first home, a log house near White Cross
A log house of about 1840 near White Cross was the first home of the Morris Lloyd family. When Lloyd later put up a much larger timber-frame house in front of it, the log house stayed in use behind it as a kitchen and sleeping space.
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The two-story Wrenn log house is built near Cedar Grove
A two-story log house now called the Rosie Wrenn House is built near Cedar Grove around 1840. A large frame addition went on the back around 1869; the house is on the Study List.
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Three planters grow nearly all of Orange County's cotton
The 1840 agricultural census recorded 253,437 pounds of cotton in Orange County, about 90 percent of it from the plantations of Paul Cameron, John Lipscomb and Fendal Southerland in the east of the county, worked by enslaved labor. The county also grew 262,882 pounds of tobacco that year, mostly in the north.
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William A. Graham of Hillsborough is elected to the United States Senate
After seven years in the House of Commons, twice as Speaker, Graham was sent to the U.S. Senate in 1840. He left when Democrats controlled the Assembly of 1842-1843.
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Four elders are ordained at New Hope
George A. Faucett, David Craig, William C. Blackwood and Joseph Kirkland were added to the session. All but Faucett were great-grandsons of William Craige; Kirkland was the father of the Rev. Alexander Kirkland.
Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church
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Drs. Johnston Blakeley Jones and George Moore open a medical practice and teach medicine
Dr. Jones moved to Chapel Hill and took over the old medicine shop, and with Dr. George Moore ran a practice that also trained medical students. The maps show the two doctors' office there through 1868.
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Elizabeth Hobbs gives birth to her son George in Hillsborough
Elizabeth Hobbs gave birth to her only child, George, whose father was Alexander Kirkland. George later took the surname Kirkland.
People: George Kirkland · Elizabeth Hobbs Keckly
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Walnut Grove Methodist Church begins
Walnut Grove Methodist Church began in 1841, when the circuit rider Sidney Bumpass started holding services there and the community soon built a log church on land given by Samuel Woods. By 1953 it had 400 members.
Subject: Walnut Grove Methodist Church
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Moses Ashley Curtis becomes rector of St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough
Curtis, an Episcopal priest who had taught at the church school in Raleigh, accepted a call to St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough in June 1841. He did his botanical and fungus research from the town while serving the parish.
Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church
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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.
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University buys the Vienna cabinet of minerals
Through John Randolph Clay, the American secretary of legation at Vienna, the university bought for about $1,500 a mineral collection that the curator of the emperor's cabinet valued at over 3,000 florins; Mitchell reported the invoice and insurance in November 1841. The trustees gave Clay an honorary master's degree in 1845.
People: Elisha Mitchell
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Chapel Hill Episcopalians buy a church lot from the university
William Mercer Green told the 1842 diocesan convention that the new Chapel Hill congregation, then fifteen communicants, had bought a lot from the university for its church and had let a contract for part of the building materials.
People: William Mercer Green
Subject: Chapel of the Cross
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Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 1, 2026.
