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Revolution and early republic · 1775–1799
- 1780s
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Indian families from Virginia settle the Texas community in northern Orange County
Charles Whitmore, Jesse Whitmore and Jacob Jeffries appear on the Orange County return used for the 1790 federal census, which was compiled from a tax list of 1787. Families of the same names had moved southwest from Greensville County in Virginia, and by 1820 the settlement later called Texas, or Pleasant Grove, was intact, with the Corn and Jeffries families holding tracts of several hundred acres.
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Richard Bennehan buys land from Judith Stagg and opens the Stagville Store
After William Johnston's death in 1785 Bennehan opened his own store, on land he bought from Judith Stagg, which became the Stagville Store.
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Samuel Strudwick's long Haw Fields lawsuits come to an end
Litigation between Strudwick and settlers on the Haw Fields tract, begun a few years after his 1766 meeting with them, ended in 1788 with Strudwick having lost about a third of the property.
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A county bridge over the Flat River at Island Ford is finished
James and John Carrington, appointed to let and oversee the work, reported the bridge on John Carrington's land completed to contract. The court allowed their account of 370 pounds.
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Hillsborough Convention declines to ratify the Constitution
Meeting at St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough, delegates defeated a motion to ratify the Constitution 184 to 84 on August 1, 1788. On August 2 they voted to neither ratify nor reject it until a declaration of rights and amendments went before Congress.
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The convention appoints a committee of privileges and elections with three members from each district
The convention set up a 27-member committee of privileges and elections, three from each district, which went on to rule on the disputed returns. Alexander Mebane of Orange County sat on it with Thomas Person, William R. Davie and James Iredell.
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The convention names a select committee to draft its rules of debate
On its first day the convention asked William R. Davie, Thomas Person, James Iredell, Elisha Battle, Richard Dobbs Spaight, Samuel Spencer and a member named McDonald to propose rules for its discussion of the Constitution.
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The ratification convention opens at Hillsborough and elects Governor Samuel Johnston its president
A majority of the elected delegates met at the church in Hillsborough and chose Governor Samuel Johnston president without a dissenting vote. They then named John Hunt and James Taylor clerks and appointed doorkeepers.
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The convention adopts eighteen rules for the conduct of its members
The rules committee reported and the convention agreed to its rules with one article left out. The rules let any two members call for a recorded yea-and-nay vote and excused Quaker members from the ban on wearing hats in the house.
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William Lenoir brings a petition against the Dobbs County election before the convention
On Lenoir's motion the convention read the Dobbs County return and a petition from county residents complaining of an illegal election, and sent both to the committee of elections. Richard Dobbs Spaight and Stephen Cabarrus added depositions and the sheriff's copy of the poll.
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The Grand Lodge of North Carolina holds its first regular meeting at Hillsborough
Seven months after Masonic delegates organized the Grand Lodge of North Carolina at Tarboro, it held its first regular meeting in Hillsborough, while the ratification convention was in session there.
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The convention has the state and federal founding documents read and receives news of two states' ratifications
On James Galloway's motion, seconded by Macon, the clerks read the state Bill of Rights and constitution, the Articles of Confederation, the act naming North Carolina's deputies to Philadelphia and the resolve of Congress sending the Constitution to the states. Johnston then laid before the members official accounts of ratification by Massachusetts and South Carolina.
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The convention unseats the Dobbs County delegates and voids both of the county's elections
The committee of elections reported that a riot at the first Dobbs poll had carried off the ballot box before all the ballots were counted, and that a majority of the county had not approved the second election the governor recommended. The convention agreed that the sitting members vacate their seats and that both elections were void.
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Willie Jones moves that the Hillsborough Convention vote on the Constitution at once
Jones moved that the question on the federal Constitution be put immediately, arguing that members had long since made up their minds and that a long sitting would waste public money. Thomas Person seconded him and James Iredell objected. The convention took up the Constitution clause by clause instead, debating it for eleven days.
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The convention resolves itself into a committee of the whole with Elisha Battle in the chair
After David Caldwell's attempt to fix governing maxims for the debate was set aside, the delegates went into committee of the whole, Elisha Battle presiding, and began reading the proposed Constitution clause by clause. The committee sat each day through July 31 except Sunday, July 27.
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The convention rules that Fayetteville has no right to a delegate and seats Thomas Devane for New Hanover
Adopting a second report from the committee of elections, the convention held that the town of Fayetteville had no right of representation, so John Ingram, returned for the town, could not sit. It seated Thomas Devane Sr. for New Hanover County, finding that ballots for him written two ways were meant for the same man.
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Governor Johnston moves in committee that the convention ratify and propose amendments afterward
When the committee of the whole reached the seventh article, read without objection, Johnston moved that North Carolina ratify the Constitution and at the same time propose amendments to be made by one of the methods it provides. His motion put the question of ratification before the committee for the first time.
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Willie Jones's previous question carries 183 to 84, setting aside Johnston's ratification motion
Jones answered Johnston by moving the previous question, meaning to bring in his own resolution calling for amendments before North Carolina adopted the Constitution. After long argument the committee carried it 183 to 84, and its chairman, James Kenan, reported resolutions not yet put in form.
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The committee of the whole adopts Willie Jones's resolution for a declaration of rights and amendments before ratification
After a day of debate on the resolution, Davie asked that the amendments be taken one at a time, but the committee approved the resolution as it stood by a large majority. Kenan reported it to the convention, which ordered it to lie on the table overnight.
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Iredell's motion to ratify and recommend amendments afterward is defeated 184 to 84
Declaring all debate at an end and the majority irresistible, James Iredell moved that the convention ratify the Constitution and recommend amendments afterward, so that the minority's view would stand on the journal. The yeas and nays were taken and the motion lost, 84 to 184.
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Orange County's delegates vote against ratifying the Constitution before amendments
In the 184 to 84 roll call that defeated Iredell's amendment to ratify, Alexander Mebane, William Mebane, William McCauley, Jonathan Lindley and William Shepperd of Orange all voted no, as did A. Tatom. The next day the same members voted to concur in the declaration of rights and amendments.
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The majority votes to keep Iredell's ratification motion off the journal, then agrees to let it be offered as an amendment
When Samuel Spencer moved to concur with the committee's report, Iredell moved to postpone it for his own resolution, and the house fell into confusion, with Whitmill Hill warning that the minority would secede. Willie Jones carried a motion that Iredell's motion had no right to a place on the journal, but while the yeas and nays were being taken the two sides agreed that Spencer would withdraw and Iredell would offer his resolution as an amendment.
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The convention adopts a declaration of rights and twenty-six amendments to be laid before Congress before ratification
On Thomas Person's motion the convention concurred with its committee of the whole, resolving that a declaration of rights of twenty articles and twenty-six amendments to the most ambiguous and exceptionable parts of the Constitution be laid before Congress and a convention of the states before North Carolina would ratify. On Willie Jones's motions it also recommended a state impost matching whatever Congress laid, urged redemption of the paper currency, and ordered the resolutions sent to Congress and the twelve other states.
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The convention directs its president to send its resolutions to Congress and the other twelve states
A unanimous resolution asked Samuel Johnston to forward the resolution on the Constitution, with the impost and paper money resolutions, to Congress and to the executives of the twelve other states.
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The convention recommends that North Carolina collect an impost for the use of Congress
Having neither ratified nor rejected the Constitution, the convention adopted by a large majority Willie Jones's resolution asking the legislature to lay a duty on goods imported into North Carolina whenever Congress laid an impost in the ratifying states, and to pay the money to Congress.
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The convention unanimously urges the Assembly to redeem the state's paper currency
On Willie Jones's motion, seconded by James Galloway, the convention asked the General Assembly to retire the state's paper currency as quickly as the people's circumstances allowed.
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The convention adjourns sine die after fixing the seat of government at Isaac Hunter's in Wake County
With the Constitution neither ratified nor rejected, the convention turned to its second charge, the seat of government. A ballot on August 2 fixed it at Isaac Hunter's in Wake County, and on Monday, August 4, after approving the ordinance for it, the convention adjourned sine die.
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Daniel Mallett buys the West King Street lots where Twin Chimneys stands
On September 4, 1788, Daniel Mallett bought Lots 21 and 31 on West King Street, the first deed since 1768 to mention buildings or improvements on the property now called Twin Chimneys.
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Cane Creek Baptist Church is organized
Thomas Cates and members of the Cates family organized Cane Creek Baptist Church, the oldest Baptist church on the chapter's list. It later planted Antioch and Mars Hill churches.
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Simon Lindley and Anna Stanley make their home in Orange County
After marrying Anna Stanley in South Carolina on July 14, 1789, Simon Lindley settled with her in Orange County. The family moved to Christian County, Kentucky, in the mid-1790s.
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The House pays the men who carried the state treasury out of Hillsborough
On November 10, 1789 the House of Commons voted to pay John Armstrong of Orange County three pounds for taking the Treasury's books and papers from Hillsborough to Fayetteville, and five pounds each to nine men of the Orange Company of Horse who guarded the money on the road. The treasurer's office had been kept in the town since 1786 in the confiscated store known as the Blue House, and its records had already been carted to Tarboro and back in 1787 and 1788.
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A second convention at Fayetteville ratifies the Constitution 195 to 77
Sixteen months after the Hillsborough convention withheld ratification, a second convention that opened at Fayetteville on the third Monday of November 1789 voted to adopt and ratify the Constitution, 195 to 77, and adjourned the next day. Congress had by then sent the states the amendments that became the Bill of Rights.
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A road jury reroutes the road from Hillsborough to General Person's around a hill
On Theophilus Thompson's petition, a jury of twelve laid off a new line taking the road from town to General Person's around a hill. The court ordered Thompson to open it and Richard Williams and his hands to keep it in repair.
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The founding of the university and Chapel Hill
The General Assembly chartered the university on December 11, 1789. Meeting at Hillsborough in August 1792, the trustees voted to build within fifteen miles of Cyprett's Bridge, and that November their commissioners chose New Hope Chapel Hill. The Old East cornerstone was laid October 12, 1793, and the first student, Hinton James, arrived February 12, 1795.
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University of North Carolina is chartered
Meeting in Fayetteville, the General Assembly adopted William R. Davie's bill chartering the University of North Carolina. The act named some forty trustees and, instead of an appropriation, gave the school escheated property and uncollected debts; the trustees later placed it in southern Orange County, where Chapel Hill grew up around it.
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Benjamin Smith gives the university 20,000 acres of western land
Davie announced at the trustees' first meeting that Smith of Brunswick County had given land he received for Revolutionary service, in what became Obion County, Tennessee. It sold some 25 years later for $14,000, and Smith Hall, now the Playmakers Theatre, bears his name.
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The university's trustees hold their first meeting, at Fayetteville
Senate Speaker Charles Johnson chaired the meeting, and Alexander Mebane and James Hogg attended for Orange County. Davie and Hogg were charged with printing the two subscription papers, one under the charter's terms and one for outright gifts.
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The Assembly grants the university the proceeds of escheated property
Alongside the charter, a second act gave the new university the proceeds from property that fell to the state for want of heirs.
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The Assembly lets Orange County's wardens of the poor build a poorhouse
A bill passed in December 1789 gave the wardens of the poor of Orange, Franklin and Surry counties power to put up poorhouses. The book cannot say whether Orange built one then or only in the 1820s.
- 1790s
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Jacob Lake ends his ministry to New Hope
Lake followed DeBow and served New Hope with the Hawfields and Eno churches in the same way until 1790. He left Orange Presbytery in 1794 after about ten years in it.
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The county tax list counts 36 white polls and 82 taxable enslaved people in Hillsborough town
Orange County's 1790 tax list returned 2,272 polls and 406,106 acres across its eight districts, with a separate list for Hillsborough town showing 36 white polls against 82 black polls. William Hooper was charged for 22 of them, John Taylor for 10 and Francis Childs for 5.
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The first federal census counts 2,060 enslaved people in Orange County
The first federal census counted 12,216 people in Orange County: 10,055 white residents, 2,060 enslaved people and 101 other free persons. No other Piedmont county held as many enslaved people, and Richard Bennehan (24) and William Hooper (22, in Hillsborough) were the largest holders.
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Fire destroys the greater part of Hillsborough
A letter written at Hillsborough early in March 1790 reported that the greatest part of the town had been destroyed by fire a few days earlier, news that reached New Bern by March 18 and was printed in the State Gazette of North Carolina on March 27. The district and county courthouse was among the buildings lost, the courts moved into a private house, and the General Assembly ordered a replacement built on the same lot before the year was out.
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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.
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William Hooper dies in Hillsborough
Hooper, one of North Carolina's three signers of the Declaration of Independence, died at Hillsborough in his forty-ninth year and was buried there.
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William Lenoir is chosen the first president of the university's trustees
At the board's second meeting, held at Fayetteville, the trustees made William Lenoir of Wilkes County their president and elected State Comptroller John Craven treasurer. Lenoir soon gave up the chair and Governor Alexander Martin succeeded him.
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General Assembly orders a new district courthouse built at Hillsborough
Alexander Mebane of Orange brought in the bill, and the act named William Watters, Absalom Tatom and Jeduthan Harper commissioners to raise a courthouse on the lot where the burned one had stood and to sell off its brick and remains. It was paid for by a poll and land tax on Orange and by lighter taxes on Wake, Chatham, Caswell, Granville and Randolph, the counties of the Hillsborough district.
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The university's treasury receives its first money
John Harvey, clerk of the Perquimans court, paid over $2,706.41 recovered from a delinquent state collecting officer under the arrearages the Assembly had granted the university. As the charter required, the trustees invested it in United States stock.
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Eagle Lodge is chartered at Hillsborough
Eagle Lodge No. 19 was chartered at Hillsborough in 1791, among the first lodges under the Grand Lodge of North Carolina, with George Doherty as its first secretary. It stayed active until 1799 and then lay dormant until the masons revived it in 1819 under a new charter and a new number.
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John B. Tenney is said to build a farmhouse northeast of the village
Local tradition credits John B. Tenney with building the one-story frame farmhouse now at 381 Tenney Circle around 1791, and says it stayed in the family into the mid-twentieth century and took in boarders early in the 1800s.
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Trustees adopt a university seal showing Apollo and the rising sun
A committee of James Hogg, Alfred Moore and John Haywood, given sole power to choose a device for the corporation's seal, picked the face of Apollo with the rising sun, meant to stand for the dawn of higher education in the state.
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The Assembly lends the university trustees 5,000 pounds for its buildings
Trustees meeting at New Bern named a committee to seek the loan, and Davie argued for it before the Commons. It passed 57 to 53 in the Commons and 28 to 21 in the Senate.
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Catherine Lockhart's burial in 1792 is the earliest known grave in the Lockhart-Phillips family cemetery
The small walled cemetery on East Tryon Street holds seventeen marked graves; the earliest is probably that of Mrs. Catherine Lockhart, who died in 1792. Saddler James Phillips, a founder of the Presbyterian church, probably built the fieldstone wall around 1820 and was buried there in 1847.
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David Faucette buys the home tract and a grist mill from his father
David Faucette paid his father Richard 400 pounds for two adjoining tracts of 100 acres where he was already living, with a grist mill and other improvements. He later built the two-story frame house that still stands above the Eno.
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Faucett's grist mill is working at the Eno ford northwest of Hillsborough
The county's architectural survey records the Faucett Mill in operation by at least 1792, at a place where a wagon road forded the Eno River northwest of Hillsborough, and says it may have been built as early as the 1760s by the Quaker milling family of Isaac Lowe. Mills of this kind ground the corn and wheat that Orange farmers hauled north to Petersburg or south toward the Cape Fear, and doubled as gathering places; the Faucett family later added a house that served as an inn and tavern.
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Hillsborough builders add a Federal-style house at Cain's Pleasant Grove
The Cains commissioned the Hillsborough builders Martin Palmer and Samuel Hopkins to build a second, Federal-style house about ten feet from the original 1775 Georgian house at Pleasant Grove.
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James Hogg of Hillsborough gathers Orange County land and money for the university site
Hogg, a Hillsborough merchant who sat on the commission that fixed the university's place, brought in pledges of land and about 1,600 dollars from people in Orange County for the New Hope Chapel Hill site. The ground chosen lay roughly twelve miles from Hillsborough on the road running from Petersburg through the town and on south to Pittsboro.
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The House of Commons rejects a bill to withhold the university's loan
John Leigh of Edgecombe County had offered the bill on the last day of 1791, two days after the loan passed.
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Gilbert Strayhorn deeds two hundred acres to New Hope church
Soon after Lake left, the aged Gilbert Strayhorn gave two hundred acres 'to the subscribers of the church and their successors.' Every New Hope church stood on this land, and seventy acres of it were still the congregation's in 1891.
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Meeting in Hillsborough, UNC's trustees adopt the ordinance placing the university within fifteen miles of Cyprett's Bridge
Twenty-five of the university's forty trustees gathered at Hillsborough on August 2, 1792. They balloted for Cyprett's Bridge as the center point on August 3 and on August 4 adopted the ordinance fixing a fifteen-mile radius and naming the site commissioners. In early November a commission chaired by Frederick Hargett toured the area and recommended New Hope Chapel Hill in southern Orange County.
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Willie Jones views New Hope Chapel Hill as a university commissioner and signs for the site
Jones was one of six commissioners the trustees sent to fix the seat of the university. On November 5, 1792 he handed the commissioners Joel Lane's offer of 640 acres in Wake County; the commissioners then went on to view New Hope Chapel Hill in Orange County, where they took offers of 1,390 acres and about 798 pounds. Jones signed the report.
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Trustees fix the university at Chapel Hill and list its Orange County land donors
Meeting on December 5, 1792, the trustees voted unanimously to place the university at New Hope Chapel Hill and recorded nine donors of Orange County land, among them Matthew McCauley (150 acres) and William McCauley (100 acres). Each donor could have one student educated free of tuition.
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A trustee committee under Samuel McCorkle reports the university's first plan of studies
Named at New Bern on December 4, 1792, the committee proposed teaching languages with English first, history, mathematics, natural philosophy, botany, agriculture and architecture, and buying scientific apparatus. A newspaper notice of December 12 inviting teachers for this course drew no applicants.
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James Hogg moves across the Eno to Poplar Hill
Hogg, who owned the land along the south bank of the Eno opposite the town, lived east of Hillsborough on the later Cameron property until 1793 or 1794. He then moved across the river to Poplar Hill, later the site of Julian S. Carr's Occoneechee Farm.
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The building committee buys Hardy Morgan's 80-acre tract beside the university site
Finding that Morgan's land ran too close to the planned buildings, the committee bought the 80 acres for $200. Battle took it to be the oldest cleared land on the university grounds, lying east of the buildings along the Raleigh road.
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William Kirkland opens his own store in Hillsborough
William Kirkland, who left Ayr, Scotland, to work in the mercantile trade, had married and opened his own store in Hillsborough by 1793.
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Hillsborough gets the first post office in Orange County
David Ray was appointed Hillsborough's first postmaster about December 18, 1792, and the office appears in post office lists from March 20, 1793, the first in the county; Chapel Hill followed on July 1, 1795. Letters were left at the office for recipients to collect, and for decades it moved from one Churton Street or King Street business to another.
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Building commissioners contract with George Daniel for 350,000 bricks for the university
Meeting at Hillsborough, the commissioners engaged Daniel, of Orange County, to make and deliver the bricks at forty shillings per thousand.
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James Patterson of Chatham County is hired to build the university's first building
The commissioners contracted with Patterson for 2,500 pounds to build a house about 96 feet long and 40 feet wide. It became Old East, the first building raised on the campus of a state university in the United States.
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Orange County leads the state in pledges to the university
By July, Davie and Willie Jones reported 909 pounds 4 shillings pledged in Orange against 804 pounds in Halifax, out of $6,723 statewide. William Cain and Walter Alves of Orange were among the three largest subscribers at $200 each, and Jesse Neville of Orange gave $100.
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Commissioners mark out the sites of the university's buildings and grounds
Davie, Alfred Moore, Alexander Mebane and Thomas Blount met on the Chapel Hill tract and fixed the building sites, with land set aside for offices, avenues and ornamental grounds.
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Old East cornerstone is laid
William Richardson Davie and fellow trustees laid Old East’s cornerstone; October 12 is observed as University Day.
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The first town lots in Chapel Hill are sold at auction
After the Old East cornerstone was laid, the commissioners auctioned the village lots on the spot; 29 lots brought more than 1,500 pounds, and one was held back for the president's house.
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Richard Bennehan gives shells for mortar for Old East
Bennehan donated fifty bushels of shells for making mortar for the university's first building. In 1796 he gave an air pump and thirty-two books.
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Alexander Mebane takes his seat as Orange County's first member of Congress
Alexander Mebane of the Hawfields, a former Orange County sheriff, sits in the Third Congress, the first on the book's list of congressmen from Orange.
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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.
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Trustees adopt the plan of instruction and set the university's opening for January 15
The board ordered the McCorkle committee's scheme into effect, fixed tuition by subject and created a presiding professor at $300 a year plus fees. It also resolved to build a steward's house before the opening and set a bill of fare for Commons with no drink but water.
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The General Assembly grants the university unsold confiscated lands
The act gave the trustees confiscated Loyalist lands still unsold, chiefly the forfeited claims of Henry Eustace McCulloch, but sent anything above $20,000 to the state. The university's suits to collect under it angered landholders in Mecklenburg and nearby counties.
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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.
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Black workers and campus labor
Enslaved men built and served the university from its first buildings, Wilson Caldwell led its labor force after Reconstruction, and the janitors organized an association in 1930 that became a CIO local in 1942. The university named the laundry for Kennon Cheek and Rebecca Clark in 1998, dedicated the Unsung Founders Memorial in 2005 and published the names of 119 enslaved workers in 2018.
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Enslaved men owned by contractor James Patterson paint the roof of Old East
James Patterson, the slaveholding contractor who built Old East between 1793 and 1795, reported in a 1795 letter that several of his own enslaved workers had painted the building's roof. Their names were not recorded.
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James Mebane serves as the first president of the Dialectic Society
Orange County student James Mebane is the first president of the university's Dialectic Society, one of the two student debating societies formed in the university's first year.
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James Strayhorn, John Strain and John Freeland become ruling elders at New Hope
Three men were ordained and installed as elders about 1795, joining James Hart. The four made up the whole session when the church was reorganized in 1820.
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New Hope builds a parsonage with a farm on the church tract
At William F. Thompson's urging the congregation built a parsonage where William C. Claytor later lived and laid off much of Gilbert Strayhorn's two-hundred-acre gift as a farm to go with it.
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Old East is finished as a two-story dormitory of sixteen rooms
The university's first building was ready in 1795 as a two-story brick dormitory with sixteen rooms. Its plan is in effect two center-hall houses joined end to end, with a fireplace for every room, and it kept that height until a third story went on in 1822.
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The university finishes a house for its president at Cameron Avenue and Columbia Street
A Federal side-hall house for the head of the university was completed in 1795 at the northeast corner of what are now Cameron Avenue and South Columbia Street. Each of its two bedrooms had a pair of built-in closets, uncommon at the time.
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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.
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William Nunn buys James Patterson's inn and adds a tavern
Captain William Nunn, a Revolutionary War officer and former Orange County sheriff, bought Patterson's inn. He and his wife Betsy enlarged the rooms for lodgers and added a tavern, and the business stayed in the Nunn family for more than half a century.
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UNC opens to students
The University formally opened at Chapel Hill on a cold, rainy January 15, 1795, with Governor Richard Dobbs Spaight and trustees present, but no students had yet arrived. Hinton James came on February 12, and by March two professors taught 41 students; UNC was the only public university to graduate students in the eighteenth century.
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Trustees adopt the university's first by-laws
Drafted by Samuel McCorkle and amended in committee, the by-laws set four classes, prayers at sunrise and evening, a monitor in each class to report absences and misconduct, and punishments from admonition to expulsion. Students could not keep liquor in their rooms or gamble.
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Hinton James arrives as UNC’s first student
Hinton James became UNC’s first student on February 12, 1795.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Samuel Hopkins opens the accounts of Chapel Hill's first post office
Samuel Hopkins, the first postmaster appointed for Chapel Hill, files his first account with the Post Office as of July 1, 1795, the earliest record of the village post office.
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UNC holds its first public examination, announced by Governor Spaight
The University's first public examination took place at Chapel Hill on July 13, 1795, after notice appeared in the newspapers over the signature of Governor Richard Dobbs Spaight. The governor's wife, Mary Spaight, was the only woman present, and about a dozen men attended, including William R. Davie, James Hogg, Alfred Moore and James Glasgow.
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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.
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Joseph Green becomes the first student dismissed from the university
Green and Frank Burton went to a cotton-picking frolic after being forbidden. Burton accepted public admonition, but Green refused and was dismissed by the faculty under David Ker.
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Orange Presbytery holds its earliest recorded meeting at New Hope
The oldest surviving Orange Presbytery minutes record a meeting at New Hope church, the first after Concord Presbytery was set off. James Bowman was moderator, William McGee was ordained with William F. Thompson, John Gillispie was licensed, and two candidates, Robert Foster and Robert Tate, sat part of their trials.
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William F. Thompson is ordained at New Hope as its first pastor
Thompson, said to be a native of Connecticut, was ordained at New Hope and apparently installed as its pastor at the same meeting, the first pastor the church had. Earlier ministers had served it as supplies alongside the Hawfields and Eno.
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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.
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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.
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John Cabe, Gilbert Strayhorn's son-in-law, sits in the legislature
John Cabe, who married Strayhorn's daughter Mary and settled near New Hope, served in the legislature in 1796.
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Richard Stanford begins about twenty years as congressman for the Hillsborough district
Richard Stanford, who was not born in Orange, won the Hillsborough district seat in Congress in 1796 and kept it for about twenty years. He started out a Jeffersonian Republican and later broke with Jefferson.
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The two student societies stage a play in place of their regular exercises
Both societies voted to give up their usual exercises for a dramatic performance, probably urged on by tutor William Richards, a former strolling actor, and bought scenery at Williamsboro. One member who failed without excuse to take his two parts was expelled from his society.
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Thomas Person gives $1,050 to complete the university chapel, later named Person Hall
Trustee Thomas Person gave $1,050 to finish the chapel then under construction at Chapel Hill. The trustees thanked him for his liberality and the building, completed in 1798, was named Person Hall.
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Trustees forbid students to visit village taverns without leave and allow dancing lessons
Meeting at the July examinations, the board barred tavern visits without a professor's permission and gave the preparatory teachers authority over all students. The same meeting let students attend dancing schools with faculty consent.
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David Gillespie receives the earliest document resembling a university diploma
Leaving to help Andrew Ellicott fix the southern boundary of the United States, Gillespie was given a certificate of his studies signed by professors Charles W. Harris and Samuel Holmes and teacher William Richards. Governor Samuel Ashe attached a certificate under the state seal.
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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.
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James O'Kelly organizes Damascus Christian Church
James O'Kelly, who had broken with the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1792, organized Damascus Christian Church near the Orange, Durham and Chatham lines and served as its first pastor.
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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.
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Student John Pettigrew draws Old East
Pettigrew sent his father a colored drawing of the building, then two stories high and two-thirds its later length, with a white band between the stories and a platform at each door. Battle reproduced it as the frontispiece view of Old East.
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The Assembly orders the sale of the ruinous St. Matthew's church building
An act of 1797 authorised the sheriff to sell the old Anglican church on Lot 98, described as in a ruinous and decayed situation and not used for divine worship for a number of years. The building went soon afterwards, and around 1800 the town had no church at all.
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The Haw River Circuit takes the place of the New Hope Circuit in serving Hillsborough Methodists
In 1797 the Methodists replaced the New Hope Circuit with the Haw River Circuit, whose preachers then served the Hillsborough community. The Hillsborough church organized about 1807 belonged to this circuit.
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Mumps spreads among the students
John Pettigrew wrote home that thirty or forty students had the mumps, none badly. Smallpox brought by a man from Norfolk was seven or eight miles away, but Battle says it never reached Chapel Hill.
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Pleasant Henderson is chosen steward of the university
Pleasant Henderson moved from Mt. Pleasant to Chapel Hill in 1797 and was chosen steward of the University of North Carolina, following John Taylor in the post. A UNC Libraries exhibit records that he owned nineteen enslaved people.
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Charles Gerrard leaves the university his Tennessee lands
Gerrard, a Revolutionary lieutenant living in Edgecombe County, bequeathed his 2,560-acre service tract on the Cumberland River below Nashville, asking that it stay university property forever, along with warrants for 11,364 more acres. The gift emboldened the trustees to begin the Main Building.
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Duncan Cameron sets up as a lawyer at Hillsborough
Cameron was admitted to the North Carolina bar in 1798 and, after a brief practice at Martinsville in Guilford County, established himself as a successful attorney at Hillsborough. A rivalry with another young Hillsborough lawyer, William Duffy, followed.
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Eagle Lodge meets in Chapel Hill and initiates Joseph Caldwell
By special dispensation, Hillsborough's Eagle Lodge met in Chapel Hill and made Masons of Joseph Caldwell, then presiding professor of the university, and three other faculty members.
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George Clarke is buried in the ground that becomes the Chapel Hill town cemetery
The oldest dated stone in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery, at Raleigh and Country Club roads, marks the 1798 grave of George Clarke, a member of the university's Philanthropic Society. It shows the burial ground in use by that year.
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The legislature authorizes another district jail at Hillsborough
The act provided for a new jail to serve the Hillsborough district.
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UNC holds its first commencement
UNC’s first graduating class included Hinton James and six other students.
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The cornerstone of the Main, later South, Building is laid
A special Grand Lodge of Masons met at the university to lay the cornerstone of the principal building. Its walls rose a story and a half and then stood roofless for years for want of money.
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William Courtney mortgages a man named Africa to William Cain
William Courtney of Orange County pledged an enslaved man known as Africa to William Cain as security for 200 pounds, the bill of sale to be void if Courtney repaid the debt with interest by the following February 28.
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A free Black distiller works on East King Street as the county counts its Black residents
Africa Parker, a free Black man, was running a distillery on East King Street near William Courtney's house in Hillsborough in 1799. The census the next year counted 3,327 enslaved people and 100 free Black people in Orange County alongside 12,222 white residents.
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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.
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John Taylor Sr. opens a tavern on Franklin Street
By 1799 the former steward had put up a tavern on Lot #13, which he had bought in 1796. The lot stayed in the hotel trade for decades: Alsobrook's hotel, the Watts Hotel, the Eagle Hotel and the Union Hotel all stood on it.
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Richard Bennehan builds the Stagville house
Bennehan built the house he called Stagville. By then he owned about 4,000 acres, worked by 44 or more enslaved people. The same year he joined the university's board of trustees.
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Samuel Chinny buys the East Tryon Street land later called BelleVue
Samuel Chinny bought land at the east edge of town that had first belonged to James Hogg, and probably built the house that became the eastern part of the Phillips-Hill-Webb House; a deed of 1801 mentions a house on the lot.
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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.
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The legislature lets the county court levy a tax for public buildings
The court could set the rate it needed for improvements, within caps on polls, land and town property.
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The Philanthropic Society adopts rules for marking its members' graves
When its minutes resumed in January 1799, after George Clarke's burial, George Long of Halifax County moved that the society honor members buried at Chapel Hill. Three weeks later a committee called for a black-painted oak or poplar railing around each grave with the name, date and society lettered in white, and a black armband worn for three months.
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William F. Thompson deeds a hundred acres of New Hope church land to John Strayhorn
As he was leaving, Thompson sold about a hundred acres of the church tract to Gilbert Strayhorn's son John, stating that Gilbert had conveyed the land to him. No such conveyance was ever seen or recorded, and Craig judged the deed a forgery; the land left the church's hands.
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William F. Thompson resigns as pastor of New Hope
Thompson gave up the charge at a called meeting of Orange Presbytery at Cross Roads church and left the presbytery's bounds. In April 1802 the presbytery suspended him from the ministry for false charges he had made against it.
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Hillsborough's Dr. James Webb helps organize the first state medical society
Dr. James Webb, the leading physician in Orange, was among the small group who organized the North Carolina Medical Society at Raleigh on December 17, 1799; its charter was dated December 23. Webb served as one of its censors, who examined men wishing to practice.
Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
- 1800s
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A great camp-meeting revival is held at New Hope
People came from long distances and camped on the church grounds for days, and the revival spread into other neighborhoods. Craig thought it did much to prompt the building of a third church.
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A saddle-notched log house is built on the Webb Farm on St. Mary's Road
The Webb Farm's one-room log house, with a fieldstone chimney, dates from the early nineteenth century; a two-story frame house was built across its front late in the century with no inside door between them.
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Hillsborough counts 474 residents
The 1800 count put the county town at 474 people, small in number though it ranked with Salisbury and Salem among the region's main towns.
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The General Assembly takes back the university's confiscated lands and escheats
Amid hostility to the university as a Federalist school, and anger at its suits over old McCulloch claims, the legislature repealed the 1794 grant of confiscated property and the 1789 grant of escheats. The courts later held the escheat repeal unconstitutional in University v. Foy.
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The Gosling log house is built in eastern Orange County
A one-room log house, later known as the Gosling Log House, is raised in eastern Orange County in the early 1800s. The survey placed it on the state Study List.
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The John Paisley Hughes House is built at Cedar Grove
The oldest part of the John Paisley Hughes House at Cedar Grove dates to the early nineteenth century. It was enlarged around 1860 and again around 1880, and is on the Study List.
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The Patterson family builds a Federal-style house near Mount Moriah
A two-story center-passage house with Federal mantels was built for the Pattersons, who owned much land and the Patterson grist mill. Colonial Revival changes, probably in the 1920s or later, and 20th-century additions have hidden its early form.
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The one-story house later called the Nathaniel Rochester House is built on West King Street
A one-story frame house, close in detail to the Ruffin-Roulhac House, was built at 225 West King Street around 1800; tradition makes Nathaniel Rochester, founder of Rochester, New York, an early owner.
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William Cain is the largest landowner in Orange County, enslaving 30 people
By 1800 William Cain owned 4,417 acres, the most of any landowner in Orange County, and enslaved 30 people at Pleasant Grove, a number he increased to 95 by 1830.
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Duncan Cameron builds a law office on Margaret Lane, later the Nash Law Office
Lawyer Duncan Cameron built a one-story Federal-style law office on his lots on Margaret Lane. In 1807 he sold the property to Frederick Nash, who kept his practice there and taught law students in it until his death in 1858.
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Students stone steward Pleasant Henderson's house
Complaints about the food at Steward's Hall under stewards John Taylor and Pleasant Henderson helped fuel the student uprising of 1799. In 1801 Henderson's house was stoned, and he did not reapply for the stewardship.
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The Paisley-Rice log house is built near Mebane
A log dwelling now called the Paisley-Rice Log House went up in western Orange County near Mebane, probably for the Rev. William D. Paisley after he bought the 200-acre tract from James Davis on February 7, 1801. It is one of the few county log houses already on the National Register by 1993.
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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.
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The university raises money for the Main Building by lottery
The legislature of 1801 let the trustees raise up to $4,000 by lotteries. Two drawings, the first of 1,500 five-dollar tickets and the second in 1802, cleared $5,080.81, though agents were slow to account for tickets.
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William Courtney Jr. deeds the Yellow House on East King Street to his brother Joseph
A 1801 deed from William Courtney Jr. to his brother Joseph is the first to call the property the "yellow house", the earliest evidence of a house on the lot. The two-story Georgian house still stands at 141 East King Street.
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William D. Paisley becomes pastor of the Hawfields and Cross Roads churches
After serving the Union and Buffalo churches in Guilford County, Paisley took charge of the Hawfields and Cross Roads Presbyterian churches near present Mebane in 1801 and stayed until 1818. The Hawfields church historian credits him with organizing the first camp meeting in North Carolina there during the Great Revival.
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William D. Paisley buys the farm where the Paisley-Rice log house stands
The Presbyterian minister William D. Paisley bought a 200-acre tract from James Davis in February 1801. Local tradition and the nomination hold that he built the dovetailed log house on this land in the early 1800s.
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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.
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Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies
Hillsborough Academy reopened under Andrew Flinn in 1801 and grew under William J. Bingham, who left in 1844 to open his own school at the Oaks. The Burwell School for girls ran from 1837 to 1857. The Nash and Kollock School and Hillsborough Military Academy opened in 1859; the military academy sent its cadets home in May 1865.
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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.
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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.
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James H. Bowman becomes stated supply at New Hope
Bowman, whose charge in 1799 was Eno and Little River, went west as a missionary in 1800, returned in the fall of 1801 and probably came to New Hope in 1802. He preached and taught school there until he left the presbytery in 1815, and was perhaps the first to preach in the third church.
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Pleasant Henderson gives up the stewardship and opens a store
Henderson gave up the university stewardship in 1802 and declined the trusteeship he was elected to. About this time he went into business as Henderson and Searcy, and he kept his Chapel Hill residence while serving as clerk of the House of Commons from 1807 to 1830.
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William Gaston serves as a trustee of the university
William Gaston sat on the university's board of trustees from 1802 until his death in January 1844, some forty-two years.
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Women of Raleigh give the university a new pair of globes
Hearing that the university's globes were too worn to use, sixteen Raleigh women, among them Sarah Polk, Anna White and Eliza Haywood, sent a new pair twelve inches across with a compass to Joseph Caldwell. The letter was written by Winifred Gales.
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Edmund Strudwick is born at Long Meadow
Edmund Strudwick, later a physician and surgeon, was born on March 25, 1802, at Long Meadow, five miles north of Hillsborough. He went to Bingham School and earned his medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania.
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A student duel brings expulsions and a trustee order against dueling
Quarrels in the spring of 1803 led to challenges and at least one meeting. Samuel G. Hopkins was expelled for fighting and John H. Hawkins for acting as second, and the trustees ordered that anyone in a duel be expelled and handed to the civil authorities.
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Hatter Henry Shutt buys the West King Street lot where the Colonial Inn now stands
In 1803 Henry Shutt bought the vacant lot and built a house there, living in it and running a hatter's shop. The lot was offered at public sale in 1820, and Isaiah Spencer built his inn on it in 1838.
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James Hogg sells Poplar Hill to his son-in-law William Norwood
James Hogg, who had built the house later called Poplar Hill on an 1,100-acre tract on the south bank of the Eno, sells the estate in 1803 to his son-in-law William Norwood. It later became the home of John Wall Norwood.
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John McCauley builds a store on Franklin Street
By 1803 John McCauley had a store on the northeast corner of Lot #11, one of the village's first. James Hogg's large house, built on the same part of the lot a year or two later, may have grown out of it.
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Mount Carmel Baptist Church is organized at Pritchard's Mill
Mount Carmel Baptist Church began at Pritchard's Mill in 1803 and moved to its later site in 1873, when it built the church still in use in 1953.
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William Norwood gives $100 toward finishing South Building
William Norwood of Hillsborough contributed $100 toward finishing South Building at the university.
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Gilbert Strayhorn, a founder and first elder of New Hope church, dies
Strayhorn died at 88 and was buried in the old New Hope graveyard, next to the church he had helped found on his own land.
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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.
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Women of New Bern give the university a quadrant
Sixteen New Bern women, among them Susan Gaston and Mary Nash, sent a quadrant for the philosophical class to Joseph Caldwell. In his reply Caldwell blamed the university's unpopularity partly on disappointment over costs and on student misconduct.
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Court rulings force the university to give up its McCulloch collections
In Ray's Executors v. McCulloch and Trustees v. Rice, the Court of Conference held that the 1783 peace treaty protected Henry Eustace McCulloch's claims. The General Assembly then ordered the money collected under the 1794 act refunded to the state treasury in trust for the debtors who had paid.
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James Hogg builds a large house on Franklin Street
James Hogg acquired the eastern half of Lot #11 from William R. Davie when his son Gavin entered the university, and built a ten-room house there. Debts forced him to sell in 1806, though he kept living in it; the house later passed to merchants and became the core of the Central Hotel.
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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.
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Richard Henderson becomes head of Hillsborough Academy
In 1804 Hillsborough Academy announced Richard Henderson, formerly a professor at the university, as its head.
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Suit by William Kirkland and others leads to the sale of Hannah and her children
Legal proceedings brought by William Kirkland, Catlett Campbell, Jacob Greer and Isaac Mordecai against Robert Bell placed Hannah and her children Jenny and David in the hands of the sheriff. Sheriff Samuel Turrentine sold the three at public auction at the Hillsborough Market House to Duncan Cameron for 200 pounds.
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Trustees make Greek a requirement for a degree
After electing Caldwell president, the board ruled that no degree be granted without Greek, set Greek tests for entering the junior and freshman classes and repealed the degree for English and the sciences. It also ordered the president to wear a black gown at commencement.
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Nervous fever kills a student
A fever the doctors called nervous fever struck the university early in 1804. A student named Philips, of Edgecombe County, died and Lemuel Sessoms was not expected to live, and the dance planned for Washington's Birthday was dropped.
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The Hillsborough Races are run over three days
The Hillsborough Races opened on a Thursday in October 1804 with three-mile heats, followed by two-mile and one-mile heats on the next two days. A Raleigh paper printed the winners, among them General Benton's Junius and Major Strudwick's Tom Jefferson.
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James Hogg dies and is buried in Hillsborough
James Hogg, the Scottish merchant who came to North Carolina in 1774 and pressed the trustees to put the university at Chapel Hill, died on November 9, 1804. He is buried in Hillsborough two blocks north of the site of his state highway marker on Churton Street.
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A bill in the House would let Hillsborough's commissioners enclose the public spring
Mr. Holt brought in a bill in the House of Commons letting the commissioners of Hillsborough enclose the public spring lot and the school house lot, and also the churchyard, and improve them.
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A brick house is built on West Queen Street for Rhody Berry, mother of builder John Berry
The one-and-a-half-story Federal house, the oldest surviving brick dwelling in the original town, was built about 1805 for Mrs. Rhody Berry. Tradition credits her son John Berry, but he was seven that year, and the 2014 nomination suggests neighbor Samuel Hancock, the brickmason who later became his partner.
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Betsy Nunn carries on the tavern and inn after her husband's death
When William Nunn died, his widow Betsy kept the tavern lot and went on running the inn. She held it until her death in her nineties, and the frontage maps label it Nunn's Tavern and Inn through 1848.
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New Hope builds its third church
The third house of worship went up about two hundred yards southeast of the second, beside a spring that rises from rock. It had a high pulpit at the west end and a gallery at the east end for Black worshippers, and it stood until fire destroyed it in 1862.
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The General Assembly restores the university's escheats
The bill passed the House 82 to 35 and the Senate 32 to 23, returning escheated property whose Tennessee land warrants later became the university's endowment. Maurice Moore, one of the first students, was among its strongest advocates.
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The governor becomes ex officio president of the university's trustees
The act restoring the escheats made the governor president of the board and gave the General Assembly, on joint ballot, the power to fill vacancies. A trustee absent from meetings for two years could lose his seat.
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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.
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Trustees repeal the monitor ordinance that set off the student secession
The 1805 law made student monitors swear to report every breach of the rules, and forty-five students signed a remonstrance and left when it was only softened. The board repealed it unanimously in December, but few of the seceders came back.
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Cane Creek Baptists organize the Haw River Mountain Church, later Antioch
Cane Creek Baptist Church set up a new congregation called Haw River Mountain Church, which moved in 1830 and became Antioch Baptist Church.
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The name Franklin Street appears in Chapel Hill documents
The village's main road was being called Franklin Street in written records by 1806, about thirteen years after the first lots along it were sold.
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William Norwood represents the borough of Hillsborough in the House of Commons
Hillsborough lawyer William Norwood was elected to the House of Commons for the borough of Hillsborough in 1806 and reelected in 1807.
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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.
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Frederick Nash moves from New Bern to Hillsborough
Nash and his wife left New Bern for Hillsborough in 1807 seeking a healthier climate. There he bought a small one-story house, an office and cabins for slave quarters from Duncan Cameron.
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Methodists organize a church in Hillsborough
A Methodist congregation was organized in Hillsborough about 1807. Its building in use in 1953 dated from 1867.
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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.
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Trustees bar students expelled from other colleges
An ordinance sent to every college president in the country refused admission to anyone expelled from another college or who had left it to avoid trial, and required applicants to declare they had not. Colleges were asked to exchange lists of expelled students.
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The Faucett family builds a two-story house and inn beside their Eno mill
After buying the mill at the Eno ford northwest of Hillsborough, the Faucetts put up a two-story house next to it that also served travelers as an inn and tavern. It still stands beside the mill.
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Thirty-eight students petition the faculty over food at Steward's Hall
Signers including John Branch complained of too little butter and of beef often unsound and full of vermin. The faculty found the wording defiant and had it rewritten, and suspended John R. Stokes and Elias Foord for refusing to sign the milder version.
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Thomas Ruffin qualifies to practice law and settles at Hillsborough
Ruffin finished his legal studies under Archibald D. Murphey in Rockingham County and qualified to practice law in 1808. He moved to Hillsborough on June 9, 1809, and built his practice there; William A. Graham later read law with him.
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Mason Hall has a small inn and a post office on the Hillsborough road west
By 1809 the hamlet of Mason Hall, on the main wagon road west from Hillsborough toward Guilford, consisted of a small inn and a post office.
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President Joseph Caldwell marries Helen Hooper and moves to her Franklin Street house
Caldwell married Helen Hogg Hooper and left the President's House on campus for her home on Lot #19, which he appears to have owned already. The house stayed in the family until 1849, when the university bought it as President Swain's residence.
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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 2, 2026.
