Chronology

Charles F. Deems joins the UNC faculty

President David L. Swain brought Deems, a young Methodist preacher, onto the faculty in 1842 as adjunct professor of rhetoric and logic, to have a Methodist among the professors. He resigned in 1848 for Randolph-Macon College.

People: David L. Swain

Charles F. Deems preaches to Chapel Hill Methodists in the hall he names Bethesda

While a professor, Deems preached to the village Methodists, at their invitation, in the upper story of Jesse Hargrave's store, a former Masonic lodge room he named Bethesda. After he left the university in 1848, ministers were regularly appointed to the Chapel Hill charge.

Subject: University United Methodist Church

Elizabeth Hobbs and her son are sent from Hillsborough back to Virginia

The Burwells sent Elizabeth Hobbs and her son George back to Dinwiddie County, Virginia, where she rejoined her mother in the household of Ann Burwell Garland and Hugh Garland. The Garlands later took the family to St. Louis, where she bought her freedom and George's in 1855.

People: George Kirkland · Elizabeth Hobbs Keckly

Fayetteville carver George Lauder makes Lewis Bowen Holt's tomb-table in the Dialectic Society plot

The marble tomb-table over Dialectic Society member Lewis Bowen Holt, who died in 1842, carries a carved desert scene of a broken fountain and cistern drawn from Ecclesiastes 12. It is unsigned but matches a signed Lauder stone in Fayetteville's Cross Creek Cemetery.

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery · Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Hillsborough Literary Association forms with Dennis Heartt as secretary

A Literary Association was formed at Hillsborough in early 1842 with Frederick Nash as president; James S. Smith, Cadwallader Jones and Robert Burwell as vice presidents; Dennis Heartt as secretary; and Walter A. Norwood as treasurer. Heartt, a charter member, had helped organize it.

People: Frederick Nash · Cadwallader Jones · Robert Armistead Burwell · James Strudwick Smith

Hugh Waddell opens a school for law students in Hillsborough

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

Mitchell demonstrates electromagnetic motion at commencement

When the 1842 society orator could not come, Elisha Mitchell showed the audience electromagnetic apparatus the university had just bought in Boston and produced rapid motion by magnetism alone. He judged that the cost of copper and zinc would keep it from competing with steam.

Subject: Gerrard Hall

Person Hall is partitioned into four classrooms

With Gerrard Hall now the chapel, the old chapel, Person Hall, was divided by thick walls and chimneys into four recitation rooms for the professors of Latin, Greek and rhetoric and the tutor of ancient languages.

Subject: Person Hall · Gerrard Hall

William A. Graham builds a law office on his new Eno River property, Montrose

On buying the property in 1842, William A. Graham built a one-and-a-half-story frame law office there. It survives on the Montrose grounds; his son John W. Graham added a two-room rear ell around 1893.

People: John W. Graham

Subject: Montrose

Willie P. Mangum builds Walnut Hall at Red Mountain

Willie P. Mangum built Walnut Hall from 1842 to 1845 as an addition to his father's house of about 1800. His wife ran the 600-acre plantation, where Mangum enslaved 20 people in 1850.

Charles Phillips joins New Hope church

James Phillips's son Charles, later a minister and teacher at the university, joined the church at New Hope. He often preached there with his father in later years.

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

Willie P. Mangum serves as president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate

Mangum, by then a leading Whig, presided over the Senate as president pro tempore for three years. He had turned down the Whig vice-presidential nomination in 1840.

William Mercer Green organizes an Episcopal parish in Chapel Hill

In May 1842 William Mercer Green presided over the organization of the Church of the Atonement, an Episcopal parish in Chapel Hill with fifteen communicants, which met in members' homes for five years while its church was built. A record of subscribers for building the church, dated 1843, survives in Green's papers.

Subject: Chapel of the Cross

William Norwood's estate lists Rebecca Ruffin and her daughters

When William Norwood died, the inventory of his estate named Rebecca, wife of Judge Ruffin's coachman Jesse, and two of their daughters, Nancy and Julia, among 57 enslaved people.

People: William Norwood

Dr. James Webb is declared bankrupt and his goods are auctioned

Dr. James Webb was declared bankrupt on November 1, 1842, and his possessions were sold at public auction on December 11. His friends and neighbors bought back nearly everything offered for him and his family.

William A. Graham buys the Eno River house that became Montrose

Senator William A. Graham bought 59 acres on the Eno River east of Hillsborough from John U. Kirkland, with the house the Rev. William Mercer Green had built there, paying $3,200 plus his town residence and three lots. Graham named the place Montrose, and his son and grandson lived there after him until 1977.

People: John U. Kirkland · William Mercer Green

Subject: Montrose

Trustees outlaw secret societies at the university

On Charles L. Hinton's motion the board declared secret societies and clubs harmful to the literary societies and to good morals, ordered the faculty to suppress them and barred admission to any student who would not pledge not to join one. The Dialectic and Philanthropic societies agreed to fine members who broke the rule.

People: Charles Lewis Hinton

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

James Jackson Jr. buys the Hillsborough House tavern on King Street

James Jackson Jr. bought the tavern known as Faddis's old stand, lately kept by Thomas D. Crane as the Hillsborough House, and advertised it to travelers and drovers and to people with business at the court house. He promised low charges and a bar kept apart from the house.

An armed posse captures Tom, a freedom seeker who had hidden for months in the woods east of Chapel Hill

Tom, enslaved by Samuel Morgan, ran away after being sold to a trader bound for the Southwest and hid in a rock shelter in the woods and in a cave on Morgan's Creek. Men with shotguns beat the woods, shot him in the legs and sent him south for sale; the shelter became known as the Robber's Den or Tom's Lair.

John Wesley Carr buys his mother-in-law's Franklin Street house

Carr married Elizabeth, daughter of Martha Bullock, in 1839; the couple moved in with her in 1841, and in 1843 he bought Martha Bullock's house.

Nathan Hooker buys ninety-four acres on the north side of Hillsborough

Nathan Hooker bought two tracts of just over ninety-four acres on the northern edge of town. A one-room Greek Revival cottage at 120 West Corbin Street, dated about 1843, is said to be the surviving wing of his house, which later burned.

Samuel Phillips builds a law office with a Tudor entrance porch on East Franklin Street

About 1843 Samuel Phillips, a lawyer who taught at the university, put up a small law office on East Franklin Street; by 1847 a boys' preparatory school was meeting in it. Its stepped-gable Tudor porch matches the Eagle Hotel annex built for Polk's 1847 visit. Dabney Cosby probably built it, and the design may be his or A. J. Davis's.

People: Dabney Cosby

The Episcopal parish begins building the Chapel of the Cross on East Franklin Street

A year after organizing, Chapel Hill's Episcopal parish started work in 1843 on its Gothic Revival chapel at 302 East Franklin Street, designed by the architect Thomas U. Walter. The building took until 1848 to finish.

Subject: Chapel of the Cross

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

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

People: Kemp Plummer Battle

Subject: Senlac (Battle house)

Alumni gather at Chapel Hill and organize the university's Alumni Association

Graduates meeting at commencement organized the Alumni Association with former governor Morehead in the chair. At the 1844 meeting they adopted a constitution and chose Morehead as the association's first president.

People: William A. Graham · Charles Phillips · William Horn Battle

A Norwood and Tillinghast debt settlement prices enslaved people by name

To pay what was owed the Bank of Cape Fear, a settlement between J. W. Norwood and Samuel Tillinghast valued an estate at $15,433 by listing each enslaved person with a price, Eliza at $75 and Manley at $200.

Trustees tell Swain to ask Robert Donaldson about plans for society halls and a landscape gardener

In October 1843 the board directed President Swain to write to Robert Donaldson in New York about how best to get plans for new literary society halls and to find someone skilled in laying out the grounds, and at what price.

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Swain authorizes Donaldson to bring architect A. J. Davis to the university

In a letter from Raleigh dated November 28, 1843, Swain told Donaldson he might invite Alexander Jackson Davis to Chapel Hill to make working drawings and specifications, with $100 for travel. The letter opened Davis's service as the university's architect and planner of its grounds.

People: Alexander Jackson Davis

Swain reports the Chapel of the Cross walls up to a plan by Thomas U. Walter

Writing to Charles Manly, university president David L. Swain noted that the Episcopalians had raised the brick walls of their church and that it was planned by Walter of Philadelphia. The nomination treats this letter as the main evidence that architect Thomas U. Walter designed the chapel, which had long been credited to Richard Upjohn.

Subject: Chapel of the Cross

Chapel Hill's Presbyterians and Methodists circulate subscription papers for church buildings

Swain's letter of November 1843 reported that the village Presbyterians and Methodists each had subscription papers going round to pay for churches, while the Episcopalians already had the brick walls of theirs standing. The Presbyterian church was finished in 1848 and the Methodist in 1853.

Subject: University Presbyterian Church · University United Methodist Church

Dabney Cosby takes the masonry subcontract for the lengthening of Old East and Old West

Chapel Hill contractors Isaac J. Collier and Kendall B. Waitt subcontracted the masonry of the university additions to Cosby, who put enslaved workmen including the brothers Osborne and Albert on the job. Cosby and the architect Alexander Jackson Davis quarrelled over the drawings, and president David L. Swain asked the Hillsborough builder John Berry to look at the brickwork, which Berry reported was defective.

People: John Berry · David L. Swain · Alexander Jackson Davis

Subject: Old East · Old West

Elias Dodson holds Hillsborough's first known Baptist services in the courthouse

Elias Dodson, a Virginia-born graduate of William and Mary, preached in the courthouse and is the first Baptist minister the authors could find holding services in town. When the county built a new courthouse he bought the old one for the Baptists.

Frederick Nash of Hillsborough is appointed to the North Carolina Supreme Court

Nash was named to the Supreme Court in 1844, following William Gaston's death. Eight years later his colleagues made him Chief Justice.

People: William Gaston

Giles Mebane represents Orange County in the House of Commons

Giles Mebane sat for Orange County in the House of Commons from 1844 to 1849, until the western part of the county, where he was from, became Alamance County.

John Newlin and his sons build a cotton mill at Saxapahaw

The Quaker Newlins began a spinning mill on the Haw River at Saxapahaw in 1844, using enslaved labor to dig the millrace from a rock dam. The brick mill was ready to produce in 1848, the second cotton mill in the county.

Juniors hold a mock funeral for Euripides's Medea

After Professor Manuel Fetter failed all but three of the junior class on the Medea, the class dressed the book in black crape, marched past his house and buried it near the Davie Poplar under a sandstone slab carved Hic Jacet Medea.

People: Manuel Fetter

Orange County's William A. Graham is elected governor

Graham, the Whig nominee chosen unanimously in 1843, won the governorship in 1844 and was re-elected in 1846. He served from 1845 to 1849.

Paul C. Cameron sends enslaved people from the family farms to cotton plantations in Alabama and Mississippi

Paul C. Cameron bought a cotton plantation in Greene County, Alabama, in 1844 and land for another in Tunica County, Mississippi, in 1856, and sent more than 100 enslaved men and women from the family's North Carolina farms to them.

Part of Slavery in Orange County · 102 events

Sidney Mulholland Barbee builds a house and three stores on Franklin Street

After buying out his partner, Barbee used the store's profits to buy land on the north side of the street, where he built a large house, two stores just west of it, and a third near the northeast corner of Franklin and Columbia.

Students found the University Magazine at Chapel Hill

UNC students established the University Magazine in 1844. Apart from one short gap it ran for 104 years and was long the state's only cultural periodical; the Carolina Quarterly later carried on its tradition.

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

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

People: Andrew Mickle

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

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

University ends student commons at Steward's Hall

1844 was the last year the university ran Steward's Hall, the frame dining house in the middle of what is now Cameron Avenue where students had taken their meals. It was rented as a private house the next year and later sold, and part of it went into the village school building.

Subject: Steward’s Hall

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

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

Alexander Jackson Davis makes his first visit to the university

Davis came to Chapel Hill in February 1844, and that year trustee John Motley Morehead met with him and Swain there about the design of a new hall, later Smith Hall. Davis stayed in touch with Swain and the trustees about campus work until the mid-1850s.

People: David L. Swain · John Motley Morehead

Subject: Smith Hall (Playmakers Theatre)

John U. Kirkland is elected a Warden of the Poor for Orange County

At an election in April 1844 Orange County chose Cadwallader Jones, Dr. James Webb, Green Jordan, Nathaniel Bain, James Faucett, John U. Kirkland and Samuel N. Tate as Wardens of the Poor.

People: Cadwallader Jones · James Webb

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

Charles Phillips returns to Chapel Hill as a tutor of mathematics

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

People: David L. Swain · James Phillips

Eagle Lodge Masons lay the cornerstone of the new Orange County courthouse

Masons of Eagle Lodge, with brethren from University Lodge, laid the cornerstone of the new courthouse in Hillsborough, with Dr. James S. Smith acting as deputy grand master. The Rev. William M. Green gave the oration in the old courthouse nearby.

People: James Strudwick Smith · William Mercer Green

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough · Eagle Lodge

William James Bingham opens his school at the Oaks

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

People: William James Bingham

Subject: Hillsborough Academy · Bingham School

Frances Devereux deeds Primus to Dr. Edmund Strudwick

Five months after her husband died, Frances Devereux of Raleigh deeded Primus to Dr. Edmund Strudwick of Hillsborough. Primus later drove and gardened at the Burwell School and, after emancipation, worked at the Nash and Kollock School as Primus Smith.

People: Edmund Strudwick · Frances (Pollock) Devereux

Subject: Burwell School · Nash and Kollock School

Brothers Albert and Osborne, enslaved by Dabney Cosby, plaster the lengthened Old East

The additions to Old East and Old West, contracted in December 1844 and finished in 1848, used the labor of Albert and Osborne, brothers enslaved by Dabney Cosby, who plastered the lengthened Old East in 1845 and 1846. Cosby praised Albert's plastering as first-rate work.

People: Albert · Osborne · Dabney Cosby · Alexander Jackson Davis

Subject: Old East · Old West

Dennis Heartt prints The Poetical Works of George M. Horton

Dennis Heartt printed The Poetical Works of George M. Horton, the Colored Bard of North-Carolina at Hillsborough in 1845, with Horton's autobiography prefixed to the poems. It was the second book by Horton, who was still enslaved when it appeared.

People: George Moses Horton

Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

Faculty turns away a fencing and boxing instructor

A Major Roberts, backed by letters from leading trustees, asked to teach the students athletics including fencing and boxing. The faculty refused to let him form a class after learning he advertised teaching the bowie knife at the University of Virginia and boasted of having been a London prize fighter.

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

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

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

Subject: Hillsborough Academy · Caldwell Institute

Josiah Turner Jr. is admitted to the bar after studying law in Hillsborough

After schooling at the Caldwell Institute in Greensboro and a year at the University of North Carolina, Josiah Turner Jr. studied law for two years in Hillsborough and was admitted to the bar in about 1845. He soon built a large practice.

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

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

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

Subject: Burwell School

Samuel F. Phillips opens a law practice in Chapel Hill

Phillips, who had grown up in Chapel Hill after his family moved there in 1826, studied law under President David L. Swain and in the new university law school, then began practising in Chapel Hill when he came of age in 1845.

People: David L. Swain

Subject: UNC School of Law

The Joseph Allison house is built near Caldwell

A frame side-gable house is built in 1845 on the Joseph Allison place near Caldwell, on land that goes back to a 1759 grant. It had been remodeled by 1993.

The Mallette-Wilson-Maurice House is built on West Cameron Avenue

A story-and-a-half Greek Revival house with a low gable roof and short upper windows went up about 1845 at 215 West Cameron Avenue, one of the oldest houses on the street. A small guest house stands beside it facing Wilson Street.

The Old Orange County Courthouse is moved up Churton Street to Queen Street

After the county built a new courthouse, its commissioners advertised the old wooden courthouse for sale at the November 1845 county court, to be removed from the court square. The Baptist missionary Elias Dodson bought it, and by about 1847 it stood at the corner of Churton and Queen streets as a church. The building later became the freedmen's school and then the home of Dickerson Chapel AME Church.

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough · Dickerson Chapel AME Church

The Smith-Cole House is built for a Hillsborough planter

Built in 1845 for a Hillsborough planter, the frame house stands two stories over a center-hall plan two rooms deep and five bays across, with a chimney at each gable end and a porch on thin columns.

Trustees bar students from bringing their own enslaved servants to the university

After 1845 the trustees prohibited students from bringing enslaved people of their own to Chapel Hill. The university went on hiring enslaved college servants by the year from local slaveholders.

William Horn Battle becomes the university's professor of law

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

Subject: UNC School of Law

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

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

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

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

Thomas W. Holden, now living in Milton, offers Enoe Mills for sale

Thomas W. Holden advertised all or half of Enoe Mills, five miles below Hillsborough, for sale. The works had about 300 acres, a threshing machine, saw mill, cotton gin, two wool-carding machines, an oil mill and a corn and flour mill, with his partner J. F. Lyon on the premises.

Lemuel Lynch becomes Hillsborough's first mayor

The silversmith Lemuel Lynch takes office as the first mayor of Hillsborough, which until then had been run by town commissioners and a magistrate of police.

Osborne begins the masonry on the additions to Old East and Old West

Dabney Cosby, who held the masonry subcontract for the university additions, sent Osborne to Chapel Hill carrying a letter to the main contractors saying that Osborne would have his mortar made up. Cosby ordered meal and bacon for him and wrote that what Osborne said could be relied on.

People: Dabney Cosby

Subject: Old East · Old West

Enslaved workers build and tend the Battle household in Chapel Hill

Letters between Lucy and William H. Battle in March 1845 describe enslaved men at their Chapel Hill house: Ben planted shrubs and flowers, Harry worked on the outbuildings and was hired out, and Billy was also at work. The well-house, servants' houses, barn and bath house were built almost entirely by enslaved labor.

Part of Slavery in Orange County · 102 events

People: David L. Swain

University trustees name the burying ground the College Graveyard

After Judge William Gaston died in 1844, faculty members asked the trustees for a separate burying ground in sight of the campus for eminent men of the university, starting with Gaston's body brought from Raleigh. The trustees let the petition lapse and in June 1845 named the existing ground the College Graveyard instead.

People: William Gaston

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Caldwell Institute reopens in Hillsborough after leaving Greensboro

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

People: Alexander Wilson

Subject: Hillsborough Academy · Caldwell Institute

James S. Smith offers his estate for sale to pay his debts

In a notice dated August 19, 1845, in the Hillsborough Recorder, James S. Smith offered property he valued at not less than $35,000 to cover debts of $15,000 or $16,000, saying he would act as his own trustee and salesman. NCpedia says he went bankrupt that year and probably then moved from Hillsborough to a house on Smith Level Road outside Chapel Hill.

Witherspoon's farm Tusculum is sold at the courthouse door

Dr. Edmund Strudwick, who had long held the mortgages, bought the farm at public sale. Susan Witherspoon was allowed to stay on at Tusculum by Strudwick's provision.

People: Edmund Strudwick

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough · Tusculum (Witherspoon farm)

Julian Shakespeare Carr, later Carrboro's namesake, is born in Chapel Hill

Julian S. Carr was born in Chapel Hill on October 12, 1845, the son of the Franklin Street merchant John Wesley Carr, and later studied at the university. He built tobacco, banking and textile fortunes in Durham, and his Durham Hosiery Mills went on to own both Carrboro mills; the town took his name in 1913.

People: Julian S. Carr

David L. Swain and Charles Phillips transfer from New Hope to the Chapel Hill church

University president David L. Swain, who first joined a church at New Hope, and Charles Phillips were released by letter to the Presbyterian church at Chapel Hill.

People: Charles Phillips

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church · University Presbyterian Church

Andrew Mickle turns the log schoolhouse at Highlands into a house

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

People: Andrew Mickle

Subject: Highlands (Paul Cameron house)

Builder John Berry enlarges a St. Mary's Road farmhouse into Sunny Side, his country home

John Berry, the Hillsborough brickmason and builder, enlarged and remodeled an older farmhouse on St. Mary's Road as a home for himself and named it Sunny Side. He kept his library there and lived there until his death in 1870.

Subject: Sunnyside (John Berry farm)

Caroline Mallett Walker conveys the Margaret Lane house to James M. Palmer

In 1846 Caroline Mary Walker conveyed the lateral-hall house at 173 West Margaret Lane, by deed of trust, to James M. Palmer. Palmer, bankrupt, gave it up in 1863, and a later owner, Tom Haise or Hayes, kept a shoemaker's shop there.

Dialectic and Philanthropic societies draw lots for the east and west buildings

The trustees had the society presidents, William M. Howerton and Matt W. Ransom, cast lots before Governor Graham, President Swain and Charles Manly; the Philanthropic won the east side and the Dialectic the west, and South Building rooms facing north went to the Phis and those facing south to the Dis. The arrangement lasted until 1868.

People: Matt W. Ransom · William A. Graham · David L. Swain

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies · South Building · Old East · Old West

James Phillips buys the Village Chapel lot for the Presbyterian church

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

Subject: University Presbyterian Church

John Christmas builds new gallows at Hillsborough

The county's new gallows went up in 1846 and were moved four years later.

Lemuel Lynch is paid to repair the courthouse clock

The old town clock, in storage since the market house came down, was repaired for the new courthouse, where it still hangs in the cupola. Lemuel Lynch was paid $250 for the work and afterward $25 a year to keep it running on time.

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

Nancy Hilliard buys the Watts Hotel from Lucy Watts

Lucy Watts sold the hotel and the land beside it to Nancy Hilliard, already known as a Chapel Hill hotel keeper. A year later Hilliard enlarged it for President Polk's commencement visit.

People: Nancy Hilliard

Subject: Eagle Hotel (Chapel Hill)

Students circulate the Literary Trumpet, a handwritten paper

William M. Howerton edited the Literary Trumpet, a pen-and-ink paper for private circulation, with a lady as nominal co-editor. Battle calls it the first of the university's informal student sheets.

The two-story Pickett log house is built near Cedar Grove

The Pickett House near Cedar Grove is a large log dwelling of two full stories, a size uncommon among the county's log houses. The survey could not settle whether it went up in 1846 or 1864.

University sells the Franklin and Columbia street oak grove to John W. Carr

The trustees conveyed to the merchant John W. Carr, for $300, the oak grove at the northwest corner of Franklin and Columbia streets where villagers gathered to hear candidates speak. It was one of several sales of university land to villagers in the middle 1840s.

People: John Wesley Carr

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

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

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

People: Robert Armistead Burwell

Smallpox at the Turner house sends students out of town

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

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

Albert joins his brother Osborne to plaster the halls at the university

Cosby sent Albert from Smithfield in Virginia to Chapel Hill, where Osborne was already at work on the additions to Old East and Old West. Albert carried a letter to university president David L. Swain saying he came to help his brother plaster the halls and would judge the sand to be used together with Osborne.

People: Dabney Cosby · David L. Swain

Subject: Old East · Old West

Morehead gives the Alumni Association address in Gerrard Hall

With no orator found from the class of thirty years before, the association's president, former governor Morehead, delivered the address at the meeting of 36 alumni in Gerrard Hall.

People: William A. Graham

Subject: Gerrard Hall

William Mercer Green pledges fifteen enslaved people and his Bolin Creek land for a loan

To secure 2,500 dollars borrowed from John H. Bryan, with David L. Swain and Duncan Cameron as his sureties, William Mercer Green conveyed to William H. Battle in trust his land on Bolin Creek near Chapel Hill and fifteen enslaved people: Jenny, Nancy, Lucy, Frances, Ellen, Celia, Anne, Julia, Rachel, Margaret, Peter, Sam, Aaron, Cain and Robert. If the debt went unpaid, they were to be advertised in the Hillsborough Recorder and sold at Chapel Hill to the highest bidder.

People: William Mercer Green · William Horn Battle · David L. Swain · Duncan Cameron

False alarm sets off a panic in the chapel at commencement

During the 1846 commencement someone shouted that the gallery was falling, and the packed crowd rushed for the doors while some jumped from windows, until President Swain, Governor Graham and other trustees calmed it. No one was hurt, and more pillars were placed under the galleries before the next commencement.

People: David L. Swain · William A. Graham

Subject: Gerrard Hall

Union Grove Methodist Church is organized

Union Grove Methodist Church was organized on September 23, 1846. The cornerstone of its later building was laid on the centennial of that day.

Subject: Union Grove Methodist Church

Helen Caldwell dies and is buried with her husband at his monument

Helen Hogg Caldwell, widow of President Caldwell and a leader of village society, died at Chapel Hill on October 30, 1846 while visiting John DeBerniere Hooper. Caldwell's remains were taken up on October 31 and laid beside hers at the base of his monument, with the president and faculty as pallbearers.

People: John DeBerniere Hooper · Elisha Mitchell

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

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

People: William Horn Battle

Alumni start a fund for a marble monument to Caldwell

Troubled by the crumbling sandstone monument, the alumni at the 1847 commencement voted on John Y. Mason's motion, supported by President Polk, to raise a marble memorial by gifts of three dollars each, and $210 was subscribed at once. By 1849 only $600 of an estimated $1,000 was in hand and the limit on gifts was dropped.

People: James K. Polk

Dabney Cosby builds the Presbyterian church on Franklin Street

After the university work Cosby built a small Tuscan style church designed by Alexander Jackson Davis for the Chapel Hill Presbyterian congregation, whose members included university president David L. Swain. In March 1848 the congregation member Charles Phillips wrote to Davis that the mason could not match the lilac gray color specified for the outside. The building no longer stands.

People: David L. Swain · Charles Phillips · Alexander Jackson Davis

Subject: University Presbyterian Church

John Wesley Carr builds a home and store at Franklin and Columbia

Carr built his house west of the middle of Lot #7 and a store on its southeast corner at Columbia Street. The store burned partly in the January 1862 fire but stayed in business, and the maps show Carr's general merchandise there through 1868.

Jones Watson buys Barbee's old store and house for a drugstore

Jones Watson acquired Sidney Barbee's former house and store on the south side of the street, the old James Hogg property, and probably ran his drugstore from the store before remodeling both buildings. By 1858 they had become his Central Hotel.

People: Jones Watson

Subject: Central Hotel (Chapel Hill)

Moses Ashley Curtis leaves St. Matthew's for Society Hill, South Carolina

Rector and botanist Moses Ashley Curtis moved from Hillsborough to Society Hill, South Carolina, ending his first period at St. Matthew's.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

Nancy Hilliard adds a castellated annex to the Eagle Hotel for President Polk's visit

For President James K. Polk's visit to the 1847 commencement, Nancy Hilliard, who kept the Eagle Hotel, added a stuccoed two-story wing with a battlemented porch in a medieval manner. The annex stood on the site of today's Graham Memorial; Dabney Cosby likely built it, perhaps to his own design or one by A. J. Davis.

People: Dabney Cosby · Nancy Hilliard

Subject: Eagle Hotel (Chapel Hill)

Robert Loder and William Watson run a dry goods store near Franklin and Columbia

Loder and his father-in-law kept a dry goods store near the corner, probably in a building of Sidney Barbee's. By 1858 Loder was selling men's clothing there on his own, until fire destroyed the store in 1862.

The Eno Friends Meeting closes

The Eno meeting, which never recovered the membership it lost in the eighteenth century, came to an end in 1847.

The Moorefields estate is divided and the house goes to Augusta Moore

The Moorefields lands were divided, and the tract with the house went to Augusta, a daughter of Alfred Moore the younger. The family kept it until 1913.

Subject: Moorefields

The Rev. William Mercer Green buys an East Franklin Street lot and builds a house

Episcopal minister William Mercer Green bought the lot at 513 East Franklin Street in 1847 and had a two-story frame house built there before he sold it, two years later, to Charles Phillips, professor of engineering and mathematics.

People: Charles Phillips

Trustees dispose of Steward's Hall

In 1847 the wings of Steward's Hall, the old college dining hall, were given to President Swain to build a servants' house and the main building was sold. For some years before, it had been rented to keepers who boarded any students who chose to eat there.

People: David L. Swain

Subject: Steward’s Hall

Robert F. Morris buys the Hillsborough House from James Jackson

Robert F. Morris, who said he had kept taverns for several years, bought the Hillsborough House, lately run by James Jackson, and promised to be ready for guests by the February court. He advertised a good table and stables and a bar stocked with liquors.

President James K. Polk returns to Chapel Hill for the university commencement

Polk came from Raleigh by carriage with Sarah Polk and a large party, lodged in an annex Nancy Hilliard built onto the Eagle Hotel for his stay, visited his old room in South Building and met Elisha Mitchell, and stayed through commencement on June 3.

People: Elisha Mitchell · Nancy Hilliard

Subject: South Building

Caldwell Institute enrollment peaks at 100 in Hillsborough

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

Subject: Caldwell Institute

Free Black cabinetmaker Thomas Day supplies woodwork and furniture for the new society halls

Thomas Day, the free Black cabinetmaker of Milton, North Carolina, supplied woodwork and furniture for the halls and libraries of the Dialectic and Philanthropic societies in A. J. Davis's north additions to Old East and Old West. Little names him, with the Virginia builder Dabney Cosby, among the craftsmen who carried out Davis's design.

Subject: Old East · Old West · Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

James B. Connelly serves as rector of St. Matthew's

James B. Connelly took charge of the parish in 1848 and served until his death late in 1855.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

James Webb Jr. and his wife buy Over-the-River from the Norwoods and enlarge it

John Wall Norwood and his wife sold Over-the-River to James Webb Jr. and his wife, who added to the two-story wing. The house stayed in the family and passed to James Webb Cheshire in 1936.

Subject: Over-the-River (Norwood-Webb-Cheshire House)

Literary societies move into new halls in the enlarged Old East and Old West

The northward extensions of Old East and Old West, designed by A. J. Davis and built by Isaac J. Collier and Kendall B. Waitt for $9,360, were finished in 1848 with debating halls and library alcoves for the two societies. At the Dialectic opening James Mebane, the society's first president in 1795, sat beside the student president, Kemp P. Battle.

People: Samuel (Samuel Field) Phillips · Alexander Jackson Davis · Kemp Plummer Battle

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies · Old East · Old West

Robert Burwell buys the house and has John Berry enlarge it

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

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

People: Robert Armistead Burwell · John Berry

Subject: Burwell School · Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

Samuel Couch builds a two-story hall-parlor farmhouse near Durham

The Couch house is a tall frame dwelling with an off-center door and windows, Greek Revival trim and a corner stair in the main room. The farm also keeps a log granary.

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

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

Subject: Burwell School

The literary societies ask the trustees for a building for dances and alumni meetings

The Dialectic and Philanthropic societies petitioned the university trustees to put up a building for dances and alumni gatherings. The request led to Smith Hall, finished in 1850 and later the Playmakers Theatre.

Subject: Smith Hall (Playmakers Theatre) · Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Mount Hermon Baptist Church is organized

Mount Hermon Baptist Church was organized on June 24, 1848, with Jesse Howell as its first pastor. Its later church was built about 1913.

Albert M. Shipp elected to the new chair of history and English literature

When William Mercer Green's retirement opened the faculty, the trustees created a professorship of history and English literature and elected the Methodist minister Albert M. Shipp to it. He held the chair until 1859.

Charles Phillips buys the house William Mercer Green built on East Franklin

Professor Charles Phillips bought the house at 513 East Franklin, just east of his father's, from the Rev. William Mercer Green, who had built it a few years earlier and was leaving to become Episcopal bishop of Mississippi. Phillips lived there until his death in 1889.

Dr. Edmund Strudwick leads the revival of the state medical society

Edmund Strudwick of Hillsborough proposed and helped call the 1849 meeting that revived the North Carolina Medical Society, and he became its first president. His teacher James Webb was made an honorary charter member.

People: James Webb

English gardeners lay out the campus grounds

The trustees began spending $1,000 a year on the still wild campus under gardeners trained in England, first Loader and then Paxton, with Black laborers. They cleared useless trees, macadamized much of Cameron Avenue and the main walks, lined walks with roses and screened the hotel stables with hedges.

Solomon Pool studies at the university in Chapel Hill

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

The Presbyterian church on Franklin Street is finished and dedicated

Built with money and effort from James and Charles Phillips, Elisha Mitchell and President Swain, the small Presbyterian church on the old Grand Avenue ground was completed and formally dedicated.

People: James Phillips · Charles Phillips · Elisha Mitchell · David L. Swain

The university buys the old Caldwell house as President Swain's residence

William Hooper sold his stepfather's former house to the university, which renovated it heavily for President David L. Swain. Professor John Thomas Wheat moved into Swain's old quarters in the Tom Taylor house.

People: William Hooper

Giles Mebane introduces the bill to form Alamance County from western Orange

On January 1, 1849, Giles Mebane, a member for Orange County, introduced a bill to create a new county from part of Orange. It passed, and he named the county Alamance.

Part of How Orange County’s boundaries changed, 1771–1881 · 11 events

William Whitted advertises Lochiel for sale

William Whitted offered Lochiel, his place a mile northwest of Hillsborough, for sale: an eleven-room house with barn, ice house and kitchen on 205 acres, with 140 more acres to the northeast. The notice ran in the Recorder into early 1851.

Subject: Lochiel

Trustees let student church members worship at their own churches

Petitions from several denominations reached the board in December 1849 asking to ease compulsory Sunday worship in the college chapel. On January 4, 1850 the trustees voted down a broader plan and adopted Samuel F. Patterson's rule letting communicants attend the church of their choice while all others still attended chapel, a rule that stood about ten years.

People: David L. Swain · William Mercer Green · Samuel Finley Patterson

Subject: Gerrard Hall

A free man is jailed in Hillsborough for giving his free papers to an enslaved man

The 1850 census taker listed the town jail's inmates with their charges. John McAndless, a free laborer of 22, was held for "giving his free papers to a slave".

Subject: Orange County jail, Hillsborough

Builder John Berry holds 44 enslaved people, most working in his building trade

By 1850 the Hillsborough brick mason and builder John Berry held 44 enslaved people, most of them working with him in masonry and construction. Some, including his head carpenter Joseph Nichols, stayed with him after emancipation, and much of the carpentry in Berry's buildings after 1840 was likely Nichols's.

People: John Berry

Caldwell Institute closes in Hillsborough

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

Subject: Hillsborough Academy · Caldwell Institute

Circuit rider Alson Gray organizes Orange Chapel Methodist Church

Orange Chapel Methodist Church was organized and built its first church in 1850 under the circuit rider Alson Gray.

Dr. Johnston Blakeley Jones builds a Gothic Revival cottage on West Cameron Avenue

In the 1850s Dr. Jones, one of the village's two physicians before the war, built a board-and-batten cottage at 321 West Cameron with Gothic windows in its front gable, a bay window and a porch of arched latticework. It is the only Gothic Revival cottage known in Chapel Hill, probably based on a pattern book such as Downing's.

English landscape designer Thomas Paxton lays out the Montrose grounds for Mrs. William A. Graham

The terraced landscape at Montrose, running down to the Eno, was first shaped in the 1850s by the English landscape architect Thomas Paxton, working under the direction of Mrs. William A. Graham.

Subject: Montrose

Enslaved workers build the stone dam at Trimm's Mill near Cedar Grove

Enslaved laborers build a large stone dam for Trimm's Mill near Cedar Grove in the 1850s. The dam is all that survived of the mill by 1993.

Ira Ellis's mill, later Hall's Mill, is working on the Eno west of Hillsborough

A mill stands on the Eno west of Hillsborough by the middle of the nineteenth century, part of the Rev. Ira Ellis's home place; it took the name Hall's Mill after Nelson P. Hall acquired the Ellis house and land. Only its stone dam, a stone foundation and the trace of the race survived.

Subject: Rev. Ira Ellis House (Little Ayr Mount)

John Kirkland builds a two-story frame farmhouse near Calvander

A two-story frame house apparently built for John Kirkland in the 1850s stands at Old NC 86 and Homestead Road. It was enlarged about 1900 and later; three early log outbuildings remain.

Most of Orange County's common surnames date back to the 1779 tax list

Forty-nine of the sixty surnames most common in Orange County in 1850 were already on the 1779 tax list, evidence that many families stayed put even as others moved west.

Orange County has 15 academies with 470 pupils

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

Orange County residents put up $100,000 for the North Carolina Railroad

Orange County people pledged $100,000 in 1850 toward building the North Carolina Railroad, planned to cross the state from Goldsboro through Hillsborough to Charlotte. Its first rails went down at Greensboro in 1851.

Subject: North Carolina Railroad

President Fillmore makes William A. Graham Secretary of the Navy

Graham, who had declined missions to Spain and Russia in 1849, led the Navy Department from 1850. His department reorganized the coast survey and the officer corps and sent the Perry expedition to Japan and an exploring party to the Amazon.

Signed marble obelisks go up in the Dialectic and Philanthropic plots

George Lauder signed obelisks for Philanthropic members David White Fisher (died 1850) and Mark Bennett (died 1851) and for Dialectic member John Alexander Smith (died 1855), and the Raleigh firm of Maunder & Campbell signed the obelisk of Joshua P. Perry (died 1856). Signed stones are rare in the cemetery.

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery · Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Smith Hall is built to Alexander Jackson Davis's design as the university library and ballroom

The New York architect Alexander Jackson Davis designed Smith Hall, built from 1850 to 1852 for just over $10,300 and named for the trustee and former governor Benjamin Smith. It served as library and ballroom and is now the Playmakers Theatre.

People: Benjamin Smith

Subject: UNC Libraries · Smith Hall (Playmakers Theatre)

The 1850 census finds Dennis Heartt's printers and apprentices living at Heartsease

The 1850 census listed editor Dennis Heartt's household at Heartsease with his two daughters, his son Edwin with his wife and small daughter, two young printers, and four boys aged eleven to eighteen entered as students who were probably apprentices at the Hillsborough Recorder.

People: Dennis Heartt

Subject: Heartsease

The 1850 census lists four enslaved people on Joseph Faucette's farm

Joseph Faucette, David's son, grew wheat, corn, oats, potatoes and hay on the home farm and held four enslaved people in one household, a number the nomination calls typical of a yeoman farmer.

Subject: David Faucette House (The Elms)

The 1850 census records 47 enslaved people on James H. Pratt's farm by the Eno

James H. Pratt and his wife Malvina worked a farm of 300 improved and 500 unimproved acres with 47 enslaved people, raising wheat, corn, oats, flax and livestock.

The Lambert Hall House goes up near Caldwell

A two-story frame hall-and-parlor house with a chimney at each end was built near Caldwell in the 1850s, its inside walls lined with wide plain boards. Local informants told the surveyors that dwellings for the people enslaved on the farm once stood in a cluster close to the house.

The Lindsey-Wilson farmstead takes shape on Damascus Church Road

A log farmhouse and log kitchen, a smokehouse, a barn for hay and a two-story frame granary that still holds its grain bins went up around the middle of the nineteenth century. A stretch of the old roadbed with a stone wall survives in the yard.

The Mary Hughes House is built at Cedar Grove

About 1850 a center-hall cottage with Greek Revival touches, louvered shutters and sidelights at both front and back doors was built at Cedar Grove. When surveyed it was little altered outside but badly run down, and its mantels had been removed.

The Morris Lloyd farmhouse is built near White Cross

A farmhouse is built around 1850 on the Morris Lloyd place near White Cross, a farm that keeps an early log house and a half-dovetailed log corn crib. The survey put it on the Study List.

The Smyth House is built near Chapel Hill

A two-story frame hall-parlor house in a restrained Greek Revival manner, its stone chimneys stuccoed and scored to look like cut blocks.

The Taylor log house is built near Carr

A single-pen log house divided into two unequal rooms on the hall-parlor plan, a layout also common in frame houses of the period.

The census counts 5,244 enslaved people in Orange County

The 1850 census found 11,330 white residents, 5,244 enslaved people and 481 free Black people in Orange County. The share of enslaved people had risen sharply since 1790, even though the new Alamance County had taken part of Orange in 1849.

The county court moves the gallows to Gallows Hill

By court order the gallows went back to the old site known as Gallows Hill on the town commons in western Hillsborough.

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

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

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

People: John Berry

Subject: Burwell School

Three-quarters of Orange County farms hold under 100 acres

By 1850 most farms in the county were small: three in four had less than 100 acres, and only a few ran past 500.

Trustees ban spirituous liquor from commencement balls

After students broke into the ball managers' stores of liquor and held a carousal, the trustees, on William A. Graham's motion, ordered that no spirituous liquor be brought to university balls and entertainments, on pain of dismissal for any manager who broke the rule. The faculty were asked to drop their dismissal of the offending managers.

People: William A. Graham

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

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

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

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

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

People: Robert Armistead Burwell · John Berry · Thomas Webb

Drinking students stone two professors in a night riot

Eight or ten students drinking on the campus turned on two professors who tried to stop them, stoning them until they took refuge in a student's room, and one tried to reach them at the window with a large stone. The ringleader was expelled, and the trustees, meeting at Hillsborough, sent the evidence to the solicitor for prosecution.

Bethel Baptist Church is organized

Bethel Baptist Church was organized in 1851. The church it used in 1953 went up about 1900.

Subject: Bethel Baptist Church

Cameron Avenue extended west through the university forest

The street now called Cameron Avenue was cut westward through the university's forest and named College Avenue by the village commissioners, and lots along it were put up for sale. Professor Fordyce M. Hubbard persuaded the trustees to build him a house at its corner with Pittsboro Street.

People: F. M. (Fordyce Mitchell) Hubbard

Campus grove is thinned and paved walks laid

Until 1851 the campus was forest with only the underbrush cleared, fenced off from the Raleigh road by rails and a hedgerow and used to pasture the president's cattle. In that year the trees were thinned and the first paved walks were built.

Delta Kappa Epsilon chapter opens as fraternities reach the university

Greek-letter fraternities began entering the university in 1851 without any trustee or faculty vote admitting them. Delta Kappa Epsilon organized that year, Beta Theta Pi in 1852, Sigma Alpha Epsilon in 1857 and Zeta Psi in January 1858, and all had disbanded before the end of the Civil War.

Dr. J. S. Lucas opens a drugstore at Franklin and Henderson

Lucas opened a drugstore on the northeast corner of Henderson and Franklin streets. Richard Benbury Saunders bought it in 1855.

Frederick Strudwick graduates and begins practising law in Hillsborough

Frederick Nash Strudwick, born in Hillsborough on 27 June 1833 and schooled there, graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1851 and then began a law practice in Hillsborough.

Hillsborough Academy is revived under Benjamin Huske and Ralph Graves

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

People: Ralph Henry Graves (1851-1889)

Subject: Hillsborough Academy · Caldwell Institute

Job Berry and Billy Payne begin the congregation that became Dickerson Chapel

Dickerson Chapel AME Church dates its founding to 1851, when Job Berry, an enslaved painter and its first pastor, began gathering the congregation with Rev. Billy (William) Payne, enslaved by Dr. Edmund Strudwick. With state law barring Black preachers, they met in homes; the congregation moved into the old courthouse on Queen Street in 1866.

Subject: Dickerson Chapel AME Church · Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

Paul C. Cameron builds new quarters for enslaved families at Horton Grove

In the decade before the Civil War Paul C. Cameron began a building campaign at the family's Horton Grove farm near Stagville. Four of the dwellings built to house families the Camerons enslaved still stand.

Part of Slavery in Orange County · 102 events

Phi Gamma Delta's Epsilon chapter forms at the university

Defying the trustees' ban on secret societies, the Epsilon chapter of Phi Gamma Delta organized in the fall of 1851, months after Delta Kappa Epsilon.

Trustees set up a system of county escheators

Rather than surrender the university's right to escheated property, the trustees made the treasurer principal escheator and had him appoint a lawyer in each county to find escheated land and unclaimed estates, paid ten percent of what they recovered. Treasurer Charles Manly's salary was raised to $1,000 for the added work.

People: David L. Swain

William Strowd builds a two-story frame house near White Cross

A two-story frame house is built in 1851 on the William Strowd place near White Cross.

Zebulon Vance studies law at Chapel Hill

Vance entered the University of North Carolina early in 1851 and spent the rest of the year at Chapel Hill studying law under Judge William H. Battle and Samuel F. Phillips. He obtained his law licence in December 1851 and set up an office at Asheville early in 1852.

People: William Horn Battle · Samuel Field Phillips

The General Assembly passes an act incorporating Chapel Hill under five commissioners

Chapter 330 of the 1850-51 session laws, ratified January 29, 1851, made Manuel Fetter, Jesse Hargrave, Patterson H. McDade, Elisha Mitchell and Jones Watson the commissioners of Chapel Hill, with five commissioners to be elected each February after. They were to choose a magistrate of police, treasurer, constable and clerk and fix the town's bounds.

People: Manuel Fetter · Elisha Mitchell · Jones Watson

Night disorder ends with ten students dismissed

Students covered the belfry walls with caricatures of the faculty, exploded gunpowder at the laboratory door, and marched with horns and bells around the professors' houses, stoning one of them. The faculty questioned twenty-one absentees and dismissed ten.

Elizabeth Nunn, who boarded students for fifty years, dies

Mrs. Elizabeth Nunn, widow of the Revolutionary captain William Nunn, died in her ninety-second year after about fifty years of feeding students and unmarried professors at Chapel Hill. As a girl she had lived through the Regulator troubles.

Beta Theta Pi charters its Eta chapter at the university

The Eta chapter of Beta Theta Pi was chartered in early 1852, the third fraternity at Chapel Hill.

Subject: Beta Theta Pi Fraternity House

Legislature transfers the university's escheats to the common schools

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

Nancy Hilliard sells the Eagle Hotel, renamed the Union Hotel

In the early 1850s Miss Nancy Hilliard, long the students' and travelers' landlady, sold her hotel interest for $10,000 to Hugh B. Guthrie, who renamed the Eagle the Union Hotel. She went on to run the North Carolina Railroad eating house at Company Shops.

People: Nancy Hilliard

Subject: North Carolina Railroad · Eagle Hotel (Chapel Hill)

The Whigs nominate William A. Graham for vice president

Graham ran on the Whig ticket with General Winfield Scott in 1852. The ticket lost.

The legislature charters the Chapel Hill and Raleigh Plank Road Company

The charter allowed $40,000 in capital, and the incorporators included W. J. Hogan and Edward Mallett of Chapel Hill.

Webb and Douglass finish a cotton factory on Little River

Webb and Douglass had finished building a cotton mill on Little River, some thirteen miles east of Hillsborough, by February 1852, and machinery for 1,000 spindles was on its way. Later owners kept it running, for a time as a rope works, until about the 1920s.

Brown and Wilkinson's Eagle Foundry is at work on the Eno

The Eagle Foundry, about three miles east of Hillsborough near Berry's mill, had opened shortly before February 1852 and could barely keep up with orders. It ran for many years.

John W. Carr sits as a justice of the county court

Carr was one of five justices holding the February 1852 term of the Orange County court, which elected a Board of Superintendents of Common Schools and set the county tax.

People: John U. Kirkland · William Nelson

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

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

People: Samuel Wellwood Hughes

Robert and John Shields ready a woollen factory on the Eno

The Shields brothers built a woollen factory on the Eno about seven miles east of Hillsborough, due to start in February 1852. The Recorder thought it one of the first three or four in the state; it later ran as the Alpha Woolen Mills.

Students revive the University Magazine

At a student meeting Jeremiah J. Slade moved to re-establish the magazine, and the first number appeared in February 1852 with editors from both literary societies and William D. Cooke of Raleigh as publisher. It ran until June 1861, the societies agreeing in 1859 to cover its deficits.

People: Zebulon B. Vance

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Students protest faculty veto of a sub-marshal

When the faculty barred the chief marshal's nominee under a new rule against irregular students representing the university, 183 students voted resolutions that the marshals should refuse to serve. They withdrew the resolutions on May 21, the chief marshal resigned, and the 1852 commencement went on without marshals.

People: Thomas Ruffin

Nathan Hooker's executor advertises his land and town lots for sale

O. Hooker, executor of the late Nathan Hooker, gave notice of a sale on November 24, 1852 at Hooker's former residence: a large tract south of town, Lots 84 and part of 85 in Hillsborough, and a hundred-acre tract half a mile north of town, with furniture, a buggy and cows.

James Strudwick Smith dies

James Strudwick Smith died on December 7, 1852. His family lived out their lives at the Smith Level Road house outside Chapel Hill, and his daughter Mary Ruffin Smith later gave land to the University of North Carolina.

Ellington Burnett's grave becomes the earliest dated African American burial in the Chapel Hill graveyard

A brownstone ledger for Ellington Burnett, 1831-1853, son of Cornelius and Caroline Burnett, is the oldest inscribed stone in Section B, the burial ground used for enslaved people. The section was almost certainly in use earlier, its graves marked only by fieldstones.

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Isaac Collier builds an I-house on East Rosemary Street

Isaac Collier is thought to have built the two-story I-house at 315 East Rosemary Street between 1853 and 1858. The novelist Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, later lived there.

People: Betty Smith

Nancy Hilliard builds the house students called the Crystal Palace

After selling her hotel, Hilliard built a large two-story house east of it on land she had bought from Lucy Watts. Students nicknamed it the Crystal Palace for its many big windows.

People: Nancy Hilliard

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

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

Shooting during a hazing raid leads the societies to stop hazing

In 1853 a new student named Evans, a brother of the South Carolina general, met a hazing party with a cocked pistol and wounded its leader, McRae, in the arm. The two literary societies offered to end hazing if the faculty would not dismiss the offenders, and Battle says the bargain held for years.

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies