Chronology

School for the Application of Science to the Arts opens

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

People: Charles Phillips · Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick

Subject: Smith Hall (Playmakers Theatre)

Benjamin Hedrick is appointed the university's professor of analytical and agricultural chemistry

The university appointed Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick to its new chair of analytical and agricultural chemistry. He held it until the trustees' executive committee dismissed him in October 1856.

Hillsborough Baptists call their first pastor

Three months after organizing, the congregation called Rev. A. Jones Jr. as its first pastor, and he accepted. The church counted 29 pastors in its first hundred years.

Chapel Hill Baptists contract for a brick church

Before the church was formally organized, a building committee let a contract for a brick church 60 by 35 feet with a tower 45 feet high, at a total cost of $3,425. William Henry Merritt had given the site and left $1,200 toward it in his will.

Subject: University Baptist Church

Mount Carmel Baptist Church authorizes a branch church at Chapel Hill

A conference of the Mount Carmel church, a country congregation south of the village, voted to set up a branch in Chapel Hill. Howell treats this as the formal start of the Chapel Hill Baptist Church.

Subject: University Baptist Church

Thomas Ruffin deeds St. Matthew's Church the land he had given by word around

Thomas Ruffin's deed of April 10, 1854 formally conveyed 1 1/3 acres to St. Matthew's Church, land he had given verbally around 1820. The tract was later enlarged for the church, parish house and walled cemetery.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

The Chapel Hill Baptist branch holds its first meeting and receives James P. Mason

The new branch met for the first time at the home of W. G. Weaver, with Mount Carmel's pastor Brantley J. Hackney presiding, and took in its first member, Elder James P. Mason. Services then met in a room John R. Hutchins built for the church.

Subject: University Baptist Church

Mary Burwell marries Frederick Nash Strudwick

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

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 132 events

People: Frederick N. Strudwick

Brantley J. Hackney is elected the first pastor of the Chapel Hill Baptist Church

The church elected Brantley James Hackney to preach four times a month at $200 a year, making him its first regularly elected pastor.

Subject: University Baptist Church

North Carolina Railroad finished to Durham's Station

The railroad was completed to Durham's Station, then a single house on Dr. Bartlett Durham's plantation in Orange County, and the company gave legislators a free ride there. From then until 1882 a two-horse hack line between Chapel Hill and Durham replaced the four-horse stage to Raleigh.

People: Samuel (Samuel Field) Phillips · Samuel Field Phillips

Subject: North Carolina Railroad

Abner Burnette is twice prosecuted for carrying a gun and once recorded as Indian

Abner Burnette of the Texas community was indicted in Alamance County in 1855 for carrying a gun, which was unlawful for free persons of color. He pled guilty and was fined thirty one dollars. Indicted again in 1860 he pled not guilty, was convicted and was fined five cents. The 1860 census for Orange County recorded him as Indian, and the 1870 Alamance County census as mulatto.

Caldwell Lodge No. 180 is chartered at Chapel Hill

Members of the defunct University Lodge took out a new charter as Caldwell Lodge No. 180, honoring the late university president Joseph Caldwell.

People: Joseph Caldwell · Solomon Pool · Adolphus Williamson Mangum

Subject: University Lodge

Chapel Hill merchants, John W. Carr among them, agree not to sell to minor students on credit

After the state's new laws on student contracts were sent to them, most of the village merchants pledged not to sell on credit to students under age without written leave from a parent or guardian, for eighteen months and subject to the faculty's approval. John W. Carr was one of nine signers.

People: Andrew Mickle

Hillsborough elects a Know Nothing slate in its town elections

In the 1855 municipal election Hillsborough voters chose a Nativist (American Party) ticket. The same year the county's congressional vote went to the Know Nothing candidate.

John and Louisa Turner inherit the Jackson farm on the Eno

Louisa Jackson Turner and her husband received the 140-acre Jackson farm outside Hillsborough, with its log and frame homeplace, from her widowed mother Mary Jackson. By 1860 the Turners farmed 713 acres on four tracts.

Subject: Jacob Jackson Farm (Maple Hill)

Revised Code tightens the laws around the university

The state's Revised Code barred the sale of liquor within two miles of Chapel Hill, public gaming tables within five, and shows, concerts and performances within five miles without seven days' written leave from the president or faculty. It also voided students' contracts with merchants made without faculty permission and restored escheated real estate to the university.

Richard Benbury Saunders buys the Lucas drugstore

Saunders, a UNC graduate of 1854, bought Dr. Lucas's drugstore at Franklin and Henderson and ran it until he moved to Raleigh in 1868.

Richard H. Battle hosts the first class reunion dinner on record

At the 1855 commencement Richard H. Battle of the class of 1854 gave a dinner for all his returning classmates. Battle calls it the first class dinner recorded in the public prints.

People: Richard H. Battle

The King-Richards-Johnston House is built on West King Street

The one-and-a-half-story frame house at 131 West King Street, dated by Bellinger to about 1855, was a boarding house by 1894. Owners of the property over the years included Abner Nash, William Courtney, Jehu Whitted, William D. Murphy, Henry Richards and Mayor Ben G. Johnston.

The legislature charters four plank road companies through Orange County

The 1855 charters were for roads from Chapel Hill to Morrisville and to Durhamsville, from Hillsborough to Chapel Hill, and from Hillsborough to Milton, with capital from $20,000 to $150,000. The book could not say which, if any, were built.

People: Charles Phillips · Edmund Strudwick · Andrew Mickle · Patterson H. McDade

Thomas Webb serves as Orange County's clerk and master in equity

Thomas Webb signed notices as clerk and master of the Court of Equity for Orange County, at his office in Hillsborough, from at least 1855 into 1862.

Warrenton builder Jacob Holt puts up an Italianate house for Mary Southerland on West Franklin Street

In the mid-1850s Mary Southerland engaged Jacob Holt, the Warrenton builder, for a house on West Franklin a little west of Columbia Street, done in his heavy Italianate style with sawn brackets, corner pilasters and arched windows. She had bought the lot from Dr. Johnston B. Jones in 1851. The house has been torn down; University Square now occupies the lot.

Willie P. Mangum is made a justice of the peace on his return to Orange County

According to the book, Mangum was made a justice of the peace on his return to Orange County in 1855, so that the county court could draw on his knowledge and experience.

The Chapel Hill Baptist Church hangs its first bell

The bell cost $210.10. The women of the church raised $140 and a local merchant collected the rest from wholesale firms he dealt with. It was still rung for Masonic meetings in the old building in 1944.

Subject: University Baptist Church

Dr. James Webb dies in Hillsborough

Dr. James Webb died in Hillsborough on Saturday morning, February 17, 1855, aged 81, after an illness of several years. The Recorder praised his integrity and charity, and he was buried with his wife in the Webb-Long plot of the Old Town Cemetery.

Subject: Old Town Cemetery, Hillsborough

Aunt Fariby saves Jane from burning

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

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 132 events

Subject: Burwell School

The Chapel Hill Baptist Church starts its Sunday school

The Sunday school opened with P. H. McDade, the church's first clerk, as superintendent. It soon had a library of about three hundred books, and in 1861 its pupils memorized 20,000 Bible verses.

People: Patterson H. McDade

Subject: University Baptist Church

William McCauley takes charge of the Hillsborough House

William McCauley took over the Hillsborough House, the inn northeast of the court house long known as Faddis' Hotel. He repaired the buildings, bought new furniture and said he had retired from other business to run it.

The Baptist Church of Chapel Hill opens its first church

Services began on Sunday, May 6, 1855 in the brick meeting house, with vestibule, belfry and bell, that the Baptist congregation put up after it organized in September 1854. The building later became the Masonic temple of University Lodge.

People: James Pleasant Mason

Subject: University Lodge · University Baptist Church

Lemuel Lynch serves a second term as mayor of Hillsborough

Ten years after becoming the town's first mayor, Lynch succeeded A. C. Murdock and served a year, followed by James M. Palmer.

People: A. C. Murdock · James M. Palmer

Five enslaved people are the first baptized into the Chapel Hill Baptist Church

The church's first baptisms took place at a new outdoor baptistry by a spring on the McDade place. The candidates were five people enslaved by William Barbee, so the first people immersed into the church in the village were Black. Black members made up about a third of the early church.

Subject: University Baptist Church

Cornelia Phillips marries James Munroe Spencer in Chapel Hill

Cornelia Phillips married James Munroe Spencer of Alabama, a first-honor graduate of the class of 1853, who returned to Chapel Hill for the wedding. The couple then left by way of Wilmington and Charleston for his home at Clinton, Alabama.

Aggie and Martin, an enslaved couple, join the Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church

Aggie, enslaved by James Watson, and her husband Martin, enslaved by a Freeland household at New Hope, were received as members on a certificate from New Hope Church. The centennial booklet gives them as proof that the church had enslaved members before the war.

Subject: University Presbyterian Church

A. J. Davis returns to Chapel Hill with designs for new and enlarged college buildings

With the dormitories overflowing, Swain asked the faculty and trustees in 1855 for leave to build new residence halls, and the university turned again to Davis, who visited in the summer of 1856 and offered several designs. When the trustees acted in 1858 they hired William Percival instead.

People: David L. Swain

E. Hunt opens a photography studio and student boarding house

Hunt took over the building that had been Isaac Partridge's University Hotel and used it for a photographic studio and rooms for students. He had closed both and left Chapel Hill before 1863.

Old belfry burns and the college bell is destroyed

During a student game of throwing alcohol-soaked fireballs, the old belfry caught fire and burned and its bell was destroyed. The executive committee sent the facts to the Orange solicitor, but no bill went to the grand jury, and the two literary societies agreed to fine any member $25 for wanton damage to university property.

People: David L. Swain

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Orange County elects John Wall Norwood to the General Assembly

Norwood entered public life in 1856 when Orange County elected him a representative in the General Assembly, where he served until 1858.

Orange County reports its county taxes to the state for the first time

County taxes, all on property and polls, came to $9,432.53 in 1856: $6,153.98 for county costs, $1,583.92 for the poor and $1,694.63 for common schools. By 1864 the county levy had grown to $35,106.63.

Paul C. Cameron repurchases Burnside and moves back to Hillsborough

Paul and Anne Ruffin Cameron left Fairntosh in 1856, bought back Burnside, the Hillsborough house where they had first lived after their 1832 marriage, and moved back to town.

Subject: Burnside

Samuel F. Phillips represents Orange County in the House of Commons

A Whig, Phillips was elected to the House of Commons in 1856 and 1858 and again in 1864 and 1865, representing Orange, and was chosen speaker in 1865. He moved to Raleigh in 1867.

Samuel Phillips builds a gable-and-wing house beside his law office

In 1856 Samuel Phillips built his family a two-story house at 407 East Franklin Street, beside his law office. With a projecting front wing and arched French doors and casements, it was the first house in the village to break from the box-like Federal and Greek Revival plan.

People: Samuel Field Phillips

Senior class invites Archbishop John Hughes to preach

A majority of the seniors present voted to invite the Roman Catholic Archbishop John Hughes to preach the commencement sermon, and the invitation was sent before the faculty could object. President Swain told the class it was unwise, the executive committee backed him, and the archbishop declined.

People: David L. Swain

The Gordan house is built near Efland

A story-and-a-half frame house, recorded as the Gordan House, is built near Efland in 1856.

The Lambda chapter of Phi Kappa Sigma is active at the university

Phi Kappa Sigma's Lambda chapter flourished at the university from 1856 to 1862, and many members served as Confederate officers. After the 1875 reopening it was the first fraternity to be reinstated.

William Bingham begins teaching in his father's school

Fresh from the university, William Bingham joins the Bingham School as a teacher in 1856 and stays until his death in 1873, the last years as its head.

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

Subject: Bingham School

William Bingham graduates from the university with first honors

William Bingham graduates from the University of North Carolina in 1856 as one of five students awarded first honor in a class of forty-seven. The Bingham School's 1905 catalogue later called him first in a class of seventy.

People: William Bingham (1835-1873)

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

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

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 132 events

Subject: North Carolina Railroad

The Burwells resolve to sell their cook Hannah

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

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 132 events

People: Robert Armistead Burwell

Subject: Burwell School

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

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

People: Robert Armistead Burwell · Margaret Anna Burwell

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

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

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 132 events

Subject: Burwell School

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

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

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 132 events

Subject: Burwell School

Professor Hedrick tells students at the Chapel Hill polls he would vote for a Fremont ticket

After voting the Democratic ticket in the August state election, Hedrick was questioned by students outside the polling place and said he would support a Fremont ticket if one existed. A garbled report that he had preached abolition to poor voters followed, and the remark grew into the case that cost him his chair.

Benjamin Hedrick answers his accusers with a public defence of his Free Soil views

Attacked in the Raleigh Standard by an anonymous alumnus, later identified as law student John A. Engelhard, Hedrick wrote a reply from Chapel Hill saying he favored Fremont and opposed carrying slavery into the territories, citing Washington, Jefferson and Clay. The Standard printed it on October 4 and called for his removal.

People: William W. Holden

Students burn Professor Hedrick in effigy on the campus

On the Saturday night the Standard with Hedrick's letter reached Chapel Hill, students hung and burned him in effigy in the college grounds while the bell was tolled, and did it again on the Monday night. President Swain spoke to the whole student body on the Sunday morning, and talk of tarring and feathering him reached Raleigh.

People: David L. Swain

The faculty vote 12 to 1 to disown Hedrick's published views

Called together by President Swain, the faculty resolved that Hedrick's letter broke the university's custom of keeping out of party politics and that no other member shared his opinions, while expressing personal regard for him. Instructor H. Herrisse cast the only vote against, saying no one suspected the faculty of Republicanism.

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

President Swain argues that the trustees' executive committee has no power to dismiss a professor

Writing to trustee secretary Charles Manly, Swain read the charter to mean that only the full board could remove a professor, and only for misbehavior, inability or neglect of duty. He urged the committee to wait for the annual meeting and to charge Hedrick, if at all, with breaking university usage rather than with his opinions.

People: Charles Manly · Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick

The trustees' executive committee rules that Hedrick has destroyed his usefulness to the university

Meeting under Governor Thomas Bragg, the committee resolved that Hedrick's letter broke the rule against professors agitating party politics, approved the faculty's stand, and found he could no longer serve the university. The resolutions were sent to Chapel Hill but not published.

People: Thomas Bragg · Charles Lewis Hinton · Bartholomew F. Moore · Romulus M. (Romulus Mitchell) Saunders

Hedrick reports 14 scientific students and 44 seniors in his chemistry courses

Asking the trustees for a full hearing, Hedrick described his scientific course: 14 students had enrolled in it that session and 44 seniors had chosen his subjects in place of the regular course. He asked the board to move carefully over a school in which he had staked a great deal.

People: Charles Manly

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

In 1856 faculty member Benjamin S. Hedrick admitted and defended in the newspapers his preference for the Free Soil party. President David L. Swain disapproved of his speaking out, and on October 18, 1856 the trustees' executive committee, meeting in Raleigh, dismissed Hedrick and paid his salary to the end of the session; Swain objected only that the committee had taken authority belonging to the full board.

People: Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick

Orange County Agricultural Society holds its third fair near Hillsborough

At the society's third annual fair, on its grounds near Hillsborough, members elected Paul C. Cameron president and Thomas Webb secretary. Cameron, away in Alabama, had given the society a flag that flew from a pole more than eighty feet high.

People: Paul C. Cameron · Josiah Turner Jr. · William A. Graham · John Wall Norwood

An octagonal brick ice house is built for Burnside

A mostly underground octagonal brick ice house with a conical shingled roof was built for Burnside, the Cameron family estate on South Cameron Street; the brickwork is said to be John Berry's. It stands in the woods south of Cameron Park Elementary School and was restored around 2002.

People: John Berry

Subject: Burnside

Brick mason William Maynard builds his frame farmhouse

William Maynard, a brick mason who also farmed, completed a story-and-a-half frame house two rooms deep in 1857, with a wide center hall and plain Greek Revival details. The older log dwelling behind it then became the kitchen. The 1993 form ranks it among the most intact antebellum farmhouses in the county.

Subject: Maynard Farm

Burwell School closes as the Burwells move to Charlotte

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

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

People: Robert Armistead Burwell · Margaret Anna Burwell

Subject: Burwell School

Dr. William P. Mallett moves his medical practice to Chapel Hill

After about fifteen years of practice in Fayetteville, Mallett moved to Chapel Hill so his children could attend the university. He treated villagers and students there for more than thirty years.

Francis L. Hawks argues for the Mecklenburg Declaration at commencement

At the 1857 commencement Hawks gave a long, later published oration defending the authenticity of the Mecklenburg Declaration of May 20, 1775. In the audience was Professor Charles Phillips, an equally firm disbeliever in the document.

People: Charles Phillips

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

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

People: Andrew Mickle

Subject: Highlands (Paul Cameron house)

Paul Cameron brings English gardener Thomas A. Adams to plant the Burnside grounds

Paul Cameron hired Thomas A. Adams, a landscape gardener from Chester, England, to plant the twenty-acre front yard of Burnside with trees ordered from Parsons and Co. of Long Island. The grounds became known as Cameron Park, and many of the trees still stand.

Subject: Burnside

Pride Jones has John Berry enlarge Sans Souci

After inheriting Sans Souci from Dr. William Cain in 1857, Dr. Pride Jones has builder John Berry renovate the house, adding the rear dining room and stair, the full-width front porch and the one-story wings.

People: Pride Jones

Subject: Sans Souci

Sigma Alpha Epsilon establishes a chapter at the university

Sigma Alpha Epsilon set up a chapter at the university in 1857, one of several fraternities to arrive in the 1850s. It withdrew before the end of the Civil War.

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

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

Thomas Ruffin buys a West Tryon Street house for his widowed daughter Catherine Roulhac

About 1857 Chief Justice Thomas Ruffin bought the house at 143 West Tryon Street, built around 1840, for his widowed daughter Catherine Ruffin Roulhac, who named it Laburnum Cottage. After her death in 1880 it passed to her daughter Annie Roulhac and then to the Hamilton family, whose children included the historian J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton.

Subject: Roulhac-Hamilton House (Laburnum Cottage)

Trustees buy Elisha Mitchell's books and minerals after his death

Elisha Mitchell, senior professor, died on June 27, 1857, in a fall while surveying the Black Mountains. The trustees paid his salary to the year's end, let his family keep their house rent-free for six months, and bought his books for $3,500 and his apparatus and mineral cabinet for $1,000.

University awards its first Bachelor of Science degree

At the 1857 commencement James E. Lindsay received the first Bachelor of Science degree in the university's history, from the new scientific school. Six more B.S. degrees followed in 1859 and five in 1860.

The full board of trustees confirms Hedrick's dismissal

At their meeting of January 5, 1857, the trustees confirmed the executive committee's October vote removing Hedrick, the step Swain had argued only the full board could take.

Snowstorm closes the university for the first time

A night of wind and snow left about eighteen inches of icy snow, and the cold kept wood wagons off the roads for a week. For the first time in the university's history all duties were suspended, from Sunday until Tuesday.

John Kimberly is elected the university's professor of agricultural chemistry

The university elected John Kimberly, a Harvard-trained chemist then teaching in eastern North Carolina, to the chair of agricultural chemistry in place of the dismissed Benjamin Hedrick.

People: Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick

Trustees create a professorship of modern languages

After a dispute between the French instructor Henri Harrisse and President Swain, the trustees created a professorship of modern languages and elected Hildreth H. Smith, president of Catawba College, to fill it. Smith held the chair until the university closed in 1868.

People: David L. Swain

Moses Ashley Curtis returns to St. Matthew's in Hillsborough

After about ten years at Society Hill, S.C., Curtis came back to St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough in February 1857, and stayed until his death in 1872; he was buried in the churchyard.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

The wardens of the poor elect Dr. Benjamin F. Mebane physician to the poorhouse

At the same April 1857 meeting the Court of Wardens told its treasurer to hand over the rest of the 1856 poor taxes so the superintendent could pay the oldest orders first.

People: Benjamin Franklin Mebane

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

The wardens of the poor order poorhouse repairs and a $1,000 loan

After a called meeting on May 11, 1857 about the state of the poorhouse building, the wardens asked the county court on May 25 to summon the magistrates on the condition of the poor. They named a committee to repair the west building and let the superintendent borrow $1,000.

People: John U. Kirkland · Pride Jones · James C. Turrentine

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

Chapel Hill bans carts, wagons and horseback riders from its sidewalks

The commissioners barred hand carts, wheelbarrows, wagons and other vehicles from the sidewalks of the village and forbade riding on them on horseback. Rolling a vehicle on the walk cost fifty cents and riding there a dollar.

Chapel Hill's commissioners enter resolutions on the death of their fellow commissioner Elisha Mitchell

The village board recorded its loss of Mitchell, who sat with them as a commissioner, and ordered the resolutions entered in the village journals. Copies went to his family and the Chapel Hill Gazette.

People: Patterson H. McDade · Hugh B. Guthrie · John H. Watson

Chapel Hill citizens hold a town meeting in the University Chapel to mourn Elisha Mitchell

Once word came that Mitchell had died on Black Mountain, the townspeople met in the University Chapel, adopted resolutions on his forty years as a resident and agreed to wear mourning for thirty days. They then walked in procession to his house to give the resolutions to his family, and the town's stores closed for the meeting.

People: Jones Watson · Francis L. Hawks · Samuel (Samuel Field) Phillips · David L. Swain

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

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

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

Subject: Bingham School

Calvin E. Parish becomes Hillsborough postmaster

Calvin E. Parish was appointed postmaster at Hillsborough, succeeding James M. Palmer. He held the office before and during the Civil War, and Dennis Heartt was appointed in his place in June 1865.

People: Dennis Heartt · James M. Palmer

William Cain dies and leaves Sans Souci to his son-in-law Pride Jones

William Cain, who built Sans Souci as his town house and was married to a sister of Chief Justice Thomas Ruffin, died and willed the house he had formerly lived in to his son-in-law, Pride Jones.

People: Pride Jones

Subject: Sans Souci

Alves, an enslaved man sentenced to death, is baptized at St. Matthew's

St. Matthew's register records the baptism of Alves, "a slave under sentence of death," with James Waddell as witness.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

John H. Watson sits on Chapel Hill's board of town commissioners

A business directory of Chapel Hill dated Christmas 1857 listed John H. Watson among the town's commissioners, with H. B. Guthrie, P. H. McDade and Calvin Scott.

People: Hugh B. Guthrie

A small smoking-tobacco factory opens by the depot at Durham's Station

Built beside the tracks and worked by free Black and white laborers, the plant was the start of the tobacco industry that later made Durham a factory town.

Adolphus W. Mangum serves as pastor of the Chapel Hill Methodist church

The Methodist minister Adolphus Williamson Mangum, born at Locust Grove on the Flat River in what was then Orange County, was pastor of the Methodist church in Chapel Hill in 1858 and 1859.

Subject: University United Methodist Church

Charles P. Mallett keeps the University Bookstore on Franklin Street

Mallett's University Bookstore was one of four businesses the book first maps in 1858, along with Andrew Mickle's dry goods, John R. Hutchins's clothing store and C. Gottenburg's mattress shop. All may have opened before 1853.

People: Andrew Mickle

John W. Graham joins the university faculty as a Latin tutor

A year after taking his A.B. in 1857, John W. Graham became a tutor in Latin at the University of North Carolina. He finished a law degree there in 1860.

Jones Watson opens the Central Hotel

Watson remodeled and enlarged the old James Hogg house and the Barbee store beside it into the Central Hotel, which had several shops on the ground. It appears on the maps through 1868.

People: Jones Watson

Subject: Central Hotel (Chapel Hill)

Students of a lawless club riot and are sued for damages

A club of students sworn to back each other in breaking rules rang and stole the bell, stoned the faculty and piled the classroom benches and blackboards for a bonfire. The leaders were expelled and, sued in Orange Superior Court, made to repay the university about $200.

People: David L. Swain

The General Assembly lets Emily Hooper, a citizen of Liberia, return to slavery in Chapel Hill

A private act allowed Emily Hooper, who had emigrated to Liberia, to come back and live again as the enslaved property of her former owner, Sally Mallet of Chapel Hill.

The brick McDade House is built on West Franklin Street

The two-story brick I-house at 113 West Franklin Street, with late Greek Revival touches and a long rear ell, was built after Isaac Hudson bought the old Nunn lot in 1854, probably for him about 1858-60, and stood by 1865. The 1992 survey's "about 1850" is a guess from its style. The McDades did not own it until 1894.

The university opens its first infirmary, the Retreat, with Dr. Mallett in charge

The small building known as the Retreat stood in the southwest corner of the university-owned Tom Taylor property, and the town physician William P. Mallett ran it. It served as the infirmary until 1894.

University enrollment reaches its antebellum peak

The university's catalogue for the 1858-59 session counted 456 students, its highest college enrollment before the Civil War. Counting eight independent law students, the 1857-58 total had been 461.

People: David L. Swain

Zeta Psi organizes a chapter at the university

The Zeta Psi chapter at the university was organized in January 1858. Battle counts four colonels among its members who served the Confederacy, and nine members killed.

Chapel Hill makes it a crime to cut or damage sidewalk shade trees

A town ordinance set a twenty-five-dollar fine for cutting down, digging up or otherwise harming any shade tree on the sidewalk of a Chapel Hill street.

John H. Webb buys 9 9/16 acres from Ellen Bain for the St. Mary's congregation

Acting for the congregation, Webb bought the tract next to the old one-acre chapel lot from Ellen Bain, a great-granddaughter of Thomas Holden. The new brick chapel was raised on this land about 350 feet northwest of the first log chapel.

Subject: St. Mary’s Chapel

A marble monument to Joseph Caldwell is dedicated in McCorkle Place

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

People: Helen Hogg Caldwell

Subject: McCorkle Place (with the Davie Poplar)

New East and New West are built to William Percival's design

To house more students, the university built two dormitories with classrooms and debating society halls on either side of Old East and Old West, to designs by the English architect William Percival, with Thomas Coates as contractor. Work began in June 1858, and the faculty announced on July 31, 1861 that the buildings were ready to occupy.

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

Pride Jones and John W. Norwood are elected to the House of Commons for Orange

Orange County elected Democrats Pride Jones and John W. Norwood to the state House of Commons in the August 1858 election.

People: John Wall Norwood

Chapel Hill forbids filling in or blocking ditches and drains

The commissioners set a ten-dollar fine for anyone who filled up or otherwise ruined a ditch, drain or water passage in the village.

Charles Tew buys land west of Hillsborough for a military academy

On December 18, 1858, Charles C. Tew of South Carolina bought from Cad Jones a 61 1/4-acre tract lying between the Greensborough road and the North Carolina Railroad, on what is now the west end of Hillsborough, for a military academy modeled on the Citadel. His advertisements, dated September 15, 1858, had already announced that the school would open at Hillsborough in January 1859.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 132 events

People: John Berry · Moses Ashley Curtis

Subject: North Carolina Railroad · Hillsborough Military Academy

Frederick Nash dies in Hillsborough and is buried in the Old Town Cemetery

Nash fell ill returning from a synod meeting at New Bern and died in December 1858 at his Hillsborough home, while serving as chief justice of the state supreme court. He was buried in the Hillsborough Old Town Cemetery.

Subject: Old Town Cemetery, Hillsborough

Alexander Gattis Jr. becomes the first person buried in the Orange Church cemetery

Gattis, the first member of Orange Church to enter the Methodist ministry, joined the North Carolina Conference in 1846. He died at forty and was the first burial in the church cemetery.

Beta Theta Pi's Eta chapter goes inactive

After a strong start the Eta chapter lapsed in 1859 as the Civil War approached.

Subject: Beta Theta Pi Fraternity House

James B. McDade serves as Chapel Hill's magistrate of police

The 1859 town pamphlet lists the corporation's officers: James B. McDade as magistrate of police; Andrew Mickle, Calvin Scott, John Ward, John H. Watson and Foster Utley as commissioners; Mickle as town treasurer; Wayne H. McDade as town constable; and John M. Blackwood as town clerk.

People: Andrew Mickle · John H. Watson

Masons lay a cornerstone at the Hillsborough Military Academy

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

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy · Eagle Lodge

New Bethel Methodist Church is organized

John R. McMannan, Jackson Latta and five other men organized New Bethel Methodist Church in 1859. The church it used in 1953 dated from 1925.

Subject: New Bethel Methodist Church

Professor William J. Martin buys the Franklin and Boundary corner and builds a house

Martin, who replaced Elisha Mitchell on the faculty and later served as a Confederate colonel, bought the northeast corner of Franklin and Boundary streets from Charles Phillips and built his home there soon after. He resigned his chair in the fall of 1867 and moved to Tennessee.

People: William Joseph Martin

Samuel F. Phillips closes his law school and shares the office with Judge Battle

Phillips, who had taught law in his Franklin Street office since 1854, closed the school, went back to practice, and shared the building with Judge William Horn Battle.

People: William Horn Battle

Subject: UNC School of Law

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

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

People: Sarah Kollock · Maria Nash

Subject: Nash and Kollock School · Nash Law Office

The legislature creates North Carolina's first Board of Medical Examiners

In 1859 the state set up its first Board of Medical Examiners by law. The book credits the urging of Hillsborough's Dr. Edmund Strudwick.

People: Edmund Strudwick

Trustees buy a second thousand shares of bank stock on credit

When the old state bank's charter ran out, the trustees put the university's $100,000 into the new Bank of North Carolina and, by a bare majority, subscribed for another thousand shares on credit. Only $10,000 of that debt was ever paid, and after the war the university owed $90,000 on shares that were worthless.

People: David L. Swain · Bartholomew F. Moore

Washington Duke turns from cotton to tobacco on his Orange County farm

After a failed cotton crop, Washington Duke began growing tobacco in 1859 on his farm, then in Orange County, following favorable publicity among Orange County farmers. The farm used the labor of an enslaved girl, Caroline, bought in 1855, and later a leased enslaved man, Jim, who worked in tobacco.

People: Washington Duke

Samuel Wellwood Hughes opens his own school near Cedar Grove

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

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 132 events

Subject: Hughes Academy (Cedar Grove Academy)

Calvin E. Parish serves as mayor of Hillsborough

Parish followed Dr. Roscoe Hooker as mayor of Hillsborough in February 1859 and served until A. C. Murdock took office in February 1860.

People: A. C. Murdock

John B. Shearer becomes the first pastor of the Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church

Faculty members had served the church as unpaid stated supplies until the congregation called John B. Shearer, later president of Davidson College, as its first installed pastor. He stayed until June 1862, when he went back to Virginia.

Subject: University Presbyterian Church

Chapel Hill bans peddlers of liquor from the village

The 1859 code fined any traveling seller five dollars each time he offered spirituous liquor or other prohibited goods for sale in any amount within the village limits. The constable was told to arrest such sellers found on the streets by day or night.

Chapel Hill bars Black people from the countryside from gathering in town on tax and election days

An ordinance made it unlawful for Black people from the country to gather or linger in the streets of Chapel Hill after 4 p.m. on tax-collecting or election days, and let the town constable whip those who did.

Chapel Hill fixes its village limits as a rectangle of 839 acres

The first ordinance of the 1859 code set the town limits from Franklin Street, which ran 2,622 yards from the road to Purefoy's Mill on John Craig's land to the university's land line, with Raleigh and Hillsborough streets marking the north-south reach. Lines through these points formed a rectangle of about 839 acres.

Chapel Hill forbids enslaved and free Black people to gather and dance without a license

Under the 1859 code no one could allow enslaved people or free people of color to meet and dance in a kitchen or other house without a license from the magistrate of police or two commissioners. The fine was five dollars for each offense.

Chapel Hill keeps lumber kilns and blacksmith shops away from houses

To guard against fire, the town barred kilns for drying lumber within 200 feet of a dwelling or 40 feet of any shop or outbuilding. New blacksmith shops had to stand 200 feet from dwellings and 50 feet from other buildings unless built with brick walls and a metal roof, on pain of removal and a twenty-five-dollar fine.

Chapel Hill orders its officers to check the status of Black residents who claim to be free

The 1859 code made it the duty of the magistrate of police and the town constable to find out the true condition of every person of color living in the village who claimed to be free.

Chapel Hill requires hay and feed sold in town to be weighed at the public scales

All oats, hay, fodder and other feed sold in the village had to be weighed by the Weigh Master at the public scales, who certified the load and the empty vehicle and kept a record of each sale. Fees ran from ten to twenty cents a load, paid by the seller, and buying or selling unweighed feed cost five dollars.

Chapel Hill sets rent and bond terms for teachers using the Village School House

The town code required any teacher who wanted to use the Village School House to post a bond with sureties, pay the commissioners rent of twenty-five dollars a year and return the building in good order at the end of the term.

Chapel Hill's commissioners adopt a revised code of ordinances

The commissioners of Chapel Hill revised and adopted the village ordinances and printed them with the 1851 act of incorporation in a pamphlet published at Chapel Hill by James M. Henderson.

Chapel Hill's constable is told to arrest drunks, with university students excepted

The 1859 code made the town constable report every violation at each board meeting and arrest anyone drunk and disorderly, except university students, along with traveling liquor sellers. He was paid twenty percent of the fines collected.

Hillsborough Methodist Church builds its church

The Hillsborough Methodist congregation, organized about 1807, bought its lot on April 4, 1859, and John Berry built the church, which was to be dedicated on Sunday, October 6, 1861. The war held up the finishing and the building was not paid for until 1874. Lefler and Wager counted 200 seats, and it was still the congregation's church in 1953.

Subject: Hillsborough Methodist Church

William Hooper gives the alumni address Fifty Years Since

On the day before commencement, with President Buchanan in the audience, Professor William Hooper addressed the university's alumni with recollections of student life fifty years earlier and a plea for action against drinking at colleges. The address was printed in Raleigh the same month.

People: James Buchanan

President James Buchanan attends commencement

President Buchanan and Interior Secretary Jacob Thompson, an alumnus, came to the 1859 commencement as guests of President Swain, received callers under the Davie Poplar and saw Buchanan given an honorary doctor of laws. The Wilmington Light Infantry, the first military company to attend a commencement, camped on the campus for the occasion.

People: David L. Swain · James Buchanan

Nash and Kollock School for young ladies opens in Hillsborough

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

People: Sarah Kollock · Maria Nash

Subject: Nash and Kollock School

Five elders are ordained at New Hope

Samuel S. Claytor, Alexander Dickson, William S. Kirkland, Bryant Strayhorn and George R. Long were ordained and installed. Craig traces each to the founding families except Dickson.

People: Alexander Dickson

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

Bishop Atkinson consecrates St. Mary's Chapel

The St. Mary's Chapel building in eastern Orange County was consecrated by Bishop Atkinson with the Rev. Dr. Curtis taking part.

People: Moses Ashley Curtis

Subject: St. Mary’s Chapel

A one-room log house goes up on the Bryant Nevilles farm near White Cross

By family tradition a one-room log house and log smokehouse on the Nevilles farm near White Cross date to about the Civil War years. Bryant Nevilles (1850-1931), who married Julia Lloyd in 1872, later farmed here, and a frame bungalow was added to the farmstead in 1926. The farm is on the Study List.

Archbishop John Hughes preaches the commencement sermon

Invited again by the senior class, the Roman Catholic Archbishop Hughes preached the baccalaureate sermon, speaking without notes for an hour and three quarters on love of God and of neighbor. Some Protestant critics attacked the choice, and a Hillsborough Recorder correspondent charged that he was treated discourteously, which the university denied.

People: Fordyce M. Hubbard

Subject: Gerrard Hall

Brick quarters for enslaved people are built at the Mangum House on St. Mary's Road

Around 1860 two four-bay brick buildings, likely quarters for enslaved people, and a brick smokehouse were built to serve the Priestly Mangum House on St. Mary's Road. The house later burned, and the Ruffin-Hill House went up near its site in 1877-1878; the quarters still stand at 311 and 313 St. Mary's Road.

Subject: Ruffin-Hill House

Census counts more than 5,000 enslaved people in Orange County

The 1860 census recorded more than 5,000 enslaved people in Orange County, whose labor sustained the county's farms. At emancipation they made up roughly a third of the county's population.

David Moore, a free Black barber in Chapel Hill, holds property worth $4,400

The 1860 census recorded Moore's property at $4,400, the largest holding among the county's 29 free Black property owners, whose combined wealth was $16,175.

Executive committee orders the faculty to stop hazing

The trustees' executive committee resolved that the ridicule and petty harassment of new students by older ones was cruel and contemptible and should be put down peremptorily by the faculty.

First Baptist Church of Hillsborough builds its church

Seven years after organizing in the old courthouse, the First Baptist Church of Hillsborough began its brick church about 1860, to a design by William Percival. The congregation met in the courthouse until 1862 and the war stalled the work; John Berry took over from the first builder, D. Kistler, and finished it. The Baptist State Convention met in the newly completed church in the fall of 1868, when Rev. Thomas H. Pritchard of Raleigh preached the dedication sermon.

People: William A. Graham

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

Four in ten Orange farms now grow bright-leaf tobacco

Between 1850 and 1860 the share of county farms growing bright leaf rose from about 11 to about 41 percent and the crop grew fivefold to over a million pounds. Farms raising 100 bushels of wheat or more rose from 26 to 39 percent.

Hillsborough counts 945 residents

Even with the railroad, the town hardly grew in the 1850s: about 900 people in 1850 and 945 at the end of the decade.

James H. Pratt buys the Jehu Brown tract and a second share of the Cabe land

John Burton, Jamima Cabe's son by her first marriage, sold the 160-acre Jehu Brown tract with the house to Pratt by a deed dated 1860. The same year Pratt bought 130 adjoining acres that had been Nancy Cabe's share of her father's land.

People: James H. Pratt

John Kimberly expands laboratory teaching at the university

Back in Chapel Hill after a year of study abroad in 1859, John Kimberly expanded laboratory instruction in chemistry and introduced the university's first laboratory fee for supplies.

John Kirkland builds a log house on Kirkland Road

John Kirkland built a log house east of NC 86 that was widened with a frame section around 1900 and given a Triple-A roof. A kitchen joined by a breezeway, a smokehouse and a dairy on posts stand in the yard.

Merchant Calvin Scott builds a Greek Revival house on West Cameron Avenue

Calvin Scott, a Chapel Hill merchant, is thought to have built the two-story I-house at 400 West Cameron Avenue about 1860. It later belonged to Samuel Mallette Gattis, a UNC alumnus of 1884 and a university trustee from 1909 to 1911.

Most white male household heads in Orange County own no land

Citing Robert Kenzer's study of the county, the report says that in 1860 some 59 percent of white men heading households held no land and 71.5 percent held no slaves. A third held between 1 and 250 acres, and 21.6 percent held from one to nine enslaved people.

New belfry built on South Building

A belfry was raised on South Building to plans by the builder Thomas H. Coates, replacing the one burned in 1856. It was strengthened after the 1875 reopening and still carried the bell in Battle's day.

Subject: South Building

Orange County teaches 57 district schools

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

Paul C. Cameron holds 470 people in slavery in Orange County

The 1860 count listed Cameron of Fairntosh as the owner of 470 enslaved people in Orange, and the joined Bennehan-Cameron holdings ran to as much as 30,000 acres worked by about 900 enslaved people.

People: Paul C. Cameron

Seven in ten free Orange County residents hold no one in slavery

In 1860, 70 percent of the free population held no enslaved people. Of the slaveholders, only seven percent held 20 or more, and more than half held fewer than five.

The Hillsborough Military Academy's commandant's house is built

The academy's castellated brick superintendent's house, known locally as the Commandant's House, with a turret at each corner and crenellated battlements, was presumably built about the same time as the barracks, which were complete by 1860. It was the home of Charles C. Tew, his wife Elizabeth and their children. John Berry was its builder, to designs by the Columbia architect John A. Kay, and Henry Richards Sr. is credited as its brickmason.

People: John Berry

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

The Neville House is built

The Neville House, built about 1860, was placed on the state Study List in July 1992 after the Chapel Hill Township survey.

The Pitard Place is built near Cedar Grove

A two-story frame house with a very low hip roof, widely spaced windows and a two-tier entry porch, the broadest local take on the Greek Revival.

The Sikes log house is built

The Sikes log house dates from about 1860 and was placed on the state Study List in July 1993.

The Tally family I-house is built near Cedar Grove

The main house at the Tally Homeplace near Cedar Grove, a two-story I-house, goes up around 1860 and is altered in the 1880s. The farm keeps tobacco barns, two tenant houses of about 1900 and an office, and is on the Study List.

The brick Mason-Lloyd-Wiley House is built on West Cameron Avenue

About 1860 a two-story brick house with carefully laid walls and a sidelighted double entrance went up at 412 West Cameron Avenue, among the biggest houses on the west side of the university. Turner Bynum may have built it.

Thomas Kirkland starts a frame house and finishes it after the Civil War

Thomas Kirkland began a two-room frame house on University Station Road before he left for the war and completed it when he came back.

Subject: University Station

Thomas and Mary Hogan build a farmhouse at Calvander

About 1860, around the time Thomas J. Hogan married Mary, the couple built a story-and-a-half frame farmhouse with Greek Revival trim on the old Hillsborough Road at Calvander; family tradition has their first child born there in 1862. Thomas served in the Civil War, and about 1890 the Hogans raised the house to two stories in the Queen Anne style.

Subject: Thomas and Mary Hogan House

Webb and Whitted's plug tobacco factory is Hillsborough's largest works

The firm made plug tobacco in Hillsborough with 15 workers, the biggest manufacturing concern in present Orange County in the 1860 census.

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

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

William Shambley builds a log house before going to war

About 1860 William Shambley raised a one-room log house on Cornwallis Road, finishing it shortly before he left to fight in the Civil War. It remained well kept in 1992.

The university catalogue counts 430 students at the close of 1859-60

At the end of the 1859-60 year the university listed 430 students, 245 of them from North Carolina and the rest from across the South and as far as California. Swain later cited the figure to show how quickly the war emptied the college.

Walter Clark enters Colonel Tew's military academy in Hillsborough

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

People: Charles Courtenay Tew

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

President Swain's circular tells parents half the states are represented at the university

In a circular to patrons dated September 4, 1860, President David L. Swain reported students from about half the states, including men from some thirty other colleges between Vermont and Texas, and judged the faculty and the students' conduct and scholarship as good as at any earlier time.

Trustees allow students to be excused from chapel worship

Answering a memorial from the Episcopal convention that compulsory chapel on Sunday violated conscience, the trustees adopted Judge Matthias E. Manly's scheme letting the president excuse students whose parents lived in the village, who belonged to another church in town, or who or whose parents objected in writing. Morning and evening prayers stayed compulsory.

People: William Horn Battle

Subject: Gerrard Hall

Sidney Smith speaks for a state convention at an Orange County mass meeting in Hillsborough

At an adjourned mass meeting of Orange County citizens in the Hillsborough courthouse after Lincoln's election, with William H. Brown in the chair, William A. Graham's committee reported resolutions on the crisis. John W. Norwood moved to ask the legislature to call a state convention; Capt. Berry opposed it, Sidney Smith spoke for it, and the amendment was rejected before the committee's resolutions passed.

People: William A. Graham · John Wall Norwood · Dennis Heartt · William H. Brown

Andrew Mickle refuses to raise his prices as Confederate money falls

Andrew Mickle was prospering as a merchant when the Civil War began, but he held that it was wrong to raise his prices when his neighbors could hardly get money. As the currency fell he sold his goods for much less than cost and lost his fortune.

At least 1,260 Orange County men serve in the Confederate army

J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton counted 1,260 Orange men in Moore's Roster, of whom 249 died in service and 139 were wounded. He thought all three figures too low.

People: J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton

F. M. Jordan preaches to enslaved people in the Baptist church basement

Rev. F. M. Jordan held services for enslaved people of Hillsborough in the basement of the Baptist church and married and baptized many Black members. One night his hearers gave him so much Confederate money that he carried it home in a handkerchief.

George Attmore Sparrow is a cadet at the Hillsborough Military Academy

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

People: Thomas Sparrow

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

Hillsborough Methodists refuse to give their church bell to be cast into Confederate cannon

When Confederate authorities, short of cannon, asked the Hillsborough Methodist Church for its bell to melt down, the congregation turned them down.

Subject: Hillsborough Methodist Church

John Wall Norwood and Paul C. Cameron run relief for Orange County soldiers' families

Through the Civil War, Norwood and Paul C. Cameron oversaw aid to the families of Orange County men in the army, working out of Norwood's law office. In August 1864 they reported that between 1,500 and 2,000 county men had served.

People: Paul C. Cameron

Seniors in the army granted diplomas without examinations

With the consent of the trustees, the faculty granted degrees to all members of the senior class, though many had joined the army and did not stand their examinations. Only thirty of the eighty-seven graduates were present in person, and the Latin salutatory was dropped because its speaker was with his regiment at Yorktown.

Subject: Gerrard Hall

Solomon Pool is promoted to adjunct professor of mathematics

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

State gives Ebenezer Emmons's geological collection to the university

Needing the space in the Capitol for war business, the state gave the university the rocks and minerals gathered by State Geologist Ebenezer Emmons. Professor William J. Martin spent two weeks sorting them and shipping them to Chapel Hill.

People: William Joseph Martin

The Weavers add a frame front wing to the log house

A plain one-and-a-half-story frame block with two rooms per floor was built across the front, by family account to shelter the wife and children of a Weaver who went off to the Civil War. The log wing got matching Greek Revival doors and sash at about the same time.

Subject: Weaver House

Thirty-five men of the New Hope congregation die in Confederate service

Craig lists thirty-five men from within the bounds of the congregation who died in the Civil War, eight of them Strayhorns and three Craigs.

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

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

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

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

Women organize Ladies Aid Societies in Hillsborough and Chapel Hill

Soon after secession women in the two towns formed aid societies, later joined by others, that made clothing and bandages, gathered food and money, met troop trains and nursed the sick and wounded until the war ended.

People: Cornelia Phillips Spencer

Young men enroll at Chapel Hill in the Orange Light Infantry

William F. Strowd and other young men of the area, who had begun organizing a volunteer company on April 6, 1861, met at Chapel Hill on April 22 and enrolled for six months. As the Orange Light Infantry they were mustered into state service at Raleigh on May 13.

A courthouse meeting in Hillsborough calls for a secession convention

Ten days after Fort Sumter, a large crowd from across the county met at the courthouse. With Dr. Edmund Strudwick presiding and Dennis Heartt as secretary, it adopted resolutions asking the legislature to call a convention at once to pass an ordinance of secession.

People: Edmund Strudwick · Dennis Heartt

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

Chapel Hill churches hold a farewell service for the Orange Light Infantry

A large meeting was held in the Baptist church the night before the Orange Light Infantry left Chapel Hill. The Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian and Episcopal pastors all took part, and a similar service was held in September when another company left.

Subject: University Baptist Church

Students petition trustees to close the university for the war

After Fort Sumter the juniors, sophomores and freshmen asked the trustees to suspend exercises until fall, since eight or ten students were leaving each day. The petition was refused, and President Swain issued a circular that the university would go on as before.

People: David L. Swain · Willoughby F. Avery