Chronology

A Quaker teacher named Dickson is reported elected to the university's agricultural chair

Word went round Chapel Hill that a new professor had been chosen for the university's agricultural college: Dickson, an English Quaker known as a teacher and agent for Black schools. Two months later Spencer learned that the appointment had never been put before the trustees.

A marble monument is set over the Mitchell family graves in the old Mitchell garden

A marble monument was placed over the graves of Elisha Mitchell's family members buried in the garden of his former home, then lived in by Alexander McIver's family. Mrs. McIver and Spencer agreed the dead belonged in the village graveyard.

People: Alexander McIver

Klansmen from Hillsborough ride to kill Senator T. M. Shoffner and turn back

A Klan party coming from Orange County that included Hillsborough legislator Frederick N. Strudwick and A. Hedgepeth of Hillsborough gathered at a Bradshaw home in Alamance County to kill state senator T. M. Shoffner, author of the anti-Klan militia bill. Dr. John A. Moore, sent by James E. Boyd, told them Shoffner had gone to Greensboro, and they turned back.

People: Frederick N. Strudwick

The remains of David L. Swain and his daughter Annie are taken from Chapel Hill to Raleigh for reburial

An undertaker, K. P. Waitt, carried the coffins of the former governor and university president and his daughter Annie from their graves in Chapel Hill to Raleigh, where they were buried side by side in the old city cemetery with only family and a few friends present.

People: David L. Swain

A two-story frame house, later known as the Pool-Patterson House, goes up on West Cameron Avenue

The survey dates the L-plan frame house at 403 West Cameron Avenue to about 1870. Its bracketed roofline and wraparound porch reflect the later Victorian remodeling.

Anne Ruffin buys the last two lots and the Ruffin place fills a whole town block

Completing a purchase begun before her husband's death, Anne M. Ruffin bought lots 202 and 203. The Ruffin property then took in an entire block of about ten acres, which was still intact in 1971.

People: Anne Kirkland Ruffin

Subject: Ruffin-Roulhac House (Little Hawfields)

Archibald Lynch builds a farmhouse on Mount Hermon Church Road

Around 1870 a rear wing was built for the farmer Archibald Lynch, and about 1890 a small frame I-house was added in front of it.

Black-owned family farms and sawmills made up the Rogers-Eubanks area

By the late nineteenth century the area between Homestead and Eubanks roads, north of Carrboro and Chapel Hill, was a neighborhood of Black-owned family farms and sawmills set among forest. RENA and the Town of Carrboro both date settlement of the wider area to the 1700s.

Subject: Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association

Eliza Beaty keeps a boarding house in the William Whitted House

In the late nineteenth century Mrs. Eliza Beaty runs a well-known boarding house in the old William Whitted House at East Queen and North Churton streets. The Italianate wing facing Churton Street may have been added for her.

Subject: William Whitted House

J. T. Hogan serves as an Orange County commissioner

Lefler and Wager's list of Orange County commissioners gives J. T. Hogan a term from 1870 to 1872.

People: Samuel Wellwood Hughes · William N. Patterson

James Tilley builds a small frame farmhouse on the NC 54 corridor

About 1870 James Tilley built a modest frame I-house with a separate frame kitchen, which remains in good shape. He lies in a family graveyard on the farm.

Mount Sinai Baptist Church is organized

Black Baptists organized Mount Sinai Baptist Church in 1870 with E. H. Cole as first pastor.

Orange County reports on its poorhouse to the new Board of Public Charities

Orange County's report to the state Board of Public Charities described two one-story brick buildings of six rooms each on a 400-acre tract five miles from Hillsborough. The poorhouse held 41 people, ten able to do light work, with ten deaths since July 1868.

People: Edmund Strudwick

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

T. U. Faucett becomes stated supply at New Hope

Thomas U. Faucett served the church as stated supply from 1870 until the fall of 1872.

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

The 1870 census records Orange County's losses since

Against 1860, farm values fell from $2,141,690 to $977,308, improved acreage from 101,354 to 73,745 and livestock value by nearly half, while manufacturing establishments rose from 61 to 92. The population was 17,507, including 6,420 Black residents.

The Camerons move a two-story building thought to be slave quarters to Burnside

In the late nineteenth century the Cameron family moves a two-story frame building, thought to have been built as quarters for enslaved people, to the southeast corner of the Burnside house at 201 South Cameron Street. It was joined to the main house at the second floor in the 1950s.

Subject: Burnside

The Dukes move their tobacco business into a wooden factory in Durham

The Duke family's smoking tobacco business outgrows the farm and moves into a wooden factory at Durham, then still part of Orange County.

People: Washington Duke

The Reilly Log House is built near Rougemont

A one-room log farmhouse with half-dovetailed corners, a rock chimney, and a log kitchen joined by a breezeway was built near Rougemont in the 1870s. Mattson treats it as one of the county's best late log dwellings.

The Watson family builds an ornate I-house near Cedar Grove

An ornate I-house is built on the Watson farm on NC 86 near Cedar Grove in the 1870s; the farm also keeps three log tobacco barns. It is on the Study List.

Trustees refuse land for a Black school in Chapel Hill

The Chapel Hill school committee of Morgan Closs, W. H. Bunch and H. C. Andrews asked the trustees for two acres on the Pittsboro Road next to the Hubbard lot for a school for Black children, saying friends of education would pay for a schoolhouse. The board declined because the land was under mortgage.

Builder John Berry dies at Sunny Side while starting the Berry Building

John Berry, the self-taught builder of the Orange County Courthouse and a longtime state legislator, died of pneumonia at his home Sunny Side at 72. He had caught cold that winter while beginning his last project, a two-story brick store and ballroom downtown known as the Berry Building.

Subject: Sunnyside (John Berry farm)

Thomas Ruffin dies at his Hillsborough home

Ruffin died in the northeast room of the house on January 15, 1870, and his widow Anne inherited the estate. He was buried at St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough, on ground he had given for the church, where he had served on the vestry.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church · Ruffin-Roulhac House (Little Hawfields)

Joseph E. Pogue clerks in his brother E. H. Pogue's Hillsborough store

At 18, Joseph Ezekiel Pogue left East Tennessee for Hillsborough, where he clerked in the general store of his brother, E. H. Pogue, until September 1871. He then became a traveling salesman for a tobacco factory, the start of a tobacco career that took him to Henderson in 1875 and Raleigh in 1885.

People: E. H. Pogue

Frederick Strudwick takes an unexpired Orange County seat in the House

In February 1870 Strudwick, a Democrat, was chosen to fill the unexpired term of J. J. Allison in the North Carolina House of Representatives. He was elected to a full two-year term that August.

Hillsborough men ask Governor Holden to commission Pride Jones against the Klan

On March 5, 1870 six Hillsborough men, among them J. W. Norwood, James Webb and Henry K. Nash, recommended to Governor Holden that Pride Jones be made a militia captain to put down night riding. Holden sent the commission on March 7 and Jones accepted on March 9. The raids soon stopped, and Jones resigned after four weeks.

People: William W. Holden · Pride Jones · George Laws · John Wall Norwood

Disguised men whip residents of the county poorhouse

Men in disguise entered the poorhouse at night and whipped several of the men and women living there. On March 10 the commissioners offered a $200 reward for the attackers, over the written protest of commissioner W. N. Patterson, who defended the raiders' motives.

People: William N. Patterson

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

Susan Washington Graham reports the Baptist church's building debt paid

Susan Washington Graham, wife of former governor William A. Graham, told the church that the last of the debt on its building was settled. Much of the money came through her appeals by letter to friends after the church's building savings were lost in the war.

Henrietta Heartt is appointed Hillsborough's postmaster

Henrietta Heartt becomes the first woman on the list of Hillsborough postmasters, succeeding Dennis Heartt. Harriet H. Strayhorn in 1873 and Mary E. Berry in 1882 followed her.

People: Dennis Heartt · Mary E. Strayhorn Berry

Dennis Heartt dies in Hillsborough

Dennis Heartt died at his home in Hillsborough on the morning of May 13, 1870, in his eighty-seventh year, and his funeral was held at the Presbyterian church the next day while the town's stores closed. The Recorder noted that Governor W. W. Holden, once his apprentice in the Recorder office, had him appointed Hillsborough postmaster after the war.

People: William W. Holden

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

Mrs. Fordyce Hubbard and her daughter leave Chapel Hill for good

The family of the former Latin professor Fordyce M. Hubbard, whose books had been boxed for shipping, drove away from their Chapel Hill home to join him in New York, one of the last old faculty households to go.

Historical society reorganized at the university's 1870 commencement

During commencement on June 8 and 9, 1870, a meeting with Professor Alexander McIver in the chair organized the North Carolina Historical Society with Col. John H. Wheeler as president and McIver as secretary and treasurer. A committee was named to recover from Eleanor H. Swain the books and manuscripts the society claimed.

People: Alexander McIver

A public common school opens in Chapel Hill

After long delay the village's common school was running by late August 1870, taking in local boys who might otherwise have attended the Pool university as day scholars.

Students of the Pool university board chiefly with Black families

With about fifteen students from away and as many day scholars, the Pool university's boarders lived mostly with Black households, among them those of Wilson Caldwell, John Ashe and Sam Mahew. Spencer noted that all the boys were poor and held free scholarships.

People: Wilson Swain Caldwell

The trustees vote to suspend the university's exercises and stop faculty salaries from February 1

On the motion of the Rev. James Reid of Franklin County, the Reconstruction board of trustees voted on December 1, 1870, to suspend the university's exercises until further orders, and on James B. Mason's motion fixed February 1, 1871, as the day the faculty's salaries ended. The same day President Solomon Pool laid before the board a plan to lease the Chapel Hill property and bring the state's colleges under the university, which its committees dropped on February 1.

People: Solomon Pool · James Augustus Graham · James B. Mason

Orange County representative Frederick N. Strudwick moves to impeach Governor Holden

Frederick N. Strudwick of Orange introduced the House resolution to impeach Governor William W. Holden, which the House adopted on December 14, 1870. On December 19 he chaired the Committee of the Whole that adopted the eight articles of impeachment and elected the seven House managers.

People: William W. Holden · Frederick N. Strudwick

Strudwick is kept off the impeachment managers because of his Klan reputation

After guiding the impeachment resolution through the house judiciary committee and the full house, Strudwick was not chosen as a manager for the senate trial. It was feared that his widely known association with the Ku Klux Klan would make the proceedings look like a Klan prosecution.

Part of Kirk-Holden War connections, 1870 · 12 events

People: William W. Holden

Joseph Blount Cheshire studies law under William K. Ruffin at Hillsborough

Cheshire read law for several months under William K. Ruffin of Hillsborough, a son of Chief Justice Thomas Ruffin. He then worked three months in a Tarboro law office and was licensed in January 1872.

Land is bought for Hillsborough's (New) Town Cemetery on Corbin Street

The six-acre cemetery just north of the old town limits stands on land bought in 1871, though its earliest graves date from the 1860s. It now holds more than 3,000 graves in regular rows behind a brick wall on East Corbin Street, including military markers for both Confederate and Union soldiers.

The Chapel Hill Baptist Church bars the Black congregation from its building

The Black members who left in 1865 had been allowed to keep using the church building for a small fee. In 1871 the white church passed a long resolution ending that use.

Subject: University Baptist Church

William L. Saunders of Chapel Hill refuses to answer the congressional Klan committee

Called before the joint committee on affairs in the insurrectionary states, Saunders, whom the book names as head of the Invisible Empire in North Carolina, declined to answer 53 questions about the Ku Klux.

People: William L. Saunders

McIver moves that the faculty step aside for the university's revival

At a faculty meeting without President Pool, McIver offered a resolution that no member wished to stand in the way of reviving the university, since the faculty lacked public confidence. It passed with McIver and Patrick for and Brewer against.

People: Solomon Pool

William A. Graham of Hillsborough joins the prosecution of Governor Holden

The House managers announced to the impeachment court that former governor William A. Graham of Hillsborough, with Thomas Bragg and Augustus S. Merrimon, would act as their counsel. Graham argued points of evidence for the prosecution through the trial.

People: William A. Graham · Thomas Bragg · Thomas Sparrow

Hillsborough constable describes Orange County Klan killings to a U.S. Senate committee

W. G. Turrentine, a Hillsborough constable, told the Senate select committee in Washington that five Black men had been killed in Orange County and many people whipped, some for voting Republican. He described how, in August 1869, 75 to 100 disguised men forced the Hillsborough jail and shot a prisoner held on a barn-burning charge, who died.

Subject: Orange County jail, Hillsborough

Solomon Pool asks alumni and friends to pay the university's debts

In January 1871 Pool addressed alumni and friends of the university and pleaded for money to pay off its debts. The appeal came too late, and the trustees decided that the institution should close on 1 February 1871.

Part of The university closes and reopens · 52 events

Lucinda Morrow of Hillsborough testifies at Governor Holden's impeachment trial

Called by Holden's defense, Lucinda Morrow, then living in Hillsborough, described disguised men breaking into her Cane Creek home in Orange County in the fall of 1869 and hanging her husband, Thomas Jefferson Morrow. Prosecution counsel William A. Graham objected to her evidence, and Augustus S. Merrimon argued it was irrelevant unless tied to Alamance County.

People: William A. Graham · Jefferson Morrow · Thomas Jefferson Morrow

Senate convicts Holden on the article charging Turner's arrest in Orange County

The state Senate found Governor Holden guilty, 37 to 12, on Article III, which charged him with the unlawful arrest of Josiah Turner Jr. in Orange County on August 5, 1870, and also convicted him on Articles IV through VIII. Senator John W. Graham of Orange then offered the order of judgment removing Holden from office and barring him from state office, which the Senate adopted.

People: William W. Holden · Josiah Turner Jr. · John W. Graham

Mary Pauline Fitzgerald is baptized at St. Matthew's

The seven-month-old daughter of the freedmen's teacher Robert G. Fitzgerald and his wife Cornelia was baptized at St. Matthew's, her mother standing as sponsor. As Pauline Fitzgerald Dame she later raised her niece, Pauli Murray.

People: Robert G. Fitzgerald

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

John T. Hogan and Samuel D. Blackwood are ordained elders at New Hope

The two men were ordained and added to the session. Hogan descended from the early elder John Freeland, and Blackwood from John Craig.

People: John T. Hogan

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

John U. Kirkland is appointed a magistrate of Hillsborough township

When James B. McDade resigned as one of the township's magistrates, the board of trustees appointed John U. Kirkland to fill the vacancy, a choice the Recorder called admirable.

Bill Crabtree's grandfather builds a log homestead on Damascus Church Road

A log house was raised around 1872 for the grandfather of Bill Crabtree, the later owner. About 1900 a frame I-house with fashionable trim was built in front, and the log house became its rear ell.

Cornelia Phillips Spencer raises a relief fund for Chapel Hill's poor

With the university closed and few able families left, Spencer wrote to former residents and to Nancy Hilliard's old boarders for money, and kept an account book of the hundreds of dollars she gave out to needy neighbors as wood, food and cash.

People: Nancy Hilliard

David McCauley buys out his store partner Thomas A. Long

Merchant David McCauley bought out his partner, Thomas A. Long, and kept the Franklin Street general store on his own. Bryant credits the store's success, and McCauley's 1873 marriage to a daughter of Sidney Mulholland Barbee, for the property he was able to buy afterward.

People: David McCauley

David McCauley lets Nancy Hilliard live rent free in her old hotel

After losing her house and giving up hotel work at the Exchange Hotel in Raleigh, Nancy Hilliard came back to Chapel Hill destitute by 1872, and the firm of Long and McCauley, which now owned her former Eagle Hotel, let her live rent free in a room there. Former students sent her money until her death in 1873.

People: David McCauley

Subject: Eagle Hotel (Chapel Hill)

John D. Cameron becomes editor and publisher of the Recorder

John Donald Cameron took over the Recorder from the Evans family, who kept only their Milton Chronicle. His masthead in January 1879 read 'J. D. Cameron, Editor and Proprietor', New Series Vol. 7, Old Series Vol. 58.

Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

John H. Watson serves as Chapel Hill's magistrate of police

Watson headed the town government as magistrate of police in 1872 and again from 1876 to 1878, before the amended charter of 1879 created the office of mayor.

Mrs. Curtis gives St. Matthew's a marble font in memory of her husband

After rector Moses Ashley Curtis died in April 1872, his widow gave the church a marble baptismal font as his memorial.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

November Caldwell, once enslaved by President Joseph Caldwell, dies

November Caldwell (1791-1872), held in slavery by Joseph Caldwell, brought firewood to the students, who were fond of him for his humor. A memorial in the old Chapel Hill Cemetery on the campus honors him.

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Orange County elects John Wall Norwood to the state Senate

Norwood was elected state senator for Orange in 1872. His speech on the amnesty bill, given in the Senate on January 27, 1873, was printed as a pamphlet.

Orange County names a three-man Board of Education and a panel of teacher examiners

Under the Reconstruction school law the county had a Board of Education of W. N. Patterson, J. T. Hogan and Jones Watson in 1872. Samuel W. Hughes and Charles Curtis were among the county examiners who licensed teachers that year.

People: Samuel Wellwood Hughes · Jones Watson · John T. Hogan · William N. Patterson

Paul C. Cameron buys the Hillsborough Military Academy at public sale

Two years after Elizabeth Tew's death in 1870, the academy property was sold at public auction to Paul C. Cameron. His heirs sold it to the Farmers' State Alliance in 1891.

People: Paul C. Cameron

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

The Turner family goes bankrupt and its North Churton Street estate is sold at auction

In 1872 the Turner family goes bankrupt and its estate around the house at 404 North Churton Street is sold at auction. Edmund Strudwick of Norfolk bought the house in 1887.

Subject: Turner-Strudwick House

H. P. Jones ships two hundred cases of Tar Heel smoking tobacco from Hillsborough to Georgia

The Recorder reported that Jones had lately shipped two hundred cases of his Tar Heel brand smoking tobacco to Georgia and held orders for a hundred more.

The Hillsborough Presbyterian session asks that members be allowed to withdraw without church trial

The session resolved to ask presbytery to propose to the General Assembly a change in discipline, so that a member living outside the church's standards could leave its communion without a formal trial. After this, discipline cases disappear from the minutes.

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

Job Berry is named a delegate to the Republican state convention

The Orange County Republican convention chose Rev. Job Berry as a Hillsborough delegate to the 1872 state convention, which backed Ulysses S. Grant and Governor Tod R. Caldwell.

People: Job Berry

The county school board settles the school fund account with Treasurer David C. Parks

The Board of Education settled the school fund account with county treasurer D. C. Parks up to March 7, 1872. It showed $9,245.36 received from the state apportionments for 1869 to 1872 and the 1871 school poll tax, and $3,869.54 paid out to the townships.

St. Matthew's rector Moses Ashley Curtis dies

Moses Ashley Curtis, rector of St. Matthew's for twenty-one years and a botanist of international standing, died at 64. The font and a south window in the church are his memorials.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

The school board refuses back pay to a Mangum Township teacher accused of misconduct

Thomas Anderson asked the board to pay him for two months he taught without a contract. The board sided with the township committee, finding he had no contract after March 7, 1872 and citing poor discipline and improper conduct toward girls in his school.

Charles Jared Curtis takes charge of St. Matthew's after his father's death

Ordained deacon in St. Matthew's on August 7, 1872, Charles Jared Curtis took charge of the parish his father, Moses Ashley Curtis, had served, became rector on his ordination as priest on December 14, 1873, and stayed until he resigned in 1880.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

Jones Watson and Pride Jones are elected to the state House for Orange County

Running as Conservative (Democratic) candidates, Jones Watson and Dr. Pride Jones won Orange County's two seats in the state House of Representatives in the August 1872 election.

People: Pride Jones

Fuller's Sea-Gift, the first novel set partly in Chapel Hill, is published

Fuller turned his student years into Sea-Gift, which follows John Smith through the university and the Civil War and draws on the Dromgoole duel legend of Piney Prospect. Students later called it the Freshman's Bible.

Harriet H. Strayhorn serves as Hillsborough's postmistress

Harriet H. Strayhorn, who with William F. Strayhorn owned Twin Chimneys on West King Street, was Hillsborough's postmistress from 1873 to 1881.

Robert Bingham takes charge of the Bingham School near Mebane

When his brother William died in 1873, Robert Bingham became headmaster of the Bingham School, which had moved from the Oaks to Mebane. In May 1879 he bought out his cousin William B. Lynch's interest and became sole proprietor.

People: William Bingham (1835-1873) · W. B. (William Bingham) Lynch

Subject: Bingham School

Robert F. Hoke obtains a charter for the Chapel Hill Iron Mountain Railroad

While the university was closed, Robert F. Hoke, owner of an iron mine north of Chapel Hill, obtained a state charter for a railroad to carry ore from Iron Mountain to the North Carolina Railroad.

People: Robert F. Hoke

Subject: North Carolina Railroad

The women of St. Matthew's give a stained glass window in memory of Moses Ashley Curtis

In 1873 the ladies of the parish gave St. Matthew's a stained glass memorial window to its late rector Moses Ashley Curtis, who had died the year before.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

William Strowd of Chatham County buys land at the edge of Chapel Hill

The tract, where 51 Davie Circle now stands, stayed in his hands until he passed it to his son Robert L. Strowd in 1886.

People: William F. Strowd

Subject: Strowd House (51 Davie Circle)

Alumni meet in Raleigh to plan the university's revival

At the invitation of trustees led by Superintendent Alexander McIver, fifty-five alumni met in the state Senate chamber with B. F. Moore in the chair. Their committee proposed that the alumni association nominate a new board for the Board of Education to appoint, but most of the 1868 trustees did not resign and the plan lapsed.

People: Alexander McIver · William A. Graham · William Horn Battle · Richmond Mumford Pearson · Bartholomew F. Moore

William Bingham, head of the Bingham School, dies in Florida at thirty-seven

William Bingham, head of the Bingham School at Mebaneville and author of a Latin grammar, an English grammar and a Latin reader, died in Florida in February 1873 at thirty-seven. A Fayetteville paper of February 25 put his death on Thursday the 20th; the school's 1905 catalogue gives February 18. His brother Robert and his widow then carried on the school together.

People: William Bingham (1835-1873)

Subject: Bingham School

The Board of Education divides the 1872 school fund among the townships by race

At its March 5, 1873 meeting the board named a teacher examining committee and apportioned the 1872 fund at the same rate per child for both races: $4,219.60 for 3,080 white children and $2,402.98 for 1,754 Black children across eight townships.

People: Samuel Wellwood Hughes

John T. Hogan is chosen school committeeman for Hillsborough Township

When Alexander Dickens resigned as school committeeman for Hillsborough Township, the county Board of Education unanimously elected John T. Hogan in his place. At the same meeting it accepted Dr. Clop's resignation for Chapel Hill Township and chose John Hutchins.

State educational convention calls for reviving the university

A convention called by the State Board of Education, with B. F. Moore presiding, resolved that the university should be revived as soon as practicable. It added that the revival was impossible except on a basis impartial between denominations and political parties, after Braxton Craven, Thomas H. Pritchard and A. W. Mangum argued over church representation.

People: Robert Bingham · Adolphus Williamson Mangum · Thomas Henderson Pritchard · Bartholomew F. Moore

Lightning strikes the Davie Poplar

Lightning split the Old Poplar's bark from top to bottom while the university was closed, and its friends took it as an omen, but the tree survived. It then measured 14 feet 6 inches around at two feet above the ground, and Cornelia Phillips Spencer wrote a lament for it in a Raleigh paper.

People: Cornelia Phillips Spencer

Subject: McCorkle Place (with the Davie Poplar)

The Board of Education appoints Hazel Norwood county examiner

The board filled the county examiner's post with Hazel Norwood after Dr. Morgan Clop resigned, and settled its account with the treasurer, who held a balance of $7,686.92 from the state's 1872 apportionment.

A constitutional amendment returns the election of university trustees to the General Assembly

An amendment taking the election of the university's trustees from the governor-controlled Board of Education and giving it back to the General Assembly became part of the state constitution in August 1873, after a vote of the people and a two-thirds vote of a second legislature. Friends of the university had first carried it through the General Assembly in 1871 by the required three-fifths, the credit going to two alumni and brothers-in-law, the Democrat Montford McGehee and the Republican Richard C. Badger.

Nancy Hilliard, longtime Chapel Hill hotel keeper, dies

Nancy Segur Hilliard, whose family moved to Chapel Hill in 1817 and who fed students and stage travelers for decades, died on November 8, 1873. Cornelia Phillips Spencer appealed to alumni to help her in her last illness and to pay for her burial and a modest monument.

People: Cornelia Phillips Spencer · Nancy Hilliard

Eno Church elects its first deacons

The session noted in October 1873 that the church had no deacons and held an election the next month. Robert W. Anderson and J. P. Forrest were ordained that year.

Subject: Eno Presbyterian Church

Webb, Roulhac & Cameron prepare to move their tobacco business from Hillsborough to Durham

The Hillsborough Recorder reported that the tobacco firm of Webb, Roulhac & Cameron was about to move to Durham, where it had been offered better terms. The paper said the town could ill spare them.

A county school census finds 24 more schoolhouses are needed

An 1874 count of school-age children by township found 2,380 Black children and set the need at 24 additional schoolhouses, ten of them in Hillsboro Township.

Andrew Mickle serves as Chapel Hill's magistrate of police

Under the town charter the commissioners chose a magistrate of police to preside at their meetings, and Andrew Mickle held the office in 1874 and 1875. In March 1870 a rival group of citizens claiming to be the town's officers had named him to the post, which the sitting board said was without authority of law.

Calvin E. Parish is elected state senator for Orange County

Orange County elected Parish to the state Senate in 1874, with Joseph W. Latta and Matthew Atwater in the House. He was elected to the House in 1876 and to the Senate again in 1880.

Commissioner's report keeps the campus and 600 acres for the university

Commissioner George H. Snow inspected Chapel Hill in the summer of 1874 with trustees Paul C. Cameron, John Manning and Kemp P. Battle, and on Judge Bond's advice to be liberal the court left the university its campus, faculty houses, libraries and 600 acres. The outlying land, including about seventy acres at Piney Prospect, was sold, and Cameron bought the parcels along with the escheated mountain lands to secure his sister Mildred Cameron's debt.

People: Paul C. Cameron · John Manning · Kemp Plummer Battle

George Trice turns Tom Moore's former house into a restaurant and shoe shop

George Trice made the East Franklin Street house where Tom Moore had lived into a restaurant and ice cream parlor with a shoe shop. He gave up the restaurant after his wife died in 1899, and by 1903 a tailor and a shoe shop were in its place.

People: George Trice

Hillsborough Methodist Church finishes paying for its building

The Civil War interrupted work on the brick church John Berry designed and built on West Tryon Street, and the congregation did not finish paying for it until 1874.

Subject: Hillsborough Methodist Church

Horner & Graves's School lists 114 students for the 1874-75 year

The school's catalogue for 1874-75 names 114 students, most from eastern and central North Carolina towns and some from Virginia, Maryland, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi. Board, tuition, washing and lights cost $157.50 a session, plus a $10 book deposit, over two twenty-week sessions beginning in January and July.

Horner & Graves's School organizes a School of Applied Mathematics and Engineering

The school set up a department of applied mathematics and engineering, citing the growing weight of technical training, to prepare boys as surveyors, levelers, draftsmen and machinists through field practice in surveying and road and railroad building, drawing and practical mechanics.

James A. Graham serves on the university's board of trustees

James A. Graham was one of only two members of the Reconstruction board elected again to the new board of trustees in 1874, and he served until 1883 and again from 1885 to 1889. In May 1875 he sat on the five-man committee whose plan for reopening the university the trustees adopted.

John Manning serves on the university's Board of Trustees

John Manning became a trustee of the University of North Carolina in 1874 and held the post for two decades, through the university's 1875 reopening.

Maj. John W. Graham builds a twelve-room house at Montrose on his father's old foundation

In 1874 William A. Graham gave the vacant Montrose land to his son Maj. John W. Graham, who built a twelve-room house on the foundation of the first house. It burned in 1893.

People: John W. Graham

Subject: Montrose

Pine Street is cut through Lot 16 from Franklin Street to Rosemary

A new street, Pine Street, was opened through the old Lot 16, running from Franklin Street to Rosemary Street.

R. H. Graves Jr. begins teaching engineering and drawing at Horner & Graves's School

R. H. Graves Jr., a former University of North Carolina student who had earned a science degree and the civil and mining engineer's degree at the University of Virginia, joined the faculty at the start of the school's second session of 1874 to teach engineering and drawing. The next year he joined the reopened university's faculty.

Seaton Barbee opens a drugstore on Franklin Street

Seaton Barbee, a son of merchant Sidney Mulholland Barbee, opened a drugstore on the south side of Franklin Street across from his father's house, with Tom Dunstan's barbershop on the floor above.

The General Assembly elects sixty-four trustees, who organize under William A. Graham with Kemp Battle as secretary and treasurer

By an act of January 28, 1874, the legislature elected sixty-four university trustees by joint ballot, only two of them from the Reconstruction board, and fourteen of them men removed in 1868. The new board first met on February 18, 1874, in the Citizens National Bank in Raleigh, elected William A. Graham of Hillsborough its president and Kemp P. Battle its secretary and treasurer, named an executive committee, and the next day sent a committee to inspect Chapel Hill, after Governor Tod R. Caldwell declined to preside because he held the legislature had no power to elect trustees.

People: William A. Graham · Kemp Plummer Battle · Paul C. Cameron · John Manning · Tod Robinson Caldwell · William L. Saunders

Horner and Graves move their boys' school from Oxford to the old Military Academy buildings at Hillsborough

J. H. Horner and R. H. Graves Sr., who had run a school at Oxford, leased the Hillsborough Military Academy in 1873, the buildings Col. C. C. Tew had put up a mile and a half from town on the North Carolina Railroad, and opened there with the spring session in January 1874. Their next catalogue says the move had worked out better than they had expected.

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

Maj. D. H. Hamilton takes charge of the military department at Horner & Graves's School

D. H. Hamilton, educated at the Citadel in Charleston, who had spent two years helping C. C. Tew run the old military academy and had served through the Civil War as a Confederate major, ran the military department of Horner & Graves's School from its opening at Hillsborough.

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

Walter Steele and Paul Cameron inspect the derelict campus and Solomon Pool refuses to surrender the keys

On April 3, 1874, trustees Walter L. Steele and Paul C. Cameron came to Chapel Hill for the new board. Solomon Pool declined their written request for the keys and possession of the buildings, since the governor had not recognized the board, but let them inspect as visitors. Their report to the trustees on April 9 described broken doors and fallen plaster, the lower passage of Old West fouled by cattle and horses, rotted gates and axe-scarred oaks, 7,490 books in the Dialectic library and 6,901 in the Philanthropic, and recommended an immediate suit against Pool for possession.

People: Paul C. Cameron · Solomon Pool · William L. Saunders · James B. Mason

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies · Old West

Haywood Beverly and Lewis Jenkins run for Hillsborough town commissioner as Black Republicans

In the Hillsborough town election, Black Republicans Haywood Beverly, a tanner, and Lewis Jenkins ran for town commissioner. Both lost, and the board elected was Conservative except for H. N. Brown, who ran on both tickets.

The new trustees sue Solomon Pool and Alexander McIver at Orange Superior Court and win possession of the university in the Supreme Court

At the May 1874 term of Orange Superior Court the new board brought one action against Superintendent Alexander McIver, who held the university's seal and books and had agreed to a friendly test suit, and another against Solomon Pool for the buildings. Judge Albion W. Tourgee ruled against the trustees; John W. Graham and James A. Graham of Hillsborough argued for them without fee, as did B. F. Moore and William H. Battle on appeal in June 1874. At its January term 1875 the state Supreme Court decided for the university on every point, and possession passed to Andrew Mickle, the board's agent, with the seal, books and papers going to Treasurer Kemp Battle.

People: Solomon Pool · Kemp Plummer Battle · Alexander McIver · John W. Graham · Andrew Mickle · Albion W. Tourgee · Bartholomew F. Moore · James Augustus Graham · William Horn Battle

Federal court rules the campus cannot be sold for the bank debt

In the suit of Charles Dewey, assignee in bankruptcy of the Bank of North Carolina, to sell the university's property under its mortgage, Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite with Judges Hugh L. Bond and George W. Brooks held the debt valid. They ruled that neither the trustees nor a creditor could sell the property that made up the life of the institution, as distinct from its endowment.

Pleasant H. Dalton becomes stated supply at New Hope

Dalton, who had joined New Hope as a university student in 1842, began supplying the church in August 1874. By his own count at least fifty members were added in his twelve years there.

People: Pleasant Hunter Dalton

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

Joseph Blount Cheshire marries Annie Huske Webb at St. Matthew's

Joseph Blount Cheshire Jr., later Episcopal bishop of North Carolina, married Annie Huske Webb of Hillsborough at St. Matthew's Church.

People: Joseph Blount Cheshire Jr.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

Adolphus W. Mangum joins the faculty of the reopened university

When the university reopened in 1875 Mangum became professor of mental and moral science, history and English language and literature. He taught until he died in Chapel Hill in May 1890 and was buried in the old Chapel Hill Cemetery.

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Anne Ruffin dies and Little Hawfields passes to her heirs

Anne Kirkland Ruffin, who had inherited the Hillsborough house on Thomas Ruffin's death in 1870, died in 1875. The estate passed to her children and a grandchild.

Subject: Ruffin-Roulhac House (Little Hawfields)

Archibald Jordan completes an Italianate house at Caldwell

Archibald C. Jordan, later Caldwell's physician, finished a two-story Italianate house there in 1875, with a projecting center pavilion, a bracketed cornice and arched windows. Inside is a curved staircase in a diagonally sheathed hall.

Subject: Arch Jordan House

Bartholomew F. Moore gives $1,000 toward reopening the university

Moore's $1,000 was among the largest gifts on the list of subscriptions paid in 1875 for the revival of the university.

Charles Phillips returns to Chapel Hill and chairs the faculty

When the University of North Carolina reopened in 1875, Phillips was invited back as professor of mathematics and served as chairman of the faculty during his first year. Illness forced his retirement in 1879, when he became the first professor emeritus named by the trustees.

Part of The university closes and reopens · 52 events

People: Cornelia Phillips Spencer

George Tayloe Winston joins the faculty of the reopened university

Winston, a Cornell graduate who had also studied at UNC, came to Chapel Hill in 1875 as professor of Latin and German when the university reopened.

Part of The university closes and reopens · 52 events

Herbert McCauley builds an I-house off Old Greensboro Road

Around 1875 a two-story frame house mixing Greek Revival and Victorian trim was built for Herbert McCauley, with a log house and smokehouse on the place. Neighbors know it as the house where the singer James Taylor grew up.

James A. Cheek builds an Italianate house on North Churton Street

James A. Cheek built a five-bay Italianate I-house with an ornate sawnwork porch on Lot 78, on a rise above North Churton Street. His family kept it until 1908; a brick kitchen and an 1880s barn survive behind it.

John DeBerniere Hooper returns as professor of Greek and French when the university reopens

When the university reopened in 1875 Hooper was appointed professor of Greek and French. He resigned in October 1885 because of illness and died at his Chapel Hill home in January 1886.

John Kimberly returns as professor of agriculture at the reopened university

When the university reorganized and reopened in 1875, John Kimberly was elected professor of agriculture. He resigned the next year to return to his farm in Buncombe County.

Part of The university closes and reopens · 52 events

John W. Carr gives $100 toward reopening the university

John W. Carr of Chapel Hill paid $100 to the subscription of nearly $20,000 raised to revive the university in 1875, alongside $500 from his son Julian S. Carr of Durham.

People: Julian S. Carr

Joseph B. Martin builds an I-house on East Rosemary Street

The two-story I-house at 401 East Rosemary Street, with end chimneys and a three-bay front, is credited to Joseph B. Martin, who probably put it up sometime from 1875 to 1885. W. M. Dey, who owned it later, gave the house its name.

People: William Morton Dey

Mount Bright Baptist Church builds its church in Hillsborough

Mount Bright Baptist Church, the Black Baptist congregation in Hillsborough led by Alfred Bright, erected its church building in 1875.

Subject: Mount Bright Baptist Church

Ralph Henry Graves joins the faculty of the reopened university

Ralph Henry Graves returned to Chapel Hill in 1875 as professor of engineering at the newly reopened University of North Carolina. He later taught mathematics and held his professorship until his death in 1889.

Part of The university closes and reopens · 52 events

Senator Calvin E. Parish votes for the grant that lets the university reopen

Parish was among the senators who voted to pay the university $7,500 a year, the interest on its land-grant fund, the grant that let it reopen its doors in 1875. Orange County's representatives Matthew Atwater and Joseph W. Latta voted for it in the House.

Solomon Pool sells his West Cameron Avenue house to Dr. Thomas W. Harris

Solomon Pool owned the Greek Revival I-house at 206 West Cameron Avenue, built about 1870, until about 1875, when physician Thomas W. Harris bought it. Harris went on to found and lead the university's medical school.

People: Thomas West Harris

St. Matthew's Episcopal Church reworks its entrance tower and adds the spire

In 1875 the west entrance tower of St. Matthew's was reworked and given its slate-covered spire.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

The Chapel Hill Baptist Church turns down the Black Baptist church's request to reunite

The Black Baptist congregation asked to join the white church again. The church declined and sent a deacon to tell them as gently as he could.

Subject: University Baptist Church

The reopened university adopts an honor pledge on examinations

From the reopening each student signed a pledge that he had neither given nor received help on an examination, and a student convicted of cheating had to leave. Battle says cheating had been widely tolerated before 1868.

William A. Graham defeats Washington Duke for a seat in the 1875 convention

Orange elected Graham over Duke, 1,908 to 1,528, and Josiah Turner Jr. over John T. Hogan. Graham died before the convention met, and William N. Patterson beat Duke again in a special election, 2,000 to 1,297.

People: Josiah Turner Jr. · Washington Duke · John T. Hogan

Wilson Caldwell returns to the reopened university and later heads its labor force

When the university reopened in 1875 Wilson Caldwell went back to work there. He became curator of South Building and head of the campus labor corps, and held the post until his death in 1898.

Part of The university closes and reopens · 52 events

People: Wilson Swain Caldwell

Subject: South Building

Women's groups give scientific apparatus to the reopened university

At the board's request Cornelia Phillips Spencer gathered gifts of instruments from women around the state, including Plateau's apparatus from the pupils of the Nash and Kollock school in Hillsborough. The women of Hillsborough gave a Holtz electrical machine in memory of William A. Graham, which Paul C. Cameron presented at the 1877 commencement.

People: Cornelia Phillips Spencer · Paul C. Cameron · William A. Graham

Subject: Nash and Kollock School

Commissioners order a new bell for the courthouse

The board authorized David C. Parks to buy and hang a new bell for the courthouse and to sell the old one on the best terms he could.

People: David C. Parks

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

Cornelia Phillips Spencer learns on her fiftieth birthday that the university will reopen

A telegram from Raleigh on March 20, 1875, reported that the legislature had passed a bill letting the closed University of North Carolina reorganize with some state support. Spencer, whose letters to state leaders had pressed for the reopening, and a few friends entered South Building and tolled the college bell to celebrate.

Part of The university closes and reopens · 52 events

Subject: South Building

Historical Society of North Carolina is incorporated

The legislature chartered the Historical Society of North Carolina, chiefly so it could receive the books and papers of the old university society held by President Swain's widow, with William A. Graham as its first president and Cornelia Phillips Spencer among the incorporators. Eleanor Swain refused to give up the papers until she later found proof that the bound books belonged to the society.

People: William A. Graham · Cornelia Phillips Spencer

A flood carries away the road bridge over the Eno at Hillsborough

Floodwater swept away the bridge over the Eno at Hillsborough, and the river rose to within a few feet of the railroad bridge. The same flood took bridges across Caswell County.

Subject: Eno River road bridge, Hillsborough

County commissioners and township trustees adopt a uniform tax scale for livestock

Meeting with a trustee from each township, the board fixed values such as $100 for a first-class horse or mule, $20 for first-class cattle and $1 a head for sheep and goats. In May and June it sat sixteen days as a board of equalization to revise the tax list.

Trustees adopt a six-college plan and set aside ground for athletics

The trustees adopted Kemp P. Battle's committee report to reopen the university on the first Monday of September with colleges of agriculture, engineering, natural science, literature, mathematics and philosophy, meant to satisfy the 1862 land-grant act. They also reserved the eastern part of the campus along the Raleigh Road for athletics and a parade ground.

People: John Manning · Kemp Plummer Battle

Kemp Battle's subscription drive raises $20,167 and Paul Cameron repairs the campus for the reopening

After the trustees on May 5, 1875, appointed a committee to seek gifts for the revival, Kemp P. Battle canvassed Raleigh, Goldsboro, Rocky Mount and Tarboro in person and the rest of the state by letter, reporting $18,787 in six weeks and $20,167 in twelve, at a total expense of $62.66; Zebulon B. Vance and Charles W. Broadfoot collected in Charlotte and Fayetteville, and women's groups sent scientific apparatus through Cornelia Phillips Spencer. Paul C. Cameron, without contractor or pay, spent the summer at Chapel Hill directing the repairs and reported on August 31 that he had spent $10,677.76 on the buildings and $2,249.09 on gas works and apparatus.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle · Paul C. Cameron · Cornelia Phillips Spencer · Zebulon B. Vance · Washington Caruthers Kerr · Rufus Lenoir Patterson

Rufus L. Patterson moves a loan to repair the university buildings and offers to stand surety

At the trustees' reorganization meeting, Patterson moved that the treasurer be allowed to borrow $5,000 if needed to repair the Chapel Hill buildings, and volunteered to be surety for the university.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle · Paul C. Cameron

Andrew Mickle becomes bursar of the reopened university

Electing the reopened university's professors, the trustees broke with the old practice of making a professor bursar and chose Andrew Mickle, the Chapel Hill merchant who had acted as their agent, at $400 a year. He held the post until he left to live with his children in Texas in the early 1880s.

People: Andrew Mickle

William A. Graham dies and is buried at Hillsborough

Graham died unexpectedly at Saratoga Springs, New York, on 11 August 1875, where he had gone for a meeting of the Virginia and Maryland arbitration commission. He was buried in the cemetery adjacent to the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church. He had been elected a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1875 but died before it assembled.

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church · Old Town Cemetery, Hillsborough

Trustees burn the repudiated railroad bonds

As the act restoring the land-scrip fund required, trustees B. F. Moore, David M. Carter and Kemp P. Battle burned 160 special tax bonds of $1,000 each issued for the Western North Carolina Railroad, with Seaton Gales as witness. In return the state had given the university its bond for the $125,000 fund, paying $7,500 a year.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle · Bartholomew F. Moore

The Dialectic and Philanthropic societies meet again

On the evening of the reopening celebration the two literary societies were revived, the Dialectic called together by its last secretary, Thomas M. Argo, with Judge William H. Battle as temporary president. William L. Saunders, who had kept the Philanthropic Society's books since its last meeting in 1868, called that society together.

People: William Horn Battle · William L. Saunders

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Francis D. Winston is the first student to arrive for the reopening

Battle names Francis Donnell Winston of Bertie County the first student on the Hill in 1875, arriving a day ahead of other entrants with his brother Robert and Charles Bond. Bond was the only student to enter the agricultural department on opening day, and Battle calls him the first student of the first college of agriculture in the state.

People: Francis D. Winston · Robert W. Winston

Algernon S. Barbee opens his own general store

Civil War veteran Algernon S. Barbee left his clerk's job with his brother-in-law David McCauley and opened his own general store. From its location Bryant judges that he took over the store of his father, Sidney Mulholland Barbee, then about seventy.

Chapel Hill's commissioners accept a new Caldwell Street

A short street named Caldwell was laid off along the east side of the old president's-house square and accepted by the town commissioners. Until then the square had been undivided.

Faculty dismisses five students for a mock revival meeting

During a revival in a village church, a group of students staged a burlesque meeting with mock sermons, and the faculty dismissed five of them despite petitions from townswomen and both literary societies. When classmates marched the five out of town, Charles Phillips stopped the procession at his house and turned it back, and four of the five later returned and graduated.

People: Charles Phillips

James L. Currie becomes pastor of Eno Presbyterian Church

Currie, who had grown up in the Eno congregation under his father, the Rev. Archibald Currie, became its pastor in 1876, and that year also served the Fairfield and Little River churches. He stayed at Eno until 1896, and the congregation's third church was built during his ministry.

Subject: Eno Presbyterian Church · Little River Presbyterian Church

John W. Graham serves on the university board of trustees

John W. Graham sat on the University of North Carolina board of trustees from 1876 until his death in 1928, and from 1891 he was an elected member of its executive committee.

Kemp Plummer Battle becomes president and reorganizes the university

Kemp Plummer Battle became president in 1876 and reorganized the reopened university that year. He served until 1891 and later wrote its two-volume history.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle

Kemp Plummer Battle buys his father's Chapel Hill house and names it Senlac

Returning to Chapel Hill in 1876 to become university president, Battle bought the family house from his father, added a one-story wing on each side and named it Senlac. The house stands on Battle Lane.

People: William Horn Battle

Subject: Senlac (Battle house)

The university begins keeping Washington's Birthday as a holiday

The reopened faculty set the precedent of a holiday on February 22, and the literary societies later chose a Washington orator for the day. At the first or second observance Francis D. Winston displayed a battered hatchet he claimed had felled the cherry tree.

People: Francis D. Winston

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Amzi Clarence Dixon serves as pastor of the Chapel Hill Baptist Church

Dixon came straight from seminary and drew in students and townspeople through revivals. The university asked him in 1878 to live in a dormitory and take charge of chapel services, which Howell calls the first official tie between a Baptist pastor and the university. He went on to pulpits in Chicago and London.

Subject: University Baptist Church

The school board orders a landowner to stop fencing off the Bethany Meeting House school

Told that William Jackson had fenced in the schoolhouse of District 15 at Bethany Meeting House and would not let school be taught, the board warned him to return the lot to the district committee or face legal action.

Former professor William Hooper dies at Chapel Hill

William Hooper, who had brought his bride to Chapel Hill in 1816 to teach at the university, died on August 25, 1876 after a trip to Philadelphia for a meeting of descendants of the Declaration's signers. At his request he was buried beside his mother and her second husband, President Joseph Caldwell, and in 1904 the remains were moved to the new Caldwell monument.

People: Joseph Caldwell

The poorhouse count records ten deaths in a single year

The enumeration listed six white men, eight white women, four Black men and six Black women living at the poorhouse. Over the previous year ten residents had died, two children had been born, twelve people had come in and four had left.

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

Professor William H. Smith publishes a guide to collecting specimens

William H. Smith, professor of natural history, issued a pamphlet with directions for skinning and preserving birds and mammals and for keeping reptiles, insects, plants, rocks and soils, to build up the university museum. Battle calls it probably the first such guide in the state.

A Presbyterian church for Hillsborough's Black members is founded

More than a decade after emancipation, a Presbyterian church for people of color was established on land from the Brodie family at the corner of Orange and Wake streets.

A new chemistry laboratory under the university library is lit with gas

The university fitted out a new chemical laboratory below the library, lit with gas, where students in long aprons did all their own experiments.

Dr. Thomas W. Harris opens a drugstore at Franklin and Henderson streets

Dr. Thomas W. Harris, the first dean of the university's medical school, opened a drugstore on the northeast corner of Franklin and Henderson streets. He sold the business to Robert Strange MacRae in 1884.

People: Thomas West Harris

James Cole Taylor works as an assistant at the state experiment station in Smith Hall

James C. Taylor and William B. Phillips, Chapel Hill graduates of 1877, worked as assistants at the state's fertilizer control and experiment station at the university, with W. Warnecke of Germany and A. D. Mickle of Chapel Hill. The station had four rooms in Smith Hall.

People: William Battle Phillips

Subject: Smith Hall (Playmakers Theatre)

McIver heads mathematics at the university's summer normal schools

Then principal of the Greensboro graded schools, McIver was chief of the mathematics department at the 1877 Summer Normal School in Chapel Hill and taught mathematics, English grammar and physiology at the 1878 session.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle

Subject: University Summer School

Phi Kappa Sigma is rechartered at the reopened university

Although the trustees still discouraged fraternities after 1875, Phi Kappa Sigma regained its charter in 1877 and met in secret, often off campus.

State experiment station opens at Chapel Hill

After Kemp P. Battle pressed for it with the State Grange and farm societies, the legislature created a Board of Agriculture, taxed commercial fertilizers and placed an experiment station at the university, whose trustees elected Albert R. Ledoux its chemist in 1877. Working in Smith Hall it analyzed fertilizers, seeds, soils and waters until it moved to Raleigh in 1881.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle · Washington Caruthers Kerr

Subject: Smith Hall (Playmakers Theatre)

The Chapel Hill Baptist Church builds an addition for its Sunday school

During A. C. Dixon's pastorate the church built an addition that housed the infant class of the Sunday school.

People: A. C. (Amzi Clarence) Dixon

Subject: University Baptist Church

The university holds its first summer session, a state normal school for teachers

In the summer of 1877 the university hosted a statewide Summer Normal School, set up by the General Assembly in March 1877 to train white teachers for the common schools. President Kemp Battle and the Board of Education admitted white women to its classes, though state money could not be spent on them.

Subject: University Summer School

Thomas Ruffin Jr. and his wife Mary build the Ruffin-Hill House

Thomas Ruffin Jr. and his wife Mary built an I-house with Italianate and Eastlake trim on a 47-acre tract near the burned Priestly Mangum House. Their daughter Mary Ruffin Hill and her husband Thomas Hill lived there for many years.

Subject: Ruffin-Hill House

William Horn Battle returns to Chapel Hill to teach law

Battle had left for Raleigh in 1868 when Reconstruction politics disrupted the university. When his law school reopened at Chapel Hill in January 1877, while his son Kemp was president, he returned as professor of law, and he taught until he resigned in January 1879, shortly before his death that March.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle

Subject: UNC School of Law

Louis H. Hackney becomes pastor of Rock Hill Baptist Church

Louis H. Hackney, who had spent six years at Shaw University in the early 1870s and then taught school, became pastor of Rock Hill Baptist Church on Franklin Street in January 1877, when he was barely twenty-two. He held the pastorate for sixty years, until his death in 1937. He and his wife had married in 1876.

Subject: First Baptist Church, Chapel Hill

Fire guts Person Hall

Person Hall, the old chapel finished in 1798 and recently given to the chemistry department, burned on February 6, 1877, apparently from a stovepipe set too close to a roof rafter. The thick walls stood, the loss came to about $1,000, and gifts from A. F. Redd, J. S. Carr and others paid to restore it.

People: Julian S. Carr · Samuel (Samuel Field) Phillips · Samuel Field Phillips

Subject: Person Hall

Latin salutatory and valedictory orations are dropped from commencement

A month after the Person Hall fire the university abolished the Latin Salutatory and Valedictory speeches, though for several years the top graduate was still called the valedictorian.

Andrew Mickle is appointed Chapel Hill postmaster

Andrew Mickle was appointed postmaster at Chapel Hill on May 19, 1877, succeeding Hugh B. Guthrie. Thomas M. Kirkland followed him on January 31, 1881.

Subject: Chapel Hill Post Office and Peace and Justice Plaza

Charles F. Deems preaches the commencement sermon and receives an honorary degree

At the 1877 commencement, Deems, then pastor of the Church of the Strangers in New York, preached the baccalaureate sermon, and the university conferred on him the honorary Doctor of Laws.

The reopened university graduates its first class

At the 1877 commencement five men took degrees, William Battle Phillips of Chapel Hill a Ph.B. and Julian M. Baker, Frank M. Fremont, Joseph C. Powell and James C. Taylor the B.S. The 1876 commencement had had no graduates.

People: James Cole Taylor · William Battle Phillips

Zebulon Vance delivers a memorial eulogy of David L. Swain at commencement

Governor Vance, in office a second time, gave the memorial address on the late president David L. Swain at the 1877 commencement, a year after he had given up the same assignment in anger. Spencer, unable to hear, had read his manuscript and watched Swain's old neighbors in tears.

People: David L. Swain

William C. Claytor, Nettleton G. Craig and Charles W. Johnston are ordained elders at New Hope

Three elders were added to the session. Claytor was a son of the 1859 elder Samuel Claytor; Johnston's grandmother was Mary Cabe, a daughter of Gilbert Strayhorn.

People: Charles W. Johnston

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

Louisa Turner sells Maple Hill and 140 acres to her brother-in-law Israel Turner

Louisa Jackson Turner, widow of John Turner, sold her father Jacob Jackson's home tract and the house where she lived to Israel Turner Jr. for $10,500. Israel Turner later ran a government-licensed distillery on the farm.

Subject: Jacob Jackson Farm (Maple Hill)

The school board approves Piney Mountain as school District 53

The board recognized Piney Mountain as District No. 53 and named its committeemen. At the same meeting it ordered that no committee contract teachers beyond the money apportioned for the year.

Subject: Piney Mountain School

Fairfield School is allowed to draw water from the county poorhouse spring

The board let the Fairfield school in District 21 use the spring at the county poorhouse for its water.

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

Hickory Grove Baptist Church is organized

Black families organized Hickory Grove Baptist Church, with C. D. Hackney as first pastor.

The school board names committeemen for 52 numbered school districts

The board's 1877 appointments name every district school in the county, from North East and Deals Creek to Prospect Hill and Orange Factory, with three committeemen for each.

University Day is established

At Kemp P. Battle's request, seconded by Zebulon B. Vance, the executive committee made October 12, the anniversary of the laying of Old East's cornerstone in 1793, a permanent holiday. At the first observance in Gerrard Hall, decorated by Cornelia Phillips Spencer and village women, Battle spoke on the charter and the cornerstone.

People: Zebulon B. Vance · Cornelia Phillips Spencer · Kemp Plummer Battle

Subject: Gerrard Hall · Old East

Bartholomew F. Moore leaves the university $5,000 for scholarships

Moore, who died in November 1878, left the university $5,000 by will to fund scholarships. Battle later reported three young men studying on the Moore scholarships.

Bursar Andrew Mickle helps poor teachers through the university's summer normal school

At the summer normal school the university lent its dormitories and bedding and let teachers cook for themselves, so that many lived on $4 or $5 a month. Andrew Mickle, the school's business agent, worked tirelessly to advise and help those who needed it.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle

Dr. T. W. Harris opens a private medical school in Chapel Hill

In 1878 Dr. T. W. Harris moved from Chatham County to Chapel Hill and started a private medical school there. Within a year the university absorbed it and named him the first dean of its School of Medicine.

Subject: UNC School of Medicine

Hillsborough's Black Presbyterians build their church on Orange Street

The congregation built its church about 1878 with some help from white residents. Leading families were the Ellisons, Boldens, Morrows, Richmonds and Webbs; Bill Bolden played the organ and a Rev. White was pastor.

John H. Watson buys the Chapel Hill Hotel from David McCauley

John H. Watson, a brother of Jones Watson, bought the Chapel Hill Hotel from McCauley. By 1891 he had taken W. W. Pickard as a partner.

People: David McCauley · John H. Watson

Subject: Eagle Hotel (Chapel Hill)

Joseph A. Harris publishes the Chapel Hill Ledger

Joseph A. Harris began printing the Chapel Hill Ledger in a small wooden shop on the south side of East Franklin Street. He stopped publishing it in 1880.

People: Joseph A. Harris

Joseph Blount Cheshire Jr. starts monthly Episcopal services in Durham

Cheshire, then serving the Chapel of the Cross, began the services that led in 1881 to the founding of St. Philip's in Durham.

Joseph Blount Cheshire is assigned to the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill

Ordered deacon at Tarboro on 21 April 1878, Cheshire was assigned by Bishop Thomas Atkinson to the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill at the request of university president Kemp P. Battle. He served his diaconate there under Robert Sutton, rector of the Pittsboro parish.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle

Subject: Chapel of the Cross

Mount Zion AME Church is organized at Martinsville

Lefler and Wager say five Black men, Jack Horner, Bedford Corbett, Richard Jordan, Sam McBroom and Richard Thompson, organized the church about 1878 at Martinsville, probably the Martin farm near Cedar Grove. The congregation's own history dates its first gatherings to about 1869 and says it was known as Poplar Springs, with a pastor by 1878, until it took the Mount Zion AME name about 1880. It bought an acre from S. W. and Margaret J. Hughes in 1882 and moved to its present site about 1927.