Chronology

The university gives Bartholomew F. Moore an honorary LL.D.

At the 1868 commencement, which Battle calls the last of the old regime, the university granted the degree of Doctor of Laws to ex-Governor Seymour and to Moore, a Raleigh lawyer and active trustee.

Robert G. Fitzgerald comes to Hillsborough to teach a freedmen's school

Fitzgerald, a Union Navy and cavalry veteran who had taught freedpeople in Amelia County, Virginia, came to Hillsborough through the Friends' Freedmen's Association of Philadelphia to teach at a new school for Black students.

Henry B. Pratt, a missionary to South America, supplies New Hope

Pratt preached at New Hope for six months with the Hillsborough church. On May 24, 1868, D. I. Craig, John T. Hogan and three women were received and baptized as members.

People: John T. Hogan

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

The Court of Wardens of the Poor holds its last meeting

The seven-member wardens' court, which had run poor relief and the county poorhouse, met for the last time before the new board of county commissioners took over its work.

People: Lemuel Lynch

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

William H. S. Burgwyn graduates from the university with first honors

After the Civil War Burgwyn re-entered the University of North Carolina as a sophomore and graduated in June 1868 with first honors, delivering the Latin salutatory address. He was a member of the Philanthropic Society.

Swain protests his removal to Governor Holden

Learning that the new Reconstruction trustees had declared his 1867 resignation final, David L. Swain wrote Governor William W. Holden, as chairman of the board, that no charge had been made against him and that a resignation accepted by a board that no longer existed could not be revived. He asked for reconsideration, but died later that month.

People: David L. Swain · William W. Holden · Charles Manly

Orange County's first elected board of commissioners takes office

Elected in April 1868 at the election that ratified the new constitution, five commissioners qualified at the courthouse and chose Lemuel Lynch chairman, replacing the old county court of justices. Within days the newly elected sheriff, treasurer, register of deeds and clerk of superior court gave their bonds.

People: John U. Kirkland · Jones Watson · David C. Parks · George Laws · Lemuel Lynch

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

David L. Swain dies after a buggy accident

Weeks after the Reconstruction board of trustees accepted his resignation, David L. Swain was thrown on August 11, 1868, from a buggy pulled by the horse General Sherman had given him. He seemed to be recovering but died on August 27 and was buried on August 29 in the garden of his Chapel Hill home; Charles Phillips preached his funeral sermon.

People: Charles Phillips

Commissioners hire Silas M. Link to divide the county into townships

Link was paid $75 to lay the school districts out into townships, and the board approved his plan of eight: Hillsboro, Little River, Mangum, Durham, Patterson, Chapel Hill, Bingham and Cedar Grove. In 1877 the board split Mangum at Little River to form Lebanon Township.

The new county commissioners name school committees for all 53 districts

Working from Silas Link's report, which listed the school districts in each new township, the board named three committeemen for every one of the county's 53 districts. Presumably they were meant to hold office until the townships could elect their own.

Reconstruction trustees vote down admitting women

The executive committee of the new Republican board of trustees recommended co-education, but the full board refused to admit women as students.

Trustees vote to found a university branch for Black students near Raleigh

On Victor C. Barringer's motion the Reconstruction trustees called for a school for Black students near Raleigh equal to the one at Chapel Hill, and on Albion W. Tourgee's motion made it a branch of the university, with Tod R. Caldwell moving that at least 100 acres be bought. Nothing came of it, nor of a later proposal to give Black students a third of the land-scrip money or of Tourgee's request for equal white and Black departments under one board.

People: Tod Robinson Caldwell · Albion W. Tourgee

Cornelia Phillips Spencer describes the emptied campus and village

In a letter to the Sentinel written under the Old Poplar, Spencer described the shut buildings and reported that nearly twenty of Chapel Hill's leading families were leaving and six places now sold liquor openly. She named the departing faculty, among them Judge William H. Battle, and called the town the Deserted Village of the South.

People: Cornelia Phillips Spencer · William Horn Battle

A school report finds 43 schoolhouses for nearly 6,000 children

A. Hooker, late chairman of the common schools board, counted 3,667 white and 2,235 Black children in the county and only 43 schoolhouses, most run down, to serve both races. He put the need at 63 new buildings of about $100 each.

A count of Chapel Hill finds 483 white and 454 Black residents

Four years after emancipation, Chapel Hill had 483 white and 454 Black residents, close to half and half. Freed families were making homes on the village's western side, on West Cameron Avenue, West Franklin Street and around Potter's Field west of Church Street.

Alexander Kirkland, a son of the congregation, supplies New Hope

The Rev. Alexander Kirkland, son of the New Hope elder Joseph Kirkland, supplied the church for part of 1869 and 1870 after Pratt.

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

Alexander McIver joins the reorganized faculty as professor of mathematics

McIver, a Moore County native who had graduated first in the class of 1853 and taught briefly as a tutor, came from Davidson College to teach mathematics on the Republican faculty that reopened the university under Solomon Pool.

People: Solomon Pool

An 1869 account finds Chapel Hill grown to about 1,000 people

By 1869 the village that had one store and one doctor in 1836 counted eight or ten stores, two drugstores, four churches and six schools, with about 1,000 people. The growth came mostly between the mid-1850s and the war, when new streets were opened and many houses built.

Black families make homes on Lot 16 on East Franklin Street

After E. Hunt closed his boarding house and Dr. Johnston B. Jones left town, Black families moved into both buildings: Tom Moore into the larger two-story house and the Burnett family into the small former medicine shop. Several other Black families settled on what had been Lot 16.

Court strikes down the act for a state-built railroad to Chapel Hill

An 1869 plan had the state build a line from the North Carolina Railroad to Chapel Hill through commissioners, paid for with $300,000 in state bonds. When the commissioners chose Henry C. Thompson as president over Governor Holden's choice, Holden refused to sign the bonds, and in the University Railroad Company's suit against him the court held the act unconstitutional over Judge Reade's dissent.

People: William W. Holden

Subject: North Carolina Railroad

David McCauley buys the Union Hotel and renames it the Chapel Hill Hotel

McCauley bought the Union Hotel, the house Nancy Hilliard had once kept as the Eagle Hotel, and gave it the name Chapel Hill Hotel. He also bought the building at the northeast corner of Franklin and Henderson streets where Richard Benbury Saunders had kept his drugstore.

People: Nancy Hilliard · David McCauley

Subject: Eagle Hotel (Chapel Hill)

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

After losing her house and failing at hotel work in Raleigh, Nancy Hilliard came back to Chapel Hill destitute, and David McCauley, who 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)

Dr. Abner B. Roberson opens a general store that specializes in drugs

With Saunders gone, the village's new druggist, Dr. Abner Benton Roberson, opened a general store on the south side of Franklin Street that dealt mainly in drugs and medical supplies. It stood on the property of his father-in-law, Haywood Stone.

People: Abner Benton Roberson

Former governor William A. Graham lives in the Nash-Hooper House

William A. Graham, former governor of North Carolina, made the Nash-Hooper House on West Tryon Street his home from 1869 until 1875.

Subject: Nash-Hooper House

J. W. Norwood of Hillsborough warns county farmers that their methods are ruining the land

In an 1869 talk to Orange County farmers, Norwood said the county's fields were exhausted because growers added no organic matter, rotated nothing and let rain wash the soil away. He urged a new system before ruin set in.

Nelson Hall runs a flour and grist mill near Caldwell

In 1869 Nelson Hall, a large landowner in the Caldwell area, was operating a flour and grist mill alongside his farm, one of several planters who took up a side business after the war.

Pleasant Green Methodist Church builds a frame church on the site of its log churches

In 1869 the Pleasant Green congregation in the Eno neighborhood replaced the second of its log churches, the first dating from the 1830s, with a frame building.

Subject: Pleasant Green Methodist Church

Robert K. Rice buys the Pettigrew log house farm

Elkins Pettigrew sold the farm to his son-in-law Robert K. Rice, husband of his daughter Martha, for $375 in 1869. Rice improved the place, which the 1880 census valued at $1,500, and it stayed in the Rice family for more than a century.

Subject: Paisley-Rice Log House

Samuel F. Phillips sells his East Franklin Street house to Henry J. Hogan

Samuel Phillips sold his East Franklin Street house and lot to Henry J. Hogan, who moved to Tennessee right away and left the place to his father, William J. Hogan. The sale sent Phillips's mother and his sister Cornelia Phillips Spencer to live in Charles Phillips's house.

Solomon Pool accepts the presidency of the university

Pool accepted the presidency of the University of North Carolina in 1869 at a salary of fifteen hundred dollars and was permitted to keep his federal appraiser post at the same time. Governor William W. Holden had taken charge of the board of trustees to secure a president with Republican affiliations.

Part of The university closes and reopens · 46 events

People: William W. Holden

Solomon Pool buys Nancy Hilliard's house, the Crystal Palace, at a sheriff's sale

When the hotel keeper Nancy Hilliard went bankrupt, university president Solomon Pool bought her Franklin Street home, known as the Crystal Palace, at a sheriff's sale for $150. He let Col. Hugh B. Guthrie and his wife Jane, a daughter of Hudson Cave, move in, which Bryant reads as a way of forcing Hilliard out.

People: Solomon Pool · Nancy Hilliard

The sheriff auctions the former Burwell School to David C. Parks

Dr. Thomas D. Warren was deep in local debt, and the Orange County sheriff sold the house at auction to David C. Parks for $600. Parks and his brother Charles traded the property between them for the next quarter century.

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

People: David C. Parks

Subject: Burwell School

Thomas Fitzgerald buys Woodside, where his son Robert builds a freedmen's school

In 1869 Thomas Fitzgerald, father of the freedmen's teacher Robert G. Fitzgerald, moved to Orange County from Delaware and bought a 158-acre farm for $1,200. The family place, Woodside, lay about six miles east of Hillsborough. Robert built a freedmen's school on the property, and his diaries record a tanning business and a brick kiln he set up with his brother.

University treasurer puts the land-grant fund into railroad bonds later repudiated

Treasurer Robert W. Lassiter invested the $125,000 land-scrip fund in North Carolina bonds, including $160,000 face value of special tax bonds issued for the Western North Carolina Railroad. The legislature repealed the acts behind those bonds on March 8, 1870, and the fund earned nothing until 1875.

Wilson Caldwell resigns from the university and founds a school for Black children

In 1869 Wilson Caldwell, who had worked at the university as an enslaved servant and janitor, resigned and started a school for children of color in Chapel Hill.

People: Wilson Swain Caldwell

New Hope's present graveyard is begun

Because the old graveyard lay so low that winter graves filled with water, James Newton Craig and elder David Craig chose a dry site a little south of east of the church. His nine-month-old son Vernon, who died on December 31, 1868, was buried there on January 1, 1869 as its first grave.

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

Dennis Heartt gives up the Hillsborough Recorder after nearly fifty years

In the Recorder of January 11, 1869, Dennis Heartt announced that his connection with the paper would end with that number, thirteen months short of fifty years after its first issue. An 1899 history of the paper says he sold it to Capt. C. N. B. Evans of the Milton Chronicle.

Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

Federal court dismisses the state's suit to void the university's bank mortgage

The Reconstruction trustees had the state sue in the United States Circuit Court, returnable at the June 1869 term, to cancel the university's mortgage to the Bank of North Carolina, but Judges Hugh L. Bond and George W. Brooks dismissed the bill for want of jurisdiction. On July 20, 1871 the trustees present advised against an appeal.

The Pool faculty holds its first commencement

After a first term that began March 3, the university reported on June 10, 1869 three sophomores and seven freshmen and gave an A.B. to Abdel Kader Tenney. At the thinly attended commencement Governor William W. Holden argued for educating both races in one university, whites at Chapel Hill and Black students elsewhere.

People: Solomon Pool · William W. Holden

Chapel Hill's town board holds the earliest meeting with surviving minutes

The oldest surviving town minutes record a meeting of commissioners H. C. Thompson, James F. Craige and Greene Brewer. The town census taker, W. S. Guthrie, reported 937 residents, 483 white and 454 Black.

Orange County holds its first township elections

Voters in each township chose magistrates, a clerk, a constable and school committeemen for the first time. In Chapel Hill Township 540 of 565 registered voters cast ballots.

People: William Kirkland · Jones Watson · Andrew Mickle · John Wesley Carr

Robert G. Fitzgerald marries Cornelia Smith of Chapel Hill

Fitzgerald married Cornelia Smith, a niece of Mary Ruffin Smith, the Chapel Hill benefactor of the university. Their granddaughter Pauli Murray later told the family's story in Proud Shoes.

People: Pauli Murray · Mary Ruffin Smith

Klansmen take two Black prisoners from jail and shoot one of them

A few nights after three barns burned in late July 1869, two Black men accused of another barn burning were taken from jail. One was let go; the other was shot and died.

Subject: Orange County jail, Hillsborough

Wright Malone is abducted and lynched near Little River

On the night of September 6, 1869, four mounted men took Wright Malone, a young Black farmer, from the coal kiln he was burning with his father near Little River in eastern Orange County. A neighbor found his body hanging from a tree on September 12, and the coroner concluded the killing had been planned in advance.

People: Wright Malone

Governor Holden warns Orange County it may be declared in insurrection

Holden's proclamation of October 20, 1869, named Lenoir, Jones, Orange and Chatham counties and said that in Orange the jail had been forced, two Black prisoners taken out and shot, and three other Black men hanged. He warned that he would declare those counties in a state of insurrection and use the whole power of the state if the violence continued.

People: William W. Holden

Bursar reports the plundering of university property

Professor David Settle Patrick reported that when exercises were suspended in 1868 many in Chapel Hill believed the university's property belonged to the people. Books had been taken from the libraries and tools carried off, and only some had been returned.

Cyrus Guy is lynched by a masked mob in western Orange County

A masked mob seized Cyrus Guy, a 24-year-old Afro-Indigenous farmer from a free family of color, and hanged him from a tree on the High Rock Road near the Alamance County line, above the county poorhouse. The Hillsborough Recorder reported that an inquest held under Sheriff Turner found out nothing, and Ben Johnson recalled in 1937 that the body was left hanging for four days.

People: Cyrus Guy

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.

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.

Baptists form the Mount Zion Association

The Mount Zion Baptist Association was formed. By 1953 nearly every Baptist church in Orange County belonged to it, replacing the older Sandy Creek Association.

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

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

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.

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

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

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

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

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 · 11 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.

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 · 46 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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Charles Jones Curtis succeeds his father as rector of St. Matthew's

After his ordination to the priesthood, Charles Jones Curtis followed his father, Moses Ashley Curtis, as rector and served until he resigned in 1880.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal 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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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 · 46 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 · 46 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 · 46 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 · 46 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.

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 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 · 46 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 · 46 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

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.