Chronology

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.

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.

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 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

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 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.

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.

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.

Nelson P. Hall buys the Ellis house and 267 acres on the Eno

Nelson Parrish Hall bought 267 acres of the Ellis land with the brick house, though his family may have lived there since about 1870, when his son Simeon was listed as a miller. The mill on the Eno across the road took the Hall name as Hall's Mill.

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

Teachers at the Normal School form a State Teachers' Association

Teachers attending the 1878 University Normal School organized a State Teachers' Association with Kemp P. Battle as president and began forming county associations. They also petitioned the legislature to continue the school.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle

Subject: University Summer School

The Orange County Observer begins publication at Hillsborough

Joseph A. Harris started the Orange County Observer at Hillsborough in 1878 as editor and owner. The paper ran until about 1917.

Subject: Orange County Observer

The present Morrow's Mill is built on Cane Creek

The timber-framed mill on a stone foundation known as Morrow's Mill was built in 1878 on Cane Creek in southwestern Orange County, the third mill on a site whose stone dam enslaved laborers had built before the Civil War. It ground grain until 1930, and the 1993 county survey found it the only rural mill building besides Faucett's still standing, with its dam kept up.

The wife of pastor J. H. Wheeler is buried in front of the Hillsborough Methodist Church

During J. H. Wheeler's four-year pastorate his wife died and was buried in the church's front yard, a grave the church still showed in 1962.

Subject: Hillsborough Methodist Church

William L. Saunders becomes secretary of the university, and later its treasurer as well

After Seaton Gales died in 1878, the trustees chose Saunders as the university's secretary; once President Battle gave up the treasurership, Saunders held both offices, which he kept until his death in 1891.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle

St. Paul AME buys a church lot from Benjamin and Dilsy Craig

The congregation paid fifty-five dollars on April 15, 1878 for a church lot bought from Benjamin and Dilsy Craig, and was raising money in December 1879 and January 1880 to finish a church there. In 1892 it built its present church across Merritt Mill Road from the earlier one, on land the 1983 Carrboro inventory says the Hargraves and Caldwell families gave about 1890.

People: Benjamin Craig

Subject: St. Paul AME Church

Three men hanged for a string of Chapel Hill burglaries

In 1877 a band of four broke into six houses in and near Chapel Hill and wounded the widow Margaret Hendon with an axe blade while trying to rob her. Albert Atwater, a Black man held for a lesser offense, confessed and named two white men and a Black man, who were convicted in Orange Superior Court and hanged on April 16, 1878, after the governor refused a pardon or commutation.

People: Thomas Ruffin · William P. Mallett

St. Matthew's rings its new bell, a memorial to Confederate dead

A steeple bell given by Mrs. Mary Curtis was rung for the first time for the Easter service. Its inscription remembers John Henry Curtis and the other men of the Orange Light Artillery who died in Confederate service.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

Summer Normal School offers the state's first kindergarten training

Emily M. Coe of New York taught a class of teachers the kindergarten method at the university's 1878 Summer Normal School, with 53 children drilled daily. Battle believed it the first normal kindergarten class in North Carolina; the session enrolled 402 teachers, 190 of them women.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle

Subject: University Summer School

Alpha Tau Omega charters a chapter at the university

Alpha Tau Omega received a charter at Chapel Hill in 1879, while fraternities were still barred and met out of sight.

Chapel Hill's amended charter creates the office of mayor

An 1879 amendment to the town charter replaces the magistrate of police with a mayor holding a justice of the peace's powers in Orange County. Merritt Cheek was the first mayor, serving until 1881.

Charles B. Aycock edits the Ledger in Chapel Hill

Aycock, then a university student, took over as editor of the weekly Chapel Hill Ledger in 1879, succeeding Cornelia Phillips Spencer. The paper ran until 1880.

Cornelia Phillips Spencer edits the Chapel Hill Weekly Ledger

For some months in 1879 Cornelia Phillips Spencer edited the Chapel Hill Weekly Ledger, with students R. P. Pell and Francis D. Winston as assistants. The book calls her the county's only woman editor; Charles B. Aycock took over from her.

People: Charles B. Aycock · Francis D. Winston

E. H. Pogue moves his tobacco manufacturing from Hillsborough to Durham

Pogue, a tobacco dealer since 1866 alongside his tinware and general merchandise trade, began making plug tobacco at a factory in Hillsborough in 1872 or 1873. In 1879 he moved the business to Durham, where E. H. Pogue & Son made granulated and long-cut smoking tobacco, while Pogue kept his home in Hillsborough.

George T. Winston buys Benjamin Hedrick's house with its polygonal annex

Professor George T. Winston bought the former Hedrick house in 1879. In the 1880s or early 1890s he tied the old farmhouse and its many-sided annex together with a Queen Anne addition of porch, entrance hall and parlor, turning the house toward Franklin Street. It is now called the Horace Williams House after its later owner.

People: George Tayloe Winston

Subject: Horace Williams House

John D. Cameron moves the Recorder from Hillsborough to Durham, ending fifty-nine years of publication in the county seat

Cameron carried the paper fifteen miles east to the tobacco town, where it continued as the Durham Recorder, published every Wednesday. The last issue under the Hillsborough title in the digitized run is March 5, 1879; the first Durham issue there is July 2, 1879.

Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

John Joseph Whitfield builds a farmhouse on Whitfield Road

About 1879 John Joseph Whitfield built an I-house with a rear ell; a tall Mount Vernon style porch was added later. Its well house and other domestic buildings survive.

John Wesley Carr builds a second store at Franklin and Columbia

Merchant John Wesley Carr put up a second store on his corner lot at Columbia Street on West Franklin. By about 1904 one of the two Carr stores was a meat market and the other a grocery.

Latta Grove Baptist Church is organized

Jerry M. Latta and others organized Latta Grove Baptist Church about 1879.

Legislature extends Normal School benefits to women

The 1877 act limited state money for the Summer Normal School to men, though women attended by invitation. When the two-year act ran out it was renewed with the restriction as to sex removed.

Subject: University Summer School

The railroad is rechartered as the State University Railroad

The legislature rechartered the stalled iron-mine line as the State University Railroad, shifting its purpose to a rail link for the university, with UNC president Kemp P. Battle working alongside Hoke to raise funds.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle · Robert F. Hoke

Toney and Nellie Strayhorn, formerly enslaved, bought thirty acres in what became Carrboro

The Strayhorns bought about thirty acres and built a one-room log cabin at what is now 109 Jones Ferry Road, and their son William built the house next door at 107 in 1915. Toney Strayhorn is remembered as a founder of First Baptist Church in Chapel Hill, and the house is still owned by a great-granddaughter.

People: Toney Strayhorn · William Strayhorn

Subject: Toney and Nellie Strayhorn House and William Strayhorn House

John C. Blake deeds Eno River land to the Catholic diocese

John C. Blake conveyed 15 acres on the Eno River to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Raleigh, decades before any Catholic parish was organized in the county.

Samuel Kirkland and Leroy Craig are ordained elders at New Hope

The two were added to the session in what Craig in 1891 called the last ordination of elders at New Hope.

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

The school board creates Buckhorn school district from four neighboring districts

On petition, the board formed District No. 56, Buckhorn, from the corners of the Gravelly Hill, Ridge Meeting House, Tom's Creek and Woody's Road districts so the school would sit at their center. Elerby (No. 54) and Vickers (No. 55) districts had been formed shortly before.

Baptist minister James P. Mason speaks at University Day

At the 1879 University Day exercises, after President Kemp Battle's historical address, short talks were given by the Rev. Joseph Blount Cheshire, the Rev. James Pleasant Mason, the Methodist minister Mr. Heitman and several professors.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle · Joseph Blount Cheshire Jr.

Charles F. Deems starts the Deems Fund for student loans

Deems sent the university $300 to begin a fund lending both principal and interest to students on security, in memory of his son Theodore Disosway Deems, who was born in Chapel Hill and killed at Gettysburg. William H. Vanderbilt later added $10,000 through him.

Alphonso J. McDade builds the first brick building in the business district

McDade put up the first brick building in Chapel Hill's business district, on the southwest corner of Franklin and Columbia streets. F. P. Booth rented it for a dry goods store in 1883, and Junius D. Webb later kept a grocery there.

People: Alphonso J. McDade

F. K. Ball builds a shingled house on East Franklin Street

F. K. Ball built the house at 604 East Franklin Street in 1880, with a steep roof, a large dormer and shingled walls and porch piers. It is named for a later owner, Dr. R. B. Lawson.

Fairfield Presbyterian Church builds a new Gothic frame church north of Efland

The Fairfield congregation, dating to 1834, put up a new steep-roofed church with Gothic windows in the 1880s, sheathed inside with flush boards.

Subject: Fairfield Presbyterian Church

Fire destroys Caldwell Lodge's records and the lodge gives up its charter

A fire destroyed all of Caldwell Lodge's old records, and the Chapel Hill lodge surrendered its charter the same year.

Subject: University Lodge

Fire destroys the old Pleasant Henderson house on East Franklin Street

The old Pleasant Henderson house, where the children of Dr. George Moore were then living, burned. In 1881 Dr. William P. Mallett bought the lot and built on it.

People: William P. Mallett

Five custom grist mills work the creeks of Cedar Grove Township

The 1880 manufacturing census found five flour and grist mills in Cedar Grove Township on Back, Eno and Lynch creeks and the South Little River, grinding local farmers' grain about six months a year. James Allen, who owned the township's largest farm, ran one of the smaller mills on Lynch Creek; two sawmills on the Little River ran five months a year.

Francis P. Venable is offered the chair of chemistry at the university

Venable, a University of Virginia chemistry graduate then studying in Germany, was offered the university's chair of chemistry in 1880. He taught at Chapel Hill until he retired in 1930.

Glenn's Grove Baptist Church is organized

Glenn's Grove Baptist Church, a Black congregation, was organized about 1880 with Henry Fuller as first pastor.

Harmony Baptist Church builds its frame meeting house northwest of Hillsborough

The one-room weatherboarded church on stone piers, with a double door and shuttered windows, was built in the 1880s.

Henry Cole runs a general store near Caldwell

Henry Cole keeps a country general store near Caldwell in the late nineteenth century; the building still stood in 1993.

Jack Brim, a Black blacksmith, and then Bennie F. Ray open smithies at West End

As the settlement around the depot and Lloyd's mills grew in the later 1880s, Jack Brim, an African American blacksmith, opened a shop at West End, and Bennie F. Ray opened a second smithy after him. Ray's shop was still working north and east of the depot in the early 1910s.

Little River Township has one grist mill and two sawmills

The 1880 manufacturing census found a single flour and grist mill in Little River Township, on the Eno, and two sawmills on the South Little River: one run by Furner and Smith, the other by Harry Roundtree.

Locke Craig teaches at the university and at a Chapel Hill school

After graduating from the university at nineteen, Locke Craig taught chemistry there for a short time and taught at a private school in Chapel Hill. Kemp Battle listed him among graduates then teaching as "Craig at Chapel Hill."

Mount Olive Lodge No. 86 of Prince Hall Masons is established

Black Masons established Mount Olive Lodge No. 86, a Prince Hall lodge serving Chapel Hill and Carrboro. Randolph Chapter No. 185 of the Order of the Eastern Star was associated with it.

Orange Cross Roads Baptist Church is organized

Orange Cross Roads Baptist Church, a Black Baptist congregation, was organized about 1880. It built its church in 1923.

Pender Store is built at Cedar Grove

The two-story weatherboarded Pender Store, with a classical gable front and a hip-roofed porch, was built at Cedar Grove in the 1880s. Its shelves and display cases were still in place in 1996.

Robert F. Hoke raises subscriptions to run the railroad toward Chapel Hill

When iron prices rose in 1880 and shipping ore to Pennsylvania furnaces paid, Gen. Robert F. Hoke, who owned most of Iron Mountain north of Chapel Hill, began organizing the branch line from University Station. His Iron Mountain Company put up $6,000, the largest single pledge, and Julian S. Carr was among the other subscribers.

People: Julian S. Carr · Robert F. Hoke

Robert F. Hoke serves as unpaid superintendent of the State University Railroad

As the branch from University Station toward Chapel Hill got under way, university president Kemp P. Battle became president of the railroad company and General Robert F. Hoke its superintendent, both without salary. John Holt managed the convict work force and Captain Fry was the civil engineer.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle

Subject: University Station

Ruffin Cheek and then Hiram Stone open West End's first general stores

Ruffin Cheek, followed by Hiram Stone, opened grocery and general merchandise stores at West End in the 1880s. The book counts their stores, east of the railroad spur on what became East Main Street, as the start of Carrboro's business district.

Seniors begin the class tree and Class Day custom

The class of 1880, led by its president Thomas H. Battle, planted a sugar maple at the edge of the Forbidden Ground after Class Day speeches that included one by Charles B. Aycock. Later classes kept the custom, planting a water oak in 1882 and a white pine in 1883.

People: Charles B. Aycock · Locke Craig

State convicts build the University Railroad

Governor Thomas J. Jarvis supplied state convicts at low hire to grade the line from University Station to Chapel Hill, while the Richmond and Danville company laid the rails. A white convict was shot dead while fleeing, and a Black convict named Fries died of gangrene after a whipping by the road's managers, which the solicitor found no ground to prosecute.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle · Alexander Boyd Andrews · Robert F. Hoke · Thomas Jordan Jarvis

Subject: University Station

The Caine Roberts farm is built near Hillsborough

A farm complex centered on a two-story frame Triple-A I-house is built around 1880 on the Caine Roberts place near Hillsborough. The survey put it on the Study List.

The Charles Davis Farm is built

The Charles Davis Farm, built about 1880, was placed on the state Study List in July 1991 at its owner's request.

Subject: Charles Davis Farm

The Davis-Eubanks House is built on Mallette Street

The one-story frame house at 129 Mallette Street, with a center front gable, rear ell and turned-post porch, dates from about 1880.

The Henry Lloyd farm is built around a walled barnyard in Chapel Hill Township

Henry Lloyd, farming in Chapel Hill Township by 1880, probably built his farmhouse in the 1880s; the farm grew in stages, and log and frame outbuildings of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries close in a rectangular barnyard, an arrangement the survey found worth a Study List place.

The Little River General Store is built on NC 57

A frame general store serving the Little River community goes up on NC 57 late in the nineteenth century.

The Neville Building, thought to be Carrboro's first store, goes up east of the depot

A one-story frame store later called the Old Neville Building was put up in the 1880s on East Main Street between Broad and Lloyd streets and is believed to be the first store building in Carrboro. Its last tenant was the Carrboro Cash Store, run by Cliff and Wilbur Partin.

The Phelps farmstead is built north of Hillsborough

The Phelps farm on NC 57 north of Hillsborough grows up in the late nineteenth century around a Triple-A I-house, with a log tenant house and one- and two-pen log barns. It is on the Study List.

The White Cross Store is built

A country store is built at White Cross in the late nineteenth century. It was later covered in vinyl siding.

The first McDade Store goes up at McDade crossroads

The first McDade Store, a two-story frame building, was put up in the 1880s at the McDade crossroads just north of Cedar Grove, where it would have stood over the small community. A second McDade store with a canopy for motorists buying gas was built across the road in the early 1920s.

Subject: McDade Store

The upstairs courtroom of the Orange County Courthouse is renovated

In the 1880s the second-floor courtroom of John Berry's 1844-1845 courthouse on East King Street was renovated; the rest of the interior keeps most of its original finish.

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

Two cotton gins operate on Cane Creek in Bingham Township

Bingham Township, where cotton was a cash crop, had two cotton gins on Cane Creek in 1880. The township also had three flour and grist mills running full time, two on Cane Creek and one on Turkey Creek, and four sawmills on Morgan, Cane and Tom creeks.

W. R. Hughes makes bricks at Cedar Grove

The only brickyard in Cedar Grove Township in 1880 belonged to W. R. Hughes. It worked two months of the year and turned out about 100,000 common bricks.

William Cole buys the Smith plantation seat on Smith Level Road

The Smith family held its large plantation south of Carrboro until the 1880s, when William Cole bought the 1845 house. No bigger pre-war house survives in the township, and in 1992 it stood almost unchanged on 130 acres.

William George Randall walks from Burke County to Chapel Hill to enter the university

Randall walked to Chapel Hill in the fall of 1880, was interviewed by President Kemp Battle and was helped by the Deems Fund. The Dialectic Society paid him as its librarian, the first year the post carried a salary.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Chapel Hill's AME congregation issues a public appeal for money to finish its house of worship

Rev. G. W. Offley, preacher in charge of the African Methodist Episcopal church in Chapel Hill, signed a circular dated January 5, 1880 asking the public to help the congregation complete its house of worship and naming Brother George Trice to solicit subscriptions. The Chapel Hill Ledger printed it in full on January 10, 1880.

People: George Trice

Subject: St. Paul AME Church

Joseph Blount Cheshire is ordained priest two years after coming to Chapel Hill

Cheshire was ordained priest on 30 May 1880 by Bishop Theodore B. Lyman in St. Paul's Church, Winston, two years after going to Chapel Hill. While based at the Chapel of the Cross he also organized a mission at Durham and built a church there named for St. Philip the Deacon.

Subject: Chapel of the Cross

The student YMCA first takes part in commencement

The 1880 commencement opened with an address to the Young Men's Christian Association by the Rev. F. C. Woodward of Elizabeth City, the association's first part in commencement exercises. By 1884 it met regularly in its own hall in South Building.

Subject: University YMCA · South Building

The school board forms Center school district

A new District No. 57, called Center, was created with 34 white children and one Black child.

Dr. William P. Mallett builds a house on the old Henderson lot

Dr. Mallett bought the burned-out lot from the heirs of Anna Ashe and built a large two-story house, keeping a chemist's shop at its southeast corner. After his death in 1889 his widow ran the house as a boarding house where new professors stayed.

James Webb Jr. builds Mid-Lawn at East Queen and North Cameron streets

James Webb Jr. built a two-story Italianate house, later called Mid-Lawn, on the northwest corner of East Queen and North Cameron streets. David and Elizabeth Patterson bought it in 1919.

People: James Webb Jr.

John Manning teaches law at the university

Elected professor of law in 1881, John Manning taught at Chapel Hill while keeping a private practice, and law enrollment grew from seven students to eighty-seven by 1897-98.

Subject: UNC School of Law

Joseph Blount Cheshire leaves Chapel Hill to become rector at Charlotte

In the spring of 1881 Cheshire accepted a call to St. Peter's Church in Charlotte, ending about three years at the Chapel of the Cross. He was elected bishop of North Carolina in 1893.

Subject: Chapel of the Cross

Joseph W. Murphy serves as rector of St. Matthew's

Joseph W. Murphy was rector of the parish for eleven years. His family later gave the brass alms basin in his memory.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

Kappa Alpha charters a chapter at the university

Kappa Alpha was chartered at Chapel Hill in 1881, four years before the trustees lifted the ban on fraternities.

Mebaneville, the railroad village on the Orange-Alamance line, is incorporated

The settlement that grew along the North Carolina Railroad from 1854 was incorporated in 1881 and shortened its name to Mebane in 1883. Part of the town lies in Orange County.

Subject: North Carolina Railroad

St. Matthew's vestry asks Joseph Blount Cheshire to be its rector

The vestries of St. Matthew's and the Burlington church asked Joseph Blount Cheshire to take charge of their parishes. He would have come to his wife's home town, but Bishop Lyman wanted him to stay in Chapel Hill.

People: Joseph Blount Cheshire Jr. · Theodore B. (Theodore Benedict) Lyman

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

The General Assembly makes its first regular appropriation to the university

In 1881 the General Assembly voted the university its first regular appropriation for maintenance, secured under President Kemp Battle. Until then the state had given no specific money for its upkeep.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle

The literary societies agree to stop hazing

The Dialectic and Philanthropic societies adopted a joint rule, under heavy penalty, against entering another student's room against his will, laying hands on him or otherwise annoying him. It held for several years before hazing resumed in disguise.

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Typhoid kills the two surviving Mason daughters, and their father sets aside a family burial ground

Martha James Mason and Carolina Varina Mason both died of typhoid fever in 1881; their father caught it as well but recovered. James P. Mason marked off a small plot on the family land where all four daughters and later both parents were buried inside an iron fence, beside the graves of Solomon and Ann Morgan.

The commissioners allow gates across the roads at Orange Factory

The board ordered a gate on the road from Orange Factory to the Durham and Roxboro road near the old Douglas place, and another across the road on the opposite side of the river on S. W. Holman's land.

George Laws dies in office as Orange County's clerk of superior court

Laws died in May 1881 while serving as judge of probate and clerk of the superior court of Orange County, after about half a century in the county's service.

Commencement celebrates the railroad's arrival, and Battle calls Hoke its father

At the 1882 commencement an hour was set aside in Gerrard Hall to celebrate the railroad's coming to Chapel Hill. Kemp P. Battle told the history of the line and called General Robert F. Hoke the source of the enterprise and the father of the State University Railroad Company.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle · Paul C. Cameron · Thomas Jordan Jarvis

Subject: Gerrard Hall

Henry H. 'Hoot' Patterson opens a general merchandise store

Henry Houston 'Hoot' Patterson, a Civil War veteran married to Dr. Thomas Hogan's daughter Mary, started a general merchandise business in the building Andrew Mickle had used. Bryant calls it very successful.

People: Andrew Mickle

Hillsborough Presbyterian Church shares a pastor with the Chapel Hill church

During J. L. Williamson's short pastorate of 1882-83 the Hillsborough church was grouped with the Presbyterian church at Chapel Hill.

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

Joshua W. Gore joins the university as professor of natural philosophy and engineering

The trustees unanimously chose Joshua Walker Gore, a Virginia-born civil engineer who had studied at Richmond College, the University of Virginia and Johns Hopkins, to succeed Carey D. Grandy as professor of natural philosophy and engineering. He was the first appointee in years to take permanent charge of the subject.

Lisbon Berry becomes Orange County's first Black lawyer

Lisbon Payne Berry, born enslaved in Hillsborough in 1850, studied law in Hillsborough and was admitted to the North Carolina bar in 1882, becoming the first Black attorney in Orange County.

William N. Pritchard and Thomas F. Lloyd open a general store on East Franklin Street

William N. 'Captain Billy' Pritchard and T. F. Lloyd opened a general store on East Franklin Street, probably in the building where John R. Hutchins had sold clothing.

The Mount Zion congregation buys an acre for its first church

The Black congregation then known as Poplar Springs, which had met in a schoolhouse and on members' farms, bought a one-acre lot from S. W. Hughes and Margaret J. Hughes for $10. Its first church there was a small frame building with benches made by members.

People: Samuel Wellwood Hughes

Fire destroys the Bingham School buildings near Mebaneville

A fire that started in a cadet's quarters about 9:30 in the morning burned the barracks, office and library, the academy hall, the infirmary and the mess hall. About 175 cadets were in barracks, no one was hurt, and the loss was put at about $30,000.

People: Robert Bingham

Subject: Bingham School

Julia Spencer drives a last spike to celebrate the finished University railroad

Chapel Hill celebrated the completed State University Railroad with speeches and the driving of the last spikes, one by Julia J. Spencer, daughter of Cornelia Phillips Spencer, and one by the railroad's agent, J. G. Cooley. Passenger trains had been running to the West End terminus since February.

The commissioners call a fence-law election in Hillsborough Township

On a petition from the township, the board ordered a vote at each Hillsborough Township precinct for and against the fence law on June 10, 1882 and named the men to hold it. The result is not given; an 1885 act later put Hillsboro and three other townships under the stock law.

Bingham School finishes new buildings after the spring fire

Less than three months after the fire, the rebuilt Bingham School stood nearly complete, with timber cut and sawed nearby. Thomas C. Oakley of Durham was the builder.

People: Robert Bingham

Subject: Bingham School

Cross Roads Baptist Church is organized as Betheden

W. P. Roberts and S. S. Cates led the founding of a Baptist church first called Betheden and later Cross Roads, with R. A. Patterson as first pastor. It built a 300-seat church in 1910.

Dr. Pride Jones serves as Orange County clerk of superior court

Dr. Pride Jones followed George Laws, clerk for thirty years, as clerk of the superior court of Orange County and held the office from 1883 to 1888, when Samuel M. Gattis succeeded him.

People: George Laws

Horace Williams earns a master's degree at the university

Williams entered the state university at Chapel Hill in 1879 and in 1883 took both the B.A. and an M.A. His M.A. and William Battle Phillips's Ph.D., conferred at the same commencement, were the first advanced degrees the reopened university granted for further study. Before 1875 any graduate could receive the A.M. three years after the B.A.

The Berry family moves to Sunnyside south of Hillsborough

Dr. John and Mary Strayhorn Berry moved from their West King Street house, now known as Two Chimneys, to Sunnyside, the Berry family plantation two miles south of town. Mary Berry tutored her daughter Harriet at home until she was twelve.

People: Harriet Morehead Berry

Subject: Sunnyside (John Berry farm)

Venable co-founds the Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society

Venable was a co-founder and the first president of the Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society, a society of university scientists named for the geologist Elisha Mitchell.

People: Elisha Mitchell

William Battle Phillips receives the university's first doctorate after the reopening

In 1883 William Battle Phillips, one of the five graduates of 1877, received a Doctor of Philosophy, the first doctorate in Battle's list of degrees granted since the 1875 reopening.

William H. S. Burgwyn is appointed a trustee of the University of North Carolina

Burgwyn was appointed a trustee of the University of North Carolina in 1883, the year after he returned to the state and settled at Henderson.

Tenant farmer Jessa Buttler mortgages his horse and crop to landowner C. R. Miller

Orange County tenant Jessa Buttler signed a chattel mortgage pledging his horse and his entire crop of corn, wheat, oats and tobacco to landowner C. R. Miller for a debt of $88.20. By October 1890 the debt stood at $106.04 despite partial payments.

Charles White, merchant and postmaster at Bingham School, dies

Charles White, who kept the store and post office at Bingham School near Mebane, died on Thursday, May 24, 1883. The Observer called him successful in business; his widow, Mary E. White, qualified as executrix of his will.

Governor Jarvis promises a commencement crowd a hall large enough for all

With Gerrard Hall overflowing at the 1883 commencement, President Kemp Battle asked Governor Thomas J. Jarvis to promise a bigger building, and Jarvis made the promise to applause. He backed the plan at the next trustees meeting and offered bricks from the state penitentiary on easy terms, and the project became Memorial Hall.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle

Subject: Gerrard Hall · Memorial Hall

Memorial Hall rises at UNC under Paul C. Cameron's building committee

The cornerstone of Swain Memorial Hall was laid on September 25, 1883, and the hall was dedicated on June 3, 1885, honoring President David L. Swain, faculty and the university's Confederate dead. Paul C. Cameron, president of the Alumni Association and chairman of the building committee, raised money for it and gave money himself.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle · David L. Swain · Thomas Jordan Jarvis

Subject: Memorial Hall

A brick saloon and barber shop stands at 106 North Churton Street

The two-story brick building at 106 North Churton Street appears as a saloon and barber shop on the Sanborn maps from 1884 through 1911. By 1924 it held bank offices, and its storefront was redone in the Colonial Revival style about the 1930s.

Adam A. Kluttz takes over management of Dr. Roberson's general store

Adam Alexander Kluttz became the active manager of Dr. Abner Benton Roberson's general store. He later opened stores of his own and built a brick store on East Franklin in 1893 and 1894.

People: Abner Benton Roberson · Adam Alexander Kluttz

Alphonso J. McDade serves as mayor of Chapel Hill

A. J. McDade was mayor of Chapel Hill in 1884, an office the town charter had created in 1879. John H. Watson held it the year before and the two years after.

People: John H. Watson

Beta Theta Pi is reestablished at UNC and takes in the Mystical Seven chapter

The Eta chapter was revived in 1884, absorbing the Star of the South chapter of the Mystical Seven, once the strongest fraternity in the South.

Subject: Beta Theta Pi Fraternity House

Election fight splits the Philanthropic Society

A quarrel over whether two South Building students could join the Philanthropic Society at the last meeting of a term, in time to swing its election, led some members to secede in 1884, and a split nearly followed in the Dialectic. Professors Winston and Manning could not bring the seceders back.

People: John Manning · George Tayloe Winston

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Foxes Knob School opens as a one-room log school near Mebane

Foxes Knob School opened in the mid-1880s in a single log room. It gained a frame addition about 1900 and was later turned into a house.

Francis P. Venable brings tennis to Chapel Hill

Venable laid out a tennis court in the grove south of his house about 1884, when sport at the university was otherwise limited to casual baseball and an old-style kicking football.

People: Francis Preston Venable

Governor Jonathan Worth's portrait is given to the university

At the 1884 commencement John Manning presented an oil portrait of Worth on behalf of the late governor's grandsons, recalling his nearly thirty years as a university trustee. President Battle accepted it, Governor Jarvis spoke, and the portrait was hung beside those of Davie, Caldwell and Swain.

People: John Manning · Kemp Plummer Battle · Thomas Jordan Jarvis

Hillsborough Methodists report their Sunday school's hundredth anniversary

In 1884 H. N. Brown reported that the Hillsborough Methodist Sunday school had celebrated its centennial; it then had thirty-five pupils and seven teachers and a library of church literature.

Subject: Hillsborough Methodist Church

Orange County reports 33 white and 31 Black public schools

In 1884 Orange had 33 white and 31 Black public schools, with 1,369 white and 1,134 Black pupils, a term under ten weeks, and mostly log buildings. School property was valued at $3,500 for white schools and $2,500 for Black schools.

Randall speaks on North Carolina folklore at commencement

Graduating with the class of 1884, Randall was class prophet at the Class Day exercises in the Chapel and gave the commencement speech 'North Carolina Folk Lore', which met with unusual applause.

People: Samuel Mallett Gattis

Subject: Gerrard Hall

Robert Strange MacRae buys Dr. Harris's drugstore and its building

MacRae bought the drug business from Dr. Thomas W. Harris and the building it occupied, at Franklin and Henderson streets, from David McCauley. He sold the drugstore to Dr. R. H. Whitehead in 1893.

People: David McCauley

Students and Black residents nearly come to blows on election night in Chapel Hill

While votes were being counted on the night of a Chapel Hill election in 1884, a young Black man from the country tried to trip a student, and students and Black townspeople gathered on both sides before the crowd broke up with little harm. Students afterward whipped Eli, a Black man who waited on the West Building, for cheering the other side.

The Park Building, a brick general store, stands on North Churton Street

The two-story pressed-brick building at 128 North Churton Street, one of the oldest commercial buildings in the district, is built as a general store and is labeled the Park Building on Sanborn maps from 1884 to 1911. It now serves as a bank with drive-through lanes.

The university makes Governor Jarvis a doctor of laws

At the 1884 commencement, his last as governor and president of the trustees, Jarvis received an honorary LL.D. and told the graduates that they were the university. Kemp Battle said the university owed him more than any other man for its railroad, Memorial Hall and money in times of need.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle

Pleasant H. Dalton is installed as pastor of New Hope

After nearly ten years as stated supply, Dalton was installed as the church's pastor.

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

The University Summer Normal School holds its last session

The eighth and last session enrolled 305 teachers, after which the legislature divided the $2,000 yearly appropriation among four normal schools chosen by the Board of Education. Battle counted 2,480 enrollments at Chapel Hill from 1877 through 1884.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle

Subject: University Summer School

A Hillsborough doctor has the picnic grounds and paths on Occoneechee Mountain put in order

A Dr. Wilson raised money to fix up the picnic grounds near the mountain spring and the paths to Sofa Rock and the Panther's Den, so the town could reach them easily. The Orange County Observer thanked him for the people of Hillsboro.

Subject: Occoneechee Mountain State Natural Area

A building of Mrs. Charles White's used by Bingham School cadets as a mess burns

Early on Tuesday morning, August 19, 1884, fire destroyed a building owned by Mrs. Charles White that some Bingham School cadets used as a messing club. Its insurance had lapsed and the loss was put at about $1,000.

Subject: Bingham School

Old students start a subscription for a monument over Nancy Hilliard's grave

E. T. McKethan of Fayetteville began collecting money from former Chapel Hill students to put a plain stone over Nancy Hilliard's neglected grave, and Cornelia Phillips Spencer endorsed the plan. The stone records the alumni's gratitude for her kindness and hospitality.

People: Cornelia Phillips Spencer

A farmstead with a center-hall house and five outbuildings is built on Mount Moriah Road

In 1885 a story-and-a-half center-hall frame house went up with five frame outbuildings, all of which survived in good condition in 1992.

A stock law ends open range in four Orange County townships

An 1885 act barred cattle from running at large in Cedar Grove, Little River, Hillsboro and Bingham townships and had the commissioners fence those townships from a special tax. A second act let Chapel Hill Township adopt the stock law on a petition of three-fourths of its freeholders.

Alumni build the university's first gymnasium off university land

After the dancing ban, a chartered Gymnasium Association sold $10 shares to alumni and built a hall 110 by 45 feet on its own land, rented to the university for exercise and used for the 1885 commencement ball. The building later became Commons Hall, the student dining hall.

People: Julian S. Carr · Robert Bingham · Isaac Hall Manning · Richard H. Lewis · David Gaston Worth

Chapel Hill's Black residents begin burying their dead in Section A

Section A, beside the old slave section on the west side of the cemetery, came into general use by Chapel Hill's African American community in the mid-1880s. Its later markers include cast concrete headstones common in Black cemeteries of the period.

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Dr. William P. Mallett begins handing out Chapel Hill's mail from his lot

Dr. Mallett and his daughter started distributing the village mail. The post office building he put up on the southwest corner of his East Franklin Street lot also held his doctor's office at the back, and after his death Thomas Kirkland ran the post office there.

Edward Atkins Rosemond buys the East Tryon Street lot where he builds his house

Deeds show Edward Atkins Rosemond bought the property at 115 East Tryon Street in 1885. His two-story I-house went up between 1888 and 1894, was enlarged by 1905 and 1911, and passed to his daughter and granddaughter.

Orange County sets up its first postwar Board of Education

Under an 1885 law, Orange created its first Board of Education since the Civil War, chosen by the justices of the peace and county commissioners together. The Rev. J. L. Currie became superintendent in June 1885.

Professor Adolphus Mangum buys the Collier house on East Rosemary Street

Professor Adolphus W. Mangum bought the house at 315 East Rosemary Street in 1885 and owned it for five years.

People: Adolphus Williamson Mangum

The General Assembly adds $15,000 a year to the university's support

An Act for the Maintenance of the University, introduced by Lee S. Overman and passed by the House 58 to 32, added $15,000 a year, payable quarterly. Because the $2,000 normal school grant was moved to other schools, the net gain was $13,000, and the act also ended the rule that county scholarship students must teach.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle · Lee S. Overman

The faculty requires most students to join a literary society

A faculty law made membership in the Dialectic or Philanthropic Society compulsory for all students except those in medicine, law, graduate and special study, and barred non-members from rooming in university buildings without permission.

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

The trustees allow fraternities at the university

On a petition from Alpha Tau Omega, Kappa Alpha and Phi Kappa Sigma, the faculty recommended and the trustees granted the admission of all Greek-letter societies, on condition that they give the faculty their members' names and pledge to serve no liquor at banquets in Chapel Hill.

The trustees bar dancing from university buildings

Pressed by church members who opposed the modern dance, the trustees prohibited the commencement ball in Smith Hall or any other university building. Battle welcomed the ban because he wanted Smith Hall kept as a library.

People: Paul C. Cameron · Kemp Plummer Battle

Subject: Smith Hall (Playmakers Theatre)

Thomas F. Lloyd buys the brick house on West Cameron Avenue later called the Lloyd-Wiley House

With his West End gin and grist mill doing well, Thomas F. Lloyd bought a two-story brick house on West Cameron Avenue in Chapel Hill in 1885. It has been known since as the Lloyd-Wiley House.

Mrs. William L. DeRosset and others give St. Matthew's a Bible

Mrs. William L. DeRosset, with family and friends, presented the church's Bible as an Easter offering.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

A rector's chair is given to St. Matthew's in memory of Sarah Mary Matthews Murphy

Her husband and children gave the rector's chair on the south side of the altar in memory of Sarah Mary Matthews Murphy.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

The university dedicates Memorial Hall

Memorial Hall, the big arched-roof auditorium near the west end of Cameron Avenue, was dedicated in June 1885. It had no heat and swallowed speakers' voices, so it served mainly during commencement week and at times as a gymnasium until it was judged unsafe and torn down.

Subject: Memorial Hall

Emile Alexander de Schweinitz is awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree

At the 1885 commencement, held in the newly dedicated Memorial Hall, the university conferred the Ph.D. on de Schweinitz, who became a government chemist and a professor in Washington.

Subject: Memorial Hall

The trustees elect Nelson B. Henry to a new chair of the science and art of teaching

Using the new appropriation, the trustees filled a chair of the science and art of teaching with Nelson B. Henry of Missouri, and the university opened a normal department with a teachers' course. Winston later called it the first chair of pedagogy in North Carolina or any Southern university.

The trustees enlarge the faculty from nine to fifteen

Meeting in Raleigh, the trustees chose from several hundred applicants Thomas Hume for English, Walter D. Toy for modern languages, William B. Phillips for agricultural chemistry and mining and James Lee Love for mathematics. A faculty circular then announced postgraduate courses toward the A.M., Ph.M. and Ph.D., free of tuition to graduates of any college.

People: Thomas Hume · James Lee Love

The new Board of Education sets aside $50 for an institute for Black teachers

At its first meeting in the Hillsboro courthouse, the board created under the 1885 school law organized with Joseph Harris as chairman and voted fifty dollars to hold a training institute for the county's Black teachers.

People: George Tayloe Winston · James L. Currie

The school board requires the superintendent to visit every school and grade its teachers

On resolutions offered by Professor Winston, the board told Superintendent Currie to spend a day at each public school while in session, give each teacher a mark for practical skill, meet each district committee and report on where districts and schoolhouses should be, at $2.50 a day.

People: George Tayloe Winston · James L. Currie

James H. Pratt's will leaves the Cabe farm to the family of Lucinda Harris

Pratt left the 140-acre Cabe tract and the 160-acre Jehu Brown tract to Lucinda Harris for life and then to her daughters Emma and Jane, keeping a promise to provide for the family after her husband Benton Harris died in the Civil War. The Harrises held the farm until 1942.

Mary Ruffin Smith dies and leaves the university a Chatham County plantation

Smith, daughter of the Orange County doctor and congressman James S. Smith, left about 1,500 acres in Chatham County to the university to educate poor students, the Francis Jones Smith Fund. She left small bequests to people formerly enslaved in her household and most of her estate to the Episcopal Church, with Kemp Battle as executor.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle · Mary Ruffin Smith

Eben Alexander comes to Chapel Hill as professor of Greek

Eben Alexander, who had taught ancient languages at East Tennessee University for thirteen years, accepted the professorship of Greek at the University of North Carolina in 1886 and moved to Chapel Hill.

James Lee Love becomes University Librarian and secretary of the faculty

In the 1886-87 session the mathematics professor James Lee Love took on the posts of librarian and secretary of the faculty, after representing the university in the merger of the literary societies' libraries with its own.

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Miss Heartt keeps a private primary school in Hillsborough, later with Mrs. Bragg

A small private school for young children run by Miss Heartt appears in the Hillsborough paper by June 1886. From 1890 she taught it with Mrs. Bragg, and the two advertised each August that they would resume classes, the last such notice found being for August 28, 1911.

Robert L. Strowd marries and likely builds a two-story L-plan house on land from his father

Strowd, a farmer who also kept a store on Franklin Street, received the tract from his father in 1886 and married Frances Hedon that year; the house at 51 Davie Circle probably went up then. It stood alone at the edge of town until the area filled in during the 1910s and 1920s.

Subject: Strowd House (51 Davie Circle)

The university begins leasing its Franklin Street land to faculty for houses

Because a federal court had ruled about 600 acres around the campus inalienable, the trustees leased a Franklin Street parcel to James Lee Love for fifty years, followed by leases to Charles Baskerville and Francis K. Ball. Later, on legal advice, such lots were sold outright to faculty members.

People: Charles Baskerville · James Lee Love

Thomas F. Lloyd buys out his partner and adds a flour mill by the depot

Lloyd bought William Pritchard's share of the steam grist mill and cotton gin the two had built north of the station in 1883, and had a flour mill built on the property.

People: Thomas F. Lloyd (Carrboro mill builder)

Subject: Lloyd grist mill (Broad Street)

Two rear wings are added to Person Hall as chemistry laboratories

The university's only other building work of the late 1800s besides Memorial Hall was a pair of wings on the back of Person Hall, added in 1886 and 1892 to hold its first chemistry laboratories.

Subject: Person Hall

Wilson Caldwell is elected to the Chapel Hill board of commissioners

Placed on the Republican ticket without seeking it, Wilson Caldwell, head of the university's labor force, was elected a Chapel Hill commissioner in 1886, defeating Professor Ralph Graves.

People: Wilson Swain Caldwell

W. V. Andrews takes Professor Winston's seat on the county Board of Education

Professor Winston of the university left the new Orange County Board of Education six months after its first meeting, and W. V. Andrews was named in his place.

People: George Tayloe Winston

Superintendent Currie's first annual report lists each district schoolhouse as log or frame

Currie's report read to the board in January 1886 gave the first district-by-district inventory of schoolhouses for both races, most of them log buildings valued at $50 to $200, and a school term averaging ten weeks.

People: James L. Currie

Professor John DeBerniere Hooper dies

Hooper, a first-honor graduate of 1831 who taught French, Latin and then Greek at Chapel Hill before and after the war, died soon after resigning in 1885 because of failing health. Student Solomon C. Weill taught his Greek classes until Eben Alexander arrived.

People: Eben Alexander

Dickerson's Chapel trustees buy the old courthouse from the Philadelphia Friends

Trustees of the Philadelphia Friends' association for the relief of freedmen sold the old Baptist church lot, with the former courthouse on it, to the trustees of Hillsborough's African Methodist Episcopal church for $800. The congregation had worshipped and kept school there for twenty years.

Subject: Dickerson Chapel AME Church

The annual YMCA convention meets at Chapel Hill

The Young Men's Christian Association's annual convention met at Chapel Hill, with sessions in Gerrard Hall, reports from associations around the state and a Sunday talk to townspeople in the Baptist church. Professor J. W. Gore was chosen its president.

People: Thomas Hume · Joshua W. Gore

Subject: Gerrard Hall · University YMCA

The literary societies merge their libraries with the university's

The Philanthropic Society voted almost unanimously and the Dialectic 42 to 30 to join their books to the university library in Smith Hall, to be called the Library of the University of North Carolina endowed by the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies and opened every weekday. Borrowing rose from 3,657 books in 1885-86 to 4,761 the next year.

People: George Tayloe Winston · James Lee Love

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

Haywood Craig, a Black man, is received into the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

The session received Haywood Craig on profession of faith; the book records him under a heading for the church's Black members.

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

D. C. Parks is elected a Hillsborough town commissioner

At a quiet town election Hillsborough chose George C. Corbin mayor and elected A. W. Graham, James Webb Jr., J. W. Hooker, William Anderson, D. M. Laws, D. C. Parks and William H. Newman commissioners.

People: James Webb Jr.

Superintendent Currie reports a teachers' institute in session for the county's white teachers

Currie wrote to the Orange County Observer that the institute for white teachers was in session with eighteen enrolled. Professor Henry and Mr. Shields of Chapel Hill taught methods of teaching by day, and a public lecture on education was given each night.

The school board asks the commissioners for a special tax to keep schools open four months

Superintendent Currie found the schools needed $2,000 beyond their apportionment to run the four months the law required, and the board petitioned the county commissioners to levy it. The board also set a floor of $40 for each white school and $30 for each Black school.

People: James L. Currie

The Charleston earthquake shakes Chapel Hill

The earthquake that wrecked Charleston rattled windows and moved bottles on the shelves of the chemical laboratory at Chapel Hill without doing damage. Some students in the New East Building fled outdoors.