Chronology

The Morris Lloyd farmhouse is built near White Cross

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

The Smyth House is built near Chapel Hill

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

The Taylor log house is built near Carr

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

The census counts 5,244 enslaved people in Orange County

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

The county court moves the gallows to Gallows Hill

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

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

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

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

People: John Berry

Subject: Burwell School

Three-quarters of Orange County farms hold under 100 acres

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

Trustees ban spirituous liquor from commencement balls

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

People: William A. Graham

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

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

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

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

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

People: Robert Armistead Burwell · John Berry · Thomas Webb

Drinking students stone two professors in a night riot

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

Bethel Baptist Church is organized

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

Subject: Bethel Baptist Church

Cameron Avenue extended west through the university forest

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

People: Fordyce M. Hubbard

Campus grove is thinned and paved walks laid

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

Delta Kappa Epsilon chapter opens as fraternities reach the university

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

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

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

Frederick Strudwick graduates and begins practising law in Hillsborough

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

Hillsborough Academy is revived under Benjamin Huske and Ralph Graves

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

People: Ralph Henry Graves (1851-1889)

Subject: Hillsborough Academy · Caldwell Institute

Isaac J. Collier finishes a house for Elizabeth Nunn

In September 1851 Lucy Battle wrote her husband that Isaac J. Collier was completing a house for Elizabeth Nunn, widow of a Chapel Hill innkeeper, one of several modest frame houses he built in the village.

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

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

People: Job Berry

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

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

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

Part of Slavery in Orange County · 102 events

Phi Gamma Delta's Epsilon chapter forms at the university

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

Trustees set up a system of county escheators

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

People: David L. Swain · Charles Manly

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

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

Zebulon Vance studies law at Chapel Hill

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

People: William Horn Battle · Samuel Field Phillips

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

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

People: Elisha Mitchell · Jones Watson · Manuel Fetter

Night disorder ends with ten students dismissed

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

Elizabeth Nunn, who boarded students for fifty years, dies

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

People: William Nunn

Beta Theta Pi charters its Eta chapter at the university

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

Subject: Beta Theta Pi Fraternity House

Fordyce M. Hubbard serves as rector of the Chapel of the Cross

While teaching Latin at the university, the Rev. Fordyce M. Hubbard served as rector of the Chapel of the Cross, Chapel Hill's Episcopal church, in 1852, and did so again in 1868.

Subject: Chapel of the Cross

Legislature transfers the university's escheats to the common schools

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

Nancy Hilliard sells the Eagle Hotel, renamed the Union Hotel

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

People: Nancy Hilliard

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

The Whigs nominate William A. Graham for vice president

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

The legislature charters the Chapel Hill and Raleigh Plank Road Company

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

Washington Duke completes the farmhouse now called Duke Homestead

Having built up more than three hundred acres from 1847, Washington Duke finished a house for his family on his Orange County farm in time for his marriage to Artelia Roney in December 1852. The house, in the part of the county that became Durham County in 1881, is now Duke Homestead.

Webb and Douglass finish a cotton factory on Little River

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

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

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

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

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

People: John U. Kirkland · William Nelson

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

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

People: Samuel Wellwood Hughes

Robert and John Shields ready a woollen factory on the Eno

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

Students revive the University Magazine

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

People: Zebulon B. Vance

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Students protest faculty veto of a sub-marshal

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

People: Thomas Ruffin

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

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

James Strudwick Smith dies

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

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

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

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Isaac Collier builds an I-house on East Rosemary Street

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

People: Betty Smith

Nancy Hilliard builds the house students called the Crystal Palace

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

People: Nancy Hilliard

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

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

Shooting during a hazing raid leads the societies to stop hazing

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

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

The new Hillsborough Baptist church joins the Beulah Association

On organizing, the Baptist congregation in Hillsborough entered the Beulah Association. It later moved to the Mount Zion Association, formed at Mount Moriah Church.

Thomas Blount Hill buys the Phillips place and makes it the BelleVue villa

Thomas Blount Hill of Halifax County buys the East Tryon Street estate and adds a west wing, a three-story central tower and wide porches, turning the old house into an Italianate villa he names BelleVue. It passed to his daughter Mary Alice and her husband Joseph Cheshire Webb, and in the 1980s opened as the Hillsborough House Inn.

Subject: BelleVue (Phillips-Hill-Webb House)

University library moved from South Building to Smith Hall

The university's books were taken from the president's lecture room in South Building to the new Smith Hall, and Hubbard, Charles Phillips and the librarian were told to prepare a catalogue. At the start of the Civil War the books were stored in a room of the East Building.

People: Charles Phillips · Fordyce M. Hubbard

Subject: UNC Libraries · South Building · Smith Hall (Playmakers Theatre) · Old East

The Hillsborough Recorder calls for a plank road from Hillsborough to Milton

An editorial regretted that no one had asked the last legislature to charter a company to build a plank road from Hillsborough to Milton by way of Roxboro or Yanceyville. It hoped a stock company would form under the general act of 1850-51 while a charter was sought.

Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

Chapel Hill's Methodists dedicate their first church

In July 1853 the Methodist congregation that became University Methodist Church dedicated its first building, at Rosemary and Henderson streets, paid for with about $5,000 that its pastor J. Milton Frost had raised around the state. The congregation had met since about 1840, with Charles F. Deems preaching in the 1840s and Frost stationed there from January 1851.

People: Charles F. Deems

Subject: University United Methodist Church · Old Methodist Church (Rosemary Street)

George Laws becomes clerk of the Orange County court

Laws succeeded Joseph Allison as clerk of the county court of pleas and quarter sessions at Hillsborough. Under the 1868 constitution he became clerk of the superior court and judge of probate.

Witherspoon dies at Tusculum and is buried in the Old Town Cemetery

He died penniless at the Tusculum farmhouse on the thirty-seventh anniversary of the organization of the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church. His funeral was held in that church and he was buried nearby in the Nash-Strudwick plot of the Old Town Cemetery, where the congregation and townspeople paid for the obelisk over his grave.

Subject: Old Town Cemetery, Hillsborough · Hillsborough Presbyterian Church · Tusculum (Witherspoon farm)

First Baptist Church of Hillsborough is organized in the old courthouse

The First Baptist Church was organized in Hillsborough and met in the former 1790 courthouse building, now Dickerson Chapel, until 1862, while it raised its own church building on a lot acquired between 1854 and 1860.

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

Solomon Pool becomes tutor of mathematics at the university

Pool was appointed tutor of mathematics at the University of North Carolina in December 1853, months after his own graduation. He received an honorary alumni master of arts degree in 1856.

A Delta Psi fraternity chapter is active at the university

Battle learned after his first volume was printed that the Delta Psi Fraternity, with a large membership, was at the university from 1854 until some time during the Civil War. No record at Chapel Hill mentions it.

A railroad depot is built at the Orange-Alamance line and Mebanesville grows up around it

The North Carolina Railroad put a depot on the county line in 1854, and the settlement of Mebanesville, later Mebane, soon formed there.

Subject: North Carolina Railroad

Baptist minister James Pleasant Mason marries Mary Elizabeth Morgan

Mary Elizabeth Morgan (1825-1894) had inherited a tract south of Chapel Hill that came down from early settler Mark Morgan through his son John and grandson Solomon P. Morgan. The couple had four daughters, two of whom died as infants.

Benjamin Hedrick's house with an eight-sided room goes up on East Rosemary Street

Professor Benjamin Hedrick's house at 610 East Rosemary Street, known for its octagonal room, was ready by 1855 and the Hedricks moved in; Preservation Chapel Hill credits the Hillsborough builder John Berry and Hedrick's own design, and Little says he bought an older farmhouse from the university and added the eight-sided room. Horace Williams later owned it, and Preservation Chapel Hill now has its offices there.

People: John Berry

Subject: Horace Williams House

David McCauley and Thomas A. Long take over Jesse Hargrave's store

After Hargrave's death, his business was sold to the two young clerks he had hired in 1850. McCauley and Long's general store appears on the maps through 1868.

People: David McCauley

Hillsborough Presbyterian Church sells the people it held in trust for the Witherspoons

People once held by John Knox Witherspoon had passed to the church in trust for the care of his ailing daughter. The session refused a sale in August 1852, but after Witherspoon's death it agreed, and part of the money went to Mary Witherspoon. The names of those sold are not recorded.

People: John Knox Witherspoon

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

James Phillips keeps weather records at Chapel Hill

From 1854 to 1862 Professor James Phillips kept weather records at Chapel Hill. They survive in the Southern Historical Collection alongside Chapel Hill records kept from December 1879 to 1882 by Professors W. B. Phillips and Francis Preston Venable.

People: Francis Preston Venable

Judge John L. Bailey buys the Norwood house south of the Eno and names it Eno Lodge

Superior court judge John Lancaster Bailey bought the house above the Eno from Joseph C. Norwood, probably added the rear ell and north bay, and called it Eno Lodge. He lived there until about the start of the Civil War, when he moved to Buncombe County.

Subject: Eno Lodge

Paul Cameron tells the county agricultural society the railroad will wake Orange up

Speaking to the Orange County Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, the Mechanic Arts, and Manufactures, Cameron predicted the coming railroad would shake local farmers and businesses out of their old habits.

Peter Brown Ruffin buys the land that became Margaret Lane Cemetery

According to the Alliance for Historic Hillsborough, Peter Brown Ruffin, owner of Occoneechee Farm, bought the land now called Margaret Lane Cemetery as a burial ground for people enslaved by him and his neighbor Cadwalader Jones. Plaques placed in 1987 date burials there from before 1852, and it remained a burial ground for Black residents of Hillsborough until 1931.

Subject: Margaret Lane Cemetery · Occoneechee Farm

Ralph Graves sells the West King Street lot later the Parks-Richmond House to John J. Freeland

In 1854 Ralph Graves, husband of Emma Taylor, sold Lot 18 on West King Street, for many years the home of clerk of court John Taylor, to John J. Freeland. Elbert H. and Emily Pogue owned it from the 1870s.

Richard H. Battle teaches at the university as a tutor

After graduating with first honors in 1854, Richard H. Battle stayed in Chapel Hill as a tutor of mathematics and Greek until 1858, reading law with his father, the law professor William H. Battle, and serving on the vestry of the Chapel of the Cross.

People: William Horn Battle

Samuel F. Phillips teaches in the university law school

From 1854 to 1859 Phillips taught in the university law school at Chapel Hill.

People: William Horn Battle

Subject: UNC School of Law

The Baptists buy W. J. Freeland's lot for a new church

The congregation bought a two-acre lot from W. J. Freeland running from Margaret Lane along Wake Street to King Street, where its present church stands.

The Evans families leave Hillsborough for Oberlin, Ohio

Squeezed by laws that stripped free people of color of the vote, the right to preach and schooling, the cabinetmakers Henry and Wilson Bruce Evans took their families to Oberlin, where their sister Delilah Copeland had settled in 1843. Both brothers were jailed there for their part in the 1858 Oberlin-Wellington rescue of a man taken as a fugitive.

Walter A. Thompson sells the old Nunn tavern property to Isaac Hudson

Betsy Nunn's grandson, a butcher who had inherited the run-down tavern and inn in 1852, sold it to Isaac Hudson, ending sixty years of Nunn family ownership. Hudson later built a brick house on the land.

School for the Application of Science to the Arts opens

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

People: Charles Phillips · Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick

Subject: Smith Hall (Playmakers Theatre)

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

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

Hillsborough Baptists call their first pastor

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

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

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

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

Mary Burwell marries Frederick Nash Strudwick

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

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

People: Frederick N. Strudwick

North Carolina Railroad finished to Durham's Station

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

People: Samuel (Samuel Field) Phillips

Subject: North Carolina Railroad

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

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

Caldwell Lodge No. 180 is chartered at Chapel Hill

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

People: Joseph Caldwell · Solomon Pool · Adolphus Williamson Mangum

Subject: University Lodge

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

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

People: Andrew Mickle

Hillsborough elects a Know Nothing slate in its town elections

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

John and Louisa Turner inherit the Jackson farm on the Eno

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

Subject: Jacob Jackson Farm (Maple Hill)

Revised Code tightens the laws around the university

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

Richard Benbury Saunders buys the Lucas drugstore

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

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

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

People: Richard H. Battle

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

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

The legislature charters four plank road companies through Orange County

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

People: Charles Phillips · Edmund Strudwick · Andrew Mickle

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. James Webb dies in Hillsborough

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

Subject: Old Town Cemetery, Hillsborough

Aunt Fariby saves Jane from burning

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

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

Subject: Burwell School

William McCauley takes charge of the Hillsborough House

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

The Baptist Church of Chapel Hill opens its first church

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

People: James Pleasant Mason

Subject: University Lodge · University Baptist Church

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

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

People: David L. Swain

E. Hunt opens a photography studio and student boarding house

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

Old belfry burns and the college bell is destroyed

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

People: David L. Swain

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Orange County elects John Wall Norwood to the General Assembly

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

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

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

Paul C. Cameron repurchases Burnside and moves back to Hillsborough

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

Subject: Burnside

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

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

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

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

Senior class invites Archbishop John Hughes to preach

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

People: David L. Swain

The Gordan house is built near Efland

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

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

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

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

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

People: Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick

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

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

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

Subject: North Carolina Railroad

The Burwells resolve to sell their cook Hannah

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

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

People: Robert Armistead Burwell

Subject: Burwell School

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

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

People: Robert Armistead Burwell · Margaret Anna Burwell

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

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

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

Subject: Burwell School

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

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

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

Subject: Burwell School

Orange County Agricultural Society holds its third fair near Hillsborough

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

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

An octagonal brick ice house is built for Burnside

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

People: John Berry

Subject: Burnside

Brick mason William Maynard builds his frame farmhouse

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

Subject: Maynard Farm

Burwell School closes as the Burwells move to Charlotte

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

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

People: Robert Armistead Burwell · Margaret Anna Burwell

Subject: Burwell School

Charles Phillips serves as stated supply for the Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church

Phillips was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Orange in December 1857 and served as stated supply for the Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church from 1857 to 1868. He taught and superintended the church Sunday school and with his wife started a Sunday school for Black residents.

Subject: University Presbyterian Church

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

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

People: Andrew Mickle

Subject: Highlands (Paul Cameron house)

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

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

Subject: Burnside

Pride Jones has John Berry enlarge Sans Souci

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

People: Pride Jones

Subject: Sans Souci

Sigma Alpha Epsilon establishes a chapter at the university

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

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

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

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

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

Subject: Roulhac-Hamilton House (Laburnum Cottage)

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

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

University awards its first Bachelor of Science degree

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

Snowstorm closes the university for the first time

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

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

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

People: Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick

Trustees create a professorship of modern languages

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

People: David L. Swain

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

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

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

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

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

People: Benjamin Franklin Mebane

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

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

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

People: John U. Kirkland · Pride Jones

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

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

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

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

Subject: Bingham School

Calvin E. Parish becomes Hillsborough postmaster

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

People: Dennis Heartt

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

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

People: Pride Jones

Subject: Sans Souci

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

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

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

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

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

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

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

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

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

Subject: University United Methodist Church

Charles P. Mallett keeps the University Bookstore on Franklin Street

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

People: Andrew Mickle

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

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

Jones Watson opens the Central Hotel

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

People: Jones Watson

Subject: Central Hotel (Chapel Hill)

Students of a lawless club riot and are sued for damages

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

People: David L. Swain

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

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

The brick McDade House is built on West Franklin Street

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

University enrollment reaches its antebellum peak

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

People: David L. Swain

Zeta Psi organizes a chapter at the university

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

A marble monument to Joseph Caldwell is dedicated in McCorkle Place

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

Subject: McCorkle Place (with the Davie Poplar)

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

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

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

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

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

People: John Wall Norwood

Charles Tew buys land west of Hillsborough for a military academy

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

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

People: John Berry · Moses Ashley Curtis

Subject: North Carolina Railroad · Hillsborough Military Academy

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

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

Subject: Old Town Cemetery, Hillsborough

Beta Theta Pi's Eta chapter goes inactive

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

Subject: Beta Theta Pi Fraternity House

Masons lay a cornerstone at the Hillsborough Military Academy

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

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy · Eagle Lodge

New Bethel Methodist Church is organized

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

Subject: New Bethel Methodist Church

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

Martin, who replaced Elisha Mitchell on the faculty and later served as a Confederate colonel, bought the northeast corner of Franklin and Boundary streets from Charles Phillips and built his home there soon after. He left for Tennessee in 1868.

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

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

People: William Horn Battle

Subject: UNC School of Law

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

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

People: Sarah Kollock · Maria Nash

Subject: Nash and Kollock School · Nash Law Office

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

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

People: Edmund Strudwick

Trustees buy a second thousand shares of bank stock on credit

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

People: David L. Swain · Bartholomew F. Moore

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

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

People: Washington Duke

Samuel Wellwood Hughes opens his own school near Cedar Grove

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

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

Subject: Hughes Academy (Cedar Grove Academy)

Calvin E. Parish serves as mayor of Hillsborough

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

People: A. C. Murdock

Corporators organize the Hillsborough Savings Institution

The corporators of the Hillsborough Savings Institution, among them Thomas Webb, William A. Graham, James F. Cain and Pride Jones, met in the county court clerk's office on April 1, 1859, adopted the charter and appointed Webb and others to open subscription books. By December 1860 Webb was its cashier.

People: William A. Graham · Pride Jones

Hillsborough Methodist Church builds its church

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

Subject: Hillsborough Methodist Church

President James Buchanan attends commencement

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

People: David L. Swain

Nash and Kollock School for young ladies opens in Hillsborough

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

People: Sarah Kollock · Maria Nash

Subject: Nash and Kollock School

Five elders are ordained at New Hope

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

People: Alexander Dickson

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

Bishop Atkinson consecrates St. Mary's Chapel

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

People: Moses Ashley Curtis

Subject: St. Mary’s Chapel

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

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

Archbishop John Hughes preaches the commencement sermon

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

People: Fordyce M. Hubbard

Subject: Gerrard Hall

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

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

Subject: Ruffin-Hill House

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

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

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

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

Executive committee orders the faculty to stop hazing

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

First Baptist Church of Hillsborough builds its church

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

People: William A. Graham

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

Four in ten Orange farms now grow bright-leaf tobacco

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

Hillsborough counts 945 residents

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

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

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

John Kimberly expands laboratory teaching at the university

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

John Kirkland builds a log house on Kirkland Road

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

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

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

Most white male household heads in Orange County own no land

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

New belfry built on South Building

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

Subject: South Building

Orange County teaches 57 district schools

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

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

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

People: Paul C. Cameron

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

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

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

The academy's castellated brick superintendent's house, known locally as the Commandant's House, with a turret at each corner and crenellated battlements, was presumably built about the same time as the barracks, which were complete by 1860. It was the home of Charles C. Tew, his wife Elizabeth and their children.

People: John Berry

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

The Neville House is built

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

The Pitard Place is built near Cedar Grove

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

The Sikes log house is built

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

The Tally family I-house is built near Cedar Grove

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