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Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
- 1880s
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A woman with no family tie to Davie pays for his Memorial Hall tablet
William R. Davie's tablet in Memorial Hall was given by a woman unrelated to him, out of admiration for his work as the university's leading founding trustee. Cameron added that Davie's portrait then hung in the Dialectic Society's hall.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Memorial Hall tablets list the university's Confederate dead
The trustees set aside a place in Memorial Hall, at their own expense, for four tablets ten feet long listing about 260 alumni who died in Confederate service. The roll was headed by Leonidas Polk, Episcopal bishop of Louisiana and Confederate lieutenant general, the oldest alumnus killed in the war.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Trustees pay for Memorial Hall tablets to Caldwell, Swain, Mitchell and Phillips
Besides the subscribed tablets, the trustees put up tablets at their own cost to presidents Joseph Caldwell and David L. Swain and professors Elisha Mitchell and James Phillips, in tribute to the long-serving officers. Governor Scales told the dedication crowd that the hall, first meant as Swain's memorial alone, had been redesigned so these names stood beside his.
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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.
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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.
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Cornelia Phillips Spencer's University Ode is sung at the Memorial Hall dedication
The dedication proceedings closed with an ode Cornelia Phillips Spencer wrote for the university, whose verses look back to the laying of the first cornerstone in October 1793. The trustees then adjourned to the next morning.
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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.
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Trustees adopt resolutions thanking Thomas J. Jarvis for Memorial Hall
As Thomas J. Jarvis left the governorship and with it the board presidency, the trustees unanimously thanked him for his yearly appeals to the legislature, his steady attendance and, above all, for Memorial Hall, built at his suggestion. They ordered an engrossed copy hung in the university library and another sent to him.
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Trustees thank Paul C. Cameron for the loan that finished Memorial Hall
When the money ran out and appeals brought no answer, trustee Paul C. Cameron, chairman of the building committee, advanced the funds to finish Memorial Hall from his own pocket without security. At the dedication Governor Alfred M. Scales thanked him publicly, and the board unanimously adopted Fabius H. Busbee's resolutions thanking Cameron for the loan and for overseeing the work from the start.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Chapel Hill Methodists vote to build a second church
At the quarterly conference, pastor R. B. John moved that a five-member committee build a new church, and former pastor Adolphus W. Mangum spoke to the need. By June 1887 the walls were ready for the roof, and the building was finished early in 1889.
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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.
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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.
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James Lee Love marries June Spencer at the Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church
Mathematics professor James Lee Love married June Spencer, Cornelia Phillips Spencer's daughter, in an afternoon service led by the Rev. Mr. Wilhelm, who then served both the Chapel Hill and Hillsborough Presbyterian churches. The couple went from the church to the train for a wedding trip to her birthplace in Alabama and on their return took rooms at Mrs. Thompson's house in Chapel Hill.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 (Fannie) Headen 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 about 1886, defeating Professor Ralph Graves. James Lee Love recalled an earlier race, about 1882 or 1883, in which Caldwell beat Professor A. W. Mangum.
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E. H. Pogue & Co. hold the opening sale at the Hillsboro Tobacco Warehouse
The Hillsboro Tobacco Warehouse, run by E. H. Pogue & Co., held its opening sale on Tuesday, January 5, 1886, and the Observer reported a heavy break with good prices. Three days earlier Pogue and fourteen other men had incorporated the Orange County Tobacco Association to buy and sell leaf tobacco.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Student Jacob A. Freeze is shot dead during a clash between students and Black residents
After a student quarreled with a Black man, Pat Brewer, a group of students besieged Jack Barbee's house in Chapel Hill, where Brewer and others had gathered, and a shot from inside killed Jacob A. Freeze, a first-year student from Rowan County, about 1 a.m. on Sunday, October 10, 1886. After the state Supreme Court upheld the sentences in December 1887, Brewer went to the penitentiary for ten years and Frank Kirby and Jesse Harris for five each. Battle, writing later, gives Pat seven years and says he escaped.
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Frank Porter Graham was born
Frank Porter Graham was born in Fayetteville; he later led UNC.
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Students hold the first of a series of gymnastic contests
On Thanksgiving Day students competed on the horizontal and parallel bars, ladders, Indian clubs and swings and in a half-mile race, a tug of war and a high jump, with Francis P. Venable calling the events. It was the first of a series of such contests.
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Fire destroys the old president's house on Christmas morning
The house Helen Hooper built, later home to Presidents Caldwell and Swain, burned the day after Professor Thomas Hume's family moved in. Fire spread from boxes and straw in an outbuilding, and Chapel Hill had no fire engine or ladder company to stop it.
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Pleasant H. Dalton's pastorate at New Hope is dissolved amid a divided session
Dalton offered his resignation in February 1886, but most of the congregation would not accept it; the relation was dissolved that December after the session fell into disagreement. The church stood vacant about a year while a presbytery commission settled the trouble.
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Berry's Grove Baptist Church is organized
Berry's Grove Baptist Church was organized in 1887 with A. T. Hord as first pastor and built a 400-seat church the next year.
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Cornelia Phillips Spencer writes a short school history of North Carolina
Spencer took a Raleigh publisher's commission for a short history of North Carolina for elementary schools and wrote it out by hand in the Loves' new house on East Franklin Street. Before it was printed the publisher had William L. Saunders read it, and Saunders cut or toned down some of her statements about the Civil War without asking her.
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Edmund Strudwick of Norfolk buys the Turner house on North Churton Street for his mother and sisters
Norfolk cotton merchant Edmund Strudwick bought the house built for tinner Josiah Turner Sr. and enlarged it for his mother and sisters, apparently adding the gables, bay windows and new sash that give it a Victorian look.
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Francis D. Winston becomes a trustee of the university
Francis D. Winston of Bertie County, a member of the class of 1879, was elected a trustee of the university in 1887. Battle's list of trustees, compiled in 1912, shows him still on the board.
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James Lee Love builds a house on East Franklin Street for his wife, June Spencer
Professor James Lee Love built the one-story house at 410 East Franklin Street in 1887, on the lot of the old president's house that burned the Christmas before, for his wife June, the only daughter of Cornelia Phillips Spencer. It is known as the Spencer House after his mother-in-law.
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June Spencer Love teaches a small class of children at Senlac
Before the Loves' own house was ready, June taught a few young children in one of the small study buildings in the yard of Senlac, President Kemp Battle's home. Her best pupil was the boy Henry Winston, whom she taught to read, and her earnings paid for most of a sewing machine.
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Professor Thomas Hume buys the house across from the Baptist church
Burned out of the president's house, Professor Thomas Hume bought the West Franklin Street house opposite the Baptist church. It had been home to the Baptist minister Needham Byron Cobb until the congregation turned its school building into a parsonage.
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Stephen B. Weeks publishes a register of the Philanthropic Society
Stephen Beauregard Weeks, class of 1886, published a 72-page catalogue of Philanthropic Society members since 1795, with a short history of the society and notes on members' careers.
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Stephen B. Weeks teaches as the university's instructor in English
For the 1887-88 session the university made Stephen B. Weeks, who had just taken his master's degree, its instructor in English, while Claudius Dockery became instructor in Latin.
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The General Assembly gives free university tuition to future teachers
An act of 1887 let North Carolina students who agreed to teach two years in the state attend the university without tuition. By 1931 almost every prospective high school teacher at Chapel Hill used it, saving $75 a year, and the consolidation survey urged its repeal.
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The county school board adds nine new school districts under Superintendent Currie
In the first years of the 1885 board, Superintendent James L. Currie laid out school districts and appointed committeemen, and by 1887 nine more districts had been created. In June 1886 he had told the board it needed $2,000 to keep the schools open four months.
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The legislature moves the land-grant income from the university to a new A. and M. College
After a campaign led by Leonidas L. Polk, the General Assembly of 1887 took the $7,500 yearly land-scrip interest from the university for a separate Agricultural and Mechanical College at Raleigh, leaving the university $20,000 a year. A House bill to cut that to $12,500 was tabled, and the university dropped pedagogics, mining engineering, animal breeding and practical horticulture.
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The revived Hillsboro Recorder moves Dennis Heartt's old press into its office
The new Hillsboro Recorder reported that it had just moved the press and some wood type Dennis Heartt brought from Connecticut for the first Recorder of 1820 out of a Hillsborough cellar, where they had sat since 1867, and into its own office.
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The school board forms the Mary Smith school district along the Chatham line
A new district in Chapel Hill Township next to Chatham County was created and its school named the Mary Smith School, District 39.
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The Webb & Co. tobacco partnership in Hillsborough is dissolved
James Webb Jr., Joseph C. Webb and George C. Corbin gave notice that their tobacco manufacturing firm, Webb & Co., was dissolved, leaving the two Webbs to collect its debts and wind up its business. The firm had been making tobacco in Hillsborough since at least 1881.
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The school board pays H. O. Strain for an acre to build the Orange Church school
The board allowed H. O. Strain $20 for one acre on which to build a schoolhouse for white children of the Orange Church district.
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James L. Currie is installed as pastor of New Hope
Currie, who had preached there briefly in 1874, was installed as pastor; the relation was dissolved in November 1889 after new troubles in the session.
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Battle Lane is cut along the edge of the president's house lot
After the president's house burned, the eastern edge of its lot on East Franklin Street was opened as Battle Lane, and the rest of the eastern part was leased to Professor James Lee Love for fifty years at $15 a year.
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David S. Payne marries Eliza Mayo
The marriage joined two Black Hillsborough families tied to the Burwell School: Eliza was a granddaughter of the school's laundress Eliza Chavious, and David was the son of Bettie Payne and a grandson of Rev. William Payne, a founder of Dickerson Chapel.
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Frederick Strudwick co-owns and edits the Hillsborough Recorder
On 11 August 1887 Strudwick and C. E. Parish became co-owners and editors of the Hillsborough Recorder. Their first issue promised a firm and conservative stand on matters of public welfare and a thoroughly Democratic line in politics. Strudwick left the paper after the issue of 8 March 1888.
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Julius I. Foust heads the Caldwell Institute at Caldwell
The Caldwell Institute, a school for boys and girls in northern Orange County, advertised with Julius I. Foust as principal, offering primary through higher studies and music.
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The school board forms Occoneechee school district from land south of the Eno
The board created District 41, Occoneechee, from land south of the Eno River and part of the Hillsboro district.
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The school board condemns a lot for a school for Black children at Walnut Grove
After two committees were named in March and September 1887 to condemn half an acre in the Walnut Grove district, the board had the deed for the site of a schoolhouse for Black children recorded on October 1.
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The superintendent's report shows Black schools running half the term of white schools
Currie's annual report counted 33 white and 25 Black public schools. White schools averaged close to nine weeks of teaching and Black schools under four and a half, and Black women teachers earned $17 a month against $24 for white women.
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A carved eagle lectern at the Chapel of the Cross memorializes Mary Ruffin Smith
A lectern topped by a carved wooden eagle was placed in the Chapel of the Cross nave in memory of Mary Ruffin Smith, with an inscription on its base dated 1888.
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Alphonso J. McDade returns as mayor of Chapel Hill
McDade served a second stretch as mayor from 1888 through 1890, following W. N. Pritchard. John H. Watson succeeded him in 1891.
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Edward Atkins Rosemond builds his house on East Tryon Street
Edward Atkins Rosemond built a two-story I-house on the East Tryon Street lot he had bought in 1885. It was enlarged at the rear by 1905 and given a front-gabled east wing by 1911.
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Hillsborough's commissioners sell the Public Spring Lot
The town sold its Public Spring Lot, one of the public lots set aside when Hillsborough was laid out, for $100. The finance committee's report for the year ending May 1, 1889 lists the sale.
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James Lee Love takes over the mathematics courses during Ralph Graves's last illness
When Professor Ralph H. Graves fell gravely ill, President Battle put Love in charge of mathematics. At George Winston's insistence a man was called from Johns Hopkins, and Love brought in his friend Mansfield T. Peed to take the freshmen while he taught the sophomores and juniors; after Graves died the trustees chose William Cain over Love for the chair.
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Piney Grove Baptist Church is organized
W. M. Ray organized Piney Grove Baptist Church, a Black congregation, and served as its first pastor.
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Richison Nichols buys the old Orange Hotel and builds its piazza over the West King Street sidewalk
Richison Nichols bought Isaiah Spencer's inn, apparently in 1888, and built the two-story piazza that reaches the street. The 1888 Sanborn map shows it as the Occoneechee Hotel, the name it kept until 1908.
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Samuel M. Gattis becomes chairman of the Orange County Democratic executive committee
In the year he began practicing law in Hillsborough, Gattis was elected chairman of the Orange County Democratic executive committee and a delegate to the party's national convention.
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Sarah Welling's gift pays to repair the Chapel Hill Presbyterian belfry
A letter from Spencer in a New York church paper, offering to pass used reading on to poor families around Chapel Hill, brought a barrel of magazines and books from Mrs. Sarah Welling of Warwick, New York. Welling then stayed with the Loves for several weeks in January and February and left $100 for the Presbyterian church, which Love, a deacon, spent on repairing and painting the belfry.
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St. Mary's Chapel is reorganized as a mission
Twenty years after losing its standing as a parish, St. Mary's Chapel was reorganized in 1888 as a mission served from Hillsborough. Murphy wished it had long since been joined with Salem Chapel and Flat River under a minister of its own.
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The university lets go its new professors of mining, teaching and biology
With the land-grant income moved to the new A. and M. College, the trustees could not pay the chairs added in 1885. William B. Phillips (mining and metallurgy), Nelson B. Henry (pedagogy) and George F. Atkinson (biology) left in the summer of 1888, and Love, assistant professor of mathematics, was kept one more year.
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Thomas West Harris, first dean of UNC's medical school, is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
Thomas West Harris (1839-1888), the first dean of the university's medical school, was buried in the cemetery.
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UNC plays its first intercollegiate football season
Organized football began at UNC in 1888.
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University Lodge No. 408 is chartered at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill Masons revived their lodge under a new charter as University Lodge No. 408, with W. N. Pritchard as first Master. It met for years above a store on Franklin Street.
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The school board authorizes a countywide summer institute for teachers
The board empowered Superintendent Currie to hold a teachers' institute for the whole county that summer.
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Judge Walter Clark gives the annual address at the 1888 commencement
Chosen by the Philanthropic Society, Walter Clark gave the annual address on the Wednesday of the 1888 commencement, speaking on the opportunities before young men and the duties that came with them.
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Stephen B. Weeks receives the university's first doctorate in English
At the 1888 commencement Weeks was the one candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy, with a thesis on 'The Maid of France and Schiller Versus Shakespeare.' It was the first doctorate given in English at the university.
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Black parents in the Cool Spring district petition for Black school committeemen
Black residents of the Cool Spring district asked the board to replace their school committee with Black members of their own choosing. The board tabled the request.
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The school board creates Cole's District at Walnut Grove on Anthony Cole's petition
After Anthony Cole petitioned for a school for about 65 children, the superintendent held a public meeting and the board set up Cole's District, No. 42, cut from parts of the Caldwell, Little River, Oak Grove and Walnut Grove districts.
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The school board forms Bethel district for the Bethel Church community
On a petition from the Bethel Church community the board created a new district, Bethel, No. 43.
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Fire destroys the Parish and Berry buildings and the Recorder printing office in Hillsborough
A fire before dawn burned Postmaster Harry L. Parish's brick building, which held the post office, his store and the Hillsboro Recorder's printing office, then spread to the three-story Berry building next door. The Recorder lost its press, type and subscription books.
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Hillsborough church men organize a Young Men's Christian Association at the Presbyterian manse
Men from the town's churches met at the Presbyterian manse on a Monday night, adopted a constitution and bylaws, and elected Charles M. Parks president and Joseph A. Harris secretary. The next meeting was called for the manse on December 10.
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The school board runs Harmony School directly when no committee can be found
Unable to find anyone to serve as its committee, the board placed Harmony School under its own supervision so a school could be taught there.
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Samuel M. Gattis becomes clerk of the Orange County superior court
Judge Gilmer appointed the young Hillsborough lawyer clerk of the superior court after Dr. Pride Jones resigned. Gattis was elected to the office in 1889 and held it until 1894.
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A small office from the Turner-Strudwick grounds is moved to East Orange Street
A one-story frame office on the Turner-Strudwick House lot, shown on John Bailey's 1839 map when the lot belonged to Josiah Turner Sr., was moved next door to 110 East Orange Street, two years after Edmund Strudwick of Norfolk bought the property. It was later enlarged into a house and rebuilt in 1987. It is not Dr. Edmund Strudwick's medical office on West King Street.
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Barbee Drive is cut beside Algernon Barbee's house lot
A road was opened along the eastern edge of Algernon S. Barbee's residential lot on Franklin Street and named Barbee Drive.
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Chapel Hill physician William Peter Mallett dies
Mallett, the village's leading doctor, who had lived in Chapel Hill for more than thirty years, died in the fall of 1889.
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Cornelia Phillips Spencer compiles a catalogue of every student since
For the 1889 centennial the university issued a general catalogue of students from 1795 to 1889, prepared by Cornelia Phillips Spencer after long correspondence and checked by Eben Alexander. It held 5,422 names, with Battle's sketches of the university's history.
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First Baptist Church of Hillsborough repairs its church and ties the walls with rods
In 1889 the Romanesque Revival brick church at 201 West King Street, which John Berry finished by 1868, was fully repaired, including reinforcing its walls with rods.
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Fred Smith begins about fifty years as conductor on the Chapel Hill branch train
Captain Fred Smith became conductor on the University Station branch in 1889 and kept the job for about half a century, until passenger service ended.
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James Lee Love leaves Chapel Hill for Harvard
Love left the university with his family in 1889 to teach mathematics at Harvard. His mother-in-law, Cornelia Phillips Spencer, stayed on in his East Franklin Street house.
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Law professor John Manning builds his house on East Franklin Street
Before 1892 Laura Phillips sold John Manning the lot west of the Presbyterian manse, and he built his home there. Manning had earlier set up the university's law school, and his daughter Mary stayed on in the house after he died in 1899.
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Membership in the literary societies becomes voluntary
For many years every student had to join the Dialectic or Philanthropic Society. As the law, medical and pharmacy students grew in number and unwilling members disrupted meetings, joining was made voluntary in 1889.
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Mount Adar Baptist Church is organized
W. H. Whitted and A. J. Compton organized Mount Adar Baptist Church. A. T. Hord, first pastor at Berry's Grove two years earlier, was its first pastor too.
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Orange County names its first superintendent of health
Ten years after the 1879 law allowing county boards of health, Orange organized one, and the state health board's report for 1889-90 lists Dr. D. C. Parris of Hillsborough as part-time superintendent. Dr. C. D. Jones succeeded him in 1898 and served until the full-time department began in 1935.
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Students found the Order of Gimghoul after hearing the Dromgoole story
Five undergraduates founded a secret society after hearing university president Kemp Battle tell the Dromgoole story. They first called it the Order of Dromgoole and later shortened the name to Gimghoul.
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The Keystone Bridge Company replaces the wooden railroad bridge over the Eno at Hillsboro with an iron one
Crews of the Keystone Bridge Company of Pittsburgh began replacing the wooden railroad bridge over the Eno near the Hillsboro depot with an iron bridge, expecting to finish by August 10. Trains kept running across it at three miles an hour.
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The Presbyterian church buys the Phillips house on East Franklin Street for a manse
After Charles Phillips left Chapel Hill and died in 1889, the Chapel Hill Presbyterian church bought his former home at 513 East Franklin Street and made it the minister's residence. Bryant dates the purchase to 1891.
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The YMCA takes charge of regular gymnasium training
The trustees accepted a YMCA plan to put gymnasium exercises on a system, with each student paying a small fee, and Lacy L. Little, a recent honor graduate and former football captain trained at Springfield, was hired as trainer.
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The university offers Mary Ruffin Smith's Jones Grove tract for sale in lots
A committee of Kemp P. Battle, John Manning and A. H. Merritt advertised for sale, in lots, the 1,500-acre Jones Grove tract just over the line in Chatham County that Mary Ruffin Smith had left the university. The sales took years and brought about $15,000, part of it later lent to start Chapel Hill's first electric plant.
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William Cain is elected to head mathematics and engineering
To succeed Ralph H. Graves the trustees elected William Cain of the South Carolina Military Academy, an author on bridge building, which let the faculty begin teaching civil engineering at little added cost.
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Orange Presbytery decides an estate dispute that had divided New Hope's session
A quarrel over a member's settlement of an estate, which Craig thought belonged in the civil courts, had been brought before the session. An adjourned meeting of the presbytery decided it, and the ruling deepened the split in the session.
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Methodist trustees sell the old Rosemary Street church to the American Missionary Association
With the Franklin Street church ready, the trustees sold the 1853 church and its lot at Rosemary and Henderson streets for $800 to W. H. Hubbard, treasurer of the American Missionary Association of New York, keeping back only the organ, clock and Bible. The building became a Congregational church that Northern friends had bought for Black worshippers.
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Hillsborough's town commissioners first meet in the new brick mayor's office and guard house
The town board met for the first time in its new brick building on the courthouse square, with the mayor's office in front and two cells for prisoners behind. The building committee accepted the work and the board ordered $560 paid in full.
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The St. Mary's Chapel land is deeded to the trustees of the Episcopal Diocese
Two days after an Easter meeting elected Philip Walker warden and made the minister trustee with power to transfer the property, the Rev. Joseph W. Murphy deeded the chapel's 9 9/16 acres to the diocesan trustees. The old one-acre burial ground was left out of the deed.
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Seven Black members are moved from the Methodist roll to the new Congregational church, then restored
At their request, pastor W. B. North transferred seven Black members by certificate to the Congregational church meeting in the old Methodist building. In February 1891 pastor E. H. Davis put their names back on the Methodist register; an unsigned protest from white members questioned his authority, but no action was taken and the seven stayed members until they died.
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Professor emeritus Charles Phillips dies
Phillips, who came to Chapel Hill at four, graduated in 1841, taught mathematics for decades and chaired the faculty at the 1875 reopening, left Chapel Hill at the end of April 1889 to live with his sons in Alabama and died on the way, at his son-in-law John S. Verner's home in Columbia, South Carolina. His body was brought back and buried in the Chapel Hill cemetery, and a tablet in the Presbyterian church records his work in building it.
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Orange Presbytery removes all six active elders of New Hope
Member David A. Claytor had carried a petition, which most of the members signed, calling on the active elders to resign; three agreed and three refused. Meeting at the church, the presbytery heard the parties, dissolved all six elders' relation to the church and ordered a new election.
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New Hope re-elects three of its removed elders
With the Rev. F. H. Johnston presiding, the congregation chose Charles W. Johnston, John T. Hogan and William C. Claytor again, and they were reinstalled before a large congregation.
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Justices and commissioners elect a new board of education and school superintendent
In joint session on June 3 the justices and commissioners chose John Thompson, W. V. Andrews and D. S. Parker as the county board of education. The next day, at a joint meeting of the commissioners and the new board, B. C. Patton was elected county superintendent of public instruction in place of the Rev. J. L. Currie, who had resigned.
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Sans Souci is sold at auction and passes to Episcopal Bishop Lyman
Sans Souci was sold at public auction to a bidder named Parrish, who at once assigned his bid to the Episcopal bishop of North Carolina, Bishop Lyman of Raleigh.
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The university celebrates the centennial of its charter
Alumni from Colorado to Florida filled Memorial Hall for a roll call of classes back to 1824, then sat down to a banquet for three hundred in Gerrard Hall with delegates from Harvard, Yale, Virginia and other schools. The reunion led to an annual alumni banquet, branch alumni associations and a drive to endow a chair of history.
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Chapel Hill's new Methodist church is dedicated
During the centennial commencement Bishop W. W. Duncan preached at night in the new Methodist church, a collection cleared its $800 debt, and the church was dedicated.
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Mathematics professor Ralph Henry Graves dies
Graves, head of mathematics since the reopening, fell into deep depression, sought treatment in Baltimore and took his own life. His widow raised their four children in Chapel Hill and sent the sons through the university.
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David C. Parks buys the Parks-Richmond lot and joins it to the Colonial Inn lot as one hotel
D. C. Parks bought Town Lot 18 on West King Street and combined it with Lot 15, the site of the present Colonial Inn, to run them as one hotel. The house on Lot 18 held the office, reception rooms and dining room, and the inn building held the sleeping rooms.
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Hillsborough's town board puts about forty Town Commons building lots up for bids
The town commissioners named James A. Cheek, S. J. Lynch and D. Y. Mebane to take bids on some forty or more building lots in the Town Commons, with every sale to be confirmed by the board.
- 1890s
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A Hogan family log house goes up on Homestead Road
In the 1890s a one-room log house was built for one of the Hogans, a family with homes all along the road. About 1935 it was built over and enlarged.
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A miller's house is built above Pritchard Mill
About 1890 a small frame I-house was set on a knoll over the Pritchard Mill site on Damascus Church Road. The survey found no other miller's dwelling in the township; an early log barn stands beside it.
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B. C. Patton's report finds most Orange County schoolhouses still built of logs
Patton's annual report to the state counted 43 white and 41 Black schools with 1,425 white and 1,048 Black pupils. Thirty of the 43 white schoolhouses and 17 of the 24 Black ones were log buildings, and terms ran about twelve weeks.
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Breeze School is built near Caldwell
A plain two-room frame schoolhouse with shuttered windows was probably built at Breeze, near Caldwell, in the 1890s. It is one of the few nineteenth-century schools left in the county.
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Caldwell Institute post office grows into a small trading place
Around 1890 the Caldwell Institute post office, with about 119 people, had Jordan's and Terry's stores, Allison's carriage shop, a blacksmith, a doctor, Turner's Mill, the Caldwell Institute school and Little River Presbyterian Church.
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Cedar Grove is the busiest post office community in its township
In the early 1890s Cedar Grove, with about sixty-five people, had the most businesses in its township. It had Cedar Grove Academy, the Methodist church, a doctor named Terrell, a tanner, a carriage maker and a dry goods merchant, with Eno Presbyterian Church and Compton's and Warren's mills a short way off. The High Rock and Yanceyville roads joined and ran east-west through the village.
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Chestnut Ridge Methodist Church is organized
Chestnut Ridge Methodist Church was organized about 1890 and counted 270 members in 1953.
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D. C. Parks has designer Jules Körner remodel his hotel buildings and Twin Chimneys
While he owned the Occoneechee Hotel, David C. Parks hired Jules Körner of Kernersville to update the hotel, the Parks-Richmond House next door and Twin Chimneys across West King Street, giving them new window and door frames with pointed-arch surrounds.
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Four post offices serve Bingham Township
In 1890 Bingham Township had post offices at Rock Springs (about 25 people), Teer's, Oaks (about 75) and Gath (about 40), each with nearby stores, doctors, carriage makers, blacksmiths and mills.
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Harris Grove Baptist Church is built near Rougemont
Harris Grove Baptist Church in northeastern Orange County builds a front-gable frame church with a bell tower around 1890. Its cemetery holds burials from before 1920; the church stood empty by 1993.
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Horace Williams begins teaching philosophy at the University of North Carolina
Williams joined the faculty in 1890 as professor of philosophy and chaired the department from 1890 until 1935. He taught at Chapel Hill for fifty years, until his death in 1940.
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John Borland builds a two-story log house on his 100-acre farm
About 1890 John Borland put up a full two-story log house with half-dovetail corners. It is one of only two two-story log houses the survey found in the township.
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Jule Gilmer Korner remodels the former Burwell School
In the 1890s the old Burwell School house was remodeled by Jule Gilmer Korner of Kernersville, who gave it a bracketed cornice, a sawnwork porch, a new hall stair and new mantels, including a marble one in the parlor. Several of the older mantels were lost in the work, which was done for an owner thought to be Mrs. Charles M. Parks.
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Laws and Border post offices serve the far corners of Cedar Grove Township
In 1890 Cedar Grove Township had post offices at Cedar Grove, Laws and Border. Border, in the far southwest of the township, counted about twenty people, and Laws, in the far northeast, about twenty-five.
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Merchant Henry "Hoot" Patterson turns a West Cameron Avenue I-house into a Queen Anne villa
In the 1890s Henry "Hoot" Patterson, whose general store was on East Franklin Street, bought the frame I-house at 403 West Cameron Avenue and turned it into a Queen Anne house with a rose window in a front gable, bracketed eaves, a bay window and an elaborate porch that wraps the corner.
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Meridith post office serves northern Little River Township
Around 1890 the Meridith post office in northern Little River Township had J. Law's store, the Riley and McKee sawmill and Berry's Grove Baptist Church close by.
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Most Orange County farmers are renters, sharecroppers or hired hands
In 1890, 58 percent of the county's farmers did not own their farms. Among Black farmers over half were field hands, a third sharecroppers and a tenth owners; more than a third of white farmers owned no land.
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Robert Worth Bingham wins the university's Representative Medal
As a University of North Carolina student, Robert Worth Bingham won the Representative Medal in 1890 for his oration "Manifest Destiny and Manifest Duty."
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St. Matthew's registers record 679 baptisms and 375 communicants in the parish's first 66 years
Totaling the parish registers in 1890, Murphy counted 99 marriages, 679 baptisms, 262 confirmations, 375 communicants and 242 burials since 1824. He also noted that only 10 Black people had been entered as communicants in that time, though the parish had built a gallery for Black worshippers in the 1830s.
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Students start the Chapel Hillian newspaper
A student paper called the Chapel Hillian appeared, edited by F. H. Argo and S. A. Ashe Jr. It gave way to two rival papers, the White and Blue of the non-fraternity men and the Tar Heel of the fraternity men, and the Tar Heel outlasted its rival.
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The Chapel of the Cross adds a chancel and vestry
A chancel and a vestry room were built onto the rear of the 1848 Chapel of the Cross, replacing its original back wall. The vestry kept its corner fireplace, paneled wainscot and built-in cupboards into the 1970s.
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The Jacobs farmhouse is built on St. Mary's Road
A two-story frame farmhouse of the Triple-A type was built in the 1890s on what the 1999 survey called the Jacobs property, where three barns and a silo also stand.
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The Manly Snipes House is built in southwest Orange County
The Manly Snipes House, a two-story farmhouse with a second-story wing projecting over the front entrance, was probably built around 1890.
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The Pritchard-Poythress Farm is built
The Pritchard-Poythress Farm dates from the 1890s and was placed on the state Study List in July 1992 after the Chapel Hill Township survey.
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The average Orange County farm is down to 114 acres
As plantation land was sold off after the Civil War, farms in Orange County grew more numerous and smaller; the 1890 agricultural census put the average at 114 acres.
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The state superintendent tells Orange County to make its sheriff pay over the school taxes
Teachers were holding $500 in unpaid orders with nothing in the school treasury because Sheriff John Knox Hughes had not turned over the taxes he collected. Asked for advice, the state superintendent advised Patton to collect from the sheriff or take him to court.
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The trustees ban intercollegiate athletic contests
After disputes with other colleges, the faculty in 1889 limited games to college grounds, and in 1890 the trustees forbade intercollegiate contests altogether. A student petition won repeal, with athletics put under an advisory committee of a professor, a graduate student and an undergraduate.
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The university confers an honorary doctorate of laws on Zebulon Vance
The University of North Carolina awarded Vance an honorary LL.D. in 1890, listing him as a student who had entered in 1851.
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The university starts a student medical fee
Each student paid $5 a year for medical care without further charge. The university's infirmary building followed in 1894.
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The university's medical school reopens under Richard H. Whitehead
After Dean T. W. Harris left in 1886, the medical school closed for three years for lack of money. It reopened in 1890 as the Medical Department under Dr. Richard H. Whitehead.
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Thomas Hume leads the university Shakespeare Club's study of All's Well That Ends Well
In the 1890-91 session Dr. Thomas Hume chaired a Shakespeare Club meeting on All's Well That Ends Well, gave a paper on the play's mixed styles and closed with notes on new books. Other members gave papers on the plot's source in Boccaccio and on its characters.
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William James Battle publishes a register of the Dialectic Society
The Dialectic Society catalogue, edited by William James Battle, was published in 1890. Its 168 pages hold a history of the society, members' recollections and sketches of members since 1795.
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County commissioners decide to send the destitute to the poor house instead of granting outside aid
At their January meeting the county commissioners settled the accounts of the clerk, sheriff and treasurer and, facing requests for help for the outside poor, resolved to be sparing and to offer the destitute a place in the county poor house instead.
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The county board of education apportions the school fund at about 80 cents a child
Meeting on Monday, the Orange County Board of Education divided the school fund at about 80 cents per child of school age, well below earlier years, and settled with the sheriff on the school fund through December 31, 1888.
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Conductor George N. Waitt is moved to the University Railroad
George N. Waitt, for many years a conductor between Greensboro and Goldsboro, was transferred to the University Railroad branch to Chapel Hill, with Peyton Brown taking his old run.
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James Webb Jr. and Joseph C. Webb buy town lot 94 in Hillsborough
George C. Corbin, who had bought the property in 1878, sold the land and house on Hillsborough's lot 94 to James Webb Jr. and Joseph C. Webb. James Webb sold the lot to the Methodist church for a parsonage in 1903.
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Postmaster Nate W. Brown opens a book and stationery store in the Hillsborough post office building
N. W. Brown, the Hillsborough postmaster, opened a book store in the post office building, selling school books, novels for sale or rent, stationery and blank legal forms and taking newspaper subscriptions.
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Thomas M. Kirkland is commissioned postmaster at Chapel Hill
Thomas M. Kirkland received his commission as Chapel Hill's postmaster and was to take charge of the office at the end of the week.
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The Hillsborough YMCA elects delegates to the state convention
Meeting on Monday night, the Young Men's Christian Association of Hillsborough chose Charles M. Parks and C. E. Parish as delegates, with S. M. Gattis and Joseph A. Harris as alternates, to the state YMCA convention at Goldsboro in March.
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Hillsborough's commissioners close barber shops on Sunday and bar the public from bar rooms that day
At their regular meeting the town commissioners amended the town ordinances to forbid opening a barber shop on Sunday, with a fine of up to ten dollars, and passed a new ordinance barring saloon keepers from letting anyone but themselves and their clerks into their places on Sunday, with half of each ten-dollar fine going to the informer.
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Federal revenue officers break up a still on Little River northeast of Hillsborough
Deputy Collector Crawford and other revenue officers raided a still on Little River about eight miles northeast of town, destroyed the beer, cut up the still and arrested a man found asleep in the still house, who was jailed when he could not give bond for the federal court at Greensboro.
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Revenue officers kill Henry McMannen, a Black man, at his house in Little River township
Searching for illicit stills about seven miles northeast of Hillsborough, federal revenue officers went with Henry McMannen to his new log house; the officers said he fired a shotgun at agent S. Kirkpatrick, wounding him in the face, and was shot dead. Others in the county said he was killed without cause, and the Rev. Sam P. Terry swore out murder warrants against the officers before magistrate A. L. Holden.
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Col. Davis is asked to move his military school from La Grange to the Hillsborough barracks
After Col. Davis's military school at La Grange closed over meningitis among the cadets, the paper learned that he had been asked to bring the school to Hillsborough and use the empty barracks, and urged the town to work for it.
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The university opens a free three-month course for teachers
The university offered a three-month course meant to train teachers, free of tuition and with no entrance examination, beginning in late February; teachers were told to write to President Battle for a circular.
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A special term of Orange Superior Court opens to clear the civil docket
Called by Governor Fowle, a special one-week term for civil cases opened at Hillsborough with Judge R. F. Armfield presiding, a week before the regular spring term; its calendar included suits against the Richmond and Danville Railroad and the state's suits on the late clerk's bond.
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Judge Armfield's hearing at Hillsborough on the McMannen killing ends with the officers in federal hands
A large crowd came to Hillsborough for Judge Armfield's habeas corpus hearing on the revenue officers charged with killing Henry McMannen. The officers' lawyers withdrew their petition, the sheriff reported he had given them up to the U.S. marshal on a federal writ, and Armfield let them go; at Greensboro on March 14 federal Judge Dick bound them over to the April term of the federal court.
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Cedar Grove residents vote to build a school building to be called Cedar Grove Academy
A meeting of Cedar Grove citizens decided to put up a large school building named Cedar Grove Academy, elected a board of trustees with John McCracken as chairman, and named an executive committee to buy a lot and build; the lot was bought and work begun at once, with completion hoped for by early summer.
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The Orange grand jury indicts Durham editor Hackney for libeling Sheriff Hughes
After the Durham Recorder printed a false report that Judge Armfield had jailed Sheriff John K. Hughes over the revenue officers' case and that the prisoners had jumped bail, the Orange County grand jury returned a true bill for libel against its editor, Hackney.
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A debating society is organized at the old Quaker church north of Hillsborough
A debating society was organized at the old Quaker meeting house a short way north of town, meeting every Tuesday night.
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An Orange County grand jury indicts five revenue officers for the murder of Henry McMannen
At the spring term the grand jury returned a true bill for murder against revenue officers S. Kirkpatrick, A. C. Patterson, L. M. Cates, A. J. Dodson and W. J. Dickson for killing Henry McMannen.
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Cedar Grove citizens put up a new academy building and plan a chapel in memory of Samuel W. Hughes
Citizens of Cedar Grove were building a handsome academy near the site of Samuel Wellwood Hughes's old school, now under Rev. J. R. Game of South Carolina. The trustees proposed a chapel beside it named for Hughes and asked his former pupils for a dollar or more each toward it.
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Josiah Turner moves his saddle and harness shop from Hillsborough to Durham
Saddle and harness maker Josiah Turner closed his Hillsborough shop and reopened opposite the post office in Durham, inviting his Orange County customers to follow.
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Register of Deeds John Laws is found liable for licensing an underage marriage
In a suit brought by W. P. Cole, Orange Superior Court gave a $200 judgment against Register of Deeds John Laws for issuing a marriage license to Cole's underage daughter; Laws appealed.
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Robert Foster is convicted of manslaughter for the killing of Thomas Day
At the spring term of Orange Superior Court, Robert Foster, a Black man, was tried for killing Thomas Day, also Black, in November 1889; the jury found him guilty of manslaughter and he was sentenced to four years in the penitentiary.
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The Orange County Farmers' Alliance sets up a trade exchange in Hillsborough
The Orange County Alliance, which had opened an Alliance exchange elsewhere in the county about two weeks before, rented a store building in Hillsborough for a second exchange and elected a manager; by mid-March the Hillsboro Exchange had stockholders and an office in town.
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The court holds the bondsmen of former clerk Pride Jones liable on his accounts
In several suits brought by the solicitor for the state, Orange Superior Court rendered judgments against James A. Cheek, Thomas H. Hughes, D. M. Laws and Mrs. Sally Collins, sureties on the bond of the late clerk of superior court Pride Jones; the defendants appealed.
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The government gives the Hillsborough depot mail route to a new low bidder
The contract to carry the mail between the Hillsborough post office and the railroad depot went to S. S. N. Crawford, the lowest of eight or ten bidders, ending David Roach's seventeen years on the route; the paper said the town thought Roach had been badly treated.
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Caldwell Institute trustees give the school building to J. H. McCracken as principal
Meeting on April 5, the trustees of Caldwell Institute gave J. H. McCracken the use of the building for a male and female school starting with the fall term, and he engaged Miss Mary R. Holeman to teach music. His notices set sessions to open the second Tuesday of August and of January.
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Federal judge Dick discharges the revenue officers who killed Henry McMannen
At a habeas corpus hearing in the U.S. court at Greensboro, Judge Dick freed the three Orange deputies, Dodson, Dickson and Cates, for want of evidence, and by late April he filed an opinion discharging revenue agents Kirkpatrick and Patterson as well. The officers had shot and killed Henry McMannen, a Black man, at his house in Little River Township in February; the Observer wrote that the people would not be satisfied with the ruling.
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The veteran carrier on the Hillsboro post office and depot mail route retires
The longtime carrier who took the mail between the Hillsboro post office and the railroad depot retired. The man first awarded the contract, Crawford, declined it, so the government gave it to the next lowest bidder, a Black man named Day.
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The Alliance Exchange board at Hillsboro names S. T. Forrest manager
After Mr. Andrews resigned as manager of the Farmers' Alliance Exchange at Hillsboro, its board of directors chose S. T. Forrest to fill the place.
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Fire destroys Delia Lee's house in Hillsboro
A small dwelling owned and lived in by Delia Lee, a Black woman, burned to the ground about one o'clock in the afternoon. The paper reported much sympathy for her and a liberal sum of money raised to help.
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Susan Washington Graham, widow of Governor William A. Graham, dies and is buried at Hillsboro
She died at Judge Walter Clark's home in Raleigh on the night of May 3. Her body was brought to Hillsboro, and after a service at the Baptist church on May 5 she was buried beside her husband in the Presbyterian churchyard.
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Hillsboro re-elects Mayor Joseph A. Harris with a seven-man town board
The town election returned Joseph A. Harris as mayor with commissioners Robert Faucette, Harry L. Parish, Hayes, S. J. Lynch, Henry N. Brown Jr., James A. Cheek and George Laws. Clerk S. M. Gattis swore them in on May 13, and on May 19 Parish gave bond as treasurer and the board named standing committees, with Cheek heading streets.
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Hillsboro's finance committee reports the town's accounts for the year to May 1
The committee found treasurer John Laws holding $417.30 in town and cemetery funds, part of the cemetery money from lots sold, and found the mayor's fines of $35.80 properly accounted for. The board ordered the report printed, a custom of past years, with Commissioner George Laws voting no.
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Professor Adolphus W. Mangum dies
Mangum, a Methodist minister who had taught mental and moral science, history and English since the reopening, died after a long illness. Josephus Daniels gave a memorial address in Gerrard Hall on May 31, 1891.
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