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- Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
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Kemp Plummer Battle buys his father's Chapel Hill house and names it Senlac
Returning to Chapel Hill in 1876 to become university president, Battle bought the family house from his father, added a one-story wing on each side and named it Senlac. The house stands on Battle Lane.
People: William Horn Battle
Subject: Senlac (Battle house)
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The university begins keeping Washington's Birthday as a holiday
The reopened faculty set the precedent of a holiday on February 22, and the literary societies later chose a Washington orator for the day. At the first or second observance Francis D. Winston displayed a battered hatchet he claimed had felled the cherry tree.
People: Francis D. Winston
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Amzi Clarence Dixon serves as pastor of the Chapel Hill Baptist Church
Dixon came straight from seminary and drew in students and townspeople through revivals. The university asked him in 1878 to live in a dormitory and take charge of chapel services, which Howell calls the first official tie between a Baptist pastor and the university. He went on to pulpits in Chicago and London.
Subject: University Baptist Church
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The school board orders a landowner to stop fencing off the Bethany Meeting House school
Told that William Jackson had fenced in the schoolhouse of District 15 at Bethany Meeting House and would not let school be taught, the board warned him to return the lot to the district committee or face legal action.
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Former professor William Hooper dies at Chapel Hill
William Hooper, who had brought his bride to Chapel Hill in 1816 to teach at the university, died on August 25, 1876 after a trip to Philadelphia for a meeting of descendants of the Declaration's signers. At his request he was buried beside his mother and her second husband, President Joseph Caldwell, and in 1904 the remains were moved to the new Caldwell monument.
People: Joseph Caldwell
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The poorhouse count records ten deaths in a single year
The enumeration listed six white men, eight white women, four Black men and six Black women living at the poorhouse. Over the previous year ten residents had died, two children had been born, twelve people had come in and four had left.
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Professor William H. Smith publishes a guide to collecting specimens
William H. Smith, professor of natural history, issued a pamphlet with directions for skinning and preserving birds and mammals and for keeping reptiles, insects, plants, rocks and soils, to build up the university museum. Battle calls it probably the first such guide in the state.
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A Presbyterian church for Hillsborough's Black members is founded
More than a decade after emancipation, a Presbyterian church for people of color was established on land from the Brodie family at the corner of Orange and Wake streets.
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A new chemistry laboratory under the university library is lit with gas
The university fitted out a new chemical laboratory below the library, lit with gas, where students in long aprons did all their own experiments.
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Dr. Thomas W. Harris opens a drugstore at Franklin and Henderson streets
Dr. Thomas W. Harris, the first dean of the university's medical school, opened a drugstore on the northeast corner of Franklin and Henderson streets. He sold the business to Robert Strange MacRae in 1884.
People: Thomas West Harris
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James Cole Taylor works as an assistant at the state experiment station in Smith Hall
James C. Taylor and William B. Phillips, Chapel Hill graduates of 1877, worked as assistants at the state's fertilizer control and experiment station at the university, with W. Warnecke of Germany and A. D. Mickle of Chapel Hill. The station had four rooms in Smith Hall.
People: William Battle Phillips
Subject: Smith Hall (Playmakers Theatre)
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McIver heads mathematics at the university's summer normal schools
Then principal of the Greensboro graded schools, McIver was chief of the mathematics department at the 1877 Summer Normal School in Chapel Hill and taught mathematics, English grammar and physiology at the 1878 session.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle
Subject: University Summer School
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Phi Kappa Sigma is rechartered at the reopened university
Although the trustees still discouraged fraternities after 1875, Phi Kappa Sigma regained its charter in 1877 and met in secret, often off campus.
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State experiment station opens at Chapel Hill
After Kemp P. Battle pressed for it with the State Grange and farm societies, the legislature created a Board of Agriculture, taxed commercial fertilizers and placed an experiment station at the university, whose trustees elected Albert R. Ledoux its chemist in 1877. Working in Smith Hall it analyzed fertilizers, seeds, soils and waters until it moved to Raleigh in 1881.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle · Washington Caruthers Kerr
Subject: Smith Hall (Playmakers Theatre)
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The Chapel Hill Baptist Church builds an addition for its Sunday school
During A. C. Dixon's pastorate the church built an addition that housed the infant class of the Sunday school.
People: A. C. (Amzi Clarence) Dixon
Subject: University Baptist Church
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The county commissioners split Mangum Township and create Lebanon Township
Acting on a petition, the board divided Mangum Township at Little River and named the new township Lebanon, adding a ninth to the eight townships laid off in 1868.
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The university holds its first summer session, a state normal school for teachers
In the summer of 1877 the university hosted a statewide Summer Normal School, set up by the General Assembly in March 1877 to train white teachers for the common schools. President Kemp Battle and the Board of Education admitted white women to its classes, though state money could not be spent on them.
Subject: University Summer School
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Thomas Ruffin Jr. and his wife Mary build the Ruffin-Hill House
Thomas Ruffin Jr. and his wife Mary built an I-house with Italianate and Eastlake trim on a 47-acre tract near the burned Priestly Mangum House. Their daughter Mary Ruffin Hill and her husband Thomas Hill lived there for many years.
Subject: Ruffin-Hill House
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William Horn Battle returns to Chapel Hill to teach law
Battle had left for Raleigh in 1868 when Reconstruction politics disrupted the university. When his law school reopened at Chapel Hill in January 1877, while his son Kemp was president, he returned as professor of law, and he taught until he resigned in January 1879, shortly before his death that March.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle
Subject: UNC School of Law
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Louis H. Hackney becomes pastor of Rock Hill Baptist Church
Louis H. Hackney, who had spent six years at Shaw University in the early 1870s and then taught school, became pastor of Rock Hill Baptist Church on Franklin Street in January 1877, when he was barely twenty-two. He held the pastorate for sixty years, until his death in 1937. He and his wife had married in 1876.
Subject: First Baptist Church, Chapel Hill
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Fire guts Person Hall
Person Hall, the old chapel finished in 1798 and recently given to the chemistry department, burned on February 6, 1877, apparently from a stovepipe set too close to a roof rafter. The thick walls stood, the loss came to about $1,000, and gifts from A. F. Redd, J. S. Carr and others paid to restore it.
People: Julian S. Carr · Samuel (Samuel Field) Phillips · Samuel Field Phillips
Subject: Person Hall
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Latin salutatory and valedictory orations are dropped from commencement
A month after the Person Hall fire the university abolished the Latin Salutatory and Valedictory speeches, though for several years the top graduate was still called the valedictorian.
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Andrew Mickle is appointed Chapel Hill postmaster
Andrew Mickle was appointed postmaster at Chapel Hill on May 19, 1877, succeeding Hugh B. Guthrie. Thomas M. Kirkland followed him on January 31, 1881.
Subject: Chapel Hill Post Office and Peace and Justice Plaza
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Charles F. Deems preaches the commencement sermon and receives an honorary degree
At the 1877 commencement, Deems, then pastor of the Church of the Strangers in New York, preached the baccalaureate sermon, and the university conferred on him the honorary Doctor of Laws.
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The reopened university graduates its first class
At the 1877 commencement five men took degrees, William Battle Phillips of Chapel Hill a Ph.B. and Julian M. Baker, Frank M. Fremont, Joseph C. Powell and James C. Taylor the B.S. The 1876 commencement had had no graduates.
People: James Cole Taylor · William Battle Phillips
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Zebulon Vance delivers a memorial eulogy of David L. Swain at commencement
Governor Vance, in office a second time, gave the memorial address on the late president David L. Swain at the 1877 commencement, a year after he had given up the same assignment in anger. Spencer, unable to hear, had read his manuscript and watched Swain's old neighbors in tears.
People: David L. Swain
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William C. Claytor, Nettleton G. Craig and Charles W. Johnston are ordained elders at New Hope
Three elders were added to the session. Claytor was a son of the 1859 elder Samuel Claytor; Johnston's grandmother was Mary Cabe, a daughter of Gilbert Strayhorn.
People: Charles W. Johnston
Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church
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Louisa Turner sells Maple Hill and 140 acres to her brother-in-law Israel Turner
Louisa Jackson Turner, widow of John Turner, sold her father Jacob Jackson's home tract and the house where she lived to Israel Turner Jr. for $10,500. Israel Turner later ran a government-licensed distillery on the farm.
Subject: Jacob Jackson Farm (Maple Hill)
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The school board approves Piney Mountain as school District 53
The board recognized Piney Mountain as District No. 53 and named its committeemen. At the same meeting it ordered that no committee contract teachers beyond the money apportioned for the year.
Subject: Piney Mountain School
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Fairfield School is allowed to draw water from the county poorhouse spring
The board let the Fairfield school in District 21 use the spring at the county poorhouse for its water.
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Hickory Grove Baptist Church is organized
Black families organized Hickory Grove Baptist Church, with C. D. Hackney as first pastor.
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The school board names committeemen for 52 numbered school districts
The board's 1877 appointments name every district school in the county, from North East and Deals Creek to Prospect Hill and Orange Factory, with three committeemen for each.
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University Day is established
At Kemp P. Battle's request, seconded by Zebulon B. Vance, the executive committee made October 12, the anniversary of the laying of Old East's cornerstone in 1793, a permanent holiday. At the first observance in Gerrard Hall, decorated by Cornelia Phillips Spencer and village women, Battle spoke on the charter and the cornerstone.
People: Zebulon B. Vance · Cornelia Phillips Spencer · Kemp Plummer Battle
Subject: Gerrard Hall · Old East
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Bartholomew F. Moore leaves the university $5,000 for scholarships
Moore, who died in November 1878, left the university $5,000 by will to fund scholarships. Battle later reported three young men studying on the Moore scholarships.
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Bursar Andrew Mickle helps poor teachers through the university's summer normal school
At the summer normal school the university lent its dormitories and bedding and let teachers cook for themselves, so that many lived on $4 or $5 a month. Andrew Mickle, the school's business agent, worked tirelessly to advise and help those who needed it.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle
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Dr. T. W. Harris opens a private medical school in Chapel Hill
In 1878 Dr. T. W. Harris moved from Chatham County to Chapel Hill and started a private medical school there. Within a year the university absorbed it and named him the first dean of its School of Medicine.
Subject: UNC School of Medicine
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Hillsborough's Black Presbyterians build their church on Orange Street
The congregation built its church about 1878 with some help from white residents. Leading families were the Ellisons, Boldens, Morrows, Richmonds and Webbs; Bill Bolden played the organ and a Rev. White was pastor.
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John H. Watson buys the Chapel Hill Hotel from David McCauley
John H. Watson, a brother of Jones Watson, bought the Chapel Hill Hotel from McCauley. By 1891 he had taken W. W. Pickard as a partner.
People: David McCauley · John H. Watson
Subject: Eagle Hotel (Chapel Hill)
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Joseph A. Harris publishes the Chapel Hill Ledger
Joseph A. Harris began printing the Chapel Hill Ledger in a small wooden shop on the south side of East Franklin Street. He stopped publishing it in 1880.
People: Joseph A. Harris
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Joseph Blount Cheshire Jr. starts monthly Episcopal services in Durham
Cheshire, then serving the Chapel of the Cross, began the services that led in 1881 to the founding of St. Philip's in Durham.
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Joseph Blount Cheshire is assigned to the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill
Ordered deacon at Tarboro on 21 April 1878, Cheshire was assigned by Bishop Thomas Atkinson to the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill at the request of university president Kemp P. Battle. He served his diaconate there under Robert Sutton, rector of the Pittsboro parish.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle
Subject: Chapel of the Cross
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Mount Zion AME Church is organized at Martinsville
Lefler and Wager say five Black men, Jack Horner, Bedford Corbett, Richard Jordan, Sam McBroom and Richard Thompson, organized the church about 1878 at Martinsville, probably the Martin farm near Cedar Grove. The congregation's own history dates its first gatherings to about 1869 and says it was known as Poplar Springs, with a pastor by 1878, until it took the Mount Zion AME name about 1880. It bought an acre from S. W. and Margaret J. Hughes in 1882 and moved to its present site about 1927.
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Nelson P. Hall buys the Ellis house and 267 acres on the Eno
Nelson Parrish Hall bought 267 acres of the Ellis land with the brick house, though his family may have lived there since about 1870, when his son Simeon was listed as a miller. The mill on the Eno across the road took the Hall name as Hall's Mill.
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Teachers at the Normal School form a State Teachers' Association
Teachers attending the 1878 University Normal School organized a State Teachers' Association with Kemp P. Battle as president and began forming county associations. They also petitioned the legislature to continue the school.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle
Subject: University Summer School
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The present Morrow's Mill is built on Cane Creek
The timber-framed mill on a stone foundation known as Morrow's Mill was built in 1878 on Cane Creek in southwestern Orange County, the third mill on a site whose stone dam enslaved laborers had built before the Civil War. It ground grain until 1930, and the 1993 county survey found it the only rural mill building besides Faucett's still standing, with its dam kept up.
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The wife of pastor J. H. Wheeler is buried in front of the Hillsborough Methodist Church
During J. H. Wheeler's four-year pastorate his wife died and was buried in the church's front yard, a grave the church still showed in 1962.
Subject: Hillsborough Methodist Church
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William L. Saunders becomes secretary of the university, and later its treasurer as well
After Seaton Gales died in 1878, the trustees chose Saunders as the university's secretary; once President Battle gave up the treasurership, Saunders held both offices, which he kept until his death in 1891.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle
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St. Paul AME buys a church lot from Benjamin and Dilsy Craig
The congregation paid fifty-five dollars on April 15, 1878 for a church lot bought from Benjamin and Dilsy Craig, and was raising money in December 1879 and January 1880 to finish a church there. In 1892 it built its present church across Merritt Mill Road from the earlier one, on land the 1983 Carrboro inventory says the Hargraves and Caldwell families gave about 1890.
People: Benjamin Craig · Dilsey Craig
Subject: St. Paul AME Church
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Three men hanged for a string of Chapel Hill burglaries
In 1877 a band of four broke into six houses in and near Chapel Hill and wounded the widow Margaret Hendon with an axe blade while trying to rob her. Albert Atwater, a Black man held for a lesser offense, confessed and named two white men and a Black man, who were convicted in Orange Superior Court and hanged on April 16, 1878, after the governor refused a pardon or commutation.
People: William P. Mallett
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St. Matthew's rings its new bell, a memorial to Confederate dead
A steeple bell given by Mrs. Mary Curtis was rung for the first time for the Easter service. Its inscription remembers John Henry Curtis and the other men of the Orange Light Artillery who died in Confederate service.
Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church
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Summer Normal School offers the state's first kindergarten training
Emily M. Coe of New York taught a class of teachers the kindergarten method at the university's 1878 Summer Normal School, with 53 children drilled daily. Battle believed it the first normal kindergarten class in North Carolina; the session enrolled 402 teachers, 190 of them women.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle
Subject: University Summer School
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Methodist trustees buy a Franklin Street lot from Thomas A. and Zoa A. Long
Looking ahead to a larger church, the trustees of the Chapel Hill Methodist Episcopal Church, South, paid $500 for about an acre on Franklin Street running back to the campus, between the Seaton M. Barbee and Jones Watson lots. The second church was built there in the late 1880s, and the 1920s church on the same grounds after they were enlarged.
People: John H. Watson · John Wesley Carr · Solomon Pool · Jones Watson
Subject: University United Methodist Church
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The Chapel Hill Baptist Church resolves to admit no Black members
After granting a letter of dismissal to one of the last Black members left on its books, the church resolved that it would admit no Black persons.
Subject: University Baptist Church
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Alpha Tau Omega charters a chapter at the university
Alpha Tau Omega received a charter at Chapel Hill in 1879, while fraternities were still barred and met out of sight.
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Charles B. Aycock edits the Ledger in Chapel Hill
Aycock, then a university student, took over as editor of the weekly Chapel Hill Ledger in 1879, succeeding Cornelia Phillips Spencer. The paper ran until 1880.
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Cornelia Phillips Spencer edits the Chapel Hill Weekly Ledger
For some months in 1879 Cornelia Phillips Spencer edited the Chapel Hill Weekly Ledger, with students R. P. Pell and Francis D. Winston as assistants. The book calls her the county's only woman editor; Charles B. Aycock took over from her.
People: Charles B. Aycock · Francis D. Winston
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E. H. Pogue moves his tobacco manufacturing from Hillsborough to Durham
Pogue, a tobacco dealer since 1866 alongside his tinware and general merchandise trade, began making plug tobacco at a factory in Hillsborough in 1872 or 1873. In 1879 he moved the business to Durham, where E. H. Pogue & Son made granulated and long-cut smoking tobacco, while Pogue kept his home in Hillsborough.
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George T. Winston buys Benjamin Hedrick's house with its polygonal annex
Professor George T. Winston bought the former Hedrick house in 1879. In the 1880s or early 1890s he tied the old farmhouse and its many-sided annex together with a Queen Anne addition of porch, entrance hall and parlor, turning the house toward Franklin Street. It is now called the Horace Williams House after its later owner.
People: George Tayloe Winston · Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick
Subject: Horace Williams House
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John D. Cameron moves the Recorder from Hillsborough to Durham, ending fifty-nine years of publication in the county seat
Cameron carried the paper fifteen miles east to the tobacco town, where it continued as the Durham Recorder, published every Wednesday. The last issue under the Hillsborough title in the digitized run is March 5, 1879; the first Durham issue there is July 2, 1879.
Subject: Hillsborough Recorder
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John Joseph Whitfield builds a farmhouse on Whitfield Road
About 1879 John Joseph Whitfield built an I-house with a rear ell; a tall Mount Vernon style porch was added later. Its well house and other domestic buildings survive.
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John Wesley Carr builds a second store at Franklin and Columbia
Merchant John Wesley Carr put up a second store on his corner lot at Columbia Street on West Franklin. By about 1904 one of the two Carr stores was a meat market and the other a grocery.
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Latta Grove Baptist Church is organized
Jerry M. Latta and others organized Latta Grove Baptist Church about 1879.
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Legislature extends Normal School benefits to women
The 1877 act limited state money for the Summer Normal School to men, though women attended by invitation. When the two-year act ran out it was renewed with the restriction as to sex removed.
Subject: University Summer School
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The railroad is rechartered as the State University Railroad
The legislature rechartered the stalled iron-mine line as the State University Railroad, shifting its purpose to a rail link for the university, with UNC president Kemp P. Battle working alongside Hoke to raise funds.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle · Robert F. Hoke
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Toney and Nellie Strayhorn, formerly enslaved, bought thirty acres in what became Carrboro
The Strayhorns bought about thirty acres and built a one-room log cabin at what is now 109 Jones Ferry Road, and their son William built the house next door at 107 in 1915. Toney Strayhorn is remembered as a founder of First Baptist Church in Chapel Hill, and the house is still owned by a great-granddaughter.
People: Toney Strayhorn · William Strayhorn
Subject: Toney and Nellie Strayhorn House and William Strayhorn House
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UNC establishes its School of Medicine
UNC began a medical program in 1879.
Subject: UNC School of Medicine
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An 1879 charter amendment gives Chapel Hill's mayor the powers of a justice of the peace
An amendment ratified March 14, 1879 clothed the mayor of Chapel Hill with a justice of the peace's powers in Orange County, let the commissioners build or rent a lockup costing up to $300, capped town taxes at two-thirds of the state and county levy, and allowed a license tax of up to $5. The act speaks of the mayor as an office already in being; Lefler and Wager count Merritt Cheek, serving to 1881, as the first mayor. Until 1895 the board of commissioners chose the mayor.
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John C. Blake deeds Eno River land to the Catholic diocese
John C. Blake conveyed 15 acres on the Eno River to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Raleigh, decades before any Catholic parish was organized in the county.
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A. C. Dixon baptizes twenty converts in Morgan Creek, among them Charles B. Aycock
At the close of a spring revival Dixon baptized twenty people in Morgan Creek near the Purefoy mill. Among them were the student Charles B. Aycock, later governor, and James Y. Joyner, later state superintendent of public instruction.
People: Charles B. Aycock
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Eno Presbyterian dedicates its third church at the old site
Built in 1878 under James L. Currie, the frame church replaced earlier log and frame buildings near the Old Eno cemetery. Orange Presbytery met there the same year, with D. I. Craig preaching the opening sermon.
People: James L. Currie · D. I. (David Irwin) Craig
Subject: Eno Presbyterian Church
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Samuel Kirkland and Leroy Craig are ordained elders at New Hope
The two were added to the session in what Craig in 1891 called the last ordination of elders at New Hope.
Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church
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The school board creates Buckhorn school district from four neighboring districts
On petition, the board formed District No. 56, Buckhorn, from the corners of the Gravelly Hill, Ridge Meeting House, Tom's Creek and Woody's Road districts so the school would sit at their center. Elerby (No. 54) and Vickers (No. 55) districts had been formed shortly before.
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Baptist minister James P. Mason speaks at University Day
At the 1879 University Day exercises, after President Kemp Battle's historical address, short talks were given by the Rev. Joseph Blount Cheshire, the Rev. James Pleasant Mason, the Methodist minister Mr. Heitman and several professors.
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Charles F. Deems starts the Deems Fund for student loans
Deems sent the university $300 to begin a fund lending both principal and interest to students on security, in memory of his son Theodore Disosway Deems, who was born in Chapel Hill and killed at Gettysburg. William H. Vanderbilt later added $10,000 through him.
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A one-room log schoolhouse is built for the St. Mary's school district
About 1880 a one-room log schoolhouse was built for the St. Mary's district on land given by John P. and Caroline Lockhart, about three-quarters of a mile northeast of St. Mary's Chapel; a frame school replaced it in 1904. The school moved onto chapel land only in 1917.
Subject: St. Mary's School
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Alphonso J. McDade builds the first brick building in the business district
McDade put up the first brick building in Chapel Hill's business district, on the southwest corner of Franklin and Columbia streets. F. P. Booth rented it for a dry goods store in 1883, and Junius D. Webb later kept a grocery there.
People: Alphonso J. McDade
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F. K. Ball builds a shingled house on East Franklin Street
F. K. Ball built the house at 604 East Franklin Street in 1880, with a steep roof, a large dormer and shingled walls and porch piers. It is named for a later owner, Dr. R. B. Lawson.
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Fairfield Presbyterian Church builds a new Gothic frame church north of Efland
The Fairfield congregation, dating to 1834, put up a new steep-roofed church with Gothic windows in the 1880s, sheathed inside with flush boards.
Subject: Fairfield Presbyterian Church
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Fire destroys Caldwell Lodge's records and the lodge gives up its charter
A fire destroyed all of Caldwell Lodge's old records, and the Chapel Hill lodge surrendered its charter the same year.
Subject: University Lodge
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Fire destroys the old Pleasant Henderson house on East Franklin Street
The old Pleasant Henderson house, where the children of Dr. George Moore were then living, burned. In 1881 Dr. William P. Mallett bought the lot and built on it.
People: William P. Mallett
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Five custom grist mills work the creeks of Cedar Grove Township
The 1880 manufacturing census found five flour and grist mills in Cedar Grove Township on Back, Eno and Lynch creeks and the South Little River, grinding local farmers' grain about six months a year. James Allen, who owned the township's largest farm, ran one of the smaller mills on Lynch Creek; two sawmills on the Little River ran five months a year.
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Francis P. Venable is offered the chair of chemistry at the university
Venable, a University of Virginia chemistry graduate then studying in Germany, was offered the university's chair of chemistry in 1880. He taught at Chapel Hill until he retired in 1930.
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Glenn's Grove Baptist Church is organized
Glenn's Grove Baptist Church, a Black congregation, was organized about 1880 with Henry Fuller as first pastor.
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Harmony Baptist Church builds its frame meeting house northwest of Hillsborough
The one-room weatherboarded church on stone piers, with a double door and shuttered windows, was built in the 1880s.
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Henry Cole runs a general store near Caldwell
Henry Cole keeps a country general store near Caldwell in the late nineteenth century; the building still stood in 1993.
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Jack Brim, a Black blacksmith, and then Bennie F. Ray open smithies at West End
As the settlement around the depot and Lloyd's mills grew in the later 1880s, Jack Brim, an African American blacksmith, opened a shop at West End, and Bennie F. Ray opened a second smithy after him. Ray's shop was still working north and east of the depot in the early 1910s.
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Little River Township has one grist mill and two sawmills
The 1880 manufacturing census found a single flour and grist mill in Little River Township, on the Eno, and two sawmills on the South Little River: one run by Furner and Smith, the other by Harry Roundtree.
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Locke Craig teaches at the university and at a Chapel Hill school
After graduating from the university at nineteen, Locke Craig taught chemistry there for a short time and taught at a private school in Chapel Hill. Kemp Battle listed him among graduates then teaching as "Craig at Chapel Hill."
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Mount Olive Lodge No. 86 of Prince Hall Masons is established
Black Masons established Mount Olive Lodge No. 86, a Prince Hall lodge serving Chapel Hill and Carrboro. Randolph Chapter No. 185 of the Order of the Eastern Star was associated with it.
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Orange Cross Roads Baptist Church is organized
Orange Cross Roads Baptist Church, a Black Baptist congregation, was organized about 1880. It built its church in 1923.
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Pender Store is built at Cedar Grove
The two-story weatherboarded Pender Store, with a classical gable front and a hip-roofed porch, was built at Cedar Grove in the 1880s. Its shelves and display cases were still in place in 1996.
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Robert F. Hoke raises subscriptions to run the railroad toward Chapel Hill
When iron prices rose in 1880 and shipping ore to Pennsylvania furnaces paid, Gen. Robert F. Hoke, who owned most of Iron Mountain north of Chapel Hill, began organizing the branch line from University Station. His Iron Mountain Company put up $6,000, the largest single pledge, and Julian S. Carr was among the other subscribers.
People: Julian S. Carr · Robert F. Hoke
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Robert F. Hoke serves as unpaid superintendent of the State University Railroad
As the branch from University Station toward Chapel Hill got under way, university president Kemp P. Battle became president of the railroad company and General Robert F. Hoke its superintendent, both without salary. John Holt managed the convict work force and Captain Fry was the civil engineer.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle
Subject: University Station
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Ruffin Cheek and then Hiram Stone open West End's first general stores
Ruffin Cheek, followed by Hiram Stone, opened grocery and general merchandise stores at West End in the 1880s. The book counts their stores, east of the railroad spur on what became East Main Street, as the start of Carrboro's business district.
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Seniors begin the class tree and Class Day custom
The class of 1880, led by its president Thomas H. Battle, planted a sugar maple at the edge of the Forbidden Ground after Class Day speeches that included one by Charles B. Aycock. Later classes kept the custom, planting a water oak in 1882 and a white pine in 1883.
People: Charles B. Aycock · Locke Craig
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State convicts build the University Railroad
Governor Thomas J. Jarvis supplied state convicts at low hire to grade the line from University Station to Chapel Hill, while the Richmond and Danville company laid the rails. A white convict was shot dead while fleeing, and a Black convict named Fries died of gangrene after a whipping by the road's managers, which the solicitor found no ground to prosecute.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle · Alexander Boyd Andrews · Robert F. Hoke · Thomas Jordan Jarvis · Frederick N. Strudwick
Subject: University Station
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The Caine Roberts farm is built near Hillsborough
A farm complex centered on a two-story frame Triple-A I-house is built around 1880 on the Caine Roberts place near Hillsborough. The survey put it on the Study List.
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The Chapel Hill Baptist Church rebuilds the old academy as its parsonage
The academy building behind the old church, where the Craig family had kept a school, was rebuilt and made into the church's parsonage. In the same decade the church bought its first hymnbooks and a small reed organ.
Subject: University Baptist Church
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The Charles Davis Farm is built
The Charles Davis Farm, built about 1880, was placed on the state Study List in July 1991 at its owner's request.
Subject: Charles Davis Farm
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The Davis-Eubanks House is built on Mallette Street
The one-story frame house at 129 Mallette Street, with a center front gable, rear ell and turned-post porch, dates from about 1880.
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The Henry Lloyd farm is built around a walled barnyard in Chapel Hill Township
Henry Lloyd, farming in Chapel Hill Township by 1880, probably built his farmhouse in the 1880s; the farm grew in stages, and log and frame outbuildings of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries close in a rectangular barnyard, an arrangement the survey found worth a Study List place.
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The Little River General Store is built on NC 57
A frame general store serving the Little River community goes up on NC 57 late in the nineteenth century.
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The Neville Building, thought to be Carrboro's first store, goes up east of the depot
A one-story frame store later called the Old Neville Building was put up in the 1880s on East Main Street between Broad and Lloyd streets and is believed to be the first store building in Carrboro. Its last tenant was the Carrboro Cash Store, run by Cliff and Wilbur Partin.
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The Phelps farmstead is built north of Hillsborough
The Phelps farm on NC 57 north of Hillsborough grows up in the late nineteenth century around a Triple-A I-house, with a log tenant house and one- and two-pen log barns. It is on the Study List.
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The White Cross Store is built
A country store is built at White Cross in the late nineteenth century. It was later covered in vinyl siding.
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The first McDade Store goes up at McDade crossroads
The first McDade Store, a two-story frame building, was put up in the 1880s at the McDade crossroads just north of Cedar Grove, where it would have stood over the small community. A second McDade store with a canopy for motorists buying gas was built across the road in the early 1920s.
Subject: McDade Store
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The upstairs courtroom of the Orange County Courthouse is renovated
In the 1880s the second-floor courtroom of John Berry's 1844-1845 courthouse on East King Street was renovated; the rest of the interior keeps most of its original finish.
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Two cotton gins operate on Cane Creek in Bingham Township
Bingham Township, where cotton was a cash crop, had two cotton gins on Cane Creek in 1880. The township also had three flour and grist mills running full time, two on Cane Creek and one on Turkey Creek, and four sawmills on Morgan, Cane and Tom creeks.
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W. R. Hughes makes bricks at Cedar Grove
The only brickyard in Cedar Grove Township in 1880 belonged to W. R. Hughes. It worked two months of the year and turned out about 100,000 common bricks.
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William Cole buys the Smith plantation seat on Smith Level Road
The Smith family held its large plantation south of Carrboro until the 1880s, when William Cole bought the 1845 house. No bigger pre-war house survives in the township, and in 1992 it stood almost unchanged on 130 acres.
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William George Randall walks from Burke County to Chapel Hill to enter the university
Randall walked to Chapel Hill in the fall of 1880, was interviewed by President Kemp Battle and was helped by the Deems Fund. The Dialectic Society paid him as its librarian, the first year the post carried a salary.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle
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Chapel Hill's AME congregation issues a public appeal for money to finish its house of worship
Rev. G. W. Offley, preacher in charge of the African Methodist Episcopal church in Chapel Hill, signed a circular dated January 5, 1880 asking the public to help the congregation complete its house of worship and naming Brother George Trice to solicit subscriptions. The Chapel Hill Ledger printed it in full on January 10, 1880.
People: George Trice
Subject: St. Paul AME Church
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Mary R. Smith gives the Chapel of the Cross an organ
The parish formally thanked Miss Mary R. Smith for her gift to the Chapel of the Cross of a fine and costly organ.
Subject: Chapel of the Cross
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Joseph Blount Cheshire is ordained priest two years after coming to Chapel Hill
Cheshire was ordained priest on 30 May 1880 by Bishop Theodore B. Lyman in St. Paul's Church, Winston, two years after going to Chapel Hill. While based at the Chapel of the Cross he also organized a mission at Durham and built a church there named for St. Philip the Deacon.
Subject: Chapel of the Cross
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The student YMCA first takes part in commencement
The 1880 commencement opened with an address to the Young Men's Christian Association by the Rev. F. C. Woodward of Elizabeth City, the association's first part in commencement exercises. By 1884 it met regularly in its own hall in South Building.
Subject: University YMCA · South Building
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Charles J. Curtis resigns as rector of St. Matthew's
Charles J. Curtis, who had followed his father Moses Ashley Curtis in charge of the parish, resigned on July 24, 1880, and held his last service on August 8. The church had no settled rector until Joseph W. Murphy took charge the next July.
Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church
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The school board forms Center school district
A new District No. 57, called Center, was created with 34 white children and one Black child.
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Chapel Hill women serve a dinner to the convicts building the University Railroad
Spencer collected food around the village and, with other women, served a dinner at a long plank table to ninety-six convicts grading the railroad to Chapel Hill, with Joseph Blount Cheshire saying grace. Some residents refused to give, and Colonel Thomas M. Holt promised the ladies a ride on the first train.
People: Cornelia Phillips Spencer · Joseph Blount Cheshire Jr.
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The Orange County Observer begins publication at Hillsborough
Joseph A. Harris started the Orange County Observer at Hillsborough in October 1880 as its publisher and one of its editors, numbering it a new series of a paper established in 1878. The paper ran until about 1917.
People: Joseph A. Harris
Subject: Orange County Observer
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Paul Cameron buys university land put up for sale
When part of the university's land around Chapel Hill was put up for sale, Spencer, fearing for places like Piney Prospect and the Roaring Fountain, wrote begging Paul C. Cameron to buy it, and Bennehan Cameron and John W. Graham came to bid for him. Cameron later left Spencer a few acres of it in his will.
People: Bennehan Cameron · John W. Graham · Cornelia Phillips Spencer
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Professor Frederick W. Simonds resigns after seniors force him to retract a rebuke
After Simonds told a rowdy senior class it was acting like little boys, three students confronted him, and one cursed him as a Yankee and gave him three minutes to take it back. Simonds retracted, then resigned, saying he could not control his classes or understand Southern ways.
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The Chapel Hill Baptist Church petitions the legislature against liquor
The church sent the General Assembly a memorial condemning the making and selling of liquor in North Carolina. Howell suggests the new pastor, Needham Bryan Cobb, was behind it.
Subject: University Baptist Church
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Dr. William P. Mallett builds a house on the old Henderson lot
Dr. Mallett bought the burned-out lot from the heirs of Anna Ashe and built a large two-story house, keeping a chemist's shop at its southeast corner. After his death in 1889 his widow ran the house as a boarding house where new professors stayed.
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George Laws dies in office as Orange County's clerk of superior court
The Orange County Observer of May 14, 1881 reported the death of George Laws, who at the time was judge of probate and clerk of the superior court of Orange County after some fifty years in the county's service.
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James Webb Jr. builds Mid-Lawn at East Queen and North Cameron streets
James Webb Jr. built a two-story Italianate house, later called Mid-Lawn, on the northwest corner of East Queen and North Cameron streets. David and Elizabeth Patterson bought it in 1919.
People: James Webb Jr.
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John Manning teaches law at the university
Elected professor of law in 1881, John Manning taught at Chapel Hill while keeping a private practice, and law enrollment grew from seven students to eighty-seven by 1897-98.
Subject: UNC School of Law
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Joseph Blount Cheshire leaves Chapel Hill to become rector at Charlotte
In the spring of 1881 Cheshire accepted a call to St. Peter's Church in Charlotte, ending about three years at the Chapel of the Cross. He was elected bishop of North Carolina in 1893.
Subject: Chapel of the Cross
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Joseph W. Murphy serves as rector of St. Matthew's
Joseph W. Murphy was rector of the parish for eleven years. His family later gave the brass alms basin in his memory.
Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church
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Kappa Alpha charters a chapter at the university
Kappa Alpha was chartered at Chapel Hill in 1881, four years before the trustees lifted the ban on fraternities.
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Mebaneville, the railroad village on the Orange-Alamance line, is incorporated
The settlement that grew along the North Carolina Railroad from 1854 was incorporated in 1881 and shortened its name to Mebane in 1883. Part of the town lies in Orange County.
Subject: North Carolina Railroad
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St. Matthew's vestry asks Joseph Blount Cheshire to be its rector
The vestries of St. Matthew's and the Burlington church asked Joseph Blount Cheshire to take charge of their parishes. He would have come to his wife's home town, but Bishop Lyman wanted him to stay in Chapel Hill.
People: Joseph Blount Cheshire Jr. · Theodore B. (Theodore Benedict) Lyman
Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church
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The General Assembly makes its first regular appropriation to the university
In 1881 the General Assembly voted the university its first regular appropriation for maintenance, secured under President Kemp Battle. Until then the state had given no specific money for its upkeep.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle
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The literary societies agree to stop hazing
The Dialectic and Philanthropic societies adopted a joint rule, under heavy penalty, against entering another student's room against his will, laying hands on him or otherwise annoying him. It held for several years before hazing resumed in disguise.
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Typhoid kills the two surviving Mason daughters, and their father sets aside a family burial ground
Martha James Mason and Carolina Varina Mason both died of typhoid fever in 1881; their father caught it as well but recovered. James P. Mason marked off a small plot on the family land where all four daughters and later both parents were buried inside an iron fence, beside the graves of Solomon and Ann Morgan.
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The commissioners allow gates across the roads at Orange Factory
The board ordered a gate on the road from Orange Factory to the Durham and Roxboro road near the old Douglas place, and another across the road on the opposite side of the river on S. W. Holman's land.
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Voters approve forming Durham County from eastern Orange and part of Wake
Under an act ratified February 28, 1881, voters in the territory cut from eastern Orange and western Wake approved the new county on April 14, 1881, the Orange portion voting 1,464 to 250. Governor Thomas J. Jarvis then proclaimed Durham County established.
People: Thomas Jordan Jarvis
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The Rev. Joseph W. Murphy takes charge of the St. Mary's congregation
Murphy began serving St. Mary's together with St. Matthew's in Hillsborough and opened the chapel's second parish register, which records much of the little church's later history.
Subject: St. Mary’s Chapel
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Commencement celebrates the railroad's arrival, and Battle calls Hoke its father
At the 1882 commencement an hour was set aside in Gerrard Hall to celebrate the railroad's coming to Chapel Hill. Kemp P. Battle told the history of the line and called General Robert F. Hoke the source of the enterprise and the father of the State University Railroad Company.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle · Paul C. Cameron · Thomas Jordan Jarvis
Subject: Gerrard Hall
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From West End to Carrboro: railroad, mills, and a new town
In 1882 a university railroad spur ended a mile west of Chapel Hill, and the settlement of West End grew around its boxcar depot. Thomas Lloyd opened a gin and grist mill in 1883 and the Alberta Cotton Mill in 1899, which Julian Carr's Durham Hosiery bought in 1909. Incorporated as Venable in 1911, the town became Carrboro in 1913.
People: Julian S. Carr
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Henry H. 'Hoot' Patterson opens a general merchandise store
Henry Houston 'Hoot' Patterson, a Civil War veteran married to Dr. Thomas Hogan's daughter Mary, started a general merchandise business in the building Andrew Mickle had used. Bryant calls it very successful.
People: Andrew Mickle
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Hillsborough Presbyterian Church shares a pastor with the Chapel Hill church
During J. L. Williamson's short pastorate of 1882-83 the Hillsborough church was grouped with the Presbyterian church at Chapel Hill.
Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church
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Jones Watson serves as mayor of Chapel Hill
Jones Watson, one of the five commissioners named in the town's 1851 charter, was mayor of Chapel Hill in 1882, an office the town's charter had created in 1879. His brother John H. Watson followed him in 1883.
People: John H. Watson
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Joshua W. Gore joins the university as professor of natural philosophy and engineering
The trustees unanimously chose Joshua Walker Gore, a Virginia-born civil engineer who had studied at Richmond College, the University of Virginia and Johns Hopkins, to succeed Carey D. Grandy as professor of natural philosophy and engineering. He was the first appointee in years to take permanent charge of the subject.
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Lisbon Berry becomes Orange County's first Black lawyer
Lisbon Payne Berry, born enslaved in Hillsborough in 1850, studied law in Hillsborough and was admitted to the North Carolina bar in 1882, becoming the first Black attorney in Orange County.
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William N. Pritchard and Thomas F. Lloyd open a general store on East Franklin Street
William N. 'Captain Billy' Pritchard and T. F. Lloyd opened a general store on East Franklin Street, probably in the building where John R. Hutchins had sold clothing.
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Railroad service reaches West End
The first passenger train on the University Railroad left Chapel Hill on Monday, February 6, 1882, and ran through University Station to Raleigh. The line ended about a mile west of the village at West End, where a boxcar served as the depot, and the settlement that became Carrboro grew up around it.
Part of From West End to Carrboro: railroad, mills, and a new town, 1882–1913 · 48 events
Subject: University Station
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The Mount Zion congregation buys an acre for its first church
The Black congregation then known as Poplar Springs, which had met in a schoolhouse and on members' farms, bought a one-acre lot from S. W. Hughes and Margaret J. Hughes for $10. Its first church there was a small frame building with benches made by members.
People: Samuel Wellwood Hughes
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Fire destroys the Bingham School buildings near Mebaneville
A fire that started in a cadet's quarters about 9:30 in the morning burned the barracks, office and library, the academy hall, the infirmary and the mess hall. About 175 cadets were in barracks, no one was hurt, and the loss was put at about $30,000.
People: Robert Bingham
Subject: Bingham School
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Julia Spencer drives a last spike to celebrate the finished University railroad
Chapel Hill celebrated the completed State University Railroad with speeches and the driving of the last spikes, one by Julia J. Spencer, daughter of Cornelia Phillips Spencer, and one by the railroad's agent, J. G. Cooley. Passenger trains had been running to the West End terminus since February.
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The commissioners call a fence-law election in Hillsborough Township
On a petition from the township, the board ordered a vote at each Hillsborough Township precinct for and against the fence law on June 10, 1882 and named the men to hold it. The result is not given; an 1885 act later put Hillsboro and three other townships under the stock law.
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James Lee Love wins the Phillips Mathematical Prize
The sons of Charles Phillips had offered a prize for the best sophomore in mathematics. Love's marks in trigonometry and analytic geometry so far outran the class that Professor Ralph H. Graves dropped the planned examination and gave him the prize on his year's record; it came at commencement as thirty dollars with a letter from William B. Phillips.
People: William Battle Phillips · Ralph Henry Graves (1851-1889)
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Bingham School finishes new buildings after the spring fire
Less than three months after the fire, the rebuilt Bingham School stood nearly complete, with timber cut and sawed nearby. Thomas C. Oakley of Durham was the builder.
People: Robert Bingham
Subject: Bingham School
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Cross Roads Baptist Church is organized as Betheden
W. P. Roberts and S. S. Cates led the founding of a Baptist church first called Betheden and later Cross Roads, with R. A. Patterson as first pastor. It built a 300-seat church in 1910.
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Dr. Pride Jones serves as Orange County clerk of superior court
Dr. Pride Jones followed George Laws, clerk for thirty years, as clerk of the superior court of Orange County and held the office from 1883 to 1888, when Samuel M. Gattis succeeded him.
People: George Laws · Samuel Mallett Gattis
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Francis P. Venable keeps Chapel Hill's weather record for the federal government
In 1883 Venable was taking barometer, thermometer and humidity readings three times a day at Chapel Hill, with daily high and low temperatures, rainfall, wind and cloud, and reporting them to Washington. For about six weeks of June and July he had the student James Lee Love live in his house and keep the record for him.
People: James Lee Love
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Horace Williams earns a master's degree at the university
Williams entered the state university at Chapel Hill in 1879 and in 1883 took both the B.A. and an M.A. His M.A. and William Battle Phillips's Ph.D., conferred at the same commencement, were the first advanced degrees the reopened university granted for further study. Before 1875 any graduate could receive the A.M. three years after the B.A.
People: William Battle Phillips
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The Berry family moves to Sunnyside south of Hillsborough
Dr. John and Mary Strayhorn Berry moved from their West King Street house, now known as Two Chimneys, to Sunnyside, the Berry family plantation two miles south of town. Mary Berry tutored her daughter Harriet at home until she was twelve.
People: Harriet Morehead Berry
Subject: Sunnyside (John Berry farm)
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The state supplies prison-made brick for Memorial Hall
Governor Jarvis offered the building committee convict labor to make brick at Chapel Hill, or brick from the State Prison delivered at its gate with the university paying the freight. After inspecting the penitentiary brick the committee chose it, and Jarvis had it shipped by rail shortly before the cornerstone was laid on September 25, 1883. In June 1885 the state's bill for the brick was the one building debt still unpaid.
People: Thomas Jordan Jarvis · Paul C. Cameron
Subject: Memorial Hall
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Thomas Lloyd and William Pritchard build a grist mill and cotton gin at the West End depot
Thomas F. Lloyd, a Confederate veteran, and his partner William Pritchard built a steam-powered grist mill and cotton gin in a two-story frame building just north of the railroad depot at West End in 1883. Farmers from southern Orange County brought grain and cotton there, and Lloyd bought out Pritchard's share in 1886.
Part of From West End to Carrboro: railroad, mills, and a new town, 1882–1913 · 48 events
People: Thomas F. Lloyd (Carrboro mill builder)
Subject: Lloyd grist mill (Broad Street)
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Venable co-founds the Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society
Venable was a co-founder and the first president of the Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society, a society of university scientists named for the geologist Elisha Mitchell.
People: Elisha Mitchell
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William Battle Phillips receives the university's first doctorate after the reopening
In 1883 William Battle Phillips, one of the five graduates of 1877, received a Doctor of Philosophy, the first doctorate in Battle's list of degrees granted since the 1875 reopening.
People: William Battle Phillips
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William H. S. Burgwyn is appointed a trustee of the University of North Carolina
Burgwyn was appointed a trustee of the University of North Carolina in 1883, the year after he returned to the state and settled at Henderson.
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Tenant farmer Jessa Buttler mortgages his horse and crop to landowner C. R. Miller
Orange County tenant Jessa Buttler signed a chattel mortgage pledging his horse and his entire crop of corn, wheat, oats and tobacco to landowner C. R. Miller for a debt of $88.20. By October 1890 the debt stood at $106.04 despite partial payments.
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Charles White, merchant and postmaster at Bingham School, dies
Charles White, who kept the store and post office at Bingham School near Mebane, died on Thursday, May 24, 1883. The Observer called him successful in business; his widow, Mary E. White, qualified as executrix of his will.
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Governor Jarvis promises a commencement crowd a hall large enough for all
With Gerrard Hall overflowing at the 1883 commencement, President Kemp Battle asked Governor Thomas J. Jarvis to promise a bigger building, and Jarvis made the promise to applause. He backed the plan at the next trustees meeting and offered bricks from the state penitentiary on easy terms, and the project became Memorial Hall.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle
Subject: Gerrard Hall · Memorial Hall
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Trustees vote to raise a monument to David L. Swain beside Caldwell's
At the June 1883 commencement a well-attended board of trustees adopted a resolution asking for an alumni committee to collect money for a monument to the late president David L. Swain, to stand near the Caldwell monument on the campus. Governor Thomas J. Jarvis, then board president, named the committee, and within weeks the plan turned into Memorial Hall.
People: Thomas Jordan Jarvis
Subject: Memorial Hall
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Governor Jarvis has the trustees build a hall in place of a Swain obelisk
At a trustees' meeting in Raleigh in July 1883, Governor Thomas J. Jarvis proposed that the board and the alumni pool their efforts on a large hall at Chapel Hill instead of an obelisk to Swain. The board agreed, on condition that the alumni not be bound to any fixed sum, and Jarvis wrote the ordinance ordering what was first called Swain Memorial Hall.
People: David L. Swain
Subject: Memorial Hall
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St. Matthew's installs a new organ
After several years of fundraising, St. Matthew's set up a new organ on August 24, 1883, at a cost of $1,040.
Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church
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Memorial Hall rises at UNC under Paul C. Cameron's building committee
The cornerstone of Swain Memorial Hall was laid on September 25, 1883, and the hall was dedicated on June 3, 1885, honoring President David L. Swain, faculty and the university's Confederate dead. Paul C. Cameron, president of the Alumni Association and chairman of the building committee, raised money for it and gave money himself.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle · David L. Swain · Thomas Jordan Jarvis
Subject: Memorial Hall
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Kemp P. Battle gives a University Day address on the history of the campus buildings
In Gerrard Hall on University Day, President Kemp P. Battle traced each university building from the laying of the Old East cornerstone in 1793 to Memorial Hall, then under construction. The address was printed as a pamphlet.
Subject: Gerrard Hall
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Work on Memorial Hall stops for the winter after a cost miscalculation
Battle told the students that construction of Memorial Hall would pause over the winter because the architect had underestimated the cost and the treasury needed refilling. Builders also advised letting the green roof timbers dry under cover before work resumed in the spring.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle
Subject: Memorial Hall
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Cane Creek Baptists build a new church after five years of setbacks
In November 1883 the congregation chose to build instead of repairing its old church. Failed lumber orders, two refused calls to preachers, cost overruns and a building chairman's resignation held the work up until late 1888, and the old building was sold at auction for $58.50.
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A brick saloon and barber shop stands at 106 North Churton Street
The two-story brick building at 106 North Churton Street appears as a saloon and barber shop on the Sanborn maps from 1884 through 1911. By 1924 it held bank offices, and its storefront was redone in the Colonial Revival style about the 1930s.
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Adam A. Kluttz takes over management of Dr. Roberson's general store
Adam Alexander Kluttz became the active manager of Dr. Abner Benton Roberson's general store. He later opened stores of his own and built a brick store on East Franklin in 1893 and 1894.
People: Abner Benton Roberson · Adam Alexander Kluttz
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Alphonso J. McDade serves as mayor of Chapel Hill
A. J. McDade was mayor of Chapel Hill in 1884, an office the town charter had created in 1879. John H. Watson held it the year before and the two years after.
People: John H. Watson
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Battle and Winston canvass the state for Memorial Hall tablets
With work on Memorial Hall stopped over the winter of 1883-84 because money from the trustees and alumni had dried up, the building committee decided to ask families of distinguished men tied to the university to pay for white marble memorial tablets on the hall's walls. President Kemp P. Battle and Professor George T. Winston canvassed the state in person and by letter and signed up ninety-eight tablets.
People: George Tayloe Winston
Subject: Memorial Hall
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Beta Theta Pi is reestablished at UNC and takes in the Mystical Seven chapter
The Eta chapter was revived in 1884, absorbing the Star of the South chapter of the Mystical Seven, once the strongest fraternity in the South.
Subject: Beta Theta Pi Fraternity House
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Carpenter John Daugherty finishes Memorial Hall after architect Samuel Sloan dies
Samuel Sloan, the hall's architect, fell ill from exposure in the great heat of summer 1884 and died at a critical stage of the work. His chief carpenter, John Daugherty of Philadelphia, carried the building to completion, and a local mason, Captain Richards, set every memorial tablet himself without metal fastenings.
Subject: Memorial Hall
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Cornelia Phillips Spencer turns her daughter's letters from Europe into a newspaper series
While June Spencer toured Europe on a family legacy in 1884, her mother used June's daily letters home as the basis for a series, "Letters from a Young Lady," printed under June's name in the North Carolina Presbyterian. The editor had sent fifty dollars before June sailed, the only pay the series brought.
People: June Spencer Love
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Election fight splits the Philanthropic Society
A quarrel over whether two South Building students could join the Philanthropic Society at the last meeting of a term, in time to swing its election, led some members to secede in 1884, and a split nearly followed in the Dialectic. Professors Winston and Manning could not bring the seceders back.
People: John Manning · George Tayloe Winston
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Foxes Knob School opens as a one-room log school near Mebane
Foxes Knob School opened in the mid-1880s in a single log room. It gained a frame addition about 1900 and was later turned into a house.
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Francis P. Venable brings tennis to Chapel Hill
Venable laid out a tennis court in the grove south of his house about 1884, when sport at the university was otherwise limited to casual baseball and an old-style kicking football.
People: Francis Preston Venable
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Governor Jonathan Worth's portrait is given to the university
At the 1884 commencement John Manning presented an oil portrait of Worth on behalf of the late governor's grandsons, recalling his nearly thirty years as a university trustee. President Battle accepted it, Governor Jarvis spoke, and the portrait was hung beside those of Davie, Caldwell and Swain.
People: John Manning · Kemp Plummer Battle · Thomas Jordan Jarvis
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Hillsborough Methodists report their Sunday school's hundredth anniversary
In 1884 H. N. Brown reported that the Hillsborough Methodist Sunday school had celebrated its centennial; it then had thirty-five pupils and seven teachers and a library of church literature.
Subject: Hillsborough Methodist Church
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Orange County reports 33 white and 31 Black public schools
In 1884 Orange had 33 white and 31 Black public schools, with 1,369 white and 1,134 Black pupils, a term under ten weeks, and mostly log buildings. School property was valued at $3,500 for white schools and $2,500 for Black schools.
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Randall speaks on North Carolina folklore at commencement
Graduating with the class of 1884, Randall was class prophet at the Class Day exercises in the Chapel and gave the commencement speech 'North Carolina Folk Lore', which met with unusual applause.
People: Samuel Mallett Gattis · James Lee Love
Subject: Gerrard Hall
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Robert Strange MacRae buys Dr. Harris's drugstore and its building
MacRae bought the drug business from Dr. Thomas W. Harris and the building it occupied, at Franklin and Henderson streets, from David McCauley. He sold the drugstore to Dr. R. H. Whitehead in 1893.
People: David McCauley · Thomas West Harris
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Students and Black residents nearly come to blows on election night in Chapel Hill
While votes were being counted on the night of a Chapel Hill election in 1884, a young Black man from the country tried to trip a student, and students and Black townspeople gathered on both sides before the crowd broke up with little harm. Students afterward whipped Eli, a Black man who waited on the West Building, for cheering the other side.
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The Park Building, a brick general store, stands on North Churton Street
The two-story pressed-brick building at 128 North Churton Street, one of the oldest commercial buildings in the district, is built as a general store and is labeled the Park Building on Sanborn maps from 1884 to 1911. It now serves as a bank with drive-through lanes.
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The university makes Governor Jarvis a doctor of laws
At the 1884 commencement, his last as governor and president of the trustees, Jarvis received an honorary LL.D. and told the graduates that they were the university. Kemp Battle said the university owed him more than any other man for its railroad, Memorial Hall and money in times of need.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle
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Pleasant H. Dalton is installed as pastor of New Hope
After nearly ten years as stated supply, Dalton was installed as the church's pastor.
People: Pleasant Hunter Dalton
Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church
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The University Summer Normal School holds its last session
The eighth and last session enrolled 305 teachers, after which the legislature divided the $2,000 yearly appropriation among four normal schools chosen by the Board of Education. Battle counted 2,480 enrollments at Chapel Hill from 1877 through 1884.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle
Subject: University Summer School
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A Hillsborough doctor has the picnic grounds and paths on Occoneechee Mountain put in order
A Dr. Wilson raised money to fix up the picnic grounds near the mountain spring and the paths to Sofa Rock and the Panther's Den, so the town could reach them easily. The Orange County Observer thanked him for the people of Hillsboro.
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The class of 1884 holds its Class Day with a song written by Cornelia Phillips Spencer
In commencement week the class of 1884, with Love as president and Samuel M. Gattis as secretary, put on one of the university's early Class Day programs. W. G. Randall read a comic prophecy and Gattis a class history, and the class sang a song Spencer had written for it.
People: James Lee Love · Samuel Mallett Gattis · William George Randall
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The faculty revives the valedictory honor and gives it to James Lee Love
At the 1884 commencement the faculty brought back the old custom of naming a valedictorian for the best standing over the whole course and gave the honor to Love, who also won the Mangum Medal for his graduating speech, "The New North State." Memorial Hall was not finished, so his class was the last to graduate in Gerrard Hall.
Subject: Gerrard Hall
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A building of Mrs. Charles White's used by Bingham School cadets as a mess burns
Early on Tuesday morning, August 19, 1884, fire destroyed a building owned by Mrs. Charles White that some Bingham School cadets used as a messing club. Its insurance had lapsed and the loss was put at about $1,000.
Subject: Bingham School
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Old students start a subscription for a monument over Nancy Hilliard's grave
E. T. McKethan of Fayetteville began collecting money from former Chapel Hill students to put a plain stone over Nancy Hilliard's neglected grave, and Cornelia Phillips Spencer endorsed the plan. The stone records the alumni's gratitude for her kindness and hospitality.
People: Cornelia Phillips Spencer
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A Memorial Hall tablet names the eleven donors of the university's land
The trustees placed a tablet in Memorial Hall naming the eleven Orange County landowners whose gifts of land settled the university and the village at Chapel Hill. Cameron called them the sturdy Orange farmers who fixed the seat of the institution.
People: Christopher Barbee · Edmund Jones · Matthew McCauley · William McCauley · Mark Morgan
Subject: Memorial Hall
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A farmstead with a center-hall house and five outbuildings is built on Mount Moriah Road
In 1885 a story-and-a-half center-hall frame house went up with five frame outbuildings, all of which survived in good condition in 1992.
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A stock law ends open range in four Orange County townships
An 1885 act barred cattle from running at large in Cedar Grove, Little River, Hillsboro and Bingham townships and had the commissioners fence those townships from a special tax. A second act let Chapel Hill Township adopt the stock law on a petition of three-fourths of its freeholders.
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Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 3, 2026.
