Chronology

The university divides the state into ten escheat districts with its own attorneys

To collect the restored escheats, the trustees named attorneys in ten districts, among them Archibald D. Murphey for the district beginning with Chatham, paid by commission on sales and collections. The same year the legislature gave the university estate balances unclaimed for seven years.

People: Archibald D. Murphey

Thomas H. Taylor builds and runs a shoe store on Franklin Street

Tom Taylor, son of John Taylor Sr., put up a shoe store on the western half of Lot #14, which his father bought in 1812. The building later housed Dr. Walter Norwood's medicine shop.

Grammar school under William Paisley opens west of Hillsborough

A grammar school under the Rev. William Paisley was announced to open in January 1809 about ten miles west of Hillsborough, teaching Latin, Greek, geography and philosophy for sixteen dollars a year.

Cameron builds Fairntosh east of the Stagville house

On land beside Stagville that Richard Bennehan gave the couple at their 1803 marriage, Duncan Cameron began building Fairntosh in 1810, finished the main house in 1811 and added a large wing about 1818 to 1821. Its dependencies included his law office, a chapel and a family burying ground, and he went on to hold more than a thousand people in slavery.

Dr. James Webb serves as Hillsborough agent of the Bank of Cape Fear

In 1810 Dr. James Webb was appointed Hillsborough agent, or cashier, of the branch of the Bank of the Cape Fear, a post he held until 1846. The branch rented a small building on West King Street, and many of its stockholder lists, dividend records and at least one ledger survive.

Polly Burke buys her house on East Queen Street

Mary Williams Burke, the only child of Governor Thomas Burke, bought a modest house on East Queen Street in Hillsborough for four hundred dollars on June 5, 1810, when she was twenty-eight. She added the east bay to the house, which was later enlarged and named Heartsease.

Subject: Heartsease

The university makes David Caldwell of Guilford a Doctor of Divinity

At the 1810 commencement the university gave honorary doctorates of divinity to David Caldwell, James Hall and James McRee. Caldwell's Latin diploma, dated in Person Hall, calls Chapel Hill Sacrarii Mons, the hill of the chapel.

People: Joseph Caldwell

Subject: Person Hall

Justice Alfred Moore dies and leaves Moorefields to his son

Former U.S. Supreme Court justice Alfred Moore, builder of Moorefields, died and willed the house to his son Alfred, a lawyer who went on to serve in the House of Commons and as its speaker in 1823-1824.

Subject: Moorefields

A log house said to date from 1811 is built for the Craig family near New Hope

Local tradition puts the building of this story-and-a-half log house on New Hope Church Road in 1811, for the Craigs; the Blackwoods owned it for many years and added to it around 1900. If the date holds it is the oldest log house in the survey.

A student outbreak leaves the university with no graduates

After an insubordination whose details are lost, every senior except John A. Ramsey forfeited his diploma, and the 1811 commencement conferred only an honorary A.B. on Ramsey. Three of the six who later passed examinations received diplomas in 1813.

Allan Bubberly sells the future Weaver House property to Thomas Weaver

In 1811 Allan Bubberly conveyed the old homestead and tavern property on the Hillsborough road to Thomas Weaver. Weaver's descendants kept it for ninety-nine years, and the house still carries the family name.

Subject: Weaver House

The Strudwick heirs' enslaved people are hired out under Dr. James Webb's guardianship

After Col. William F. Strudwick died in 1810, Dr. James Webb managed the estate for his widow and younger sons and hired out the people it held, listing them by name year after year. In 1819 two of those assigned to young Edmund Strudwick, Jim and Nelly, were sold or leased for $533 and $500.

People: James Webb · Edmund Strudwick

William R. Davie receives the university's first honorary Doctor of Laws

The University of North Carolina awarded William R. Davie an honorary LL.D. in 1811, the first Doctor of Laws it conferred; honorary master's degrees had gone to Joseph Caldwell and others in 1799. Davie had sat on the board of trustees from 1789 to 1807.

William Kirkland gives four enslaved people to Thomas and Anne Ruffin

Out of affection for his son-in-law Thomas Ruffin and his daughter Anne, William Kirkland of Ayr Mount conveyed to Ruffin a woman named Juley, her two children, John and an infant, and a young girl, all of them already in the Ruffins' household. The deed was proved at the Orange County court that August.

People: William Kirkland · Thomas Ruffin · Anne Kirkland Ruffin

Subject: Ayr Mount

A sacred music society forms and an organ is ordered for the university chapel

The Raleigh Register reported a new society for the study of sacred music at the university and an organ, paid for by private gifts, already built in New York. The trustees later paid $50 to bring it to Chapel Hill.

Subject: Person Hall

Archibald D. Murphey serves Orange County in the state senate

Archibald D. Murphey was elected to the legislature from Orange County in 1812 and sat in the state senate until 1818. There he proposed a publicly financed system of schools in a report he finished on November 29, 1817, and in 1819 he followed it with his memoir on internal improvements.

John H. Pickard is principal of Hawfield Academy

Hawfield Academy, about ten miles west of Hillsborough, had John H. Pickard as principal from 1812 to 1814. The school had earlier been led by William Paisley.

Professor Andrew Rhea buys the Hillsborough Street land where the log "Old Tavern" stands

In 1812 professor Andrew Rhea bought a tract a few blocks north of the campus, and he may have built the log house still standing at 419 Hillsborough Street as his own home. The house goes by the name Old Tavern, although nothing shows it was ever used as one.

Subject: Old Tavern (419 Hillsborough Street)

Upperclassmen shut out of the literary societies form the Kappa Alpha order

When the Dialectic and Philanthropic societies stopped taking juniors and seniors to make room for new members, older students met in new secret clubs, the first being an order of Kappa Alpha.

Rev. William Bingham takes charge of Hillsborough Academy

The trustees announced that the Rev. William Bingham had taken charge of Hillsborough Academy, with exercises to begin on February 3 and Elizabeth Russell in charge of a female department.

Subject: Hillsborough Academy

Robert H. Chapman is elected president as Caldwell returns to teaching mathematics

Caldwell asked to give up the presidency to finish his geometry and study astronomy. The board accepted his resignation, elected the Presbyterian minister Chapman president at $1,200 a year and kept Caldwell as professor of mathematics at $1,000.

People: William Hawkins · Robert H. (Robert Hett) Chapman

Thomas Ruffin represents Hillsborough in the House of Commons

Ruffin sat for the town of Hillsborough in the North Carolina House of Commons in 1813, 1815 and 1816, until he was elected a Superior Court judge at the age of twenty-nine.

Thomas Ruffin serves on the University of North Carolina Board of Trustees

Ruffin served on the university's Board of Trustees from 1813 to 1831 and again from 1842 to 1868. The residence hall completed in 1922 was named for him and for his son Thomas Ruffin Jr.

William Cain builds Sans Souci

William Cain probably built Sans Souci, his Hillsborough town house, about 1813, soon after he bought the thirty-acre tract in 1812; a 1953 plate caption had dated it about 1760. It was the home of S. T. Latta Jr. in 1953.

Subject: Sans Souci

William Watson and William Barbee open a lumber yard

William Watson came to Chapel Hill in 1813 to work on South Building and went into the lumber business with William Barbee. Their yard supplied much of the lumber used in village building; its site is not known.

Christopher Barbee opens a blacksmith shop on Franklin Street

Christopher Barbee, the university's largest land donor, rented the southwest corner of Matthew McCauley's Lot #8 for a smithy with a 33-foot front on the street. He bought the corner in 1824, and William D. Kirksey was advertising as the village blacksmith by 1833.

Frederick Nash represents Orange County in the House of Commons

Nash sat for Orange County in the House of Commons in 1814, 1816 and 1817. He was speaker of the house in 1814.

Hillsborough Academy is rechartered

Hillsborough Academy received a new charter from the General Assembly in 1814.

Subject: Hillsborough Academy

James Thompson and George Trice build a store on Franklin Street

Thompson and Trice bought a 20-by-30-foot piece of Matthew McCauley's Lot #8 and put up a store on its narrow street front. Known later as Trice's store, it was held back when McCauley's heir sold the rest of the lot in 1822.

Margaretta Chapman's marble headstone becomes the oldest surviving monument in the Chapel Hill graveyard

The Baroque-style marble headstone of sixteen-year-old Margaretta Chapman, who died in 1814, was probably set soon after her death and is thought to be the oldest stone monument in the cemetery. Like other early stones it was likely shipped in, since no gravestone carvers worked in North Carolina before the 1820s.

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Professor William Hooper builds a house on East Franklin Street

About 1814 William Hooper, professor of ancient languages, put up a plain two-story Federal house at 504 East Franklin Street, one block east of the campus, with brick chimneys at the gable ends and a center door under a transom. It is one of only two houses from the village of that decade still standing.

Students move into the finished South Building

Subscriptions Caldwell gathered on tours of the state in 1809 and 1811, about $8,220, let contractor John Close finish the Main Building begun in 1798. Students moved in during 1814.

People: Joseph Caldwell · John Haywood · William Gaston

Subject: South Building

The earliest part of the Walker House is built off St. Mary's Road

The heavy-timber rear section of the Walker House on the Robert Walker farm, on Schley Road just off St. Mary's Road northeast of Hillsborough, is said to date from 1814.

Thomas H. Taylor buys Lot #17 and builds the Tom Taylor house

Taylor bought Lot #17 from Frances Benton, enlarged the log cabin on it, and later built a much larger house around it, moving in about 1817. The university acquired the house in 1835, and it became President Swain's home and then housing for faculty.

Caldwell takes students before a justice of the peace over attacks on President Chapman's property

After night raids on Chapman's stable, cart and gate, and tar and feathers on his gatepost, Caldwell asked justice Pleasant Henderson for a general warrant. Refused, he named five students, and a hearing questioned the student body under oath.

People: Pleasant Henderson · Robert H. (Robert Hett) Chapman

A Mr. Graham and Miss Farley take charge of Hillsborough Academy

After William Bingham left in 1815, Hillsborough Academy was run for a time by a teacher named Graham, with Miss Farley presumably over the female department.

Subject: Hillsborough Academy

Orange County's enslaved people are valued at nearly two thirds of its land

The 1815 valuation put the county's enslaved population at $1,216,347 and all its land at $1,917,993.

Robert H. Chapman serves New Hope as stated supply

After James H. Bowman left, Chapman supplied the New Hope pulpit about 1815.

The Hillsborough Presbyterian Church is built on the old St. Matthew's church lot with lottery money

The brick church on West Tryon Street was built in 1815 and 1816 near the site of the colonial St. Matthew's church, lost in the 1790s, with money raised by a lottery the state authorized. The brickmasons John Berry and Samuel Hancock are credited with the work.

People: John Berry · Samuel Hancock

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

William Bingham runs his school at Mount Repose northwest of Hillsborough

After leaving Hillsborough Academy, the Rev. William Bingham kept his own academy at Mount Repose, in a house on Back Creek about ten miles northwest of Hillsborough. His son William James Bingham closed it in 1826 when he took over Hillsborough Academy.

People: William James Bingham

William Huntington opens his own silversmith business in Hillsborough

Trained by his father, the engraver Roswell Huntington, William Huntington sets up his own Hillsborough shop, selling silver along with gravestones, flour and medicine and running a blacksmith shop.

Edward Robson keeps a store and the post office on Franklin Street

Before selling the property to Thomas H. Taylor in 1816, Edward Robson ran a store on the eastern half of Lot #10 and kept the village post office in it.

Senator Archibald D. Murphey of Orange moves for a legislative committee on public schools

Following Governor Miller's 1816 message, Orange County senator Archibald D. Murphey won a joint committee to study public education. Its report led to a second committee, also under Murphey, whose plan Pender credits as the groundwork of the later state school system.

Thomas Ruffin of Hillsborough is chosen Speaker of the House of Commons

Ruffin, sitting for the borough of Hillsborough, was elected Speaker in the 1816 session, his last in the legislature before he became a superior court judge.

William Norwood becomes a trustee of Hillsborough Academy

William Norwood was a trustee of Hillsborough Academy by 1816 and chaired its board in 1826.

Subject: Hillsborough Academy

Witherspoon takes charge of the Hillsborough Academy

Returning to Hillsborough at twenty-five, Witherspoon took a double charge: the pastorate of the newly built Presbyterian church and the principalship of the closely allied Hillsborough Academy. He gave up the academy sometime after 1819.

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

Subject: Hillsborough Academy · Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

John Craig, a founder and first elder of New Hope church, dies

John Craig, eldest son of William Craige, died at about 90. Craig names him with Gilbert Strayhorn as the church's original founders and first elders.

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

Senior William B. Shepard speaks forbidden political passages and sets off a student revolt

Chapman had struck Republican passages from Shepard's oration and ordered him to sit when he spoke them anyway, but students cheered him on and the next day met in the chapel to back him. The trustees expelled Shepard and George C. Dromgoole, others were suspended, and most of the rest signed apologies.

People: Robert H. (Robert Hett) Chapman

A gunpowder bomb explodes outside tutor John Patterson's door

Apparently in revenge for the Shepard suspensions, someone filled a brass door knob with powder, lit a match fuse and left it at Patterson's door. A student picked it up and dropped it moments before it went off, and no one was hurt.

People: William Mercer Green

Robert H. Chapman resigns the university presidency

At the first board meeting after the Shepard affair Chapman resigned, saying he wished to give himself to the ministry. The trustees made it effective at once, paid him half a year's salary and let him keep the president's house to the end of the session.

People: Duncan Cameron · Robert H. (Robert Hett) Chapman

Joseph Caldwell is elected president a second time

After William Neill and Lewis von Schweinitz declined the office, the trustees returned the presidency to Caldwell by a commission taking effect January 1, 1817.

People: John Haywood · William Polk

Archibald D. Murphey submits his Report on Education to the General Assembly

While state senator for Orange, Murphey laid before the Assembly a plan for primary schools, academies and more state support for the university. The book calls it the first definite plan for public education offered in North Carolina.

John Motley Morehead serves as a tutor at the university

After graduating in 1817, Morehead was one of the university's two tutors for that year, with Priestly Hinton Mangum.

Nancy Hilliard's family moves from Granville County to Chapel Hill

William and Lucy Walker Hilliard moved their family, including their daughter Nancy, from Granville County to Chapel Hill in 1817. She later kept the village's main hotel for students and travelers.

The Rev. John Knox Witherspoon adds the paired end chimneys to his West King Street house

While he owned the house now called Twin Chimneys, the Presbyterian minister and schoolmaster built the Flemish-bond pairs of chimneys at each gable end that gave it its name. The two-story front porch dates from about 1816.

Hillsborough physician James S. Smith serves in Congress

James Strudwick Smith, an Orange County-born physician who had studied medicine with Dr. James Webb of Hillsborough, represented the Hillsborough district in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Congresses from March 4, 1817, to March 3, 1821. He was defeated when he sought a third term.

People: James Webb

New Hope's elders sell seventeen acres of church land for repairs

After what the deed calls mature deliberation, the elders and subscribers sold seventeen acres at the southwest corner of the church tract to Samuel Strayhorn to pay for church repairs. Seventy acres of Gilbert Strayhorn's gift remained.

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

Dr. James Webb deeds land for Polly Burke's log schoolhouse

On November 6, 1817, Dr. James Webb deeded to his neighbor Mary W. Burke a strip of his lot on East Queen Street, where a log schoolhouse was built for her to teach the Webb children. Known as Miss Polly Burke's School, it took neighborhood children from about 1818 to 1834 and is cited as a forerunner of the Burwell School.

People: James Webb

Subject: Burwell School

A student of 1818 recalls the village's two stores and Hilliard's tavern

Writing to Elisha Mitchell in 1853, William D. Moseley of the class of 1818 remembered about a dozen houses on the main street in his student years, with two stores, Trice's and Tom Taylor's, and Hilliard's tavern. Of the private buildings he named, only two houses on East Franklin Street survive.

People: William Dunn Moseley

Archibald D. Murphey becomes a Superior Court judge

Archibald D. Murphey left the state senate, where he had represented Orange since 1812, to become a judge of the Superior Court in 1818.

Jacob Jeffries of the Texas community makes his will

The will of Jacob Jeffries, one of the first heads of household on the 1787 tax list, was witnessed by David Haitcock, and one of his daughters married into the Guy family. Hazel reads such ties among the Jeffries, Haitcock, Guy and Whitmore families as the marks of a single community that married within itself.

Mary Mendenhall keeps Union School near Woody's Ferry on the Haw

In 1818 Union School, about a mile south of Woody's Ferry on the Haw River in Orange County, was in the charge of Mary Mendenhall.

Mrs. Frederick Nash plants the double row of cedars that forms Hillsborough's Cedar Walk

Mrs. Frederick Nash planted two rows of cedar trees along a path of about ten feet running north from West Margaret Lane toward West King Street, linking the Nash house with the John H. Witherspoon house. The walk survives and several houses face onto it.

Students James K. Polk and William Horn Battle board at the Tenney farmhouse

The one-story frame house at 381 Tenney Circle, a dwelling on John B. Tenney's farm northeast of the campus, was probably standing by 1818 and keeps much of its early interior. James K. Polk of the class of 1818 and William Horn Battle of the class of 1820 took room and board there and walked two miles to classes.

People: William Horn Battle

The Puckett house stands on East Franklin Street across from Hooper's

John Puckett, a former postmaster, bought the lot at 501 East Franklin Street from John Craig in 1817, and by early 1818 his widow lived in a two-story Federal house there; Denison Olmsted bought it from her about 1820 and remodeled it. Before the Civil War it was the home of mathematics professor James Phillips, whose family held Ben and Dilsey Craig in slavery; the Craigs lived in a brick kitchen in the back yard.

Thomas Ruffin's law office is built beside his Hillsborough house

A one-room frame law office with a rubble stone chimney was built for Thomas Ruffin, later chief justice of North Carolina, near his house on what became the Burnside lawn. It still stands on its original site.

Subject: Burnside

Trustees add a professorship of rhetoric and logic

Counting on money from Tennessee land warrants, the board created a chair of rhetoric and logic and an adjunct chair of moral philosophy over one dissenting vote. Shepard K. Kollock took the rhetoric chair in the fall of 1819, and critics complained that the faculty was filling with Presbyterian ministers.

People: Joseph Caldwell · Denison Olmsted

Willie P. Mangum represents Orange County in the House of Commons

In 1818, a year after his admission to the bar, Willie P. Mangum was elected to the House of Commons for Orange County, where he promoted constitutional reform.

Elisha Mitchell arrives in Chapel Hill as professor of mathematics

Elisha Mitchell, a Yale graduate from Connecticut, arrived at the University of North Carolina in January 1818 as professor of mathematics and natural philosophy. He taught at Chapel Hill until his death in 1857, moving to chemistry, geology and mineralogy in 1825.

Mary Walker is born into an enslaved family held by the Bennehans and Camerons

Mary Walker was born to Priscilla, whose mother Aggy had been one of the first enslaved children born on the Bennehan plantation in 1781. Her monument at Mount Auburn Cemetery records her birth in Orange County.

Drunken students break into a Chapel Hill kitchen and beat an enslaved man

On a Sunday three students full of corn whiskey shouted through the village, broke into a kitchen, beat a Black man there and insulted his owner and family. They were suspended for four months.

William Woods Holden is born near Hillsborough

William Woods Holden, later editor of the North Carolina Standard and governor, was born near Hillsborough to Thomas Holden and Priscilla Woods. His grandfather had moved to Orange County to farm, and from age six he was raised by his stepmother, Sally Nichols Holden.

Elijah Graves preaches at New Hope as stated supply

Graves, who was teaching at Hillsborough, preached at New Hope from November 1818 until April 1820. A temperance reformer, he persuaded many hearers to sign a pledge.

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

Hillsborough Academy publishes its rules for students

Under principal John Witherspoon, Hillsborough Academy printed its rules of conduct in the Raleigh Register. Students had to attend daily worship, stay out of stores and taverns, avoid liquor, and keep the Sabbath.

People: John Knox Witherspoon

Subject: Hillsborough Academy

A sitting-room wing and a separate kitchen are added at the Nash-Hooper House

A one-story frame sitting room, later the dining room, was built on a log base at the rear of the Nash-Hooper House, giving it an L shape. A detached frame kitchen went up just east of the house at the same time.

Subject: Nash-Hooper House

Amendments drawn by Bartlett Yancey reshape the university's board of trustees

The act raised the board to 65, the number of counties, left vacancies to the General Assembly, fixed a quorum of seven and let an annual meeting of fifteen remove a trustee for improper conduct. Special meetings could not undo votes of an annual meeting.

An auxiliary Colonization Society is reported active in Chapel Hill

The Reverend William Meade reported a thriving Chapel Hill branch of the American Colonization Society, which promoted sending free Black people to Liberia.

Denison Olmsted begins teaching chemistry at Chapel Hill

Appointed in November 1817 to the university's new professorship of chemistry, Olmsted spent a year studying with Benjamin Silliman at Yale and began teaching at Chapel Hill in the fall of 1819. He stayed until the end of 1825, when Elisha Mitchell succeeded him.

Eagle Lodge is revived at Hillsborough after twenty dormant years

Eagle Lodge, silent since 1799, was revived under a new number, 71. The Grand Lodge restored its original number, 19, in 1932.

Subject: Eagle Lodge

Elijah Graves announces Mrs. Graves' Female School at Long Meadows

In 1819 the Rev. Elijah Graves announced Mrs. Graves' Female School at Long Meadows, six miles northwest of Hillsborough.

Samuel Hancock buys lots near the Eno for a brickyard

With a $50 loan from Dr. James Webb, brickmason Samuel Hancock bought lots near the Eno River for a brickyard, which became known as the Webb-Hancock brickyard. Webb's 1842 bankruptcy papers say the two men ran it as partners.

People: James Webb

St. Mary's Chapel is admitted to the Episcopal convention

The St. Mary's congregation in eastern Orange County was received into the Episcopal convention of North Carolina, two years after the diocese was formed.

Subject: St. Mary’s Chapel

The university closes its grammar school and makes Hillsborough Academy its preparatory school

When Abner W. Clopton gave up the grammar school the university dropped it. Caldwell arranged for Hillsborough Academy, under John Witherspoon with John Rogers teaching, to prepare boys for the university, whose faculty could attend its examinations and admit its top pupils on certificate.

People: Abner Wentworth Clopton · John Knox Witherspoon · Joseph Caldwell

Subject: Hillsborough Academy · University grammar school (Preparatory School)

The university stops running Steward's Hall and lets students board where they choose

Ending the old commons, the trustees rented Steward's Hall to Mrs. Burton, who had to feed students for no more than $9 a month the first year and allow the commencement ball in the dining room free. Board there had risen from $30 a year in 1795 to $95 in 1818.

Subject: Steward’s Hall

Students give up pistols and dirks after a Washington's Birthday brawl

After Walker Anderson's oration a dinner ended in drunken fighting, a dirk was drawn and a peacemaker was stabbed in the arm. The students were made to hand in their weapons, six pistols and two dirks, to be held while they remained at the university.

William D. Paisley sells his Orange County farm to Elijah Pickard

Paisley left the Hawfields in 1818 to head the Greensborough Academy and in September 1819 sold the log house farm to Elijah Pickard. The chain of title is unclear for some years after the sale.

Subject: Paisley-Rice Log House

A Federal house is built on West Queen Street for Eliza Hasell

Eliza G. Hasell bought the lots from Archibald D. Murphey on July 27, 1819, and the two-story house with pedimented one-story wings, modeled on a plate in Robert Morris's Rural Architecture, was built for her about 1820. After her marriage to William S. Plumer she sold it to Samuel Simpson, and his daughter Mary Simpson Nash's family held it into the twentieth century.

People: Archibald D. Murphey

Subject: Hasell-Nash House

A hall-and-parlor farmhouse is built on the Cabe land by the Eno

The one-and-a-half-story frame house, with unpainted heart pine walls and late Georgian mantels, was probably built in the 1820s by Jamima Cabe and her husband Jehu Brown, who married in 1827. It may instead date from before William Cabe's death in 1828.

David Faucette builds his farmhouse above the Eno

David Faucette built a two-story frame farmhouse above the Eno about 1820. It gained Greek Revival trim in the mid-1800s and a front porch about 1880. Placed on the state Study List in April 1992, it was listed in the National Register in 1999 as the David Faucette House; the name The Elms was given by owners in 1977.

Subject: David Faucette House (The Elms)

Eagle Lodge votes money toward a male academy in Hillsborough

A year after its revival, Eagle Lodge voted to put money toward building a male academy in Hillsborough.

Subject: Eagle Lodge · Hillsborough Academy

Jeffries and other Texas community families move to Ohio and Indiana

From the 1820s to the 1840s a number of families left the Texas community for Greene County, Ohio, and some went on to Rush and Whitley counties in Indiana. There members of the Jeffries family won three court cases between 1842 and 1869 over whether, as people of Indian descent, they could vote.

Lebanon Methodist Church is organized

Lebanon Methodist Church was organized in rural Orange County in 1820.

Professor Denison Olmsted buys the Widow Puckett house on East Franklin Street

In 1820 Denison Olmsted bought the two-story Federal house and lot at 501 East Franklin Street from the Puckett family. From 1826 it was home to the family of mathematics professor James Phillips.

People: James Phillips

Saddler James Phillips walls in the Lockhart-Phillips family cemetery

James Phillips probably built the fieldstone wall around the small family graveyard on East Tryon Street, where Catherine Lockhart was buried in 1792 and Phillips himself in 1847.

Texas community families leave Orange for Sugar Fork in Macon County

In the 1820s, after the Cherokee cession opened the land, a group of Guy, Whitmore, Jeffries and Gibson families from the Texas community moved to the mountains and formed the Sugar Fork settlement in Macon County. It stayed distinct for many years; letters of 1869 and 1872 to the Indian Office described its people as Catawba who had come from Orange County.

The Beasley House is built on a hall-and-parlor plan

Thought to date from the 1820s, the Beasley House ranks among the finest hall-and-parlor houses left in Orange County. Its early story-and-a-half section keeps its original room layout and its hewn, pegged frame, though the house was changed and enlarged late in the nineteenth century.

The Miller log house is built near Rougemont

The Miller house is a log dwelling with a second log pen behind it, joined by a covered breezeway; the rear pen served as the kitchen and has a stone chimney about eight feet wide.

The core of the Saunders-Pritchard House is built on land that later became Northside

The two-story I-house at 208 Pritchard Avenue stands at right angles to the street because it is older than the street. Local tradition carries its core back as far as 1820; an early owner was the Civil War veteran, preacher and farmer Joseph Hubbard Saunders, and merchant and landowner William N. Pritchard owned it later.

Thomas Ruffin gives the land for St. Matthew's Church

Thomas Ruffin donated the hill on the east side of town where St. Matthew's church and churchyard stand, as a thank offering tied to his courtship of Anne Kirkland there.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

A. Mason opens the Eagle Hotel at Mason Hall

Mason advertised in February 1820 that his seven-room house at Mason Hall was nearly finished and open to travelers and summer visitors. Guests could read newspapers from across the country in his hall.

William Kirkland opens a cash store in Hillsborough

Kirkland advertised in February 1820 a new cash store in his former house, stocked with cloth, blankets, guns, tools and hardware. He also sought a young clerk.

New Hope church is reorganized under Shepherd K. Kollock

On April 22, 1820, Kollock laid before the session Orange Presbytery's call for long-vacant churches to be reorganized; finding no roll of members and little discipline, the session resolved to reorganize the next day. On April 23 four elders and ten members publicly assented to the articles of faith and covenant.

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

D. Yarbrough opens a grocery store in Hillsborough

Yarbrough advertised in May 1820 a cash-only grocery in Mr. Bacon's former shoe shop, selling coffee, sugar, rum, brandy, wine, tea, china, glass, nails and powder.

Chapel Hill Academy prepares boys for the university under James A. Craig

James A. Craig announced that the Chapel Hill Academy would begin its session on June 20, 1820, with a course arranged as preparation for the University of North Carolina and sessions matching the university's.

Alexander Gattis, Samuel Faucett and Gilbert Strayhorn are ordained elders at New Hope

The session added three ruling elders; Gilbert Strayhorn was a grandson of the founding elder and a son of William Strayhorn.

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

A Methodist camp meeting at Hillsborough adds about 38 members and starts a fund for a meeting house

A camp meeting held at Hillsborough in 1821 brought about thirty-eight people into the Methodist fold, and the converts opened a subscription to pay for a house of worship. Two years later the church bought a lot with a house on it.

A small Federal house is built on East Orange Street for Martin Hanks

The three west bays of the house later called Little Hawfields and the Ruffin-Roulhac House were built about 1821 for Martin Hanks. In the 1830s Francis L. Hawks and Frances C. P. Blount Hill bought it and added the east rooms.

People: Francis L. (Francis Lister) Hawks

Subject: Ruffin-Roulhac House (Little Hawfields)

Archibald D. Murphey offers forty enslaved people for sale

Murphey put forty people up for sale in 1821, a number the book calls unmatched in Orange sale notices, where most sales involved one or a few people.

People: Archibald D. Murphey

Eagle Lodge runs a lottery to pay for its Masonic Hall

Eagle Lodge held a lottery over eleven years and used the proceeds to build the Masonic Hall in Hillsborough, still in use in 1953.

People: James Strudwick Smith

Subject: Eagle Lodge

Elisha Mitchell is ordained by the Presbytery of Orange at Hillsborough

In 1821 the Presbytery of Orange, meeting in Hillsborough, ordained Professor Elisha Mitchell, who had been licensed to preach by the Congregational Church.

Tavern keeper William Adams builds the house that became the Burwell School

William Adams, a Hillsborough tavern keeper and businessman, builds a two-story house with two rooms on each floor facing West Union Street in 1821. Those rooms survive as the south rooms of the Burwell School.

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

Subject: Burwell School

The Hillsborough Recorder calls slavery a misfortune and urges colonization

Editor Dennis Heartt wrote that slavery harmed the state but argued against freeing people to remain in North Carolina. He proposed sending free Black people to Africa at public expense and asked the legislature to act.

People: Dennis Heartt

Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

The Rev. William Mercer Green builds the first house on the land later called Montrose

Around 1821 the Rev. William Mercer Green, rector of St. Matthew's, built the first house on land he had acquired from William Kirkland; the tract had first belonged to James Hogg. William A. Graham bought it in 1842.

People: William Kirkland

Subject: Montrose

The university rents the empty Grammar School house to hunter Peyton Clements

Two years after closing its preparatory school, the university let the building on the Grand Avenue ground to Peyton Clements, a hunter who supplied game to the college and the village boarding houses.

Subject: University grammar school (Preparatory School)

Trustees vote to raise Old East a story and build Old West

At Caldwell's urging, and against the faculty's plea to spend on books and apparatus, the board voted to enlarge Old East, build Old West to match and start a new chapel, borrowing from banks against Tennessee land sales. Architect William Nichols ran the work, and the South Building's Prayer Hall became a chemistry laboratory.

People: Joseph Caldwell · Elisha Mitchell · William Nichols

Subject: South Building · Gerrard Hall · Old East · Old West

Brickmason Samuel Hancock joins the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church he helped build

Samuel Hancock joined the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church on November 17, 1821, five years after his wife Susan. He rented a pew and gave toward the pastor's salary and a bell.

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

William H. Adams buys the lots that became the Burwell School site

Hillsborough sold lots in the old North Town Commons pasture, advertising the town as a healthy place to live and to school children. In November 1821 William H. Adams took the deed for lots 152 and 153, an acre each, for $216.

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

Subject: Burwell School

Josiah Turner Jr. is born in Hillsborough

Josiah Turner Jr. was born in Hillsborough, the eldest son of Josiah and Eliza Evans Turner. His father was a longtime sheriff and large landowner in Orange County.

Bethlehem Presbyterian Church is organized

Elisha Mitchell, Elijah Graves and Samuel Child led the organization of Bethlehem Presbyterian Church, which built its first church the next year.

People: Elisha Mitchell · John Knox Witherspoon

Subject: Bethlehem Presbyterian Church

David B. Alsobrook buys Taylor's tavern and makes it a hotel

Attorney David B. Alsobrook bought John Taylor Sr.'s tavern and, after improvements, ran it as a hotel with a ballroom that became a favorite in the village.

Dr. Charles R. Yancey builds a house and farm buildings on Franklin Street

Dr. Yancey bought most of Lot #8 from William McCauley and put up a large house with a barn, carriage house, smokehouse, separate kitchen and quarters for enslaved people. Jesse Hargrave bought the place in 1840; the house burned in 1866.

Fanny Evans, a free woman of color, receives a town lot by the Eno

A land record gave Fanny Evans and her children Henry and Jane lot 135, a town lot running down to the Eno River. She also owned three lots at West Margaret Lane and Occoneechee Street. Her sons Henry and Wilson Bruce Evans became cabinetmakers in town.

John Faddis warns the public not to trade with the men he holds in slavery

Faddis ran a notice in the Hillsborough Recorder naming Jim, Joe, Alfred and Peter and threatening to prosecute anyone who sold them liquor or traded with them without his written leave.

John Rogers runs Hillsborough Academy

John Rogers ran Hillsborough Academy from 1822 to 1826, when W. J. Bingham succeeded him.

People: William Bingham (1835-1873)

Subject: Hillsborough Academy

Jonathan P. Sneed builds the house on the bluff south of the Eno later called Eno Lodge

Jonathan P. Sneed built a two-story Federal house on the high ground above the Eno across from town. It was later known as Norwood, Eno Lodge and the Eagles' Nest.

Subject: Eno Lodge

Named enslaved workers build the third story of Old East

Bills from William Nichols's 1822 to 1824 enlargement of Old East list enslaved carpenters, bricklayers and laborers including Bob, Henry, Nelson, Allman, Tony, Luke, Isaac and Ned Peek, with their pay due to their owners. One bill from John C. White came to about $395.

People: William Nichols

Subject: Old East

State architect William Nichols designs Old West and Gerrard Hall

In 1822 William Nichols, the English-born architect who was North Carolina's first state architect, drew Old West as a match for Old East and designed a new chapel, Gerrard Hall. Gerrard's south portico of four two-story Ionic columns made it the campus's first building in the Romantic Classical mode.

People: William Nichols

Subject: Gerrard Hall · Old West

Faculty send ten new students out of Chapel Hill in a smallpox scare

Word that ten arriving students had spent a night in Tarboro, where smallpox was spreading, set off a panic. The faculty ordered them to stay five miles from Chapel Hill until the danger passed.

People: Augustus Moore

The Franklin Library Society is organized in Hillsborough and chartered by the General Assembly

The Franklin Library Society was established in Hillsborough on February 7, 1822, for the promotion of learning and cultivation of virtue. The General Assembly incorporated it that December, giving it the power to hold property, sue and be sued, and make its own bylaws.

Dr. James Webb offers free smallpox vaccination in Hillsborough

The Hillsborough Recorder announced in February 1822 that Dr. James Webb had fresh vaccine matter and would vaccinate anyone who applied, free of charge, at his shop every Wednesday from noon to two o'clock. The notice cited smallpox recently brought into the Tarborough area.

A lateral-hall house is built on Margaret Lane for Caroline Mallett Walker and Carleton Walker

After Peter Mallett's heirs deeded their shares of Lot 19 to their sister Caroline Mary Mallett Walker, a one-and-a-half-story Federal house was apparently built there for her and her husband Carleton Walker. With Ayr Mount it is one of only two lateral-hall houses in Hillsborough.

Hugh Waddell begins practising law in Hillsborough

Waddell, an 1818 graduate of the university, began to practise law in Hillsborough and Orange County in 1823 and kept his practice there until 1867, when he moved to Wilmington.

John Wall Norwood builds Over-the-River across the Eno from Hillsborough

John Wall Norwood and his wife built a two-story, center-hall house south of the Eno opposite the town. It became known as Over-the-River and later as the Norwood-Webb-Cheshire House.

Subject: Over-the-River (Norwood-Webb-Cheshire House)

Mount Moriah Baptist Church is organized

Mount Moriah Baptist Church, a white congregation, was organized in 1823.

Subject: Mount Moriah Baptist Church

Professor Denison Olmsted is hired to make the state's geological survey

The Board of Agriculture, created in 1822, was allowed in 1823 to employ someone to survey the state's geology and minerals at $250 a year. It chose Olmsted, whose published report Battle thought probably the first of any state, and Elisha Mitchell later carried on the work.

People: Elisha Mitchell

Seniors hold a drinking party at the Foxhall spring

After final examinations nineteen of the twenty-eight seniors took whiskey and brandy to a spring north of the village called Foxhall, and one poured the liquor into the spring to make toddy. The faculty granted their diplomas only after they made formal acknowledgments.

The Hillsborough Recorder shop prints The Discipline of Friends and A Solemn Address to Youth

Besides the weekly paper, Dennis Heartt's Recorder office printed pamphlets. Two surviving titles from 1823 are The Discipline of Friends, for Quaker use, and A Solemn Address to Youth.

People: Dennis Heartt

Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

Willie P. Mangum begins his service in the U.S. House of Representatives

Mangum, a former superior court judge, took a seat in Congress for the district in 1823 and served two terms before resigning in 1826.

Dr. James Webb deeds Hillsborough's Methodists a lot and house on Tryon Street

For ten shillings Dr. James Webb conveyed a 44-foot-square part of town lot 102 on Tryon (then Church) Street to trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Church, on condition that a meeting house be kept there. A house already standing on the lot became the congregation's first church.

Subject: Hillsborough Methodist Church

Martin Hanks sells his lot and house at Churton and Orange streets to William H. Phillips

Martin Hanks sold town lot 181 to William H. Phillips for $650, a price that shows a house already stood there.

Subject: Ruffin-Roulhac House (Little Hawfields)

The Presbyterian session admonishes two men for trading in enslaved people

Hillsborough Presbyterian Church charged William Adams and John Wall with the "unchristian act of negro trading." Adams said he had sold people he held to pay his debts and taken friends' slaves to market with his own; the session admonished both men and did not punish them.

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

James S. Smith's building commission starts Hillsborough's brick Masonic Hall

In July 1823 commissioners James S. Smith, Thomas Clancy and J. P. Sneed advertised in the Hillsborough Recorder for proposals to build a brick Masonic Hall in the town. The cornerstone was laid on November 23, 1823, for the Greek Revival hall designed by William Nichols and built by local brickmasons John Berry and Samuel Hancock.

People: John Berry · William Nichols · Samuel Hancock

Subject: Eagle Lodge

The wardens of the poor buy 470 acres for a county poorhouse

Enoch Thompson deeded about 470 acres to the Wardens of the Poor of Orange County for $800, for a poorhouse and the support of paupers there. The poorhouse on this land stayed in use until 1941.

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

The cornerstone of Eagle Lodge's Masonic hall is laid on West King Street

The cornerstone of the brick Masonic hall at 142 West King Street, designed by state architect William Nichols and believed built by brickmasons John Berry and Samuel Hancock, was laid on November 23, 1823. The lot was deeded to the lodge in 1824 after the building went up.

People: John Berry · William Nichols · Samuel Hancock

Subject: Eagle Lodge

Faculty and Orange County trustees expel two students who attacked professors

Two students, drunk from the village grog shop and armed with a club and a pistol, went out after members of the faculty and assaulted two of them. The trustees living in Orange County were called to sit with the faculty, and the two were expelled.

People: Elisha Mitchell · Duncan Cameron · Thomas Ruffin · James Webb

Free Black woodworker Thomas Day advertises in Hillsborough

Thomas Day, the free Black cabinetmaker, lived in Hillsborough for a time and advertised his business in local papers in 1824.

Orange County votes for Andrew Jackson in the presidential election

Orange gave Jackson 638 votes to 591 for William H. Crawford, even though its congressman Willie P. Mangum backed Crawford. The county voted for Jackson again in 1828 (1,036 to 440) and 1832 (759 to 170 for Clay).

People: Willie P. Mangum

The trustees settle William Nichols's accounts for Old West and the campus repairs

The university settled with William Nichols, its supervisor and builder, for Old West, the new chapel, the bricks made on university land and repairs to South Building, the President's House and Steward's Hall. Battle gives the cost as about $26,587 and says the accounts showed a want of careful superintendence.

Subject: Old West · South Building · Steward’s Hall

Trustees send Caldwell to Europe to buy books and scientific instruments

Acting on Caldwell's February 1824 plea that the university could not go forward without books and apparatus, the trustees set aside $6,000, half for each, and accepted his offer to buy them abroad at his own expense. He wrote from London on August 31, 1824, after visiting booksellers and instrument makers and touring Scotland.

People: Denison Olmsted

University Lodge No. 80 is chartered at Chapel Hill

Chapel Hill's first Masonic lodge, University Lodge No. 80, was chartered. It stopped meeting in 1849 as older members died or moved away.

Subject: University Lodge

William A. Graham settles in Hillsborough to study law with Thomas Ruffin

Fresh from the university, Graham settled in Hillsborough in 1824 to study law with Ruffin, a path many later graduates followed into the county seat's law offices.

People: Thomas Ruffin

William Norwood is elected first junior warden of the reorganized St. Matthew's Church

When St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Hillsborough was reorganized, William Norwood was elected its first junior warden.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

Hillsborough Episcopalians organize St. Matthew's Church

After decades without a resident minister, Hillsborough's Episcopalians organized a parish again and founded the present St. Matthew's on Thomas Ruffin's gift of land, with William Mercer Green as first rector.

People: William Mercer Green · Thomas Ruffin · Francis L. (Francis Lister) Hawks · William Norwood

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

A branch Manumission Society meeting at Trotter's Creek issues an address against slavery

Meeting at Trotter's Creek, a branch of the Manumission Society, strong among Orange Quakers, adopted an address calling on citizens to end slavery by consent and to open schools to Black as well as white children.

Burials begin in the Matthew and Martha McCauley family cemetery

The family burial ground of Matthew and Martha McCauley, who gave land for the university, lies on Old Fayetteville Road near University Lake. Its graves date from about 1825 to 1850.

Francis L. Hawks buys the house at Churton and Orange streets

William H. Phillips sold the house to Francis Lister Hawks, then reporter to the state supreme court. While living there Hawks left the law to study theology under William Mercer Green of St. Matthew's and was ordained deacon in 1827; he later became a noted Episcopal clergyman and historian.

Subject: Ruffin-Roulhac House (Little Hawfields)

General Assembly gives the faculty power to bar traveling shows at Chapel Hill

After a band of strolling players performed nightly for a week in a room over a village store and took an estimated $383, most of it from students, the faculty asked for power to stop such shows. The General Assembly passed a law giving it to them.

John Berry and Samuel Hancock build St. Matthew's Episcopal Church to William Nichols's design

St. Matthew's, an early Gothic Revival church of Flemish-bond brick, was built in 1825-1826 by the local masons John Berry and Samuel Hancock to a design by William Nichols, who set its size at 35 by 45 feet. It replaced an earlier church at Churton and West Tryon streets that had burned in 1793.

People: William Nichols · Samuel Hancock

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

People freed by David Patterson of Orange sail for Liberia

Under the auspices of the Colonization Society, the formerly enslaved people of David Patterson left for Liberia in 1825.

Sarah Grove buys lots 152 and 153 for $800

Adams sold the two lots to Sarah Grove for $800, a rise that suggests he had built the first four-room house and its outbuildings. About eighteen months later she sold them to the attorney Nathaniel J. Palmer for $1,200.

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

Students illuminate the college to welcome Caldwell home from Europe

When President Caldwell came back from nearly a year in Europe buying books and apparatus, the students lit up the college buildings and escorted him to a stand by the well in front of South Building, where he spoke to them and the villagers. In December 1825 the trustees formally thanked him for his work.

People: Paul C. Cameron · George E. Badger

Subject: South Building · The Old Well

The Orange County Sunday School Union asks the Assembly to fund its schools

The Orange County Sunday School Union petitioned the General Assembly for 25 cents a year per pupil for its 22 Sunday schools, which taught 800 to 1,000 children, many from poor families, to read. John Scott of Hillsborough presented it in the House of Commons, which turned it down.

People: James Webb · William Kirkland · William Norwood · John Knox Witherspoon · Dennis Heartt · William Bingham (1835-1873)

Trustees take over Denison Olmsted's house for the professors of chemistry

When Olmsted resigned in December 1825 to teach at Yale, the trustees bought at cost the house he had purchased from Mrs. Puckett for $1,300 and repaired. The lot was set apart for the professors of chemistry, and the house was later the home of James Phillips and then of President Venable.

People: James Phillips

Shepherd K. Kollock's connection with New Hope is dissolved

Kollock, who had preached at New Hope with the Hillsborough church since 1820, ended his connection in May 1825. Elijah Graves came back as stated supply that November and stayed until May 1831.

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

Trustees adopt by-laws creating a resident superintendent and a student uniform

On Bartlett Yancey's motion the trustees created a superintendent of university property living at Chapel Hill, who was to receive and pay out all student money, and they prescribed a plain uniform dress and forbade boots. Chapel Hill merchant Thomas H. Taylor was appointed; in January 1829 the office passed to the faculty, who chose Elisha Mitchell.

People: Elisha Mitchell

Fever outbreak kills three university students

A serious sickness, which Battle identifies as typhoid fever, struck the university in August and September 1825 and three students died, among them William H. Beard and Zenas Johnston. The acting president urged the trustees to engage a resident physician.

People: Elisha Mitchell

Hillsborough Female Seminary opens under Lavinia Brainerd

A female seminary opened in Hillsborough on August 1, 1825, taught by Lavinia Brainerd under the supervision of the Rev. William M. Green. DNCR says the Hillsborough Female Academy had been incorporated apart from the male academy in 1824.

People: William Mercer Green

The House of Commons postpones the Franklin Library Society's request for a book lottery

Hillsborough's Franklin Library Society asked the General Assembly for leave to raise up to three thousand dollars by lottery to buy useful books for its library. The petition, signed December 14, 1825 by the society's officers including librarian Thomas C. Palmer, was read in the House of Commons on December 23 and indefinitely postponed.

Caroline Lee Hentz befriends and tutors the poet George Moses Horton in Chapel Hill

While her husband Nicholas Hentz taught languages at the university, Caroline Lee Hentz befriended the enslaved poet George Moses Horton, tutored him in grammar and helped edit his work. She sent some of his poems to the Lancaster Gazette in her Massachusetts hometown, which printed them in 1829.

People: George Moses Horton · Nicholas Marcellus Hentz

Dr. Edmund Strudwick begins practising medicine in Hillsborough

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1824 and two years in Philadelphia's almshouse and charity hospital, Edmund Strudwick began practising medicine in Hillsborough in 1826. He practised from the town, largely as a surgeon, for more than fifty years.

Duncan Cameron records tobacco sales of nearly 30,000 pounds

Cameron's accounts for 1826 show close to 30,000 pounds of tobacco sold from the Bennehan-Cameron plantations, where the crop was grown with the labor of enslaved people.

People: Duncan Cameron

Hillsborough's market house is torn down

The town clock, which had hung in the market-house tower after leaving the old Episcopal church steeple, was put in storage until the new courthouse was finished.

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

John Witherspoon opens a private boarding school

The Raleigh Register announced the Rev. John Witherspoon's Private Boarding School for opening in 1826. The school seems to have run until 1830 or later.

People: John Knox Witherspoon

Nicholas Marcellus Hentz becomes the university's professor of modern languages

Hentz took the chair of modern languages at the university, the first professor at Chapel Hill whose duties were to teach French and Spanish regularly. While there he also studied spiders and published on them in scientific journals.

The Phillips family, with infant Cornelia, moves to Chapel Hill

James Phillips moved his family from New York to Chapel Hill in 1826 when he became professor of mathematics at the University of North Carolina, where he taught until his death in 1867. His daughter Cornelia, born in Harlem in March 1825, grew up in the village.

People: James Phillips

Young Andrew Johnson, walking from Raleigh to Tennessee, is fed and lodged at James Craig's

On his way west on foot, the future president Andrew Johnson stopped at James Craig's farmhouse about a mile west of the village and was given supper, a night's lodging and food for the road. He told the story from the steps of the president's house when he returned for the 1867 commencement.

Rev. William Bingham dies at his Mount Repose academy

The Rev. William Bingham, who had kept an academy at Mount Repose northwest of Hillsborough for years, died after a few days' illness in his 73rd year. His son William J. Bingham carried on and in 1827 moved the school to Hillsborough.

St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough is consecrated under its first rector, William Mercer Green

William Mercer Green became first rector of the reorganized St. Matthew's parish in 1825, the year work began on its brick church; state architect William Nichols and brickmaker John Berry were among the builders. Bishop John Stark Ravenscroft consecrated the church on May 21, 1826, during the diocesan convention it hosted.

People: John Berry · John Stark Ravenscroft · William Nichols

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

Chapel Hill celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of independence

The village marked the semicentennial of the Declaration of Independence with a procession to Person Hall, where Revolutionary veteran Major Henderson read the Declaration and William McCauley gave the oration. A dinner at S. B. Alsobrook's hotel and a ball to Ilai Nunn's violin followed.

Subject: Person Hall

Dr. Hudson Cave builds a house on Franklin Street

Dr. Cave bought the eastern half of Lot #6 from his father-in-law William Barbee and built a house set well back from the street. The frontage maps show the Cave residence there through 1868.

Trustees prescribe a student uniform and forbid boots

The board ordered students to wear dark gray in summer and blue in winter, changing winter to gray six months later, and banned boots, probably because of hard times after the panic of 1825. Seniors were excused from the boot rule at their commencement, and the other classes soon won the same privilege.

Fire destroys Witherspoon's farmhouse and the Orange Presbytery records

The fire burned the Witherspoons' rural home a mile and a half south of Hillsborough and its contents, including all but one volume of the old records of Orange Presbytery, which Witherspoon held as stated clerk. Losses were put at about 3,000 dollars and the house was rebuilt.

Subject: Tusculum (Witherspoon farm)

William James Bingham becomes principal of Hillsborough Academy

After John Rogers resigned, the trustees engaged William James Bingham as principal of Hillsborough Academy, where he taught until he moved his school to the country in 1844.

People: William James Bingham · John Rogers

Subject: Hillsborough Academy

Archibald D. Murphey gives the first commencement-eve oration in Person Hall

On June 27, 1827, the day before commencement, Murphey delivered an oration in Person Hall at Chapel Hill under the appointment of the Dialectic Society. Addressing the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies, he argued that a college course only prepared the mind for later learning; the speech was printed and reissued in 1843.

Subject: Person Hall · Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Dr. Walter A. Norwood opens a medicine shop opposite Alsobrook's hotel

Dr. Norwood's medicine shop stood on Thomas H. Taylor's half of Lot #14, probably in Taylor's old store building, which Norwood later bought. From 1841 the shop housed the practice of Drs. Jones and Moore.

Farmers of Orange, Chatham and Guilford meet to talk about a railroad

In 1828 farmers from Orange, Chatham and Guilford counties met to discuss building a railroad, the first such meeting in North Carolina. Public meetings on a line through the county went on into the early 1850s.

Frederick Nash represents the town of Hillsborough in the House of Commons

Having earlier sat for Orange County, Nash represented the town of Hillsborough itself in the House of Commons in 1828 and 1829.

Orange County sends Hugh Waddell to the House of Commons

Waddell was elected to the House of Commons from Orange County for the 1828-29 session and again in 1835, and then served Orange in the state senate in five sessions between 1836 and 1848, as president of the senate in 1836.

Orange Superior Court tries Jim, Sherod and Harry, three enslaved men

The 1828 term convicted Jim, held by Willie P. Mangum, of manslaughter in the death of another enslaved man and ordered 39 lashes. Sherod got 15 lashes for larceny, and Harry was sentenced to death for burglary but won a new trial on appeal.

People: Willie P. Mangum

William W. Holden serves as an apprentice printer at the Hillsborough Recorder

At about age ten Holden was apprenticed as a printer's devil to Dennis Heartt, editor of the Hillsborough Recorder, who was responsible for his early education and political views. He struck out on his own at about sixteen, working first for the Milton Chronicle.

People: Dennis Heartt

Subject: Hillsborough Recorder