Chronology

Trustee William Polk hires out five enslaved men to build Old West

Jourdan, Jim, Stephen, Charles and Joe, men enslaved by William Polk, worked on the construction of Old West, then called New College. By a settlement of May 22, 1823, the university had paid Polk $600 for their labor.

Subject: 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.

Bishop Ravenscroft makes his first visitation to Orange County

Newly elected and consecrated, the bishop came to Orange the year before St. Matthew's was reorganized under William Mercer Green.

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.

People: John Wall Norwood

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

Jonathan Worth comes to Hillsborough to read law under Archibald D. Murphey

Worth moved to Hillsborough to study law with the judge Archibald DeBow Murphey, who became his mentor. In 1824 he married Murphey's niece, Martitia Daniel, and then settled in Asheboro to practice.

People: Archibald D. Murphey

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

Hillsborough Academy pupils are examined before the university faculty

At an examination held in the presence of the university faculty, fifteen Hillsborough Academy pupils were approved for the freshman class and six for the sophomore class. Principal John Rogers also announced an assistant who had taught for several years at a Maryland classical school.

Subject: Hillsborough Academy

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 · Francis L. Hawks

Francis L. Hawks is elected the first senior warden of St. Matthew's Church

When Hillsborough's Episcopalians organized St. Matthew's parish in 1824, they elected Francis L. Hawks senior warden and William Norwood junior warden. Hawks and Emily Hawks are on the parish's first membership roll.

People: William Norwood

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

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 new St. Matthew's vestry decides not to claim the old parish church from the Presbyterians

When St. Matthew's was organized, some vestrymen proposed asserting the parish's colonial title to the old church lot at Churton and Tryon, then used by the Presbyterians. Thomas Ruffin argued that pressing the claim would set neighbors against each other and offered his own land for a new church and churchyard instead.

People: Thomas Ruffin

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

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

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. He offered the land in 1824, when the new vestry chose not to claim the old church lot; the formal deed followed on April 10, 1854.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

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 · William Norwood · Francis L. Hawks

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.

Elisha Mitchell moves from mathematics to the chair of chemistry, mineralogy and geology

When Denison Olmsted left Chapel Hill for Yale, Mitchell took over his chair and gave up the mathematics professorship he had held since 1818. The memoir says the new post widened his field trips across the state.

People: Denison Olmsted · James Phillips

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.

People: Francis L. Hawks

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 · 116 events

St. Matthew's in Hillsborough is admitted into union with the diocesan convention

At the 1825 convention William Mercer Green asked that the newly organized St. Matthew's be received into the diocese, and it was admitted with Thomas Carney seated as its delegate. Green reported that a church building had been started in Hillsborough, and the convention assessed St. Matthew's, St. Mary's and St. Jude's together toward the bishop's salary.

People: William Mercer Green

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

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 · John Wall Norwood · William Huntington

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.

People: Elijah Graves

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

John Rogers and William Hooper take joint charge of Hillsborough Academy

The trustees put the academy under Rogers and the Rev. William Hooper as a classical school preparing boys for the university's sophomore class, at thirty dollars a year. When Hooper was made a university professor that July, the trustees kept him on as joint manager while Rogers taught.

Subject: Hillsborough Academy

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 · Thomas H. Taylor

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.

Presbyterian faculty families start a Sunday school in Person Hall

Members of the Presbyterian faculty families, with their wives and some students, began a Sunday school that met in Person Hall, then the college chapel. Spencer counts it among the first Presbyterian works in the village.

Subject: Person Hall

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

The Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina holds its convention in Hillsborough for the first time

Bishop John Stark Ravenscroft, eight clergy and lay delegates from ten parishes met in Hillsborough in May 1826, gathering in the newly finished St. Matthew's Church, which was consecrated on the Sunday of the session. St. Matthew's sent Thomas Ruffin, William Norwood, Francis L. Hawks and James S. Smith as its delegates.

People: John Stark Ravenscroft · William Mercer Green · Thomas Ruffin · William Norwood · Francis L. Hawks · James Strudwick Smith

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.

Presbyterians begin worshipping together in Chapel Hill

A Presbyterian church at Chapel Hill appears in Orange Presbytery's 1827 report to the Synod, with twenty members and President Joseph Caldwell as stated supply; it met in homes and university buildings, with faculty as ministers. Its session was formed in 1845, when David L. Swain and Charles Phillips were elected elders, its first sanctuary on Franklin Street was dedicated September 23, 1849, and the congregation took the name University Presbyterian Church in the 1960s.

Subject: University Presbyterian Church

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

Around 1827 the Rev. William Mercer Green, rector of St. Matthew's, built the first house on land he had bought that May from William Kirkland, who had acquired it in 1821; the tract had first belonged to James Hogg. William A. Graham bought it in 1842.

People: William Kirkland

Subject: Montrose

Trustees name Badger, Yancey and Moore to draft a law against liquor and student credit at Chapel Hill

On President Caldwell's motion the trustees named Bartlett Yancey, George E. Badger and Alfred Moore to prepare a bill forbidding the distilling or selling of spirituous liquors at or near Chapel Hill and barring village merchants from trading with students. It became law; Battle says the liquor ban still stood in 1907 while the trading ban was ignored and later repealed.

People: Alfred Moore · Joseph Caldwell

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. He had carried on his father's Mount Repose school since February 1826.

People: William James Bingham · John Rogers

Subject: Hillsborough Academy

James H. Otey, later bishop of Tennessee, is ordained priest in St. Matthew's Church

Bishop Ravenscroft ordained James H. Otey to the priesthood in St. Matthew's Church, Hillsborough, on testimonials from Christ Church, Nashville. Otey heads Murphy's 1890 list of the seven men ordained at the St. Matthew's chancel.

People: John Stark Ravenscroft

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

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

Bishop Ravenscroft consecrates Salem Chapel, built by Duncan Cameron near his home

Duncan Cameron paid for a chapel near his residence in Orange County for his household and neighbors, standing by 1825 and still unfinished when the bishop preached in it in May 1826. After Cameron executed the deeds, Bishop Ravenscroft consecrated it as Salem Chapel on Sunday, October 7, 1827, assisted by Mr. Wright of Salisbury and by William Mercer Green, who served it from Hillsborough.

People: John Stark Ravenscroft · William Mercer Green

At William Polk's instance the trustees order professors to keep office hours and visit student rooms at night

Each professor was given a room in the college buildings and required to be in it during set morning and afternoon hours, and to visit every student's room at night at least three times a week. Battle says the code was Polk's, that it was obeyed unevenly until near the Civil War, and that it caused endless friction.

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.

People: Thomas H. Taylor · Walter A. Norwood

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

William A. Graham establishes a law practice in Hillsborough

Graham read law with Thomas Ruffin of Orange County and, having taken his county and superior court licences, had established a practice among the Hillsborough bar by March 1828. He kept a law practice until his death and in time owned three plantations worked by enslaved people.

People: Thomas Ruffin

Planter William Cabe dies and is buried in the family graveyard on the Eno

William Cabe, who held 1,389 acres of corn and wheat land on the Eno, died without a will. His marked stone is one of two legible among twelve graves in the Cabe family cemetery south of the house.

People: William Cabe

Thirty students walk out of Sunday worship in the chapel

One Sunday morning thirty students left divine service in the chapel one by one. The faculty examined each; thirteen gave acceptable excuses and the other seventeen denied any plan, so the case was dropped.

People: Cadwallader Jones

Subject: Person Hall

William Cabe's estate offers his residence and 14 or 15 enslaved people for sale

After a sale of Cabe's household goods, stock and crops set for October 22, 1828, a December notice in the Hillsborough Recorder offered his late residence together with 14 or 15 enslaved people.

People: William Cabe

An Orange County mass meeting calls for state aid to roads and river navigation

A county meeting chaired by James Webb, with Dennis Heartt as secretary, adopted an address to the people of Orange in favor of internal improvements and had 500 copies printed for circulation in the county.

People: James Webb · Dennis Heartt

Bethlehem School on Cane Creek offers college preparation under George W. Morrow

Bethlehem School, on Cane Creek twelve miles from Hillsborough, offered studies to prepare boys for college under George W. Morrow in 1829.

Elijah Graves opens a female school at Walnut Grove

In 1829 Elijah Graves advertised a school for girls that he would run at Walnut Grove, near the Pittsboro road and twelve miles from Hillsborough.

People: Elijah Graves

Eliza Hasell sells her West Queen Street house to Samuel Simpson for his daughter and son-in-law Henry K. Nash

In 1829 Eliza Hasell and her new husband, the Rev. William S. Plumer, sold the house to Samuel Simpson of New Bern, who bought it for his daughter Mary and her husband Henry Kollock Nash. The Nashes lived there until their deaths in 1897, and their daughter Annie Nash kept it until 1919.

Subject: Hasell-Nash House

George Laws becomes a deputy sheriff of Orange County

Laws, a carpenter in his early years, became a deputy sheriff in 1829, the start of more than forty years in county offices at Hillsborough.

Students organize a temperance society

Some students formed a Temperance Society in the summer of 1829, and Battle credits it with reducing drinking of spirits at the college. At its request Elisha Mitchell gave an address on intemperance in 1831 that was printed.

People: Elisha Mitchell

Chapel Hill forbids Sunday work and Sunday trading

Two 1829 ordinances barred work at ordinary jobs and buying or selling on Sundays in Chapel Hill, except for necessity or mercy. White and free Black residents faced fines, merchants and shopkeepers a ten-dollar fine for opening, and enslaved people whipping unless a fine was paid.

Chapel Hill forbids enslaved people to hire their own time or live on their own

The 1829 town code made it unlawful for an enslaved person to hire out his or her own time or live apart from the direct care of a free white person in Chapel Hill. Those found doing so could be whipped or jailed in the Orange County jail as runaways.

Chapel Hill orders its white men into patrol companies

The first town ordinance divided the white men of Chapel Hill aged 21 to 50, other than the sitting commissioners, into patrol classes. Each captain had to turn out his company two nights a week from 8 or 9 in the evening and report under oath to the magistrate of police, with fines for captains and members who failed.

Chapel Hill requires its men to work on the town streets

All white men of Chapel Hill aged 18 to 45, except the commissioners, and all Black men aged 16 to 50 were made liable to work on the town streets when called. The commissioners could hire an overseer paid by the day from town funds, and anyone who skipped a call was fined up to fifty cents.

Chapel Hill requires written passes for enslaved people on its streets

A town ordinance barred enslaved people from the streets, lanes and lots of Chapel Hill on Sundays and between 8 at night and 5 in the morning unless they carried a written pass from an owner or overseer. They also needed written permission to sell anything in town. The patrol could whip offenders or take a one-dollar fine.

Chapel Hill's board creates the offices of town constable, treasurer and clerk

The 1829 code had the commissioners appoint a town constable each year, paid the same fees as county constables, along with a yearly treasurer and clerk. Fines collected under the ordinances went to the treasurer for town use, and the board set a quorum of three commissioners with the magistrate of police and fined members who missed meetings.

Chapel Hill's commissioners pass a code of town ordinances

The board of commissioners for Chapel Hill adopted fifteen ordinances for the government of the town and had them printed by Dennis Heartt at Hillsborough. The last section repealed all earlier town ordinances and resolutions on the same matters.

People: Dennis Heartt

Commissioners divide William Cabe's 1,389 acres among his heirs

Court-appointed commissioners split Cabe's land into nine lots. Lot three, 160 acres where the Cabe-Pratt-Harris House stands, went to his daughter Jamima, then married to Jehu Brown.

The county court levies a tax on Black polls to pay for the patrol

Along with its taxes for county costs and the poor, the August 1829 court ordered ten cents collected on each Black poll to pay the patrol, the county's slave patrol.

Thomas Clancy advertises Lucy and her five children for sale

Pressed for money, Clancy offered a woman named Lucy and her five children, the eldest about thirteen, saying he preferred to sell the family together to a buyer in or near Hillsborough.

James, an enslaved college servant, escapes from Chapel Hill

Samuel M. Stewart advertised a $20 reward in the Hillsborough Recorder for James, who had worked four years as a college servant at the university. Stewart thought he was headed for Norfolk or Richmond to reach the free states or Africa through the Colonization Society.

A log homestead is built on the later William Couch farm

About 1830 a log house was built on the Cornwallis Road land where William Couch later put up his two-story frame house. It still stands next to the frame house with four log outbuildings.

A two-story frame farmhouse is built on the land later called Webb's Happy Acres

The one-room-deep house with a pegged frame, log sills and end chimneys may have been built by Carolina Kirkland and her husband or by earlier owners. Her grandson J. Richard Webb and his wife moved in about 1954, restored it and named it Webb's Happy Acres.

Subject: Webb's Happy Acres

Anne Royall publishes a hostile account of Chapel Hill

The traveling writer Anne Royall visited Chapel Hill in 1829 and in her Southern Tour, published in 1830, charged that the president's wife, Helen Caldwell, ruled the university. Battle answers with the faculty's account of the student she defended, who had been dismissed for disorder at a Sunday service.

People: Joseph Caldwell · Helen Hogg Caldwell

Caldwell builds the first college observatory in the United States

Caldwell began an astronomical observatory on the campus in 1830 and finished it in 1831, paying more than 400 dollars himself, to house instruments he had bought in Europe in 1824. The DocSouth biography calls it the first American observatory built for teaching.

Dr. Edmund Strudwick builds a medical office on West King Street

Dr. Edmund Strudwick put up a one-story, two-room frame office at 139 West King Street, on the site of Edmund Fanning's law office. Dr. W. F. Strudwick later practised there and Robert Strudwick used it as a law office.

Frances Blount buys the Hawks house and the lot beside it

Walker Anderson, acting for Francis L. Hawks, sold the house to Frances Blount, who is thought to have been renting it. She also bought the neighboring lot 180 that year.

People: Francis L. Hawks · Walker Anderson

Subject: Ruffin-Roulhac House (Little Hawfields)

Frances Blount enlarges the house to a center-passage plan

Soon after buying it, Frances Blount added two rooms to the east side of the one-and-a-half-story house, turning its side-hall plan into the center-passage form it keeps today.

Subject: Ruffin-Roulhac House (Little Hawfields)

Fred Hartgrove, a free Black man, holds three enslaved people

The 1830 records show Hartgrove holding three people and Lucy Peters, also free and Black, holding one. No free Black resident of Orange held anyone in 1860.

Orange Methodist Church is organized at the Davis School House

Alexander Gattis and neighbors organized Orange Methodist Church in the Davis School House near the Wash Fowler home. Its early records are lost: Lefler and Wager give about 1830, and the church's own tradition 1832. The congregation had trustees by October 1836, when Gattis and Thomas King deeded them land, and built its first church about 1838.

People: Jones Watson · Isaac J. Collier

Professor James Phillips hires David Barham from his owner as a college servant

In 1830 Professor James Phillips hired David Barham from William Barham to work as a college servant. A university account book page from the same year shows students paying a two-dollar fee to compensate the slaveholders whose people were hired as servants.

People: James Phillips

Robert Donaldson has A. J. Davis design a campus hall for the Philanthropic Society that is never built

In the 1830s alumnus Robert Donaldson, by then living in New York, hired Alexander Jackson Davis to design a hall for the Philanthropic Society on the campus. It was not built, but Donaldson kept up a correspondence with President Swain about gardens, architects and furnishings that led to Davis's later work at Chapel Hill.

People: Robert Donaldson Jr.

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

St. Matthew's adds a tower to its church

Rector William Mercer Green told the 1830 convention that a tower had been added to the Hillsborough church during the past year, four years after its consecration. The parish then counted 40 communicants and 61 Sunday school scholars.

People: William Mercer Green

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

The census finds Orange County's enslaved population at its peak

The 1830 census counted 7,339 enslaved people beside 15,918 white residents, a little under 31 percent of the county. The number fell afterward through sales, migration, manumission and the loss of territory to new counties.

The census lists the Texas community families as free Negro heads of household

The 1830 federal census for the North District of Orange County listed the Whitmores, Jeffrieses, Corns, Burnettes, Haithcocks and Joneses among free Negro heads of household. Through the nineteenth century county and federal records almost always classed these families as free colored or mulatto, and almost never as Indian.

The core of the Huskey House is built on East Rosemary Street

The heavily altered house at 215 East Rosemary Street probably dates from the 1830s; only its Greek Revival doorway still shows its age. It is named for a later resident, village blacksmith John Huskey.

The legislature elects Willie P. Mangum to the United States Senate

Mangum, then a Jacksonian Democrat, was chosen senator in 1830. He broke with Jackson over the bank deposits and resigned when a Democratic legislature instructed him to vote to expunge the censure of Jackson.

W. Anderson opens a female boarding school near Hillsborough

In 1830 W. Anderson announced Anderson's Female Boarding School within a mile of Hillsborough. It took a limited number of pupils and ran at least through 1836.

Trustees meet in emergency session over the university's debts

With debts of about $37,500 and only some 82 paying students, a special meeting of trustees at Chapel Hill on June 21, 1830 called the whole board to Raleigh on July 19. There a committee under James Iredell reported on the finances, and the board adopted a memorial drawn by Thomas Ruffin asking the General Assembly for relief.

People: Joseph Caldwell · Willie P. Mangum · Thomas Ruffin · William Gaston

Trustees refuse a state loan tied to legislative control of the university

The General Assembly answered the trustees' memorial with an act having the Literary Board lend $25,000 for five years, but only if the loan became a lien on all university property and the trustees agreed that the legislature could take over the charter. The trustees unanimously rejected it and borrowed $4,000 from the Bank of the United States branch at Fayetteville.

Christopher Barbee turns over his home tract and blacksmith shop to his son William

In 1831 Christopher Barbee sold his son William the village blacksmith property and the tract where he lived, with all adjacent land. He died the next year, and his will left William more land on Morgan Creek and Bolin Creek.

People: William Barbee

Giles Mebane stays at Chapel Hill as a university tutor

After graduating from the University of North Carolina in 1831, Giles Mebane remained in Chapel Hill as a tutor before starting to practice law.

Hentz leaves the university and Chapel Hill for Kentucky

Hentz left the university in 1831. The local Presbyterian community had frowned on his Roman Catholic upbringing and suspected his politics, and after he left French was dropped from the curriculum.

People: Caroline Lee Hentz

John DeBerniere Hooper teaches at the university as tutor and professor

After graduating in 1831 Hooper stayed in Chapel Hill as a tutor in languages, became professor of modern languages in July 1836 and professor of Latin in 1838. He and his wife left Chapel Hill in 1848 to teach and farm near Littleton.

Schoolmaster William J. Bingham builds a house at Churton and Union streets

William James Bingham, then head of the Hillsborough Academy, builds a one-and-a-half-story house at the southeast corner of North Churton and East Union streets and lives there until 1845. Later owners included the Methodist church, which used it for a time as a parsonage.

Trustees offer the university's Chapel Hill lands for sale

Pressed by debt, the trustees named William Polk, James Mebane and James Webb to offer the unimproved university lands around Chapel Hill for sale. Only a small sum came in, from the sale of the Preparatory School acre; that school had been closed for more than ten years.

People: James Webb · William Polk · James Mebane

Subject: University grammar school (Preparatory School)

Friends of education organize the North Carolina Institute of Education at Chapel Hill

During commencement week a meeting adopted a constitution on Benjamin M. Smith's motion, elected Simmons J. Baker president and made professors Elisha Mitchell, William Hooper and James Phillips its executive committee. The Institute met at the next few commencements and enrolled about 130 members before it lapsed.

People: Elisha Mitchell · James Phillips · Walter A. Norwood · William James Bingham

William Mercer Green delivers the literary societies' oration before commencement

On June 22, 1831, the day before commencement, William Mercer Green delivered an oration at Chapel Hill on the influence of Christianity upon the welfare of nations, under the annual appointment of the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies. Dennis Heartt printed it in Hillsborough the same year.

People: Dennis Heartt

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Godfrey and Isabella marry at St. Matthew's

The Rev. William Mercer Green married Godfrey and Isabella, the first couple in St. Matthew's register of people of color. Their infant son Milton Alexander was baptized there in November 1835.

People: William Mercer Green

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

New bishop Levi S. Ives confirms thirty at St. Matthew's on his first visit to Hillsborough

Two weeks after leaving New York for his new diocese, Bishop Levi S. Ives reached Hillsborough and preached four times in St. Matthew's over a weekend, giving communion to some fifty or sixty people and confirming thirty. Eleven of those confirmed were men, seven of them University of North Carolina students.

People: William Mercer Green

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

A year-long revival at New Hope adds at least seventy communicants

Under the evangelists Daniel L. Russell, John S. McCutcheon and Philip Pearson, families built tents on the church grounds and lived in them for weeks to attend the meetings. The session record shows at least seventy people admitted to communion.

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

A small nondenominational Union Church goes up on the Grand Avenue ground

After the university sold the old Grammar School property, a small church open to all denominations, called the Union Church or the Village Chapel, was built on the Grand Avenue plot facing Franklin Street.

Subject: University grammar school (Preparatory School)

Benton Utley buys the Hogg house and opens a dry goods store

Gavin Hogg sold the family house to Benton Utley, who shared it with James Hogg and built a dry goods store beside it. The store failed, and Utley sold house and stock to Zachariah Trice in 1837.

Cadwallader Jones graduates from the University of North Carolina

Jones, the son of Cadwallader and Rebecca Edwards Long Jones of West Hill near Hillsborough, took his degree at Chapel Hill in 1832.

Fannie Breeze is born enslaved in the household of Samuel Breeze

Fannie Breeze was born in 1832, enslaved in the household of Samuel H. Breeze, a farmer and member of Pleasant Green Methodist church in what was then eastern Orange County. She joined Pleasant Green before the Civil War and later worked as a midwife along the Eno.

Judge William Gaston predicts the end of slavery in a UNC commencement address

Gaston told the university's graduates and guests that slavery would be overthrown. The book says the audience applauded the speech but rejected its antislavery message.

Mary W. Burke deeds her Queen Street house to George Johnston, keeping one room

Governor Thomas Burke's daughter Mary W. Burke sold her East Queen Street house and lot, later called Heartsease, to George Johnston for one dollar and kept the use of one room for herself. The next year Johnston gave up his claim for the same sum.

People: George Johnston · George Mulholland Johnston

Subject: Heartsease

Mount Zion Christian Church is organized

Thomas Reeves led the organization of Mount Zion Christian Church and built its first church in 1833.

Orange County counts twenty-one academies

By 1832 Orange County had twenty-one academies, among them Hillsborough Academy, the Bingham school and Cedar Grove Academy, a pace of school founding somewhat ahead of the state as a whole.

Pleasant Green Methodist Church is organized

Pleasant Green Methodist Church was organized about 1832 by a group of local families.

Subject: Pleasant Green Methodist Church

The Recorder shop prints Letters on Popular Education

The Hillsborough Recorder office printed Letters on Popular Education Addressed to the People of North Carolina in 1832.

People: Dennis Heartt

Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

The university sells the old Grammar School house and grounds

Thirteen years after the Grammar School closed, the university sold its empty schoolhouse and lot. In the meantime the house had been left vacant and then lived in by a hunter's family.

Subject: University grammar school (Preparatory School)

Archibald D. Murphey dies in Hillsborough

Archibald D. Murphey died in Hillsborough, then his home, on February 1, 1832, after years of rheumatism and debt, and was buried in the town graveyard a few feet from the door of the Presbyterian church. No monument marked his grave when the memoir in his published papers was written.

Five elders are ordained at New Hope during the revival

William Brown, Alexander Strain, Samuel Hart, David Hart and Allen Petty were added to the session. The two Harts were grandsons of Gilbert Strayhorn, and Strain was a son of the earlier elder Alexander Strain.

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

White Cross Church, later an AME congregation, is organized

The church list dates the White Cross congregation and its first building to May 1832. It was rebuilt in 1921 and was an African Methodist Episcopal church by 1953.

The Institute of Education names Gaston to a committee to petition the legislature on popular education

At its second meeting, held during the 1832 commencement, the North Carolina Institute of Education voted to memorialize the General Assembly on popular education and named William Gaston, Frederick Nash and David L. Swain to the committee.

People: Frederick Nash · David L. Swain

Cedar Grove Methodist Church is organized

The Cedar Grove Methodist Episcopal Church was organized on July 23, 1832.

Subject: Cedar Grove Methodist Church

English Record Commission sends its publications to the university library

Between 1833 and 1841 the British government's Record Commission gave the university 83 folio and 24 octavo volumes, among them a printing of the Domesday Book, with twelve books and many pamphlets by its secretary, Charles Parton Cooper.

Subject: UNC Libraries

George E. Badger gives the commencement address to the literary societies

At the 1833 commencement, held without the ailing President Caldwell, George E. Badger, chosen by the Dialectic Society, delivered the annual address before the two literary societies at Chapel Hill.

People: Elisha Mitchell

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Isaac J. Collier and Jones Watson open a cabinetmaking business

The two men started making furniture on Franklin Street in 1833. After the partnership dissolved in the later 1830s, Collier kept the business going.

People: Jones Watson · Isaac J. Collier

James Phillips is licensed to preach and later serves New Hope Presbyterian Church

Mathematics professor James Phillips joined the Presbyterian church in 1832 and was licensed to preach by Orange Presbytery in 1833. He was later ordained and installed as minister of New Hope Presbyterian Church, about seven miles outside Chapel Hill, and shared the university chapel work with Elisha Mitchell.

People: Elisha Mitchell

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

Peter Dromgoole disappears from Chapel Hill

Peter Pelham Dromgoole came to Chapel Hill in January 1833, failed the university's entrance examination and studied under a tutor. That spring, after bitter letters with his father, he vanished from his lodgings, leaving most of his belongings and a debt to a Chapel Hill merchant.

Pleasant Henderson leaves Chapel Hill for Tennessee

Still deep in debt, the former steward and storekeeper moved west. His son Dr. Alexander Martin Henderson secured the family home on Franklin Street, and the store on the property was advertised that year as Norfleet and Henderson's.

The house of tinner Josiah Turner Sr. is built on North Churton Street

The Turner house at 404 North Churton Street is built about 1833 on a five-acre lot bounded by Churton, Orange and Union streets. It appears on John L. Bailey's 1839 map and was the home of Josiah Turner Sr., a tinner, and his family.

Subject: Turner-Strudwick House

Thomas Ruffin becomes Chief Justice of North Carolina

Ruffin, elected an associate justice in 1829 after putting the state bank back in order, became Chief Justice in 1833 and held the post until he retired to his farm in 1852.

Trustees name the new chapel Gerrard Hall

The trustees sold Major Charles Gerrard's 2,560-acre service tract in Tennessee for $6,400, voted $2,000 of it toward finishing the new chapel that had stood unfinished since about 1824, and resolved that the building be known forever as Gerrard Hall in his memory.

People: William Gaston · George E. Badger · William Polk

Subject: Gerrard Hall

William A. Graham represents Hillsborough and then Orange County in the House of Commons

Graham was borough representative from Hillsborough in the legislatures of 1833, 1834 and 1835. After the constitutional reforms of 1835 he represented Orange County in the House of Commons in the 1836, 1838 and 1840 sessions, and he was speaker in the last two.

William D. Kirksey advertises as the village blacksmith

After Christopher Barbee's death, his corner blacksmith shop passed through his son William, and by 1833 William D. Kirksey was advertising as Chapel Hill's blacksmith. Maps show Kirksey's shop on the corner through 1843.

People: Christopher Barbee

William McPheeters presses the trustees to raise the standard for admission

McPheeters, principal of the Raleigh Academy and a university trustee, urged the board to raise the requirements for entering the university. The board agreed and required all of arithmetic, algebra to simple equations, the prose of Jacob's Greek Reader, the whole of Virgil and Cicero's select orations.

People: Joseph Caldwell

New Hope elects George W. Ferrill as pastor

The congregation unanimously elected Ferrill pastor, and he was installed soon after. The pastoral relation was dissolved in July 1836.

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

Witherspoon ends seventeen years as pastor at Hillsborough

Witherspoon severed his connection with the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church and moved to Camden, South Carolina. His advocacy of religious education, Sunday schools and preaching for enslaved people had strained relations with his congregation.

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

Isaac C. Partridge publishes The Harbinger

Isaac C. Partridge's weekly The Harbinger, one of the county's first literary periodicals, began at Chapel Hill on August 27, 1833, after a prospectus that January, and ran for about a year. It covered the sciences and arts and leaned on professors Elisha Mitchell and William Hooper for its contents.

People: Elisha Mitchell

Job, later Rev. Job Berry, is baptized at St. Matthew's

Job, enslaved by George W. B. Burgwyn, was baptized at St. Matthew's Episcopal Church by William Mercer Green and confirmed the next April. As Job Berry he later led Hillsborough's first Black congregation.

People: William Mercer Green · Job Berry

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

Students win the use of Steward's Hall for the commencement ball

A committee chosen by a mass meeting of students, with Christopher C. Battle as its writer, petitioned the trustees on November 6, 1833 for a room in Steward's Hall for the commencement ball, and the trustees agreed. The ball managers then invited leading men of the state, among them Governor Swain.

People: David L. Swain · John H. Watson

Subject: Steward’s Hall

Trustee committee advises against moving the university to Raleigh

On James Iredell's motion, Governor Swain named fifteen trustees, none from Orange County, to consider moving the university to the capital. In December 1833 they reported removal inexpedient, and the question never came before the board again.

People: David L. Swain

Cedar Grove Methodist Episcopal Church builds its first church

The congregation put up a small frame sanctuary facing east on what is now Efland-Cedar Grove Road, on land given by Joseph Allison and John Kelly. It was enlarged on the south side in 1876 and later torn down; its site lies just east of the 1939 stone church.

Subject: Cedar Grove Methodist Church

Dr. Walter A. Norwood closes his medicine shop and moves to Hillsborough

Norwood gave up his Franklin Street shop and left for Hillsborough. Elisha Mitchell owned the land and building by the end of the year and soon sold them on credit to Isaac Partridge for a hotel.

People: Walter A. Norwood

Duncan Cameron of Orange is elected president of the state Colonization Society

Cameron, a leading Orange planter and banker, took the presidency of the North Carolina branch of the colonization movement in 1834.

People: Duncan Cameron

Fairfield Presbyterian Church is organized

Fairfield Presbyterian Church was organized with Samuel Paisley as its first pastor.

Subject: Fairfield Presbyterian Church

Former sheriff Thomas D. Watts takes over Alsobrook's hotel

Thomas D. Watts, once sheriff of Orange County, took charge of the hotel on Lot #13, which became known as Watts's hotel. His widow Lucy bought the property in 1839 and ran it until 1846.

James Strudwick Smith buys Harriet, aged fifteen, as Mary Ruffin Smith's maid

James Strudwick Smith bought Harriet, fifteen years old by the deed, from William Kell of Orange County to be his daughter Mary Ruffin Smith's maid. The family then lived in Hillsborough and enslaved about thirty people at a time.

People: James Strudwick Smith

John Wall Norwood becomes treasurer and then a ruling elder of the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

In 1834 Norwood succeeded the silversmith William Huntington as treasurer of the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church. In 1835 he was confirmed a ruling elder, a post he held until his death.

People: William Huntington

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

Lemuel Lynch and William Huntington work as partners in Hillsborough

Back in Hillsborough by March 1834, the silversmith Lemuel Lynch went into a two-year partnership with William Huntington, in whose shop he had trained. Afterward he kept his shop alone, perhaps with help from his sons or apprentices.

People: William Huntington

Lemuel Lynch sets up as a silversmith and jeweler in Hillsborough

Lemuel Lynch, who learned his trade from William Huntington and had kept shops in Greensboro and Concord, begins working in Hillsborough, where he stayed for the rest of his life.

People: Lemuel Lynch · William Huntington

Samuel Hancock goes bankrupt and Dr. James Webb buys his house and the enslaved man Abram

In 1834 Samuel Hancock went bankrupt. Dr. James Webb bought the Hancocks' house and lot, their furniture and Abram, a man they enslaved, and rented all of them back to Hancock for $1 a year.

People: James Webb

The Ladies' Working Society of St. Matthew's takes on much of the church debt

Ten years after the parish was organized, the women of St. Matthew's Ladies' Working Society undertook to pay a large share of the debt still owed on the church building. The vestry had reported in 1833 that it remained in debt to the builder.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

A notice offers Christopher Barbee's livestock and household goods for sale at his late home

Two years after Christopher Barbee died, a public notice offered his horses, cattle, corn, farm tools and household and kitchen furniture for sale at his late residence on The Mountain. His son William was the executor.

People: Christopher Barbee · William Barbee

Subject: The Mountain (Christopher Barbee plantation, now Meadowmont)

Six enslaved women are baptized into Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

The Rev. S. J. Price baptized six women held by the Nash, Watters, Scott and Waddell households, and Frederick Nash and William J. Bingham received them as members. In the twenty years that followed under Robert Burwell, the church took in only one communicant of color.

People: Frederick Nash · William James Bingham · Hugh Waddell

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

Members of Cane Creek organize Mars Hill Baptist Church

Members of Cane Creek Baptist Church organized Mars Hill Baptist Church, near the old Eno Quaker burying ground off the Hillsborough-Schley road.

Subject: Mars Hill Baptist Church

Samuel Iredell Johnston and William W. Spear are ordained deacons in St. Matthew's

Bishop Ives returned to Hillsborough and made Samuel Iredell Johnston and William W. Spear deacons in St. Matthew's Church, with William Mercer Green reading prayers and the Rev. Mr. Freeman preaching. Johnston had been baptized as an adult in the parish, and Spear had spent part of his boyhood in it.

People: William Mercer Green

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

Polly Burke leaves Hillsborough for Alabama

In August 1834 Mary W. Burke sold most of her household goods and moved to Greensboro, Alabama, with her niece's family, part of a wider migration of Hillsborough people to Alabama. After her nephew-in-law died there she settled in Marion, where she taught again for many years.

People: George Mulholland Johnston

Duncan Cameron gives his son Paul C. Cameron forty-one enslaved people

Duncan Cameron deeded his son Paul C. Cameron forty-one enslaved people, with any children the women would bear: Gabriel, Mima, Simeon and Sarah in Orange County, and families at the Mill Quarter plantation in Person County, among them Phillip and Jenny and their children Randol, Jim, Ellen, Nancy and Phill. Cameron acknowledged the deed before Justice William Gaston at Raleigh on January 1, 1835.

People: Duncan Cameron · Paul C. Cameron · William Gaston

I. C. Patridge opens the University Hotel in Chapel Hill

Patridge advertised in December 1834 that he had opened a public house at Chapel Hill across from Watts' Hotel, with new stables and an ostler.

A. Mickle serves as Orange County's register of deeds

Lefler and Wager's list of Orange County registers of deeds gives A. Mickle in the office from 1835 to 1849, between J. McKerall and John Laws.

Dialectic Society prints a catalogue of its library

The Dialectic Society's printed catalogue of 1835 listed 2,954 bound volumes and ten maps, the largest groups being novels and romances, periodicals and history. With the Philanthropic library about the same size, the two societies held some 6,000 books.

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Dr. James Webb builds the Presbyterian Sessions House in the Old Town Cemetery

In 1835 Dr. James Webb took a ninety-nine-year lease on the southeast corner of Hillsborough's Old Town Cemetery lot and built a frame Sessions House with a bell tower there. It served as the Presbyterian Sunday school room and later as a public library until 1934.

Subject: Old Town Cemetery, Hillsborough · Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

Dr. William Montgomery of Orange is elected to Congress

Montgomery, a Jackson Democrat and longtime state senator for Orange, defeated Daniel A. Barringer, carrying his home county 1,501 to 900. He served three terms.

People: William Montgomery

Elizabeth Hobbs is brought to Hillsborough in the household of Robert and Anna Burwell

When the Reverend Robert Burwell became minister of the Presbyterian church in Hillsborough, he moved his household from Virginia, bringing the enslaved Elizabeth Hobbs, later Keckly. By her own account she was nearly eighteen.

People: Elizabeth Hobbs Keckly · Robert Armistead Burwell · Margaret Anna Burwell

Harmony Primitive Baptist Church is organized

Harmony Primitive Baptist Church was organized about 1835. By 1953 it had three members.

John A. Pettigrew sells the former Paisley farm to Lemuel Pettigrew

By 1835 the log house tract had passed to John A. Pettigrew, who sold it that year to Lemuel Pettigrew. Lemuel later sold it to (John) Elkins Pettigrew, a small farmer whose farm the 1860 census valued at $500.

Subject: Paisley-Rice Log House

Orange County sends physicians William Montgomery and James S. Smith to the 1835 convention

Ten men were put forward at meetings around the county, and the voters chose two physicians, William Montgomery and James S. Smith. Each sided with the majority that abolished borough seats, which cost Hillsborough its own member in the House of Commons.

People: Thomas Ruffin · Frederick Nash · William Montgomery

Orange County votes overwhelmingly for a constitutional convention

Orange voted 1,648 to 111 for calling a convention to reform representation, and Hillsborough, which stood to lose its borough seat, voted 228 to 23 in favor.

People: Dennis Heartt

Paul C. Cameron builds Burnside on the foundation of Thomas Ruffin's old house

Paul Cameron built the town house he named Burnside on South Cameron Street, on the stone foundation of his father-in-law Thomas Ruffin's earlier house. Enslaved workers from Cameron's Fairntosh plantation built it under his master carpenter Jack, and John Berry laid the brick.

People: John Berry · Thomas Ruffin

Subject: Burnside

Robert Burwell becomes pastor of the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

Burwell began a thirteen-year pastorate, and he and his wife opened a school for young women whose income let him serve the church on a small salary. He returned for a second term in the 1850s.

People: Robert Armistead Burwell

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

Slave trader George Lewis advertises in Hillsborough to buy 100 young people

Lewis, a commercial trader visiting the town, announced he would pay cash for one hundred young Black people.