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Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
- 1850s
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The new Hillsborough Baptist church joins the Beulah Association
On organizing, the Baptist congregation in Hillsborough entered the Beulah Association. It later moved to the Mount Zion Association, formed at Mount Moriah Church.
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Thomas Blount Hill buys the Phillips place and makes it the BelleVue villa
Thomas Blount Hill of Halifax County buys the East Tryon Street estate and adds a west wing, a three-story central tower and wide porches, turning the old house into an Italianate villa he names BelleVue. It passed to his daughter Mary Alice and her husband Joseph Cheshire Webb, and in the 1980s opened as the Hillsborough House Inn.
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University library moved from South Building to Smith Hall
The university's books were taken from the president's lecture room in South Building to the new Smith Hall, and Hubbard, Charles Phillips and the librarian were told to prepare a catalogue. At the start of the Civil War the books were stored in a room of the East Building.
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The Hillsborough Recorder calls for a plank road from Hillsborough to Milton
An editorial regretted that no one had asked the last legislature to charter a company to build a plank road from Hillsborough to Milton by way of Roxboro or Yanceyville. It hoped a stock company would form under the general act of 1850-51 while a charter was sought.
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Chapel Hill's Methodists dedicate their first church
In July 1853 the Methodist congregation that became University Methodist Church dedicated its first building, at Rosemary and Henderson streets, paid for with about $5,000 that its pastor J. Milton Frost had raised around the state. The congregation had met since about 1840, with Charles F. Deems preaching in the 1840s and Frost stationed there from January 1851.
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Witherspoon dies at Tusculum and is buried in the Old Town Cemetery
He died penniless at the Tusculum farmhouse on the thirty-seventh anniversary of the organization of the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church. His funeral was held in that church and he was buried nearby in the Nash-Strudwick plot of the Old Town Cemetery, where the congregation and townspeople paid for the obelisk over his grave.
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First Baptist Church of Hillsborough is organized in the old courthouse
The First Baptist Church was organized in Hillsborough and met in the former 1790 courthouse building, now Dickerson Chapel, until 1862, while it raised its own church building on a lot acquired between 1854 and 1860.
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Solomon Pool becomes tutor of mathematics at the university
Pool was appointed tutor of mathematics at the University of North Carolina in December 1853, months after his own graduation. He received an honorary alumni master of arts degree in 1856.
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A Delta Psi fraternity chapter is active at the university
Battle learned after his first volume was printed that the Delta Psi Fraternity, with a large membership, was at the university from 1854 until some time during the Civil War. No record at Chapel Hill mentions it.
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A railroad depot is built at the Orange-Alamance line and Mebanesville grows up around it
The North Carolina Railroad put a depot on the county line in 1854, and the settlement of Mebanesville, later Mebane, soon formed there.
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Baptist minister James Pleasant Mason marries Mary Elizabeth Morgan
Mary Elizabeth Morgan (1825-1894) had inherited a tract south of Chapel Hill that came down from early settler Mark Morgan through his son John and grandson Solomon P. Morgan. The couple had four daughters, two of whom died as infants.
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Benjamin Hedrick's house with an eight-sided room goes up on East Rosemary Street
Professor Benjamin Hedrick's house at 610 East Rosemary Street, known for its octagonal room, was ready by 1855 and the Hedricks moved in; Preservation Chapel Hill credits the Hillsborough builder John Berry and Hedrick's own design, and Little says he bought an older farmhouse from the university and added the eight-sided room. Horace Williams later owned it, and Preservation Chapel Hill now has its offices there.
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Chapel Hill Baptist Church is organized
Chapel Hill Baptists organized the Baptist Church of Chapel Hill in 1854 under William Henry Merritt, George W. Purefoy and Brantley J. Hackney, with Elder J. P. Mason as first pastor. Its first building went up in 1854–55, and the congregation is now University Baptist Church.
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David McCauley and Thomas A. Long take over Jesse Hargrave's store
After Hargrave's death, his business was sold to the two young clerks he had hired in 1850. McCauley and Long's general store appears on the maps through 1868.
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Hillsborough Presbyterian Church sells the people it held in trust for the Witherspoons
People once held by John Knox Witherspoon had passed to the church in trust for the care of his ailing daughter. The session refused a sale in August 1852, but after Witherspoon's death it agreed, and part of the money went to Mary Witherspoon. The names of those sold are not recorded.
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James Phillips keeps weather records at Chapel Hill
From 1854 to 1862 Professor James Phillips kept weather records at Chapel Hill. They survive in the Southern Historical Collection alongside Chapel Hill records kept from December 1879 to 1882 by Professors W. B. Phillips and Francis Preston Venable.
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Judge John L. Bailey buys the Norwood house south of the Eno and names it Eno Lodge
Superior court judge John Lancaster Bailey bought the house above the Eno from Joseph C. Norwood, probably added the rear ell and north bay, and called it Eno Lodge. He lived there until about the start of the Civil War, when he moved to Buncombe County.
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Paul Cameron tells the county agricultural society the railroad will wake Orange up
Speaking to the Orange County Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, the Mechanic Arts, and Manufactures, Cameron predicted the coming railroad would shake local farmers and businesses out of their old habits.
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Peter Brown Ruffin buys the land that became Margaret Lane Cemetery
According to the Alliance for Historic Hillsborough, Peter Brown Ruffin, owner of Occoneechee Farm, bought the land now called Margaret Lane Cemetery as a burial ground for people enslaved by him and his neighbor Cadwalader Jones. Plaques placed in 1987 date burials there from before 1852, and it remained a burial ground for Black residents of Hillsborough until 1931.
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Ralph Graves sells the West King Street lot later the Parks-Richmond House to John J. Freeland
In 1854 Ralph Graves, husband of Emma Taylor, sold Lot 18 on West King Street, for many years the home of clerk of court John Taylor, to John J. Freeland. Elbert H. and Emily Pogue owned it from the 1870s.
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Samuel F. Phillips teaches in the university law school
From 1854 to 1859 Phillips taught in the university law school at Chapel Hill.
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The Baptists buy W. J. Freeland's lot for a new church
The congregation bought a two-acre lot from W. J. Freeland running from Margaret Lane along Wake Street to King Street, where its present church stands.
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The Evans families leave Hillsborough for Oberlin, Ohio
Squeezed by laws that stripped free people of color of the vote, the right to preach and schooling, the cabinetmakers Henry and Wilson Bruce Evans took their families to Oberlin, where their sister Delilah Copeland had settled in 1843. Both brothers were jailed there for their part in the 1858 Oberlin-Wellington rescue of a man taken as a fugitive.
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Walter A. Thompson sells the old Nunn tavern property to Isaac Hudson
Betsy Nunn's grandson, a butcher who had inherited the run-down tavern and inn in 1852, sold it to Isaac Hudson, ending sixty years of Nunn family ownership. Hudson later built a brick house on the land.
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School for the Application of Science to the Arts opens
Under a trustee resolution of 1852 the university opened a scientific school with departments of civil engineering, under Charles Phillips, and of chemistry applied to agriculture and the arts, under Benjamin S. Hedrick, with a laboratory in the basement of Smith Hall. Its students could earn a Bachelor of Science in about two and a half years.
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Benjamin Hedrick is appointed the university's professor of analytical and agricultural chemistry
The university appointed Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick to its new chair of analytical and agricultural chemistry. He held it until the trustees' executive committee dismissed him in October 1856.
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Hillsborough Baptists call their first pastor
Three months after organizing, the congregation called Rev. A. Jones Jr. as its first pastor, and he accepted. The church counted 29 pastors in its first hundred years.
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Thomas Ruffin deeds St. Matthew's Church the land he had given by word around
Thomas Ruffin's deed of April 10, 1854 formally conveyed 1 1/3 acres to St. Matthew's Church, land he had given verbally around 1820. The tract was later enlarged for the church, parish house and walled cemetery.
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Mary Burwell marries Frederick Nash Strudwick
Mary Susan Burwell, one of her mother's first pupils and later a teacher at the school, married the neighbor Frederick Nash Strudwick in Hillsborough, with the Rev. F. K. Nash officiating, joining two families who lived a town lot apart.
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North Carolina Railroad finished to Durham's Station
The railroad was completed to Durham's Station, then a single house on Dr. Bartlett Durham's plantation in Orange County, and the company gave legislators a free ride there. From then until 1882 a two-horse hack line between Chapel Hill and Durham replaced the four-horse stage to Raleigh.
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Abner Burnette is twice prosecuted for carrying a gun and once recorded as Indian
Abner Burnette of the Texas community was indicted in Alamance County in 1855 for carrying a gun, which was unlawful for free persons of color. He pled guilty and was fined thirty one dollars. Indicted again in 1860 he pled not guilty, was convicted and was fined five cents. The 1860 census for Orange County recorded him as Indian, and the 1870 Alamance County census as mulatto.
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Caldwell Lodge No. 180 is chartered at Chapel Hill
Members of the defunct University Lodge took out a new charter as Caldwell Lodge No. 180, honoring the late university president Joseph Caldwell.
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Chapel Hill merchants, John W. Carr among them, agree not to sell to minor students on credit
After the state's new laws on student contracts were sent to them, most of the village merchants pledged not to sell on credit to students under age without written leave from a parent or guardian, for eighteen months and subject to the faculty's approval. John W. Carr was one of nine signers.
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Elizabeth Keckly purchases freedom for herself and her son
Elizabeth Keckly purchased freedom for herself and her son in St. Louis, after earlier enslavement in Hillsborough.
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Hillsborough elects a Know Nothing slate in its town elections
In the 1855 municipal election Hillsborough voters chose a Nativist (American Party) ticket. The same year the county's congressional vote went to the Know Nothing candidate.
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John and Louisa Turner inherit the Jackson farm on the Eno
Louisa Jackson Turner and her husband received the 140-acre Jackson farm outside Hillsborough, with its log and frame homeplace, from her widowed mother Mary Jackson. By 1860 the Turners farmed 713 acres on four tracts.
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Revised Code tightens the laws around the university
The state's Revised Code barred the sale of liquor within two miles of Chapel Hill, public gaming tables within five, and shows, concerts and performances within five miles without seven days' written leave from the president or faculty. It also voided students' contracts with merchants made without faculty permission and restored escheated real estate to the university.
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Richard Benbury Saunders buys the Lucas drugstore
Saunders, a UNC graduate of 1854, bought Dr. Lucas's drugstore at Franklin and Henderson and ran it until he moved to Raleigh in 1868.
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Richard H. Battle hosts the first class reunion dinner on record
At the 1855 commencement Richard H. Battle of the class of 1854 gave a dinner for all his returning classmates. Battle calls it the first class dinner recorded in the public prints.
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The King-Richards-Johnston House is built on West King Street
The one-and-a-half-story frame house at 131 West King Street, dated by Bellinger to about 1855, was a boarding house by 1894. Owners of the property over the years included Abner Nash, William Courtney, Jehu Whitted, William D. Murphy, Henry Richards and Mayor Ben G. Johnston.
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The legislature charters four plank road companies through Orange County
The 1855 charters were for roads from Chapel Hill to Morrisville and to Durhamsville, from Hillsborough to Chapel Hill, and from Hillsborough to Milton, with capital from $20,000 to $150,000. The book could not say which, if any, were built.
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Thomas Webb serves as Orange County's clerk and master in equity
Thomas Webb signed notices as clerk and master of the Court of Equity for Orange County, at his office in Hillsborough, from at least 1855 into 1862.
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Warrenton builder Jacob Holt puts up an Italianate house for Mary Southerland on West Franklin Street
In the mid-1850s Mary Southerland engaged Jacob Holt, the Warrenton builder, for a house on West Franklin a little west of Columbia Street, done in his heavy Italianate style with sawn brackets, corner pilasters and arched windows. She had bought the lot from Dr. Johnston B. Jones in 1851. The house has been torn down; University Square now occupies the lot.
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Willie P. Mangum is made a justice of the peace on his return to Orange County
According to the book, Mangum was made a justice of the peace on his return to Orange County in 1855, so that the county court could draw on his knowledge and experience.
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Dr. James Webb dies in Hillsborough
Dr. James Webb died in Hillsborough on Saturday morning, February 17, 1855, aged 81, after an illness of several years. The Recorder praised his integrity and charity, and he was buried with his wife in the Webb-Long plot of the Old Town Cemetery.
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Aunt Fariby saves Jane from burning
Jane, a young enslaved servant at the Burwell School, caught fire. Anna Burwell wrote that she would have burned to death but for Aunt Fariby, who saved her life.
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William McCauley takes charge of the Hillsborough House
William McCauley took over the Hillsborough House, the inn northeast of the court house long known as Faddis' Hotel. He repaired the buildings, bought new furniture and said he had retired from other business to run it.
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The North Carolina Railroad reaches Hillsborough
The Hillsborough Recorder of Wednesday, April 4, 1855, announced that the North Carolina Railroad was finished to the Chapel Hill Road, a few hundred yards south of town, and that passenger cars would begin running there that day. The editor cheered the end of two-day trips over muddy roads to Raleigh and costly wagoning of farm produce.
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The Baptist Church of Chapel Hill opens its first church
Services began on Sunday, May 6, 1855 in the brick meeting house, with vestibule, belfry and bell, that the Baptist congregation put up after it organized in September 1854. The building later became the Masonic temple of University Lodge.
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A. J. Davis returns to Chapel Hill with designs for new and enlarged college buildings
With the dormitories overflowing, Swain asked the faculty and trustees in 1855 for leave to build new residence halls, and the university turned again to Davis, who visited in the summer of 1856 and offered several designs. When the trustees acted in 1858 they hired William Percival instead.
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E. Hunt opens a photography studio and student boarding house
Hunt took over the building that had been Isaac Partridge's University Hotel and used it for a photographic studio and rooms for students. He had closed both and left Chapel Hill before 1863.
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Old belfry burns and the college bell is destroyed
During a student game of throwing alcohol-soaked fireballs, the old belfry caught fire and burned and its bell was destroyed. The executive committee sent the facts to the Orange solicitor, but no bill went to the grand jury, and the two literary societies agreed to fine any member $25 for wanton damage to university property.
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Orange County reports its county taxes to the state for the first time
County taxes, all on property and polls, came to $9,432.53 in 1856: $6,153.98 for county costs, $1,583.92 for the poor and $1,694.63 for common schools. By 1864 the county levy had grown to $35,106.63.
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Paul C. Cameron repurchases Burnside and moves back to Hillsborough
Paul and Anne Ruffin Cameron left Fairntosh in 1856, bought back Burnside, the Hillsborough house where they had first lived after their 1832 marriage, and moved back to town.
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Samuel F. Phillips represents Orange County in the House of Commons
A Whig, Phillips was elected to the House of Commons in 1856 and 1858 and again in 1864 and 1865, representing Orange, and was chosen speaker in 1865. He moved to Raleigh in 1867.
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Samuel Phillips builds a gable-and-wing house beside his law office
In 1856 Samuel Phillips built his family a two-story house at 407 East Franklin Street, beside his law office. With a projecting front wing and arched French doors and casements, it was the first house in the village to break from the box-like Federal and Greek Revival plan.
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Senior class invites Archbishop John Hughes to preach
A majority of the seniors present voted to invite the Roman Catholic Archbishop John Hughes to preach the commencement sermon, and the invitation was sent before the faculty could object. President Swain told the class it was unwise, the executive committee backed him, and the archbishop declined.
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The Gordan house is built near Efland
A story-and-a-half frame house, recorded as the Gordan House, is built near Efland in 1856.
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The Lambda chapter of Phi Kappa Sigma is active at the university
Phi Kappa Sigma's Lambda chapter flourished at the university from 1856 to 1862, and many members served as Confederate officers. After the 1875 reopening it was the first fraternity to be reinstated.
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The university dismisses Benjamin S. Hedrick over his Free Soil views
In 1856 faculty member Benjamin S. Hedrick admitted and defended in the newspapers his preference for the Free Soil party. President David L. Swain disapproved of his speaking out, and the trustees' executive committee dismissed Hedrick; Swain objected only that the committee had taken authority belonging to the full board.
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The first through trains run on the finished North Carolina Railroad, with mail trains at Hillsborough
The North Carolina Railroad was finished on January 29, 1856, when the last rail was laid about four and a half miles west of Greensboro. Two days later the regular mail and passenger trains made their first through run from Charlotte to Goldsboro, with a westbound train due at Hillsborough each morning and an eastbound one before dawn, replacing the coach connection that had carried the Burwells' letters to their daughter Fanny in New York.
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The Burwells resolve to sell their cook Hannah
Hannah, who had come from Virginia with the family and cooked for the school, had been drinking heavily through 1855. Anna Burwell wrote to her daughter Fanny that she had made up her mind: Hannah would be sent to Richmond to be sold.
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Fanny Burwell dies aboard the steamer Jamestown as her parents bring her home to Hillsborough
Fanny Burwell had gone to New York to complete her music education, but fell ill with erysipelas in early March. Her mother went north to nurse her, and she died at dawn on the steamer Jamestown between New York and Norfolk with both parents beside her, in her eighteenth year; her body was brought home to Hillsborough for burial.
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Anne Call Cameron, piano teacher to Burwell School students, dies
A widow known as Nancy, she gave piano lessons at the Burwell School to help pay for the care of her daughter Anna McKenzie Kirkland, whose illness followed her husband's death in 1843. She died in Hillsborough in June 1856.
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A Black child and then a student die of illness at the Burwell School
Writing to her mother, the student Lizzie Glass mentioned a small Black boy who had died at the school the previous day, at a time when Nannie Burwell and three of the Burwell children lay sick. Within a few weeks Lizzie Glass herself died at the school.
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Orange County Agricultural Society holds its third fair near Hillsborough
At the society's third annual fair, on its grounds near Hillsborough, members elected Paul C. Cameron president and Thomas Webb secretary. Cameron, away in Alabama, had given the society a flag that flew from a pole more than eighty feet high.
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An octagonal brick ice house is built for Burnside
A mostly underground octagonal brick ice house with a conical shingled roof was built for Burnside, the Cameron family estate on South Cameron Street; the brickwork is said to be John Berry's. It stands in the woods south of Cameron Park Elementary School and was restored around 2002.
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Brick mason William Maynard builds his frame farmhouse
William Maynard, a brick mason who also farmed, completed a story-and-a-half frame house two rooms deep in 1857, with a wide center hall and plain Greek Revival details. The older log dwelling behind it then became the kitchen. The 1993 form ranks it among the most intact antebellum farmhouses in the county.
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Burwell School closes as the Burwells move to Charlotte
The Burwells closed their Hillsborough school in 1857, the same year they took charge of a girls' school in Charlotte.
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Charles Phillips serves as stated supply for the Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church
Phillips was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Orange in December 1857 and served as stated supply for the Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church from 1857 to 1868. He taught and superintended the church Sunday school and with his wife started a Sunday school for Black residents.
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Paul C. Cameron enlarges Highlands, the former log schoolhouse south of the Eno
Paul C. Cameron added two bays to Highlands, giving it the center-hall plan it keeps. The house had begun about 1844 as a log school and was made a dwelling by Andrew Mickle in 1846.
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Paul Cameron brings English gardener Thomas A. Adams to plant the Burnside grounds
Paul Cameron hired Thomas A. Adams, a landscape gardener from Chester, England, to plant the twenty-acre front yard of Burnside with trees ordered from Parsons and Co. of Long Island. The grounds became known as Cameron Park, and many of the trees still stand.
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Pride Jones has John Berry enlarge Sans Souci
After inheriting Sans Souci from Dr. William Cain in 1857, Dr. Pride Jones has builder John Berry renovate the house, adding the rear dining room and stair, the full-width front porch and the one-story wings.
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Sigma Alpha Epsilon establishes a chapter at the university
Sigma Alpha Epsilon set up a chapter at the university in 1857, one of several fraternities to arrive in the 1850s. It withdrew before the end of the Civil War.
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The Baptists build a schoolhouse, and the lane beside it becomes Church Street
A schoolhouse went up next to the new Baptist church on West Franklin Street, and the dirt road just east of the two buildings took the name Church Street.
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Thomas Ruffin buys a West Tryon Street house for his widowed daughter Catherine Roulhac
About 1857 Chief Justice Thomas Ruffin bought the house at 143 West Tryon Street, built around 1840, for his widowed daughter Catherine Ruffin Roulhac, who named it Laburnum Cottage. After her death in 1880 it passed to her daughter Annie Roulhac and then to the Hamilton family, whose children included the historian J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton.
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Trustees buy Elisha Mitchell's books and minerals after his death
Elisha Mitchell, senior professor, died on June 27, 1857, in a fall while surveying the Black Mountains. The trustees paid his salary to the year's end, let his family keep their house rent-free for six months, and bought his books for $3,500 and his apparatus and mineral cabinet for $1,000.
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University awards its first Bachelor of Science degree
At the 1857 commencement James E. Lindsay received the first Bachelor of Science degree in the university's history, from the new scientific school. Six more B.S. degrees followed in 1859 and five in 1860.
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Snowstorm closes the university for the first time
A night of wind and snow left about eighteen inches of icy snow, and the cold kept wood wagons off the roads for a week. For the first time in the university's history all duties were suspended, from Sunday until Tuesday.
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John Kimberly is elected the university's professor of agricultural chemistry
The university elected John Kimberly, a Harvard-trained chemist then teaching in eastern North Carolina, to the chair of agricultural chemistry in place of the dismissed Benjamin Hedrick.
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Trustees create a professorship of modern languages
After a dispute between the French instructor Henri Harrisse and President Swain, the trustees created a professorship of modern languages and elected Hildreth H. Smith, president of Catawba College, to fill it. Smith held the chair until the university closed in 1868.
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Moses Ashley Curtis returns to St. Matthew's in Hillsborough
After about ten years at Society Hill, S.C., Curtis came back to St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough in February 1857, and stayed until his death in 1872; he was buried in the churchyard.
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The wardens of the poor elect Dr. Benjamin F. Mebane physician to the poorhouse
At the same April 1857 meeting the Court of Wardens told its treasurer to hand over the rest of the 1856 poor taxes so the superintendent could pay the oldest orders first.
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The wardens of the poor order poorhouse repairs and a $1,000 loan
After a called meeting on May 11, 1857 about the state of the poorhouse building, the wardens asked the county court on May 25 to summon the magistrates on the condition of the poor. They named a committee to repair the west building and let the superintendent borrow $1,000.
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Robert Bingham becomes a partner in his father's school at the Oaks
After graduating from the University of North Carolina in 1857, Robert Bingham was admitted in July as junior partner in his father's school at the Oaks, which took the firm name W. J. Bingham and Sons. His brother William was also a partner.
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William Cain dies and leaves Sans Souci to his son-in-law Pride Jones
William Cain, who built Sans Souci as his town house and was married to a sister of Chief Justice Thomas Ruffin, died and willed the house he had formerly lived in to his son-in-law, Pride Jones.
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Alves, an enslaved man sentenced to death, is baptized at St. Matthew's
St. Matthew's register records the baptism of Alves, "a slave under sentence of death," with James Waddell as witness.
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A small smoking-tobacco factory opens by the depot at Durham's Station
Built beside the tracks and worked by free Black and white laborers, the plant was the start of the tobacco industry that later made Durham a factory town.
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Adolphus W. Mangum serves as pastor of the Chapel Hill Methodist church
The Methodist minister Adolphus Williamson Mangum, born at Locust Grove on the Flat River in what was then Orange County, was pastor of the Methodist church in Chapel Hill in 1858 and 1859.
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Charles P. Mallett keeps the University Bookstore on Franklin Street
Mallett's University Bookstore was one of four businesses the book first maps in 1858, along with Andrew Mickle's dry goods, John R. Hutchins's clothing store and C. Gottenburg's mattress shop. All may have opened before 1853.
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John W. Graham joins the university faculty as a Latin tutor
A year after taking his A.B. in 1857, John W. Graham became a tutor in Latin at the University of North Carolina. He finished a law degree there in 1860.
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Jones Watson opens the Central Hotel
Watson remodeled and enlarged the old James Hogg house and the Barbee store beside it into the Central Hotel, which had several shops on the ground. It appears on the maps through 1868.
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St. Mary's Chapel is built
The Episcopal congregation of St. Mary's, about six miles northeast of Hillsborough, replaced its eighteenth-century church with a small brick Gothic Revival chapel on land bought beside the original tract. Bishop Thomas Atkinson consecrated it on November 25, 1859, and the congregation reported that the neat brick church had cost $2,000.
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Students of a lawless club riot and are sued for damages
A club of students sworn to back each other in breaking rules rang and stole the bell, stoned the faculty and piled the classroom benches and blackboards for a bonfire. The leaders were expelled and, sued in Orange Superior Court, made to repay the university about $200.
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The General Assembly lets Emily Hooper, a citizen of Liberia, return to slavery in Chapel Hill
A private act allowed Emily Hooper, who had emigrated to Liberia, to come back and live again as the enslaved property of her former owner, Sally Mallet of Chapel Hill.
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The brick McDade House is built on West Franklin Street
The two-story brick I-house at 113 West Franklin Street, with late Greek Revival touches and a long rear ell, was built after Isaac Hudson bought the old Nunn lot in 1854, probably for him about 1858-60, and stood by 1865. The 1992 survey's "about 1850" is a guess from its style. The McDades did not own it until 1894.
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University enrollment reaches its antebellum peak
The university's catalogue for the 1858-59 session counted 456 students, its highest college enrollment before the Civil War. Counting eight independent law students, the 1857-58 total had been 461.
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Zeta Psi organizes a chapter at the university
The Zeta Psi chapter at the university was organized in January 1858. Battle counts four colonels among its members who served the Confederacy, and nine members killed.
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A marble monument to Joseph Caldwell is dedicated in McCorkle Place
A marble obelisk to Caldwell was dedicated north of the Davie Poplar. Its inscription names the President of the United States, the Governor and other alumni as donors and praises his advocacy of common schools and internal improvements. Caldwell and his wife still lay by the old sandstone shaft near New West; their remains, with her son's, were moved to the monument's east base in July 1904.
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New East and New West are built to William Percival's design
To house more students, the university built two dormitories with classrooms and debating society halls on either side of Old East and Old West, to designs by the English architect William Percival, with Thomas Coates as contractor. Work began in June 1858, and the faculty announced on July 31, 1861 that the buildings were ready to occupy.
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Charles Tew chooses a site west of Hillsborough for a military academy
In late July 1858 Charles C. Tew, with Moses A. Curtis and A. S. Galliard, searched Hillsborough for a school site and settled on a 40-acre tract about a mile and a half west of town near the new North Carolina Railroad. They engaged the Columbia architect John A. Kay, and local builders John Berry and Henry Richards built the barracks and commandant's house.
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Pride Jones and John W. Norwood are elected to the House of Commons for Orange
Orange County elected Democrats Pride Jones and John W. Norwood to the state House of Commons in the August 1858 election.
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Frederick Nash dies in Hillsborough and is buried in the Old Town Cemetery
Nash fell ill returning from a synod meeting at New Bern and died in December 1858 at his Hillsborough home, while serving as chief justice of the state supreme court. He was buried in the Hillsborough Old Town Cemetery.
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Beta Theta Pi's Eta chapter goes inactive
After a strong start the Eta chapter lapsed in 1859 as the Civil War approached.
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Farm labor in rural Orange County
Tobacco spread from Washington Duke’s turn to the crop in 1859, and after emancipation many freedpeople worked the land as tenants and sharecroppers; the 1930 census counted tenants on about a third of the county’s farms. Farm Security Administration loans reached Black farmers from 1938, tenancy fell sharply in the 1950s, and by 2022 the census counted 36 migrant workers on the county’s farms.
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Masons lay a cornerstone at the Hillsborough Military Academy
A delegation from Eagle Lodge took part in a Masonic cornerstone ceremony at the Hillsborough Military Academy in 1859.
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New Bethel Methodist Church is organized
John R. McMannan, Jackson Latta and five other men organized New Bethel Methodist Church in 1859. The church it used in 1953 dated from 1925.
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Professor William J. Martin buys the Franklin and Boundary corner and builds a house
Martin, who replaced Elisha Mitchell on the faculty and later served as a Confederate colonel, bought the northeast corner of Franklin and Boundary streets from Charles Phillips and built his home there soon after. He left for Tennessee in 1868.
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Samuel F. Phillips closes his law school and shares the office with Judge Battle
Phillips, who had taught law in his Franklin Street office since 1854, closed the school, went back to practice, and shared the building with Judge William Horn Battle.
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The Nash and Kollock School turns the old Nash law office into a music room
After Chief Justice Frederick Nash died, his daughters Sally and Maria Nash and their cousin Sarah Kollock began holding their school's music lessons in his former law office on Margaret Lane.
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The legislature creates North Carolina's first Board of Medical Examiners
In 1859 the state set up its first Board of Medical Examiners by law. The book credits the urging of Hillsborough's Dr. Edmund Strudwick.
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Trustees buy a second thousand shares of bank stock on credit
When the old state bank's charter ran out, the trustees put the university's $100,000 into the new Bank of North Carolina and, by a bare majority, subscribed for another thousand shares on credit. Only $10,000 of that debt was ever paid, and after the war the university owed $90,000 on shares that were worthless.
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Washington Duke turns from cotton to tobacco on his Orange County farm
After a failed cotton crop, Washington Duke began growing tobacco in 1859 on his farm, then in Orange County, following favorable publicity among Orange County farmers. The farm used the labor of an enslaved girl, Caroline, bought in 1855, and later a leased enslaved man, Jim, who worked in tobacco.
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Hillsborough Military Academy opens
Charles C. Tew, then superintendent of the South Carolina military academy at Columbia, opened the Hillsborough Military Academy on January 12, 1859, holding its first classes in the Hillsborough Academy building. Its neo-Gothic barracks west of town, built to house 125 cadets, was finished in September 1860.
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Samuel Wellwood Hughes opens his own school near Cedar Grove
After fourteen years as founder and principal of Cedar Grove Academy, Samuel Wellwood Hughes opened his own classical school five miles northwest of Hillsborough, its first session beginning on the second Monday of January 1859. He taught there until his death in 1884; the surviving schoolhouse, dated about 1862, was later moved to Hillsborough and restored.
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The Hillsborough Military Academy commandant's house is ready to live in
The academy's neo-Gothic commandant's house, with turrets and crenellations along the roofline, was far enough along to be occupied by March 1859, though interior work may have continued for years.
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Corporators organize the Hillsborough Savings Institution
The corporators of the Hillsborough Savings Institution, among them Thomas Webb, William A. Graham, James F. Cain and Pride Jones, met in the county court clerk's office on April 1, 1859, adopted the charter and appointed Webb and others to open subscription books. By December 1860 Webb was its cashier.
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Hillsborough Methodist Church builds its church
The Hillsborough Methodist congregation, organized about 1807, bought its lot on April 4, 1859, and John Berry built the church, which was to be dedicated on Sunday, October 6, 1861. The war held up the finishing and the building was not paid for until 1874. Lefler and Wager counted 200 seats, and it was still the congregation's church in 1953.
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President James Buchanan attends commencement
President Buchanan and Interior Secretary Jacob Thompson, an alumnus, came to the 1859 commencement as guests of President Swain, received callers under the Davie Poplar and saw Buchanan given an honorary doctor of laws. The Wilmington Light Infantry, the first military company to attend a commencement, camped on the campus for the occasion.
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Nash and Kollock School for young ladies opens in Hillsborough
After Chief Justice Frederick Nash died in 1858, his daughters Sarah and Maria Nash and their cousin Sarah Kollock opened a select boarding and day school for girls in the Nash home.
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Five elders are ordained at New Hope
Samuel S. Claytor, Alexander Dickson, William S. Kirkland, Bryant Strayhorn and George R. Long were ordained and installed. Craig traces each to the founding families except Dickson.
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Bishop Atkinson consecrates St. Mary's Chapel
The St. Mary's Chapel building in eastern Orange County was consecrated by Bishop Atkinson with the Rev. Dr. Curtis taking part.
- 1860s
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A one-room log house goes up on the Bryant Nevilles farm near White Cross
By family tradition a one-room log house and log smokehouse on the Nevilles farm near White Cross date to about the Civil War years. Bryant Nevilles (1850-1931), who married Julia Lloyd in 1872, later farmed here, and a frame bungalow was added to the farmstead in 1926. The farm is on the Study List.
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Archbishop John Hughes preaches the commencement sermon
Invited again by the senior class, the Roman Catholic Archbishop Hughes preached the baccalaureate sermon, speaking without notes for an hour and three quarters on love of God and of neighbor. Some Protestant critics attacked the choice, and a Hillsborough Recorder correspondent charged that he was treated discourteously, which the university denied.
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Brick quarters for enslaved people are built at the Mangum House on St. Mary's Road
Around 1860 two four-bay brick buildings, likely quarters for enslaved people, and a brick smokehouse were built to serve the Priestly Mangum House on St. Mary's Road. The house later burned, and the Ruffin-Hill House went up near its site in 1877-1878; the quarters still stand at 311 and 313 St. Mary's Road.
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Census counts more than 5,000 enslaved people in Orange County
The 1860 census recorded more than 5,000 enslaved people in Orange County, whose labor sustained the county's farms. At emancipation they made up roughly a third of the county's population.
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David Moore, a free Black barber in Chapel Hill, holds property worth $4,400
The 1860 census recorded Moore's property at $4,400, the largest holding among the county's 29 free Black property owners, whose combined wealth was $16,175.
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Executive committee orders the faculty to stop hazing
The trustees' executive committee resolved that the ridicule and petty harassment of new students by older ones was cruel and contemptible and should be put down peremptorily by the faculty.
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First Baptist Church of Hillsborough builds its church
Seven years after organizing in the old courthouse, the First Baptist Church of Hillsborough began its brick church about 1860, to a design by William Percival. The congregation met in the courthouse until 1862 and the war stalled the work; John Berry took over from the first builder, D. Kistler, and finished it. The Baptist State Convention met in the newly completed church in the fall of 1868, when Rev. Thomas H. Pritchard of Raleigh preached the dedication sermon.
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Four in ten Orange farms now grow bright-leaf tobacco
Between 1850 and 1860 the share of county farms growing bright leaf rose from about 11 to about 41 percent and the crop grew fivefold to over a million pounds. Farms raising 100 bushels of wheat or more rose from 26 to 39 percent.
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Hillsborough counts 945 residents
Even with the railroad, the town hardly grew in the 1850s: about 900 people in 1850 and 945 at the end of the decade.
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James H. Pratt buys the Jehu Brown tract and a second share of the Cabe land
John Burton, Jamima Cabe's son by her first marriage, sold the 160-acre Jehu Brown tract with the house to Pratt by a deed dated 1860. The same year Pratt bought 130 adjoining acres that had been Nancy Cabe's share of her father's land.
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John Kimberly expands laboratory teaching at the university
Back in Chapel Hill after a year of study abroad in 1859, John Kimberly expanded laboratory instruction in chemistry and introduced the university's first laboratory fee for supplies.
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John Kirkland builds a log house on Kirkland Road
John Kirkland built a log house east of NC 86 that was widened with a frame section around 1900 and given a Triple-A roof. A kitchen joined by a breezeway, a smokehouse and a dairy on posts stand in the yard.
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Merchant Calvin Scott builds a Greek Revival house on West Cameron Avenue
Calvin Scott, a Chapel Hill merchant, is thought to have built the two-story I-house at 400 West Cameron Avenue about 1860. It later belonged to Samuel Mallette Gattis, a UNC alumnus of 1884 and a university trustee from 1909 to 1911.
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Most white male household heads in Orange County own no land
Citing Robert Kenzer's study of the county, the report says that in 1860 some 59 percent of white men heading households held no land and 71.5 percent held no slaves. A third held between 1 and 250 acres, and 21.6 percent held from one to nine enslaved people.
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New belfry built on South Building
A belfry was raised on South Building to plans by the builder Thomas H. Coates, replacing the one burned in 1856. It was strengthened after the 1875 reopening and still carried the bell in Battle's day.
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Orange County teaches 57 district schools
In 1860 Orange County taught fifty-seven district schools with forty-five licensed teachers, on about $7,400 in state school money and $1,800 in county taxes, in terms of about four months, two decades after the state's first public school law. The 1860 census, counting differently, listed 25 public schools with 2,163 pupils.
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Paul C. Cameron holds 470 people in slavery in Orange County
The 1860 count listed Cameron of Fairntosh as the owner of 470 enslaved people in Orange, and the joined Bennehan-Cameron holdings ran to as much as 30,000 acres worked by about 900 enslaved people.
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Seven in ten free Orange County residents hold no one in slavery
In 1860, 70 percent of the free population held no enslaved people. Of the slaveholders, only seven percent held 20 or more, and more than half held fewer than five.
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The Neville House is built
The Neville House, built about 1860, was placed on the state Study List in July 1992 after the Chapel Hill Township survey.
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The Pitard Place is built near Cedar Grove
A two-story frame house with a very low hip roof, widely spaced windows and a two-tier entry porch, the broadest local take on the Greek Revival.
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The Sikes log house is built
The Sikes log house dates from about 1860 and was placed on the state Study List in July 1993.
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The Tally family I-house is built near Cedar Grove
The main house at the Tally Homeplace near Cedar Grove, a two-story I-house, goes up around 1860 and is altered in the 1880s. The farm keeps tobacco barns, two tenant houses of about 1900 and an office, and is on the Study List.
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The brick Mason-Lloyd-Wiley House is built on West Cameron Avenue
About 1860 a two-story brick house with carefully laid walls and a sidelighted double entrance went up at 412 West Cameron Avenue, among the biggest houses on the west side of the university. Turner Bynum may have built it.
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Thomas Kirkland starts a frame house and finishes it after the Civil War
Thomas Kirkland began a two-room frame house on University Station Road before he left for the war and completed it when he came back.
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Thomas and Mary Hogan build a farmhouse at Calvander
About 1860, around the time Thomas J. Hogan married Mary, the couple built a story-and-a-half frame farmhouse with Greek Revival trim on the old Hillsborough Road at Calvander; family tradition has their first child born there in 1862. Thomas served in the Civil War, and about 1890 the Hogans raised the house to two stories in the Queen Anne style.
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Webb and Whitted's plug tobacco factory is Hillsborough's largest works
The firm made plug tobacco in Hillsborough with 15 workers, the biggest manufacturing concern in present Orange County in the 1860 census.
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William H. S. Burgwyn enters the University of North Carolina
Burgwyn entered the University of North Carolina as a freshman in 1860, after schooling near Baltimore and at Horner's School in Oxford. He left in 1861 because of illness.
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William Shambley builds a log house before going to war
About 1860 William Shambley raised a one-room log house on Cornwallis Road, finishing it shortly before he left to fight in the Civil War. It remained well kept in 1992.
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Walter Clark enters Colonel Tew's military academy in Hillsborough
Walter Clark, then fourteen, enrolled at Colonel C. C. Tew's Military Academy in Hillsborough. He left for Confederate service after the war began.
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Trustees allow students to be excused from chapel worship
Answering a memorial from the Episcopal convention that compulsory chapel on Sunday violated conscience, the trustees adopted Judge Matthias E. Manly's scheme letting the president excuse students whose parents lived in the village, who belonged to another church in town, or who or whose parents objected in writing. Morning and evening prayers stayed compulsory.
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Andrew Mickle refuses to raise his prices as Confederate money falls
Andrew Mickle was prospering as a merchant when the Civil War began, but he held that it was wrong to raise his prices when his neighbors could hardly get money. As the currency fell he sold his goods for much less than cost and lost his fortune.
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At least 1,260 Orange County men serve in the Confederate army
J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton counted 1,260 Orange men in Moore's Roster, of whom 249 died in service and 139 were wounded. He thought all three figures too low.
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George Attmore Sparrow is a cadet at the Hillsborough Military Academy
Sparrow, the teenage son of the Washington lawyer Thomas Sparrow, was enrolled as a cadet at the Hillsborough Military Academy in 1861 and 1862. He wrote home to his father from the academy through that period.
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Hillsborough Methodists refuse to give their church bell to be cast into Confederate cannon
When Confederate authorities, short of cannon, asked the Hillsborough Methodist Church for its bell to melt down, the congregation turned them down.
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Seniors in the army granted diplomas without examinations
With the consent of the trustees, the faculty granted degrees to all members of the senior class, though many had joined the army and did not stand their examinations. Only thirty of the eighty-seven graduates were present in person, and the Latin salutatory was dropped because its speaker was with his regiment at Yorktown.
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Solomon Pool is promoted to adjunct professor of mathematics
Pool was promoted to adjunct professor of mathematics in 1861 and held the position for six years. In 1866 he took leave to become a United States deputy appraiser in North Carolina on the understanding that the university need not reemploy him until it had need of him.
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State gives Ebenezer Emmons's geological collection to the university
Needing the space in the Capitol for war business, the state gave the university the rocks and minerals gathered by State Geologist Ebenezer Emmons. Professor William J. Martin spent two weeks sorting them and shipping them to Chapel Hill.
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T. M. Jordan preaches to enslaved people in the Baptist church basement
Rev. T. M. Jordan held services for enslaved people of Hillsborough in the basement of the Baptist church and married and baptized many Black members. One night his hearers gave him so much Confederate money that he carried it home in a handkerchief.
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The Weavers add a frame front wing to the log house
A plain one-and-a-half-story frame block with two rooms per floor was built across the front, by family account to shelter the wife and children of a Weaver who went off to the Civil War. The log wing got matching Greek Revival doors and sash at about the same time.
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Thirty-five men of the New Hope congregation die in Confederate service
Craig lists thirty-five men from within the bounds of the congregation who died in the Civil War, eight of them Strayhorns and three Craigs.
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UNC remains open during the Civil War
President David Lowry Swain kept the university in session as students left Chapel Hill at eight to ten a day to enlist in late April 1861. Enrollment fell to 91 by September 1861, Swain won a Confederate draft exemption for some students in 1863, and only four students graduated in 1865.
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William H. S. Burgwyn enrolls as a cadet at the Hillsborough Military Academy
Later in 1861 Burgwyn entered the Hillsborough Military Academy as a cadet. By the autumn he had been appointed drill master of the camp of instruction near Raleigh, and he was then elected a lieutenant in the Thirty-fifth North Carolina Regiment.
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Women organize Ladies Aid Societies in Hillsborough and Chapel Hill
Soon after secession women in the two towns formed aid societies, later joined by others, that made clothing and bandages, gathered food and money, met troop trains and nursed the sick and wounded until the war ended.
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Orange County voters reject a secession convention
In the February 28, 1861 vote on calling a state convention, Orange County voted 1,436 against and 458 for, and chose Unionists William A. Graham and John Berry as delegates over secession candidates Henry K. Nash and Pride Jones. The governor's count showed the convention defeated statewide, 46,603 to 46,409, before Davie County reported.
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Young men enroll at Chapel Hill in the Orange Light Infantry
William F. Strowd and other young men of the area, who had begun organizing a volunteer company on April 6, 1861, met at Chapel Hill on April 22 and enrolled for six months. As the Orange Light Infantry they were mustered into state service at Raleigh on May 13.
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A courthouse meeting in Hillsborough calls for a secession convention
Ten days after Fort Sumter, a large crowd from across the county met at the courthouse. With Dr. Edmund Strudwick presiding and Dennis Heartt as secretary, it adopted resolutions asking the legislature to call a convention at once to pass an ordinance of secession.
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Orange County companies mobilize for Confederate service
Answering Governor John W. Ellis's call, Capt. R. J. Ashe's Orange Light Infantry was to report at state headquarters on April 27, 1861, with about $1,000 raised by Chapel Hill residents, and was made the first company of the First Regiment of North Carolina Volunteers. The Orange Guards were drilling at Fort Macon by early May.
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Students petition trustees to close the university for the war
After Fort Sumter the juniors, sophomores and freshmen asked the trustees to suspend exercises until fall, since eight or ten students were leaving each day. The petition was refused, and President Swain issued a circular that the university would go on as before.
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Orange County during the Civil War
Students left Chapel Hill to enlist from late April 1861, and Hillsborough Military Academy's founder, Charles Tew, left in May to command a Confederate regiment. The university stayed open as enrollment fell to about a dozen. Federal cavalry held Chapel Hill from April 17 to May 3, 1865, as many newly freed people left town or joined the army.
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Orange County sends delegates to the secession convention
On May 13, 1861, after Fort Sumter and Lincoln's call for troops, Orange County voters again chose William A. Graham and John Berry as delegates to the state convention, over Paul C. Cameron and Henry K. Nash. The Recorder printed the precinct returns and noted the convention would meet in Raleigh on May 20.
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North Carolina secedes from the Union
Meeting in Raleigh on May 20, 1861, the state convention, with Orange County's delegates William A. Graham and John Berry among its members, unanimously adopted an ordinance dissolving North Carolina's union with the United States and the same day ratified the provisional Confederate constitution.
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Orange County elects William A. Graham to the secession convention
Graham had led Union men in defeating a February 1861 referendum to call a convention on disunion. After Fort Sumter he was elected by a large margin to represent Orange County in the Constitutional Convention of May 1861, where he stood unsuccessfully for the presidency of the convention before voting for secession.
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The Orange County court sets aside $50,000 for soldiers' families
Recognizing that many volunteers were men of small means, the county court appropriated $50,000 to support their families. The fund lasted until late in the war.
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Faculty deny rumors of closing and add military drill
Alarmed by reports that the university had suspended, the faculty issued a circular that there had been no suspension since 1795 and would be none, and that students were being taught military tactics. Drill was led first by a Mr. Lilly and Professor William J. Martin, and on March 18, 1862 tutor Frederick A. Fetter was made drill master.
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Presiding elder William Barringer dedicates the new Methodist church in Hillsborough
The brick church that Capt. John Berry built on the Tryon Street lot bought in 1859 was dedicated by William Barringer, presiding elder of the Raleigh District. The first sermon in it was preached by Jesse A. Cunninggim.
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A carved brownstone headstone marks Thomas Fletcher's grave in the enslaved people's section
Thomas Fletcher, 1838-1862, received a round-topped brownstone headstone with a monogrammed footstone in Section B, as did George, son of Samuel Barbee (no dates). The rough local stone points to a mason cutting gravestones on the side; with Burnett's ledger they are among the few inscribed antebellum markers in a North Carolina slave cemetery.
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Commencement held without its ball or marshals
The ball managers told the trustees the seniors' ball could not be held unless the board gave $200 or $300, and the trustees did not answer, so it was omitted for the first time. A quarrel between seniors and juniors over the marshal left the commencement without marshals or music.
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Dr. Armand J. DeRosset of Wilmington buys a West Franklin house as a wartime refuge
DeRosset bought Mary Southerland's house and kept it as his family's refuge from the coast for the rest of the war. He sold it to Caroline Frederica Baudry in 1867.
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Druggist Richard Benbury Saunders makes blue mass for the Confederacy
Saunders enlisted in 1861 but was back at his Franklin Street drugstore by 1862, compounding blue mass, a mercury purgative the Confederate army counted as essential.
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Eagle Lodge's rooftop observatory is taken down and a hipped roof built
In 1862 the glassed-in observatory on the roof of the Masonic hall, said to have predated President Caldwell's 1831 observatory at the university, was removed and the present hipped roof built.
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George Attmore Sparrow leaves the Hillsborough academy to join the Confederate army
Writing from the academy on 21 July 1862, Sparrow told his father he had approval for his discharge and would leave with other cadets when the session ended on 31 July. He was in camp with the Army of the Pamlico by 1863.
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The legislature elects William A. Graham to the Confederate Senate
Early in the session that began after the 1862 election, the Assembly chose Graham, then Orange's state senator, for the Confederate Senate term starting in May 1864. He kept his state seat until December 1863.
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William A. Graham's house at Montrose burns
The house the Grahams had enlarged at Montrose burned in 1862, and the family moved to a house on West Tryon Street. Only the law office and outbuildings were left on the land.
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Fire destroys Robert Loder's clothing store
Robert Loder's store near Franklin and Columbia burned, and the fire crossed Columbia Street to John Wesley Carr's store before it was put out.
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New Hope's 1805 church burns
The church burned on a Saturday night, most people believing it was set on purpose. The next morning James Phillips preached to the congregation under the trees, and through the summer of 1862 they worshipped under a large arbor built on the grounds.
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Robert Bingham goes to war with an Orange County militia company
Robert Bingham, a member of an Orange County militia company, enlisted in state service with his fellow members on March 8, 1862, and on March 25 was elected captain of Company G, Forty-fourth North Carolina Infantry. He was captured in June 1863 and held in Union prisons until he was exchanged in 1864.
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Hillsborough Savings Institution stockholders vote to stop paying interest
At a called meeting on August 9, 1862, stockholders holding 512 shares resolved to pay no interest on deposit certificates after September 16 and to settle all certificates by then. Cashier John U. Kirkland published the notice.
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The Baptists sell their old courthouse church to George Bishop of New Bern
Trustees H. C. Strowd, John Cheek and William Ward sold the old Baptist church lot at Churton and Queen streets, part of town lot 80, to George Bishop of New Bern for $750. Bishop later resold it to Philadelphia Friends working for freedpeople, and it became the home of Dickerson's Chapel.
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The Collins family buys the former Burwell School and calls it the Beehive
Members of the Collins family of Somerset Place, who had left Union-held eastern North Carolina, paid Robert Burwell $3,500 for the house and four lots. By 1863 about forty family members and enslaved servants lived there, and the family named it the Beehive.
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Thirty Chapel Hill families pool money to buy corn
Amid wartime scarcity, thirty heads of families sent Andrew Mickle to buy corn in a better-supplied district; he brought back about 1,921 bushels by rail to Durham and wagon from there, at $6.75 a barrel delivered. The livery keeper John H. Watson took ninety barrels, President Swain 33 and Judge Battle 24.
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Hillsborough meeting resolves to erect a monument to Col. Charles C. Tew
A Hillsborough meeting chaired by M. E. Manly resolved to raise a monument to Col. Tew, killed at Sharpsburg, at or near the front of his Military Academy, and named Dr. Edmund Strudwick, Dr. Pride Jones and Thomas Webb to collect funds and build it.
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John Newman acquires the old Federal house on West Queen Street that his family keeps for generations
John Newman acquired the one-story Federal house at 230 West Queen Street in the mid-1860s. It passed to his son William Henry Newman in 1917 and then to his daughters Estelle, Josie and Gertrude, and late 1940s wings were added on each side.
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New Hope Presbyterian Church builds its fourth church
In the middle of the Civil War, New Hope Presbyterian Church put up its fourth building, the one still in use in 1953.
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Two rooms are added to the Nash law office for music practice and Sarah Kollock's lodging
Two rooms were built onto the west side of the old Nash law office to give the Nash and Kollock School more practice rooms and to house Sarah Kollock.
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Walter Clark resigns his Confederate commission and graduates first in his class at the university
When his regiment came back to North Carolina in February 1863, Walter Clark resigned his commission as a Confederate officer and went to the university, where he studied under David L. Swain and William H. Battle. He graduated first in his class in June 1864.
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County commissioners call for builders of a new bridge over the Eno at Hillsborough
In a notice dated March 4, 1863, commissioners William H. Brown and J. W. Norwood announced they would let the building of a bridge over the Eno at Hillsborough to contract at the courthouse on Saturday, March 14. The plan was on view at the county court clerk's office.
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The county school board names committeemen for all 53 districts in wartime
The Board of Superintendents appointed school committeemen for each of Orange County's 53 districts, a sign the public schools stayed open during the war. That month W. H. Brown's examining committee also called would-be teachers to the courthouse in May.
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Jim, an enslaved tobacco worker leased to Washington Duke, flees toward Union lines
Jim, an enslaved man whose labor Washington Duke leased to grow and cure tobacco, ran away with three others in June 1863 trying to reach Union lines. After the war he took the surname Cox and became a tobacco sharecropper in the Durham area.
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