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Revolution and early republic · 1775–1799
- 1790s
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Charles Wilson Harris acts as presiding professor
After David Ker resigned under pressure from the trustees in the summer of 1796, Harris acted as presiding professor until his own resignation that December. He had persuaded Joseph Caldwell to join the faculty in October 1796.
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Joseph Caldwell arrives in Chapel Hill as professor of mathematics
Joseph Caldwell, a Princeton graduate and tutor, moved to Chapel Hill in October 1796 to teach mathematics at the new university. He became presiding professor the next year.
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James Smiley Gillaspie is made principal of the university
To keep Joseph Caldwell, who meant to leave rather than carry the executive duties, the trustees elected Gillaspie professor of natural philosophy with the title of principal. Caldwell stayed as professor of mathematics and taught French in the preparatory school.
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Eagle Lodge meets in Chapel Hill and initiates Joseph Caldwell
By special dispensation, Hillsborough's Eagle Lodge met in Chapel Hill and made Masons of Joseph Caldwell, then presiding professor of the university, and three other faculty members.
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Students rise against the faculty and beat principal Gillaspie
In the term before the 1799 commencement students beat Gillaspie, waylaid and stoned tutor William E. Webb and threatened Caldwell and Archibald Murphey, and for a week exercises stopped. Three leaders were dismissed and the faculty offered to resign, and by that November Caldwell was chosen again to head the university.
Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
- 1800s
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The General Assembly takes back the university's confiscated lands and escheats
Amid hostility to the university as a Federalist school, and anger at its suits over old McCulloch claims, the legislature repealed the 1794 grant of confiscated property and the 1789 grant of escheats. The courts later held the escheat repeal unconstitutional in University v. Foy.
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Women of Raleigh give the university a new pair of globes
Hearing that the university's globes were too worn to use, sixteen Raleigh women, among them Sarah Polk, Anna White and Eliza Haywood, sent a new pair twelve inches across with a compass to Joseph Caldwell. The letter was written by Winifred Gales.
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A student duel brings expulsions and a trustee order against dueling
Quarrels in the spring of 1803 led to challenges and at least one meeting. Samuel G. Hopkins was expelled for fighting and John H. Hawkins for acting as second, and the trustees ordered that anyone in a duel be expelled and handed to the civil authorities.
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Women of New Bern give the university a quadrant
Sixteen New Bern women, among them Susan Gaston and Mary Nash, sent a quadrant for the philosophical class to Joseph Caldwell. In his reply Caldwell blamed the university's unpopularity partly on disappointment over costs and on student misconduct.
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Joseph Caldwell is elected the first president of the university
When the trustees created the office of president in 1804 they elected Caldwell to it unanimously. He resigned the presidency in 1812 to teach and returned to it a few years later, holding it until his death in 1835.
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Trustees make Greek a requirement for a degree
After electing Caldwell president, the board ruled that no degree be granted without Greek, set Greek tests for entering the junior and freshman classes and repealed the degree for English and the sciences. It also ordered the president to wear a black gown at commencement.
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President Joseph Caldwell marries Helen Hooper and moves to her Franklin Street house
Caldwell married Helen Hogg Hooper and left the President's House on campus for her home on Lot #19, which he appears to have owned already. The house stayed in the family until 1849, when the university bought it as President Swain's residence.
- 1810s
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The university makes David Caldwell of Guilford a Doctor of Divinity
At the 1810 commencement the university gave honorary doctorates of divinity to David Caldwell, James Hall and James McRee. Caldwell's Latin diploma, dated in Person Hall, calls Chapel Hill Sacrarii Mons, the hill of the chapel.
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Robert H. Chapman is elected president as Caldwell returns to teaching mathematics
Caldwell asked to give up the presidency to finish his geometry and study astronomy. The board accepted his resignation, elected the Presbyterian minister Chapman president at $1,200 a year and kept Caldwell as professor of mathematics at $1,000.
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Students move into the finished South Building
Subscriptions Caldwell gathered on tours of the state in 1809 and 1811, about $8,220, let contractor John Close finish the Main Building begun in 1798. Students moved in during 1814.
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Caldwell takes students before a justice of the peace over attacks on President Chapman's property
After night raids on Chapman's stable, cart and gate, and tar and feathers on his gatepost, Caldwell asked justice Pleasant Henderson for a general warrant. Refused, he named five students, and a hearing questioned the student body under oath.
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Joseph Caldwell is elected president a second time
After William Neill and Lewis von Schweinitz declined the office, the trustees returned the presidency to Caldwell by a commission taking effect January 1, 1817.
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Trustees add a professorship of rhetoric and logic
Counting on money from Tennessee land warrants, the board created a chair of rhetoric and logic and an adjunct chair of moral philosophy over one dissenting vote. Shepard K. Kollock took the rhetoric chair in the fall of 1819, and critics complained that the faculty was filling with Presbyterian ministers.
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The university closes its grammar school and makes Hillsborough Academy its preparatory school
When Abner W. Clopton gave up the grammar school the university dropped it. Caldwell arranged for Hillsborough Academy, under John Witherspoon with John Rogers teaching, to prepare boys for the university, whose faculty could attend its examinations and admit its top pupils on certificate.
- 1820s
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Trustees vote to raise Old East a story and build Old West
At Caldwell's urging, and against the faculty's plea to spend on books and apparatus, the board voted to enlarge Old East, build Old West to match and start a new chapel, borrowing from banks against Tennessee land sales. Architect William Nichols ran the work, and the South Building's Prayer Hall became a chemistry laboratory.
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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.
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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.
- 1830s
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Trustees make the senior professor Caldwell's deputy and add an adjunct professor
When Caldwell's illness first forced him to ask for help, the trustees gave the professor of longest standing, Elisha Mitchell, power to act in the president's place and created an adjunct professorship of natural philosophy and astronomy, filled by Walker Anderson. Mitchell served as acting president until Swain arrived.
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President Joseph Caldwell dies
The university's first president died after years of a painful illness and was buried in the Chapel Hill village cemetery. The trustees' executive committee adopted a tribute on February 6, 1835, and the students resolved to wear badges of mourning.
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Philanthropic Society has a cast made of Caldwell's features
In November 1835, at the Philanthropic Society's request, Caldwell's body was taken up so that the artist Alfred S. Waugh could make a plaster cast of his face. The bust made from it stands in Gerrard Hall.
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David L. Swain moves to Chapel Hill as university president
Chosen to succeed the late Joseph Caldwell, former governor David L. Swain moved to Chapel Hill in January 1836 to become president and professor of national and constitutional law. He stayed at the university for the rest of his life, the longest term of any of its presidents.
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Trustees raise a sandstone monument to Caldwell on the campus
The trustees adopted a design by Thomas Waitt, the master mechanic in charge of university repairs, for a shaft of local sandstone cut by J. B. Turney. It soon crumbled, and the marble slab meant for its Latin inscription arrived so badly cut that it was smashed, so the monument never bore a name.
- 1840s
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Helen Caldwell dies and is buried with her husband at his monument
Helen Hogg Caldwell, widow of President Caldwell and a leader of village society, died at Chapel Hill on October 30, 1846 while visiting John DeBerniere Hooper. Caldwell's remains were taken up on October 31 and laid beside hers at the base of his monument, with the president and faculty as pallbearers.
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Alumni start a fund for a marble monument to Caldwell
Troubled by the crumbling sandstone monument, the alumni at the 1847 commencement voted on John Y. Mason's motion, supported by President Polk, to raise a marble memorial by gifts of three dollars each, and $210 was subscribed at once. By 1849 only $600 of an estimated $1,000 was in hand and the limit on gifts was dropped.
- 1850s
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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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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.
Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
- 1870s
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Former professor William Hooper dies at Chapel Hill
William Hooper, who had brought his bride to Chapel Hill in 1816 to teach at the university, died on August 25, 1876 after a trip to Philadelphia for a meeting of descendants of the Declaration's signers. At his request he was buried beside his mother and her second husband, President Joseph Caldwell, and in 1904 the remains were moved to the new Caldwell monument.
- 1880s
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Fire destroys the old president's house on Christmas morning
The house Helen Hooper built, later home to Presidents Caldwell and Swain, burned the day after Professor Thomas Hume's family moved in. Fire spread from boxes and straw in an outbuilding, and Chapel Hill had no fire engine or ladder company to stop it.
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