Chronology

Cornelia Phillips Spencer describes the emptied campus and village

In a letter to the Sentinel written under the Old Poplar, Spencer described the shut buildings and reported that nearly twenty of Chapel Hill's leading families were leaving and six places now sold liquor openly. She named the departing faculty, among them Judge William H. Battle, and called the town the Deserted Village of the South.

People: Cornelia Phillips Spencer · William Horn Battle

A count of Chapel Hill finds 483 white and 454 Black residents

Four years after emancipation, Chapel Hill had 483 white and 454 Black residents, close to half and half. Freed families were making homes on the village's western side, on West Cameron Avenue, West Franklin Street and around Potter's Field west of Church Street.

Solomon Pool buys Nancy Hilliard's house, the Crystal Palace, at a sheriff's sale

When the hotel keeper Nancy Hilliard went bankrupt, university president Solomon Pool bought her Franklin Street home, known as the Crystal Palace, at a sheriff's sale for $150. He let Col. Hugh B. Guthrie and his wife Jane, a daughter of Hudson Cave, move in, which Bryant reads as a way of forcing Hilliard out.

People: Solomon Pool · Nancy Hilliard

University treasurer puts the land-grant fund into railroad bonds later repudiated

Treasurer Robert W. Lassiter invested the $125,000 land-scrip fund in North Carolina bonds, including $160,000 face value of special tax bonds issued for the Western North Carolina Railroad. The legislature repealed the acts behind those bonds on March 8, 1870, and the fund earned nothing until 1875.

Thomas Fitzgerald buys Woodside, where his son Robert builds a freedmen's school

Thomas Fitzgerald, whose son Robert had persuaded the family to move from Pennsylvania, bought Woodside, a 158-acre plantation six miles east of Hillsborough, from Robert J. Jeffreys for $1,200 in April 1869, with Robert writing the deed. Robert built a freedmen's school on the property, and the family also farmed and ran a tannery and brick making there.

Federal court dismisses the state's suit to void the university's bank mortgage

The Reconstruction trustees had the state sue in the United States Circuit Court, returnable at the June 1869 term, to cancel the university's mortgage to the Bank of North Carolina, but Judges Hugh L. Bond and George W. Brooks dismissed the bill for want of jurisdiction. On July 20, 1871 the trustees present advised against an appeal.

The Pool faculty holds its first commencement

After a first term that began March 3, the university reported on June 10, 1869 three sophomores and seven freshmen and gave an A.B. to Abdel Kader Tenney. At the thinly attended commencement Governor William W. Holden argued for educating both races in one university, whites at Chapel Hill and Black students elsewhere.

People: Solomon Pool · William W. Holden

Bursar reports the plundering of university property

Professor David Settle Patrick reported that when exercises were suspended in 1868 many in Chapel Hill believed the university's property belonged to the people. Books had been taken from the libraries and tools carried off, and only some had been returned.

The remains of David L. Swain and his daughter Annie are taken from Chapel Hill to Raleigh for reburial

An undertaker, K. P. Waitt, carried the coffins of the former governor and university president and his daughter Annie from their graves in Chapel Hill to Raleigh, where they were buried side by side in the old city cemetery with only family and a few friends present.

People: David L. Swain

Mount Sinai Baptist Church is organized

Black Baptists organized Mount Sinai Baptist Church in 1870 with E. H. Cole as first pastor.

The Camerons move a two-story building thought to be slave quarters to Burnside

In the late nineteenth century the Cameron family moves a two-story frame building, thought to have been built as quarters for enslaved people, to the southeast corner of the Burnside house at 201 South Cameron Street. It was joined to the main house at the second floor in the 1950s.

Subject: Burnside

Trustees refuse land for a Black school in Chapel Hill

The Chapel Hill school committee of Morgan Closs, W. H. Bunch and H. C. Andrews asked the trustees for two acres on the Pittsboro Road next to the Hubbard lot for a school for Black children, saying friends of education would pay for a schoolhouse. The board declined because the land was under mortgage.

Thomas Ruffin dies at his Hillsborough home

Ruffin died in the northeast room of the house on January 15, 1870, and his widow Anne inherited the estate. He was buried at St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough, on ground he had given for the church, where he had served on the vestry.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church · Ruffin-Roulhac House (Little Hawfields)

The trustees vote to suspend the university's exercises and stop faculty salaries from February 1

On the motion of the Rev. James Reid of Franklin County, the Reconstruction board of trustees voted on December 1, 1870, to suspend the university's exercises until further orders, and on James B. Mason's motion fixed February 1, 1871, as the day the faculty's salaries ended. The same day President Solomon Pool laid before the board a plan to lease the Chapel Hill property and bring the state's colleges under the university, which its committees dropped on February 1.

People: Solomon Pool · James Augustus Graham

Mary Pauline Fitzgerald is baptized at St. Matthew's

The seven-month-old daughter of the freedmen's teacher Robert G. Fitzgerald and his wife Cornelia was baptized at St. Matthew's, her mother standing as sponsor. As Pauline Fitzgerald Dame she later raised her niece, Pauli Murray.

People: Robert G. Fitzgerald

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

November Caldwell, once enslaved by President Joseph Caldwell, dies

November Caldwell (1791-1872), held in slavery by Joseph Caldwell, brought firewood to the students, who were fond of him for his humor. A memorial in the old Chapel Hill Cemetery on the campus honors him.

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Job Berry is named a delegate to the Republican state convention

The Orange County Republican convention chose Rev. Job Berry as a Hillsborough delegate to the 1872 state convention, which backed Ulysses S. Grant and Governor Tod R. Caldwell.

Alumni meet in Raleigh to plan the university's revival

At the invitation of trustees led by Superintendent Alexander McIver, fifty-five alumni met in the state Senate chamber with B. F. Moore in the chair. Their committee proposed that the alumni association nominate a new board for the Board of Education to appoint, but most of the 1868 trustees did not resign and the plan lapsed.

People: Alexander McIver · William A. Graham · William Horn Battle · Richmond Mumford Pearson

State educational convention calls for reviving the university

A convention called by the State Board of Education, with B. F. Moore presiding, resolved that the university should be revived as soon as practicable. It added that the revival was impossible except on a basis impartial between denominations and political parties, after Braxton Craven, Thomas H. Pritchard and A. W. Mangum argued over church representation.

People: Robert Bingham · Adolphus Williamson Mangum · Thomas Henderson Pritchard

A constitutional amendment returns the election of university trustees to the General Assembly

An amendment taking the election of the university's trustees from the governor-controlled Board of Education and giving it back to the General Assembly became part of the state constitution in August 1873, after a vote of the people and a two-thirds vote of a second legislature. Friends of the university had first carried it through the General Assembly in 1871 by the required three-fifths, the credit going to two alumni and brothers-in-law, the Democrat Montford McGehee and the Republican Richard C. Badger.

Commissioner's report keeps the campus and 600 acres for the university

Commissioner George H. Snow inspected Chapel Hill in the summer of 1874 with trustees Paul C. Cameron, John Manning and Kemp P. Battle, and on Judge Bond's advice to be liberal the court left the university its campus, faculty houses, libraries and 600 acres. The outlying land, including about seventy acres at Piney Prospect, was sold, and Cameron bought the parcels along with the escheated mountain lands to secure his sister Mildred Cameron's debt.

People: Paul C. Cameron · John Manning · Kemp Plummer Battle

The General Assembly elects sixty-four trustees, who organize under William A. Graham with Kemp Battle as secretary and treasurer

By an act of January 28, 1874, the legislature elected sixty-four university trustees by joint ballot, only two of them from the Reconstruction board, and fourteen of them men removed in 1868. The new board first met on February 18, 1874, in the Citizens National Bank in Raleigh, elected William A. Graham of Hillsborough its president and Kemp P. Battle its secretary and treasurer, named an executive committee, and the next day sent a committee to inspect Chapel Hill, after Governor Tod R. Caldwell declined to preside because he held the legislature had no power to elect trustees.

People: William A. Graham · Kemp Plummer Battle · Paul C. Cameron · John Manning · Tod Robinson Caldwell

Walter Steele and Paul Cameron inspect the derelict campus and Solomon Pool refuses to surrender the keys

On April 3, 1874, trustees Walter L. Steele and Paul C. Cameron came to Chapel Hill for the new board. Solomon Pool declined their written request for the keys and possession of the buildings, since the governor had not recognized the board, but let them inspect as visitors. Their report to the trustees on April 9 described broken doors and fallen plaster, the lower passage of Old West fouled by cattle and horses, rotted gates and axe-scarred oaks, 7,490 books in the Dialectic library and 6,901 in the Philanthropic, and recommended an immediate suit against Pool for possession.

People: Paul C. Cameron · Solomon Pool

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies · Old West

The new trustees sue Solomon Pool and Alexander McIver at Orange Superior Court and win possession of the university in the Supreme Court

At the May 1874 term of Orange Superior Court the new board brought one action against Superintendent Alexander McIver, who held the university's seal and books and had agreed to a friendly test suit, and another against Solomon Pool for the buildings. Judge Albion W. Tourgee ruled against the trustees; John W. Graham and James A. Graham of Hillsborough argued for them without fee, as did B. F. Moore and William H. Battle on appeal in June 1874. At its January term 1875 the state Supreme Court decided for the university on every point, and possession passed to Andrew Mickle, the board's agent, with the seal, books and papers going to Treasurer Kemp Battle.

People: Solomon Pool · Albion W. Tourgée · Kemp Plummer Battle · Alexander McIver · James Augustus Graham · John W. Graham · Andrew Mickle

Federal court rules the campus cannot be sold for the bank debt

In the suit of Charles Dewey, assignee in bankruptcy of the Bank of North Carolina, to sell the university's property under its mortgage, Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite with Judges Hugh L. Bond and George W. Brooks held the debt valid. They ruled that neither the trustees nor a creditor could sell the property that made up the life of the institution, as distinct from its endowment.

Charles Phillips returns to Chapel Hill and chairs the faculty

When the University of North Carolina reopened in 1875, Phillips was invited back as professor of mathematics and served as chairman of the faculty during his first year. Illness forced his retirement in 1879, when he became the first professor emeritus named by the trustees.

Part of The university closes and reopens · 46 events

People: Cornelia Phillips Spencer

Mount Bright Baptist Church builds its church in Hillsborough

Mount Bright Baptist Church, the Black Baptist congregation in Hillsborough led by Alfred Bright, erected its church building in 1875.

Subject: Mount Bright Baptist Church

Trustees adopt a six-college plan and set aside ground for athletics

The trustees adopted Kemp P. Battle's committee report to reopen the university on the first Monday of September with colleges of agriculture, engineering, natural science, literature, mathematics and philosophy, meant to satisfy the 1862 land-grant act. They also reserved the eastern part of the campus along the Raleigh Road for athletics and a parade ground.

People: John Manning · Kemp Plummer Battle

Kemp Battle's subscription drive raises $20,167 and Paul Cameron repairs the campus for the reopening

After the trustees on May 5, 1875, appointed a committee to seek gifts for the revival, Kemp P. Battle canvassed Raleigh, Goldsboro, Rocky Mount and Tarboro in person and the rest of the state by letter, reporting $18,787 in six weeks and $20,167 in twelve, at a total expense of $62.66; Zebulon B. Vance and Charles W. Broadfoot collected in Charlotte and Fayetteville, and women's groups sent scientific apparatus through Cornelia Phillips Spencer. Paul C. Cameron, without contractor or pay, spent the summer at Chapel Hill directing the repairs and reported on August 31 that he had spent $10,677.76 on the buildings and $2,249.09 on gas works and apparatus.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle · Paul C. Cameron · Cornelia Phillips Spencer · Zebulon B. Vance · Washington Caruthers Kerr · Rufus Lenoir Patterson

Andrew Mickle becomes bursar of the reopened university

Electing the reopened university's professors, the trustees broke with the old practice of making a professor bursar and chose Andrew Mickle, the Chapel Hill merchant who had acted as their agent, at $400 a year. He held the post until he left to live with his children in Texas in the early 1880s.

People: Andrew Mickle

William A. Graham dies and is buried at Hillsborough

Graham died unexpectedly at Saratoga Springs, New York, on 11 August 1875, where he had gone for a meeting of the Virginia and Maryland arbitration commission. He was buried in the cemetery adjacent to the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church. He had been elected a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1875 but died before it assembled.

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church · Old Town Cemetery, Hillsborough

Trustees burn the repudiated railroad bonds

As the act restoring the land-scrip fund required, trustees B. F. Moore, David M. Carter and Kemp P. Battle burned 160 special tax bonds of $1,000 each issued for the Western North Carolina Railroad, with Seaton Gales as witness. In return the state had given the university its bond for the $125,000 fund, paying $7,500 a year.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle

The Dialectic and Philanthropic societies meet again

On the evening of the reopening celebration the two literary societies were revived, the Dialectic called together by its last secretary, Thomas M. Argo, with Judge William H. Battle as temporary president. William L. Saunders, who had kept the Philanthropic Society's books since its last meeting in 1868, called that society together.

People: William Horn Battle

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Francis D. Winston is the first student to arrive for the reopening

Battle names Francis Donnell Winston of Bertie County the first student on the Hill in 1875, arriving a day ahead of other entrants with his brother Robert and Charles Bond. Bond was the only student to enter the agricultural department on opening day, and Battle calls him the first student of the first college of agriculture in the state.

People: Robert W. (Robert Watson) Winston

Kemp Plummer Battle becomes president and reorganizes the university

Kemp Plummer Battle became president in 1876 and reorganized the reopened university that year. He served until 1891 and later wrote its two-volume history.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle

Kemp Plummer Battle buys his father's Chapel Hill house and names it Senlac

Returning to Chapel Hill in 1876 to become university president, Battle bought the family house from his father, added a one-story wing on each side and named it Senlac. The house stands on Battle Lane.

People: William Horn Battle

Subject: Senlac (Battle house)

A Presbyterian church for Hillsborough's Black members is founded

More than a decade after emancipation, a Presbyterian church for people of color was established on land from the Brodie family at the corner of Orange and Wake streets.

The university holds its first summer session, a state normal school for teachers

In the summer of 1877 the university hosted a statewide Summer Normal School, set up by the General Assembly in March 1877 to train white teachers for the common schools. President Kemp Battle and the Board of Education admitted white women to its classes, though state money could not be spent on them.

Subject: University Summer School

William Horn Battle returns to Chapel Hill to teach law

Battle had left for Raleigh in 1868 when Reconstruction politics disrupted the university. When his law school reopened at Chapel Hill in January 1877, while his son Kemp was president, he returned as professor of law, and he taught until he resigned in January 1879, shortly before his death that March.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle

Subject: UNC School of Law

Hickory Grove Baptist Church is organized

Black families organized Hickory Grove Baptist Church, with C. D. Hackney as first pastor.

Mount Zion AME Church is organized at Martinsville

Lefler and Wager say five Black men, Jack Horner, Bedford Corbett, Richard Jordan, Sam McBroom and Richard Thompson, organized the church about 1878 at Martinsville, probably the Martin farm near Cedar Grove. The congregation's own history dates its first gatherings to about 1869 and says it was known as Poplar Springs, with a pastor by 1878, until it took the Mount Zion AME name about 1880. It bought an acre from S. W. and Margaret J. Hughes in 1882 and moved to its present site about 1927.

The present Morrow's Mill is built on Cane Creek

The timber-framed mill on a stone foundation known as Morrow's Mill was built in 1878 on Cane Creek in southwestern Orange County, the third mill on a site whose stone dam enslaved laborers had built before the Civil War. It ground grain until 1930, and the 1993 county survey found it the only rural mill building besides Faucett's still standing, with its dam kept up.

St. Paul AME buys a church lot from Benjamin and Dilsy Craig

The congregation paid fifty-five dollars on April 15, 1878 for a church lot bought from Benjamin and Dilsy Craig, and was raising money in December 1879 and January 1880 to finish a church there. In 1892 it built its present church across Merritt Mill Road from the earlier one, on land the 1983 Carrboro inventory says the Hargraves and Caldwell families gave about 1890.

People: Benjamin Craig

Subject: St. Paul AME Church

Latta Grove Baptist Church is organized

Jerry M. Latta and others organized Latta Grove Baptist Church about 1879.

Toney and Nellie Strayhorn, formerly enslaved, bought thirty acres in what became Carrboro

The Strayhorns bought about thirty acres and built a one-room log cabin at what is now 109 Jones Ferry Road, and their son William built the house next door at 107 in 1915. Toney Strayhorn is remembered as a founder of First Baptist Church in Chapel Hill, and the house is still owned by a great-granddaughter.

Subject: Toney and Nellie Strayhorn House and William Strayhorn House

Baptist minister James P. Mason speaks at University Day

At the 1879 University Day exercises, after President Kemp Battle's historical address, short talks were given by the Rev. Joseph Blount Cheshire, the Rev. James Pleasant Mason, the Methodist minister Mr. Heitman and several professors.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle · Joseph Blount Cheshire Jr.

Glenn's Grove Baptist Church is organized

Glenn's Grove Baptist Church, a Black congregation, was organized about 1880 with Henry Fuller as first pastor.

Orange Cross Roads Baptist Church is organized

Orange Cross Roads Baptist Church, a Black Baptist congregation, was organized about 1880. It built its church in 1923.

Chapel Hill's AME congregation issues a public appeal for money to finish its house of worship

Rev. G. W. Offley, preacher in charge of the African Methodist Episcopal church in Chapel Hill, signed a circular dated January 5, 1880 asking the public to help the congregation complete its house of worship and naming Brother George Trice to solicit subscriptions. The Chapel Hill Ledger printed it in full on January 10, 1880.

Subject: St. Paul AME Church

Lisbon Berry becomes Orange County's first Black lawyer

Lisbon Payne Berry, born enslaved in Hillsborough in 1850, studied law in Hillsborough and was admitted to the North Carolina bar in 1882, becoming the first Black attorney in Orange County.

The Mount Zion congregation buys an acre for its first church

The Black congregation then known as Poplar Springs, which had met in a schoolhouse and on members' farms, bought a one-acre lot from S. W. Hughes and Margaret J. Hughes for $10. Its first church there was a small frame building with benches made by members.

People: Samuel Wellwood Hughes

The Berry family moves to Sunnyside south of Hillsborough

Dr. John and Mary Strayhorn Berry moved from their West King Street house, now known as Two Chimneys, to Sunnyside, the Berry family plantation two miles south of town. Mary Berry tutored her daughter Harriet at home until she was twelve.

People: Harriet Morehead Berry

Subject: Sunnyside (John Berry farm)

Memorial Hall rises at UNC under Paul C. Cameron's building committee

The cornerstone of Swain Memorial Hall was laid on September 25, 1883, and the hall was dedicated on June 3, 1885, honoring President David L. Swain, faculty and the university's Confederate dead. Paul C. Cameron, president of the Alumni Association and chairman of the building committee, raised money for it and gave money himself.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle · David L. Swain

Subject: Memorial Hall

Dilsey Craig, enslaved in the household of professor James Phillips, dies

Dilsey Craig (1802-1894) and Ben Craig were enslaved by the family of mathematics professor James Phillips and lived in the brick kitchen behind 501 East Franklin Street. Dilsey remained with the family long after freedom, and a memorial marks her in the old Chapel Hill Cemetery.

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

The Masons leave their farm and a scholarship fund to the university

Mary Elizabeth Morgan Mason, who died in July 1894 a year after her husband James Pleasant Mason, left the university about 800 acres of Morgan family land near Chapel Hill. His $1,000 gift funded the education of poor students in the names of their daughters Martha and Varina, and their portraits were hung in the university library.

Wilson Caldwell dies and is buried in the Chapel Hill town cemetery

Wilson Caldwell, head of the university's campus workforce, died on July 8, 1898 and was buried the next day in the Chapel Hill town cemetery, now the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery; Kemp Battle gave the funeral address.

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Commencement marks twenty-five years since the university reopened

The 1900 commencement was given over to the reopening of 1875, with nineteen members of the 1875-76 student body present and addresses by Kemp Battle, George T. Winston, W. J. Peele and President Alderman.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle · George Tayloe Winston · W. J. Peele

Subject: Memorial Hall

Jesse Ruffin, coachman and stagecoach driver, dies

Jesse Ruffin died in his nineties at his grandson Lindsey Faucette's house, out between Hillsborough and Durham. The Durham Sun remembered him as Judge Ruffin's servant and later Paul Cameron's, and a stagecoach driver before the railroad came; he was carried to Hillsborough by train for burial.

Mount Bright Baptist Church's first building burns

Fire destroyed Mount Bright Baptist Church's original building, on the lot Susan Graham had given the congregation. The 2014 Hillsborough Historic District documentation places that first church on South Churton Street near the Eno, before the congregation moved to West Union Street early in the twentieth century.

Subject: Mount Bright Baptist Church

Mount Bright Baptist Church is rebuilt

Three years after the fire, Mount Bright's members raised a new church; the Rev. Alvis Whitted was then the pastor. The congregation's present church on West Union Street dates from 1979.

Subject: Mount Bright Baptist Church

The university names a new McCorkle Place residence hall for Kemp Plummer Battle

In 1912 the university named a new residence hall on McCorkle Place for Battle, its president from 1876 to 1891. It was one section of a three-part dormitory whose other sections honored J. Johnston Pettigrew and Zebulon B. Vance.

Swain Hall is built as the university dining hall

The university built Swain Hall in 1913 and 1914 as a dining hall on the site of the first president's house and named it for David L. Swain. It served as the dining hall until 1940 and later became the first home of the communications department.

Subject: Swain Hall

Flat Rock church builds its frame church at St. Mary's and New Sharon Church roads

Soon after the congregation formed in 1915, members of Flat Rock church built a one-story frame church in a plain Gothic style at the corner of St. Mary's and New Sharon Church roads, the center of one of two Black settlements that grew up along the road after emancipation.

Subject: Flat Rock AME Church

Phillips Hall opens, named for three Phillips family teachers

Phillips Hall opened on the Chapel Hill campus in 1919, honoring three members of the Phillips family who taught at the university in the nineteenth century: James Phillips, his son Charles Phillips and his grandson William Battle Phillips.

People: Charles Phillips

The Student Council removes the Carolina Magazine editors over the story 'Slaves'

Just as classes began, the council voted to remove the editor and assistant editor for printing a story with a hint of interracial sex. On appeal, a faculty committee Chase appointed called publication bad taste and poor judgment but not misconduct, and set the council's action aside. Durham textile executive Kemp Lewis protested; Chase defended the committee.

People: Harry Woodburn Chase

A Phillips grandchild sets a headstone for Dilsey Craig

A small granite headstone was placed over the grave of Dilsey Craig, who died in 1894 after sixty years enslaved, mostly in the household of Professor James Phillips. Its inscription says a Phillips grandchild erected it, and its style suggests the 1930s.

People: James Phillips

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

The last known burials are made at Margaret Lane Cemetery

Margaret Lane Cemetery, begun as a burial ground for enslaved people before 1852, was used until 1931, according to the plaques placed in 1987. The oldest legible stone is for George W. Hill (1844-1900).

Subject: Margaret Lane Cemetery

Mary Strayhorn Berry's recollections of antebellum Hillsborough are typed

A typed transcription of Mary Elizabeth Strayhorn Berry's "Reminiscences of the Old South" records the names, family ties and skills of many people enslaved by the Strayhorn, Nichols and other Hillsborough families, and her father's store and cobbler shop.

Ben Johnson, born enslaved near Hillsborough, recalls the Klan lynching of Cyrus Guy for a WPA interviewer

Interviewed at 85 in Hecktown, Durham, by Federal Writers' Project worker Mary A. Hicks, Johnson said the Ku Klux came for Cy Guy a hundred strong, tried him in the woods and hanged him over the road. He said nobody would touch the body for four days, until the sheriff took it down.

Nellie Stroud Strayhorn, who learned of her freedom in 1865 as a girl, is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Nellie Stroud Strayhorn (1850-1950) was buried in the cemetery at about one hundred; as a teenager in 1865 she was said to have been told by passing soldiers, while sitting on a cabin porch, that she was free.

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

A state highway marker for Elizabeth Keckly goes up on North Churton Street in Hillsborough

North Carolina highway marker G-115, cast in 2002, stands on North Churton Street at Union Street in Hillsborough. It records Keckly as a Burwell family slave who lived there in the 1830s, bought her freedom in 1855, dressed Mary Todd Lincoln and published her memoir in 1868.

UNC Libraries opens the exhibit Slavery and the Making of the University

University archivists mounted an exhibit on the enslaved and free Black people who built and served the early university, including cabinetmaker Thomas Day and poet George Moses Horton.

People: George Moses Horton

Subject: UNC Libraries

Burwell School Historic Site marks the bicentennial of Elizabeth Keckly

Through 2018 the Burwell School Historic Site in Hillsborough marked the 200th anniversary of Keckly's birth with an exhibition that included an original copy of her memoir and a replica of a purple velvet dress she made, sewn by local seamstress Karen DeSombre.

Subject: Burwell School

University Archives publishes the names of 119 enslaved people who built and worked at the university

Drawing on research by archivists, historians and students in Jim Leloudis's fall 2017 History 398 class, the archives listed 119 enslaved people who built and labored at the university from 1795 to 1865, including November Caldwell and David Barham.

African, African American, and Diaspora Studies faculty ask the university to take Battle's name off Battle Hall

Faculty of the Department of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies, whose offices are in Battle Hall, petitioned to remove Kemp Plummer Battle's name, citing his enslaving of people, his support for secession and his promotion of white supremacy. The university's Commission on History, Race, and a Way Forward endorsed the request.

Hillsborough renames Thomas Ruffin Street as Lydia Lane

The Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to rename the street for Lydia, the enslaved woman shot by John Mann in the case Thomas Ruffin decided. All twelve households on the street had petitioned for a new name and had first proposed Hope Lane; Commissioner Mark Bell suggested using Lydia's name, and Commissioner Kathleen Ferguson made the motion to approve.

People: Thomas Ruffin

Carrboro unveils a truth plaque naming Green Cordal and Benjamin Craig

The Town of Carrboro unveiled its second truth plaque at the former freedmen's school site on North Merritt Mill Road, next to St. Paul AME Church. The text reads that Green Cordal and Benjamin Craig, freed from bondage, purchased this land for a Freedman School and church, and that with funds from the Society of Friends they built a schoolhouse that served hundreds of free Black children and adults.

People: Benjamin Craig · Jacquelyn Gist

The Burwell School is renamed the Elizabeth Keckly Center at the Burwell School

The Burwell School Historic Site in Hillsborough took the name the Elizabeth Keckly Center at the Burwell School in late August 2026, honoring the woman the Burwells held in slavery in the house from 1835. Site director Elizabeth Hays said the aim was to hold the site's histories together.

Subject: Burwell School