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Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
- 1860s
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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.
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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.
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Chapel Hill's town board holds the earliest meeting with surviving minutes
The oldest surviving town minutes record a meeting of commissioners H. C. Thompson, James F. Craige and Greene Brewer. The town census taker, W. S. Guthrie, reported 937 residents, 483 white and 454 Black.
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Orange County holds its first township elections
Voters in each township chose magistrates, a clerk, a constable and school committeemen for the first time. In Chapel Hill Township 540 of 565 registered voters cast ballots.
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Washington Morrow, Thomas Jefferson Morrow and Daniel Morrow are lynched
Early on August 7, 1869, about 100 disguised white men took Washington Morrow and his brother Nelson from the Hillsborough jail, where they were held on barn-burning charges, and shot Washington as they fled; he died of the wound. On October 14 a mob hanged their father, Thomas Jefferson Morrow, and their uncle, Daniel Morrow.
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Robert G. Fitzgerald marries Cornelia Smith of Chapel Hill
Fitzgerald married Cornelia Smith, a niece of Mary Ruffin Smith, the Chapel Hill benefactor of the university. Their granddaughter Pauli Murray later told the family's story in Proud Shoes.
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Klansmen take two Black prisoners from jail and shoot one of them
A few nights after three barns burned in late July 1869, two Black men accused of another barn burning were taken from jail. One was let go; the other was shot and died.
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Racial-terror lynchings in Orange County
Six people are documented as lynched in Orange County: Washington Morrow, Thomas Jefferson Morrow, Daniel Morrow, Wright Malone and Cyrus Guy in 1869, and Manly McCauley in 1898. In September 2022 the county commissioners apologized for racial-terror lynchings and approved markers, citing five cases without naming the victims.
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Wright Malone is abducted and lynched near Little River
On the night of September 6, 1869, four mounted men took Wright Malone, a young Black farmer, from the coal kiln he was burning with his father near Little River in eastern Orange County. A neighbor found his body hanging from a tree on September 12, and the coroner concluded the killing had been planned in advance.
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Governor Holden warns Orange County it may be declared in insurrection
Holden's proclamation of October 20, 1869, named Lenoir, Jones, Orange and Chatham counties and said that in Orange the jail had been forced, two Black prisoners taken out and shot, and three other Black men hanged. He warned that he would declare those counties in a state of insurrection and use the whole power of the state if the violence continued.
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Orange County in the Kirk–Holden War
Governor Holden named Orange County in his October 1869 warning about Klan violence, Hillsborough men were named in a Klan plot against Senator T. M. Shoffner, and Kirk's militia arrested Josiah Turner Jr. at Hillsborough in August 1870. Orange men Frederick N. Strudwick, William A. Graham and John W. Graham then helped bring, prosecute and decide Holden's impeachment.
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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.
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Cyrus Guy is lynched by a masked mob in western Orange County
A masked mob seized Cyrus Guy, a 24-year-old Afro-Indigenous farmer from a free family of color, and hanged him from a tree on the High Rock Road near the Alamance County line, above the county poorhouse. The Hillsborough Recorder reported that an inquest held under Sheriff Turner found out nothing, and Ben Johnson recalled in 1937 that the body was left hanging for four days.
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Klansmen from Hillsborough ride to kill Senator T. M. Shoffner and turn back
A Klan party coming from Orange County that included Hillsborough legislator Frederick N. Strudwick and A. Hedgepeth of Hillsborough gathered at a Bradshaw home in Alamance County to kill state senator T. M. Shoffner, author of the anti-Klan militia bill. Dr. John A. Moore, sent by James E. Boyd, told them Shoffner had gone to Greensboro, and they turned back.
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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.
- 1870s
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A two-story frame house, later known as the Pool-Patterson House, goes up on West Cameron Avenue
The survey dates the L-plan frame house at 403 West Cameron Avenue to about 1870. Its bracketed roofline and wraparound porch reflect the later Victorian remodeling.
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Anne Ruffin buys the last two lots and the Ruffin place fills a whole town block
Completing a purchase begun before her husband's death, Anne M. Ruffin bought lots 202 and 203. The Ruffin property then took in an entire block of about ten acres, which was still intact in 1971.
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Archibald Lynch builds a farmhouse on Mount Hermon Church Road
Around 1870 a rear wing was built for the farmer Archibald Lynch, and about 1890 a small frame I-house was added in front of it.
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Baptists form the Mount Zion Association
The Mount Zion Baptist Association was formed. By 1953 nearly every Baptist church in Orange County belonged to it, replacing the older Sandy Creek Association.
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Black-owned family farms and sawmills made up the Rogers-Eubanks area
By the late nineteenth century the area between Homestead and Eubanks roads, north of Carrboro and Chapel Hill, was a neighborhood of Black-owned family farms and sawmills set among forest. RENA and the Town of Carrboro both date settlement of the wider area to the 1700s.
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Eliza Beaty keeps a boarding house in the William Whitted House
In the late nineteenth century Mrs. Eliza Beaty runs a well-known boarding house in the old William Whitted House at East Queen and North Churton streets. The Italianate wing facing Churton Street may have been added for her.
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J. T. Hogan serves as an Orange County commissioner
J. T. Hogan signed the county records as one of Orange County's commissioners from 1870 to 1872. In 1872 he sat with W. N. Patterson and Jones Watson on the county Board of Education, which in March elected Samuel W. Hughes county examiner of teachers.
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James Tilley builds a small frame farmhouse on the NC 54 corridor
About 1870 James Tilley built a modest frame I-house with a separate frame kitchen, which remains in good shape. He lies in a family graveyard on the farm.
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John and Mary Jane Pope build their farm near Cedar Grove
John S. Pope, a Confederate captain, and his wife Mary Jane McDade Pope built a two-story I-house on land she inherited from her father's estate in 1869; it was likely finished by 1874, when her brother's share brought the tract to about 73 acres. Tobacco was the farm's main cash crop, and its oldest surviving barn dates to about 1875.
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Mount Sinai Baptist Church is organized
Black Baptists organized Mount Sinai Baptist Church in 1870 with E. H. Cole as first pastor.
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Orange County reports on its poorhouse to the new Board of Public Charities
Orange County's report to the state Board of Public Charities described two one-story brick buildings of six rooms each on a 400-acre tract five miles from Hillsborough. The poorhouse held 41 people, ten able to do light work, with ten deaths since July 1868.
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St. Paul joins the African Methodist Episcopal Church
Six years after it began meeting under a grape arbor in 1864, the Chapel Hill Black Methodist congregation now known as St. Paul AME received word in 1870 that it had been accepted into the African Methodist Episcopal Church, headquartered in Philadelphia.
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T. U. Faucett becomes stated supply at New Hope
Thomas U. Faucett served the church as stated supply from 1870 until the fall of 1872.
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The 1870 census records Orange County's losses since
Against 1860, farm values fell from $2,141,690 to $977,308, improved acreage from 101,354 to 73,745 and livestock value by nearly half, while manufacturing establishments rose from 61 to 92. The population was 17,507, including 6,420 Black residents.
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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.
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The Dukes move their tobacco business into a wooden factory in Durham
The Duke family's smoking tobacco business outgrows the farm and moves into a wooden factory at Durham, then still part of Orange County.
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The Reilly Log House is built near Rougemont
A one-room log farmhouse with half-dovetailed corners, a rock chimney, and a log kitchen joined by a breezeway was built near Rougemont in the 1870s. Mattson treats it as one of the county's best late log dwellings.
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The Watson family builds an ornate I-house near Cedar Grove
An ornate I-house is built on the Watson farm on NC 86 near Cedar Grove in the 1870s; the farm also keeps three log tobacco barns. It is on the Study List.
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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.
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Builder John Berry dies at Sunny Side while starting the Berry Building
John Berry, the self-taught builder of the Orange County Courthouse and a longtime state legislator, died of pneumonia at his home Sunny Side at 72. He had caught cold that winter while beginning his last project, a two-story brick store and ballroom downtown known as the Berry Building.
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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.
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Joseph E. Pogue clerks in his brother E. H. Pogue's Hillsborough store
At 18, Joseph Ezekiel Pogue left East Tennessee for Hillsborough, where he clerked in the general store of his brother, E. H. Pogue, until September 1871. He then became a traveling salesman for a tobacco factory, the start of a tobacco career that took him to Henderson in 1875 and Raleigh in 1885.
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Frederick Strudwick takes an unexpired Orange County seat in the House
In February 1870 Strudwick, a Democrat, was chosen to fill the unexpired term of J. J. Allison in the North Carolina House of Representatives. He was elected to a full two-year term that August.
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Hillsborough men ask Governor Holden to commission Pride Jones against the Klan
On March 5, 1870 six Hillsborough men, among them J. W. Norwood, James Webb and Henry K. Nash, recommended to Governor Holden that Pride Jones be made a militia captain to put down night riding. Holden sent the commission on March 7 and Jones accepted on March 9. The raids soon stopped, and Jones resigned after four weeks.
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Disguised men whip residents of the county poorhouse
Men in disguise entered the poorhouse at night and whipped several of the men and women living there. On March 10 the commissioners offered a $200 reward for the attackers, over the written protest of commissioner W. N. Patterson, who defended the raiders' motives.
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Rival claimants to Chapel Hill's town offices are told to stand down
On March 30, 1870, the Chapel Hill commissioners recorded that a group of residents claimed to be the village's officers, had taken some of the town's books and papers and had named A. Mickle magistrate of police. On April 1, Solomon Pool reported that their election had been held without any law authorizing it, on informal notice from T. M. Argo, and the board adopted his advice to take no action if they gave up the books.
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Henrietta Heartt is appointed Hillsborough's postmaster
Henrietta Heartt becomes the first woman on the list of Hillsborough postmasters, succeeding Dennis Heartt. Harriet H. Strayhorn in 1873 and Mary E. Berry in 1882 followed her.
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Dennis Heartt dies in Hillsborough
Dennis Heartt died at his home in Hillsborough on the morning of May 13, 1870, in his eighty-seventh year, and his funeral was held at the Presbyterian church the next day while the town's stores closed. The Recorder noted that Governor W. W. Holden, once his apprentice in the Recorder office, had him appointed Hillsborough postmaster after the war.
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Historical society reorganized at the university's 1870 commencement
During commencement on June 8 and 9, 1870, a meeting with Professor Alexander McIver in the chair organized the North Carolina Historical Society with Col. John H. Wheeler as president and McIver as secretary and treasurer. A committee was named to recover from Eleanor H. Swain the books and manuscripts the society claimed.
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Kirk's militia arrests Josiah Turner Jr. at Hillsborough
On August 5, 1870, a detachment of Kirk's state militia seized Raleigh Sentinel editor Josiah Turner Jr. at or near Hillsborough, took him by rail to Company Shops and then held him with Kirk's other prisoners in the Caswell County courthouse at Yanceyville. U.S. District Judge George W. Brooks ordered him discharged on August 19, 1870, on his habeas corpus petition.
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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.
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Orange County representative Frederick N. Strudwick moves to impeach Governor Holden
Frederick N. Strudwick of Orange introduced the House resolution to impeach Governor William W. Holden, which the House adopted on December 14, 1870. On December 19 he chaired the Committee of the Whole that adopted the eight articles of impeachment and elected the seven House managers.
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Strudwick is kept off the impeachment managers because of his Klan reputation
After guiding the impeachment resolution through the house judiciary committee and the full house, Strudwick was not chosen as a manager for the senate trial. It was feared that his widely known association with the Ku Klux Klan would make the proceedings look like a Klan prosecution.
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Joseph Blount Cheshire studies law under William K. Ruffin at Hillsborough
Cheshire read law for several months under William K. Ruffin of Hillsborough, a son of Chief Justice Thomas Ruffin. He then worked three months in a Tarboro law office and was licensed in January 1872.
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Land is bought for Hillsborough's (New) Town Cemetery on Corbin Street
The six-acre cemetery just north of the old town limits stands on land bought in 1871, though its earliest graves date from the 1860s. It now holds more than 3,000 graves in regular rows behind a brick wall on East Corbin Street, including military markers for both Confederate and Union soldiers.
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William L. Saunders of Chapel Hill refuses to answer the congressional Klan committee
Called before the joint committee on affairs in the insurrectionary states, Saunders, whom the book names as head of the Invisible Empire in North Carolina, declined to answer 53 questions about the Ku Klux.
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McIver moves that the faculty step aside for the university's revival
At a faculty meeting without President Pool, McIver offered a resolution that no member wished to stand in the way of reviving the university, since the faculty lacked public confidence. It passed with McIver and Patrick for and Brewer against.
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William A. Graham of Hillsborough joins the prosecution of Governor Holden
The House managers announced to the impeachment court that former governor William A. Graham of Hillsborough, with Thomas Bragg and Augustus S. Merrimon, would act as their counsel. Graham argued points of evidence for the prosecution through the trial.
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Hillsborough constable describes Orange County Klan killings to a U.S. Senate committee
W. G. Turrentine, a Hillsborough constable, told the Senate select committee in Washington that five Black men had been killed in Orange County and many people whipped, some for voting Republican. He described how, in August 1869, 75 to 100 disguised men forced the Hillsborough jail and shot a prisoner held on a barn-burning charge, who died.
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Solomon Pool asks alumni and friends to pay the university's debts
In January 1871 Pool addressed alumni and friends of the university and pleaded for money to pay off its debts. The appeal came too late, and the trustees decided that the institution should close on 1 February 1871.
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U.S. Senate committee hears Orange County testimony on Klan violence
A Senate select committee created on January 19, 1871 took testimony in Washington on Klan violence in North Carolina. Orange County witnesses, including Hillsborough constable W. G. Turrentine, court clerk George Laws and editor Josiah Turner Jr., described the 1869 jail raid, hangings and whippings in the county. The committee reported on March 10, 1871.
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The University of North Carolina closes
Under President Solomon Pool and the Reconstruction board of trustees, the university shut down on February 1, 1871, after years of few students, little money and public opposition. It reopened on Monday, September 6, 1875.
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Lucinda Morrow of Hillsborough testifies at Governor Holden's impeachment trial
Called by Holden's defense, Lucinda Morrow, then living in Hillsborough, described disguised men breaking into her Cane Creek home in Orange County in the fall of 1869 and hanging her husband, Thomas Jefferson Morrow. Prosecution counsel William A. Graham objected to her evidence, and Augustus S. Merrimon argued it was irrelevant unless tied to Alamance County.
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Senate convicts Holden on the article charging Turner's arrest in Orange County
The state Senate found Governor Holden guilty, 37 to 12, on Article III, which charged him with the unlawful arrest of Josiah Turner Jr. in Orange County on August 5, 1870, and also convicted him on Articles IV through VIII. Senator John W. Graham of Orange then offered the order of judgment removing Holden from office and barring him from state office, which the Senate adopted.
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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.
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John T. Hogan and Samuel D. Blackwood are ordained elders at New Hope
The two men were ordained and added to the session. Hogan descended from the early elder John Freeland, and Blackwood from John Craig.
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John U. Kirkland is appointed a magistrate of Hillsborough township
When James B. McDade resigned as one of the township's magistrates, the board of trustees appointed John U. Kirkland to fill the vacancy, a choice the Recorder called admirable.
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Bill Crabtree's grandfather builds a log homestead on Damascus Church Road
A log house was raised around 1872 for the grandfather of Bill Crabtree, the later owner. About 1900 a frame I-house with fashionable trim was built in front, and the log house became its rear ell.
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David McCauley buys out his store partner Thomas A. Long
Merchant David McCauley bought out his partner, Thomas A. Long, and kept the Franklin Street general store on his own. Bryant credits the store's success, and McCauley's 1873 marriage to a daughter of Sidney Mulholland Barbee, for the property he was able to buy afterward.
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John D. Cameron becomes editor and publisher of the Recorder
John Donald Cameron took over the Recorder from the Evans family, who kept only their Milton Chronicle. His masthead in January 1879 read 'J. D. Cameron, Editor and Proprietor', New Series Vol. 7, Old Series Vol. 58.
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John H. Watson serves as Chapel Hill's magistrate of police
Watson headed the town government as magistrate of police in 1872 and again from 1876 to 1878, before the amended charter of 1879 created the office of mayor.
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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.
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Orange County elects John Wall Norwood to the state Senate
Norwood was elected state senator for Orange in 1872. His speech on the amnesty bill, given in the Senate on January 27, 1873, was printed as a pamphlet.
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Orange County names a three-man Board of Education and a panel of teacher examiners
Under the Reconstruction school law the county had a Board of Education of W. N. Patterson, J. T. Hogan and Jones Watson in 1872. Samuel W. Hughes and Charles Curtis were among the county examiners who licensed teachers that year.
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Paul C. Cameron buys the Hillsborough Military Academy at public sale
Two years after Elizabeth Tew's death in 1870, the academy property was sold at public auction to Paul C. Cameron. His heirs sold it to the Farmers' State Alliance in 1891.
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The Turner family goes bankrupt and its North Churton Street estate is sold at auction
In 1872 the Turner family goes bankrupt and its estate around the house at 404 North Churton Street is sold at auction. Edmund Strudwick of Norfolk bought the house in 1887.
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H. P. Jones ships two hundred cases of Tar Heel smoking tobacco from Hillsborough to Georgia
The Recorder reported that Jones had lately shipped two hundred cases of his Tar Heel brand smoking tobacco to Georgia and held orders for a hundred more.
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The Hillsborough Presbyterian session asks that members be allowed to withdraw without church trial
The session resolved to ask presbytery to propose to the General Assembly a change in discipline, so that a member living outside the church's standards could leave its communion without a formal trial. After this, discipline cases disappear from the minutes.
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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.
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The county school board settles the school fund account with Treasurer David C. Parks
The Board of Education settled the school fund account with county treasurer D. C. Parks up to March 7, 1872. It showed $9,245.36 received from the state apportionments for 1869 to 1872 and the 1871 school poll tax, and $3,869.54 paid out to the townships.
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St. Matthew's rector Moses Ashley Curtis dies
Moses Ashley Curtis, rector of St. Matthew's for twenty-one years and a botanist of international standing, died at 64. The font and a south window in the church are his memorials.
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The school board refuses back pay to a Mangum Township teacher accused of misconduct
Thomas Anderson asked the board to pay him for two months he taught without a contract. The board sided with the township committee, finding he had no contract after March 7, 1872 and citing poor discipline and improper conduct toward girls in his school.
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Jones Watson and Pride Jones are elected to the state House for Orange County
Running as Conservative (Democratic) candidates, Jones Watson and Dr. Pride Jones won Orange County's two seats in the state House of Representatives in the August 1872 election.
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Addison Holden builds the Holden–Roberts farmhouse
Addison Holden, a Confederate veteran and half-brother of Governor William W. Holden, built a tri-gable frame I-house in 1873 and 1874 on the farm about three miles east of Hillsborough that he bought from his uncle Isaac Holden in 1871. It is one of very few Orange County houses built during Reconstruction; George Cain Roberts bought the farm in 1908.
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Fuller's Sea-Gift, the first novel set partly in Chapel Hill, is published
Fuller turned his student years into Sea-Gift, which follows John Smith through the university and the Civil War and draws on the Dromgoole duel legend of Piney Prospect. Students later called it the Freshman's Bible.
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Harriet H. Strayhorn serves as Hillsborough's postmistress
Harriet H. Strayhorn, who with William F. Strayhorn owned Twin Chimneys on West King Street, was Hillsborough's postmistress from 1873 to 1881.
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Robert Bingham takes charge of the Bingham School near Mebane
When his brother William died in 1873, Robert Bingham became headmaster of the Bingham School, which had moved from the Oaks to Mebane. In May 1879 he bought out his cousin William B. Lynch's interest and became sole proprietor.
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Robert F. Hoke obtains a charter for the Chapel Hill Iron Mountain Railroad
While the university was closed, Robert F. Hoke, owner of an iron mine north of Chapel Hill, obtained a state charter for a railroad to carry ore from Iron Mountain to the North Carolina Railroad.
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William Strowd of Chatham County buys land at the edge of Chapel Hill
The tract, where 51 Davie Circle now stands, stayed in his hands until he passed it to his son Robert L. Strowd in 1886.
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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.
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The Board of Education divides the 1872 school fund among the townships by race
At its March 5, 1873 meeting the board named a teacher examining committee and apportioned the 1872 fund at the same rate per child for both races: $4,219.60 for 3,080 white children and $2,402.98 for 1,754 Black children across eight townships.
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John T. Hogan is chosen school committeeman for Hillsborough Township
When Alexander Dickens resigned as school committeeman for Hillsborough Township, the county Board of Education unanimously elected John T. Hogan in his place. At the same meeting it accepted Dr. Clop's resignation for Chapel Hill Township and chose John Hutchins.
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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.
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Lightning strikes the Davie Poplar
Lightning split the Old Poplar's bark from top to bottom while the university was closed, and its friends took it as an omen, but the tree survived. It then measured 14 feet 6 inches around at two feet above the ground, and Cornelia Phillips Spencer wrote a lament for it in a Raleigh paper.
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The Board of Education appoints Hazel Norwood county examiner
The board filled the county examiner's post with Hazel Norwood after Dr. Morgan Clop resigned, and settled its account with the treasurer, who held a balance of $7,686.92 from the state's 1872 apportionment.
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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.
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Nancy Hilliard, longtime Chapel Hill hotel keeper, dies
Nancy Segur Hilliard, whose family moved to Chapel Hill in 1817 and who fed students and stage travelers for decades, died on November 8, 1873. Cornelia Phillips Spencer appealed to alumni to help her in her last illness and to pay for her burial and a modest monument.
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Charles Jones Curtis succeeds his father as rector of St. Matthew's
After his ordination to the priesthood, Charles Jones Curtis followed his father, Moses Ashley Curtis, as rector and served until he resigned in 1880.
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Webb, Roulhac & Cameron prepare to move their tobacco business from Hillsborough to Durham
The Hillsborough Recorder reported that the tobacco firm of Webb, Roulhac & Cameron was about to move to Durham, where it had been offered better terms. The paper said the town could ill spare them.
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A county school census finds 24 more schoolhouses are needed
An 1874 count of school-age children by township found 2,380 Black children and set the need at 24 additional schoolhouses, ten of them in Hillsboro Township.
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Andrew Mickle serves as Chapel Hill's magistrate of police
Under the town charter the commissioners chose a magistrate of police to preside at their meetings, and Andrew Mickle held the office in 1874 and 1875. In March 1870 a rival group of citizens claiming to be the town's officers had named him to the post, which the sitting board said was without authority of law.
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Calvin E. Parish is elected state senator for Orange County
Orange County elected Parish to the state Senate in 1874, with Joseph W. Latta and Matthew Atwater in the House. He was elected to the House in 1876 and to the Senate again in 1880.
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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.
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George Trice turns Tom Moore's former house into a restaurant and shoe shop
George Trice made the East Franklin Street house where Tom Moore had lived into a restaurant and ice cream parlor with a shoe shop. He gave up the restaurant after his wife died in 1899, and by 1903 a tailor and a shoe shop were in its place.
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Hillsborough Methodist Church finishes paying for its building
The Civil War interrupted work on the brick church John Berry designed and built on West Tryon Street, and the congregation did not finish paying for it until 1874.
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John Manning serves on the university's Board of Trustees
John Manning became a trustee of the University of North Carolina in 1874 and held the post for two decades, through the university's 1875 reopening.
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Maj. John W. Graham builds a twelve-room house at Montrose on his father's old foundation
In 1874 William A. Graham gave the vacant Montrose land to his son Maj. John W. Graham, who built a twelve-room house on the foundation of the first house. It burned in 1893.
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Pine Street is cut through Lot 16 from Franklin Street to Rosemary
A new street, Pine Street, was opened through the old Lot 16, running from Franklin Street to Rosemary Street.
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Seaton Barbee opens a drugstore on Franklin Street
Seaton Barbee, a son of merchant Sidney Mulholland Barbee, opened a drugstore on the south side of Franklin Street across from his father's house, with Tom Dunstan's barbershop on the floor above.
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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.
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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.
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Haywood Beverly and Lewis Jenkins run for Hillsborough town commissioner as Black Republicans
In the Hillsborough town election, Black Republicans Haywood Beverly, a tanner, and Lewis Jenkins ran for town commissioner. Both lost, and the board elected was Conservative except for H. N. Brown, who ran on both tickets.
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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.
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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.
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Pleasant H. Dalton becomes stated supply at New Hope
Dalton, who had joined New Hope as a university student in 1842, began supplying the church in August 1874. By his own count at least fifty members were added in his twelve years there.
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Joseph Blount Cheshire marries Annie Huske Webb at St. Matthew's
Joseph Blount Cheshire Jr., later Episcopal bishop of North Carolina, married Annie Huske Webb of Hillsborough at St. Matthew's Church.
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Adolphus W. Mangum joins the faculty of the reopened university
When the university reopened in 1875 Mangum became professor of mental and moral science, history and English language and literature. He taught until he died in Chapel Hill in May 1890 and was buried in the old Chapel Hill Cemetery.
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Anne Ruffin dies and Little Hawfields passes to her heirs
Anne Kirkland Ruffin, who had inherited the Hillsborough house on Thomas Ruffin's death in 1870, died in 1875. The estate passed to her children and a grandchild.
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Archibald Jordan completes an Italianate house at Caldwell
Archibald C. Jordan, later Caldwell's physician, finished a two-story Italianate house there in 1875, with a projecting center pavilion, a bracketed cornice and arched windows. Inside is a curved staircase in a diagonally sheathed hall.
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Bartholomew F. Moore gives $1,000 toward reopening the university
Moore's $1,000 was among the largest gifts on the list of subscriptions paid in 1875 for the revival of the university.
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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.
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George Tayloe Winston joins the faculty of the reopened university
Winston, a Cornell graduate who had also studied at UNC, came to Chapel Hill in 1875 as professor of Latin and German when the university reopened.
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Herbert McCauley builds an I-house off Old Greensboro Road
Around 1875 a two-story frame house mixing Greek Revival and Victorian trim was built for Herbert McCauley, with a log house and smokehouse on the place. Neighbors know it as the house where the singer James Taylor grew up.
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James A. Cheek builds an Italianate house on North Churton Street
James A. Cheek built a five-bay Italianate I-house with an ornate sawnwork porch on Lot 78, on a rise above North Churton Street. His family kept it until 1908; a brick kitchen and an 1880s barn survive behind it.
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John DeBerniere Hooper returns as professor of Greek and French when the university reopens
When the university reopened in 1875 Hooper was appointed professor of Greek and French. He resigned in October 1885 because of illness and died at his Chapel Hill home in January 1886.
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John Kimberly returns as professor of agriculture at the reopened university
When the university reorganized and reopened in 1875, John Kimberly was elected professor of agriculture. He resigned the next year to return to his farm in Buncombe County.
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John W. Carr gives $100 toward reopening the university
John W. Carr of Chapel Hill paid $100 to the subscription of nearly $20,000 raised to revive the university in 1875, alongside $500 from his son Julian S. Carr of Durham.
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Joseph B. Martin builds an I-house on East Rosemary Street
The two-story I-house at 401 East Rosemary Street, with end chimneys and a three-bay front, is credited to Joseph B. Martin, who probably put it up sometime from 1875 to 1885. W. M. Dey, who owned it later, gave the house its name.
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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.
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Ralph Henry Graves joins the faculty of the reopened university
Ralph Henry Graves returned to Chapel Hill in 1875 as professor of engineering at the newly reopened University of North Carolina. He later taught mathematics and held his professorship until his death in 1889.
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Senator Calvin E. Parish votes for the grant that lets the university reopen
Parish was among the senators who voted to pay the university $7,500 a year, the interest on its land-grant fund, the grant that let it reopen its doors in 1875. Orange County's representatives Matthew Atwater and Joseph W. Latta voted for it in the House.
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Solomon Pool sells his West Cameron Avenue house to Dr. Thomas W. Harris
Solomon Pool owned the Greek Revival I-house at 206 West Cameron Avenue, built about 1870, until about 1875, when physician Thomas W. Harris bought it. Harris went on to found and lead the university's medical school.
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St. Matthew's Episcopal Church reworks its entrance tower and adds the spire
In 1875 the west entrance tower of St. Matthew's was reworked and given its slate-covered spire.
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The reopened university adopts an honor pledge on examinations
From the reopening each student signed a pledge that he had neither given nor received help on an examination, and a student convicted of cheating had to leave. Battle says cheating had been widely tolerated before 1868.
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William A. Graham defeats Washington Duke for a seat in the 1875 convention
Orange elected Graham over Duke, 1,908 to 1,528, and Josiah Turner Jr. over John T. Hogan. Graham died before the convention met, and William N. Patterson beat Duke again in a special election, 2,000 to 1,297.
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Wilson Caldwell returns to the reopened university and later heads its labor force
When the university reopened in 1875 Wilson Caldwell went back to work there. He became curator of South Building and head of the campus labor corps, and held the post until his death in 1898.
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Women's groups give scientific apparatus to the reopened university
At the board's request Cornelia Phillips Spencer gathered gifts of instruments from women around the state, including Plateau's apparatus from the pupils of the Nash and Kollock school in Hillsborough. The women of Hillsborough gave a Holtz electrical machine in memory of William A. Graham, which Paul C. Cameron presented at the 1877 commencement.
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Commissioners order a new bell for the courthouse
The board authorized David C. Parks to buy and hang a new bell for the courthouse and to sell the old one on the best terms he could.
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Cornelia Phillips Spencer learns on her fiftieth birthday that the university will reopen
A telegram from Raleigh on March 20, 1875, reported that the legislature had passed a bill letting the closed University of North Carolina reorganize with some state support. Spencer, whose letters to state leaders had pressed for the reopening, and a few friends entered South Building and tolled the college bell to celebrate.
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Historical Society of North Carolina is incorporated
The legislature chartered the Historical Society of North Carolina, chiefly so it could receive the books and papers of the old university society held by President Swain's widow, with William A. Graham as its first president and Cornelia Phillips Spencer among the incorporators. Eleanor Swain refused to give up the papers until she later found proof that the bound books belonged to the society.
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A flood carries away the road bridge over the Eno at Hillsborough
Floodwater swept away the bridge over the Eno at Hillsborough, and the river rose to within a few feet of the railroad bridge. The same flood took bridges across Caswell County.
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County commissioners and township trustees adopt a uniform tax scale for livestock
Meeting with a trustee from each township, the board fixed values such as $100 for a first-class horse or mule, $20 for first-class cattle and $1 a head for sheep and goats. In May and June it sat sixteen days as a board of equalization to revise the tax list.
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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.
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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.
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Rufus L. Patterson moves a loan to repair the university buildings and offers to stand surety
At the trustees' reorganization meeting, Patterson moved that the treasurer be allowed to borrow $5,000 if needed to repair the Chapel Hill buildings, and volunteered to be surety for the university.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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UNC reopens
The university resumed classes on Monday, September 6, 1875, after more than four years closed, with Charles Phillips as chairman of the faculty, and held a public celebration on September 15. Kemp P. Battle, then secretary of the trustees, was elected president in 1876.
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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.
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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.
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Algernon S. Barbee opens his own general store
Civil War veteran Algernon S. Barbee left his clerk's job with his brother-in-law David McCauley and opened his own general store. From its location Bryant judges that he took over the store of his father, Sidney Mulholland Barbee, then about seventy.
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Chapel Hill's commissioners accept a new Caldwell Street
A short street named Caldwell was laid off along the east side of the old president's-house square and accepted by the town commissioners. Until then the square had been undivided.
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Faculty dismisses five students for a mock revival meeting
During a revival in a village church, a group of students staged a burlesque meeting with mock sermons, and the faculty dismissed five of them despite petitions from townswomen and both literary societies. When classmates marched the five out of town, Charles Phillips stopped the procession at his house and turned it back, and four of the five later returned and graduated.
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James L. Currie becomes pastor of Eno Presbyterian Church
Currie, who had grown up in the Eno congregation under his father, the Rev. Archibald Currie, became its pastor in 1876, and that year also served the Fairfield and Little River churches. He stayed at Eno until 1896, and the congregation's third church was built during his ministry.
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John W. Graham serves on the university board of trustees
John W. Graham sat on the University of North Carolina board of trustees from 1876 until his death in 1928, and from 1891 he was an elected member of its executive committee.
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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.
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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.
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The university begins keeping Washington's Birthday as a holiday
The reopened faculty set the precedent of a holiday on February 22, and the literary societies later chose a Washington orator for the day. At the first or second observance Francis D. Winston displayed a battered hatchet he claimed had felled the cherry tree.
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The school board orders a landowner to stop fencing off the Bethany Meeting House school
Told that William Jackson had fenced in the schoolhouse of District 15 at Bethany Meeting House and would not let school be taught, the board warned him to return the lot to the district committee or face legal action.
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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.
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The poorhouse count records ten deaths in a single year
The enumeration listed six white men, eight white women, four Black men and six Black women living at the poorhouse. Over the previous year ten residents had died, two children had been born, twelve people had come in and four had left.
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Professor William H. Smith publishes a guide to collecting specimens
William H. Smith, professor of natural history, issued a pamphlet with directions for skinning and preserving birds and mammals and for keeping reptiles, insects, plants, rocks and soils, to build up the university museum. Battle calls it probably the first such guide in the state.
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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.
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Dr. Thomas W. Harris opens a drugstore at Franklin and Henderson streets
Dr. Thomas W. Harris, the first dean of the university's medical school, opened a drugstore on the northeast corner of Franklin and Henderson streets. He sold the business to Robert Strange MacRae in 1884.
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McIver heads mathematics at the university's summer normal schools
Then principal of the Greensboro graded schools, McIver was chief of the mathematics department at the 1877 Summer Normal School in Chapel Hill and taught mathematics, English grammar and physiology at the 1878 session.
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Phi Kappa Sigma is rechartered at the reopened university
Although the trustees still discouraged fraternities after 1875, Phi Kappa Sigma regained its charter in 1877 and met in secret, often off campus.
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State experiment station opens at Chapel Hill
After Kemp P. Battle pressed for it with the State Grange and farm societies, the legislature created a Board of Agriculture, taxed commercial fertilizers and placed an experiment station at the university, whose trustees elected Albert R. Ledoux its chemist in 1877. Working in Smith Hall it analyzed fertilizers, seeds, soils and waters until it moved to Raleigh in 1881.
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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.
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Thomas Ruffin Jr. and his wife Mary build the Ruffin-Hill House
Thomas Ruffin Jr. and his wife Mary built an I-house with Italianate and Eastlake trim on a 47-acre tract near the burned Priestly Mangum House. Their daughter Mary Ruffin Hill and her husband Thomas Hill lived there for many years.
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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.
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Louis H. Hackney becomes pastor of Rock Hill Baptist Church
Louis H. Hackney, who had spent six years at Shaw University in the early 1870s and then taught school, became pastor of Rock Hill Baptist Church on Franklin Street in January 1877, when he was barely twenty-two. He held the pastorate for sixty years, until his death in 1937. He and his wife had married in 1876.
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Fire guts Person Hall
Person Hall, the old chapel finished in 1798 and recently given to the chemistry department, burned on February 6, 1877, apparently from a stovepipe set too close to a roof rafter. The thick walls stood, the loss came to about $1,000, and gifts from A. F. Redd, J. S. Carr and others paid to restore it.
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Latin salutatory and valedictory orations are dropped from commencement
A month after the Person Hall fire the university abolished the Latin Salutatory and Valedictory speeches, though for several years the top graduate was still called the valedictorian.
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Andrew Mickle is appointed Chapel Hill postmaster
Andrew Mickle was appointed postmaster at Chapel Hill on May 19, 1877, succeeding Hugh B. Guthrie. Thomas M. Kirkland followed him on January 31, 1881.
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Charles F. Deems preaches the commencement sermon and receives an honorary degree
At the 1877 commencement, Deems, then pastor of the Church of the Strangers in New York, preached the baccalaureate sermon, and the university conferred on him the honorary Doctor of Laws.
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The reopened university graduates its first class
At the 1877 commencement five men took degrees, William Battle Phillips of Chapel Hill a Ph.B. and Julian M. Baker, Frank M. Fremont, Joseph C. Powell and James C. Taylor the B.S. The 1876 commencement had had no graduates.
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William C. Claytor, Nettleton G. Craig and Charles W. Johnston are ordained elders at New Hope
Three elders were added to the session. Claytor was a son of the 1859 elder Samuel Claytor; Johnston's grandmother was Mary Cabe, a daughter of Gilbert Strayhorn.
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Louisa Turner sells Maple Hill and 140 acres to her brother-in-law Israel Turner
Louisa Jackson Turner, widow of John Turner, sold her father Jacob Jackson's home tract and the house where she lived to Israel Turner Jr. for $10,500. Israel Turner later ran a government-licensed distillery on the farm.
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The school board approves Piney Mountain as school District 53
The board recognized Piney Mountain as District No. 53 and named its committeemen. At the same meeting it ordered that no committee contract teachers beyond the money apportioned for the year.
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Fairfield School is allowed to draw water from the county poorhouse spring
The board let the Fairfield school in District 21 use the spring at the county poorhouse for its water.
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Hickory Grove Baptist Church is organized
Black families organized Hickory Grove Baptist Church, with C. D. Hackney as first pastor.
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The school board names committeemen for 52 numbered school districts
The board's 1877 appointments name every district school in the county, from North East and Deals Creek to Prospect Hill and Orange Factory, with three committeemen for each.
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University Day is established
At Kemp P. Battle's request, seconded by Zebulon B. Vance, the executive committee made October 12, the anniversary of the laying of Old East's cornerstone in 1793, a permanent holiday. At the first observance in Gerrard Hall, decorated by Cornelia Phillips Spencer and village women, Battle spoke on the charter and the cornerstone.
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Bartholomew F. Moore leaves the university $5,000 for scholarships
Moore, who died in November 1878, left the university $5,000 by will to fund scholarships. Battle later reported three young men studying on the Moore scholarships.
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Bursar Andrew Mickle helps poor teachers through the university's summer normal school
At the summer normal school the university lent its dormitories and bedding and let teachers cook for themselves, so that many lived on $4 or $5 a month. Andrew Mickle, the school's business agent, worked tirelessly to advise and help those who needed it.
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Dr. T. W. Harris opens a private medical school in Chapel Hill
In 1878 Dr. T. W. Harris moved from Chatham County to Chapel Hill and started a private medical school there. Within a year the university absorbed it and named him the first dean of its School of Medicine.
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Hillsborough's Black Presbyterians build their church on Orange Street
The congregation built its church about 1878 with some help from white residents. Leading families were the Ellisons, Boldens, Morrows, Richmonds and Webbs; Bill Bolden played the organ and a Rev. White was pastor.
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John H. Watson buys the Chapel Hill Hotel from David McCauley
John H. Watson, a brother of Jones Watson, bought the Chapel Hill Hotel from McCauley. By 1891 he had taken W. W. Pickard as a partner.
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Joseph A. Harris publishes the Chapel Hill Ledger
Joseph A. Harris began printing the Chapel Hill Ledger in a small wooden shop on the south side of East Franklin Street. He stopped publishing it in 1880.
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Joseph Blount Cheshire is assigned to the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill
Ordered deacon at Tarboro on 21 April 1878, Cheshire was assigned by Bishop Thomas Atkinson to the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill at the request of university president Kemp P. Battle. He served his diaconate there under Robert Sutton, rector of the Pittsboro parish.
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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.
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Nelson P. Hall buys the Ellis house and 267 acres on the Eno
Nelson Parrish Hall bought 267 acres of the Ellis land with the brick house, though his family may have lived there since about 1870, when his son Simeon was listed as a miller. The mill on the Eno across the road took the Hall name as Hall's Mill.
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Teachers at the Normal School form a State Teachers' Association
Teachers attending the 1878 University Normal School organized a State Teachers' Association with Kemp P. Battle as president and began forming county associations. They also petitioned the legislature to continue the school.
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The Orange County Observer begins publication at Hillsborough
Joseph A. Harris started the Orange County Observer at Hillsborough in 1878 as editor and owner. The paper ran until about 1917.
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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.
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The wife of pastor J. H. Wheeler is buried in front of the Hillsborough Methodist Church
During J. H. Wheeler's four-year pastorate his wife died and was buried in the church's front yard, a grave the church still showed in 1962.
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William L. Saunders becomes secretary of the university, and later its treasurer as well
After Seaton Gales died in 1878, the trustees chose Saunders as the university's secretary; once President Battle gave up the treasurership, Saunders held both offices, which he kept until his death in 1891.
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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.
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Three men hanged for a string of Chapel Hill burglaries
In 1877 a band of four broke into six houses in and near Chapel Hill and wounded the widow Margaret Hendon with an axe blade while trying to rob her. Albert Atwater, a Black man held for a lesser offense, confessed and named two white men and a Black man, who were convicted in Orange Superior Court and hanged on April 16, 1878 after Governor Jarvis refused clemency.
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St. Matthew's rings its new bell, a memorial to Confederate dead
A steeple bell given by Mrs. Mary Curtis was rung for the first time for the Easter service. Its inscription remembers John Henry Curtis and the other men of the Orange Light Artillery who died in Confederate service.
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Summer Normal School offers the state's first kindergarten training
Emily M. Coe of New York taught a class of teachers the kindergarten method at the university's 1878 Summer Normal School, with 53 children drilled daily. Battle believed it the first normal kindergarten class in North Carolina; the session enrolled 402 teachers, 190 of them women.
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Alpha Tau Omega charters a chapter at the university
Alpha Tau Omega received a charter at Chapel Hill in 1879, while fraternities were still barred and met out of sight.
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Chapel Hill's amended charter creates the office of mayor
An 1879 amendment to the town charter replaces the magistrate of police with a mayor holding a justice of the peace's powers in Orange County. Merritt Cheek was the first mayor, serving until 1881.
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Charles B. Aycock edits the Ledger in Chapel Hill
Aycock, then a university student, took over as editor of the weekly Chapel Hill Ledger in 1879, succeeding Cornelia Phillips Spencer. The paper ran until 1880.
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