Chronology

William James Bingham opens his school at the Oaks

William James Bingham gave up Hillsborough Academy after its spring 1844 session and in May announced a select classical and mathematical school twelve miles southwest of Hillsborough, to open that November on the Oaks tract he bought the same year. It became known as the Bingham School and stayed at the Oaks until December 1864.

People: William James Bingham

Subject: Hillsborough Academy · Bingham School

The university awards Isaac J. Collier and Kendall B. Waitt the contract for the Old East and Old West additions

On December 23, 1844, Collier and Waitt won the contract to build A. J. Davis's three-story brick additions to Old East and Old West, at $9,360. They subcontracted the masonry to Dabney Cosby; the next day trustee secretary Charles Manly asked that they hire his enslaved carpenters.

People: Alexander Jackson Davis · Dabney Cosby · Charles Manly · Kendall B. Waitt

Subject: Old East · Old West

Frances Devereux deeds Primus to Dr. Edmund Strudwick

Five months after her husband died, Frances Devereux of Raleigh deeded Primus to Dr. Edmund Strudwick of Hillsborough. Primus later drove and gardened at the Burwell School and, after emancipation, worked at the Nash and Kollock School as Primus Smith.

People: Edmund Strudwick · Frances (Pollock) Devereux

Subject: Burwell School · Nash and Kollock School

Brothers Albert and Osborne, enslaved by Dabney Cosby, plaster the lengthened Old East

The additions to Old East and Old West, contracted in December 1844 and finished in 1848, used the labor of Albert and Osborne, brothers enslaved by Dabney Cosby, who plastered the lengthened Old East in 1845 and 1846. Cosby praised Albert's plastering as first-rate work.

People: Albert · Osborne · Dabney Cosby · Alexander Jackson Davis

Subject: Old East · Old West

Dennis Heartt prints The Poetical Works of George M. Horton

Dennis Heartt printed The Poetical Works of George M. Horton, the Colored Bard of North-Carolina at Hillsborough in 1845, with Horton's autobiography prefixed to the poems. It was the second book by Horton, who was still enslaved when it appeared.

People: George Moses Horton

Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

Faculty turns away a fencing and boxing instructor

A Major Roberts, backed by letters from leading trustees, asked to teach the students athletics including fencing and boxing. The faculty refused to let him form a class after learning he advertised teaching the bowie knife at the University of Virginia and boasted of having been a London prize fighter.

Hillsborough citizens pay to refit the academy building for the Caldwell Institute

Townspeople paid for the repair and enlargement of the Hillsborough Academy building so that the Caldwell Institute could move in from Greensboro. The older school was absorbed into the institute under Alexander Wilson.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 137 events

Subject: Hillsborough Academy · Caldwell Institute

James Strudwick Smith sells Harriet, Julius and Cornelia to Mary Ruffin Smith

Shielding his property from creditors, James Strudwick Smith passed most of the family's holdings to his daughter Mary Ruffin Smith, including Harriet and her children Julius and Cornelia, whom he sold to her in 1845. Cornelia had been born in 1844 after Sidney Smith raped Harriet.

People: James Strudwick Smith · Cornelia Smith Fitzgerald

Josiah Turner Jr. is admitted to the bar after studying law in Hillsborough

After schooling at the Caldwell Institute in Greensboro and a year at the University of North Carolina, Josiah Turner Jr. studied law for two years in Hillsborough and was admitted to the bar in about 1845. He soon built a large practice.

Richard Mayo, a free cabinetmaker of color, buys three town lots

Richard Mayo paid $200 for three lots on Occoneechee Street between West Tryon and West Queen streets, and in 1849 gave them to Levi McCollum to settle a debt. His brother William later waited tables at the Burwell School.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 137 events

Subject: Burwell School

Samuel F. Phillips opens a law practice in Chapel Hill

Phillips, who had grown up in Chapel Hill after his family moved there in 1826, studied law under President David L. Swain and in the new university law school, then began practising in Chapel Hill when he came of age in 1845.

People: David L. Swain

Subject: UNC School of Law

The Joseph Allison house is built near Caldwell

A frame side-gable house is built in 1845 on the Joseph Allison place near Caldwell, on land that goes back to a 1759 grant. It had been remodeled by 1993.

The Mallette-Wilson-Maurice House is built on West Cameron Avenue

A story-and-a-half Greek Revival house with a low gable roof and short upper windows went up about 1845 at 215 West Cameron Avenue, one of the oldest houses on the street. A small guest house stands beside it facing Wilson Street.

The Old Orange County Courthouse is moved up Churton Street to Queen Street

After the county built a new courthouse, its commissioners advertised the old wooden courthouse for sale at the November 1845 county court, to be removed from the court square. The Baptist missionary Elias Dodson bought it, and by about 1847 it stood at the corner of Churton and Queen streets as a church. The building later became the freedmen's school and then the home of Dickerson Chapel AME Church.

People: Elias Dodson

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough · Dickerson Chapel AME Church

The Smith-Cole House is built for a Hillsborough planter

Built in 1845 for a Hillsborough planter, the frame house stands two stories over a center-hall plan two rooms deep and five bays across, with a chimney at each gable end and a porch on thin columns.

The Smiths leave Hillsborough for Price Creek Plantation near Chapel Hill

After Cornelia's birth the Smiths sold their Hillsborough house and moved to the more remote Price Creek Plantation, about 1,500 acres southwest of Chapel Hill, where building of the main house, Oakland, began in 1845. Harriet and her children moved with them.

People: James Strudwick Smith

Trustees bar students from bringing their own enslaved servants to the university

After 1845 the trustees prohibited students from bringing enslaved people of their own to Chapel Hill. The university went on hiring enslaved college servants by the year from local slaveholders.

William Horn Battle becomes the university's professor of law

After teaching law from his office in Chapel Hill, Battle was professor of law at the university by 1845, and the university began offering the bachelor of law degree.

Subject: UNC School of Law

Samuel Wellwood Hughes opens a classical school for boys near Cedar Grove

Samuel Wellwood Hughes opened his own academy in northern Orange County in January 1845. First called Cedar Grove Academy and later Hughes' Academy, it offered classical and mathematical courses modeled on the Bingham School and ran until his death in 1884.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 137 events

Subject: Bingham School · Hughes Academy (Cedar Grove Academy)

Thomas W. Holden, now living in Milton, offers Enoe Mills for sale

Thomas W. Holden advertised all or half of Enoe Mills, five miles below Hillsborough, for sale. The works had about 300 acres, a threshing machine, saw mill, cotton gin, two wool-carding machines, an oil mill and a corn and flour mill, with his partner J. F. Lyon on the premises.

Lemuel Lynch becomes Hillsborough's first mayor

The silversmith Lemuel Lynch takes office as the first mayor of Hillsborough, which until then had been run by town commissioners and a magistrate of police.

People: Lemuel Lynch

Measles spreads through Chapel Hill households

Measles went through the village in February 1845. Charles Phillips was laid up with it, and at the Mitchell house ten people were waiting to come down with it.

People: Charles Phillips · Elisha Mitchell

Osborne begins the masonry on the additions to Old East and Old West

Dabney Cosby, who held the masonry subcontract for the university additions, sent Osborne to Chapel Hill carrying a letter to the main contractors saying that Osborne would have his mortar made up. Cosby ordered meal and bacon for him and wrote that what Osborne said could be relied on.

People: Dabney Cosby

Subject: Old East · Old West

Trustees dismiss students after a riot at the college

After a large disturbance among the students, trustees were called in and treated the offenders more lightly than the faculty wanted, dismissing them rather than expelling them.

Enslaved workers build and tend the Battle household in Chapel Hill

Letters between Lucy and William H. Battle in March 1845 describe enslaved men at their Chapel Hill house: Ben planted shrubs and flowers, Harry worked on the outbuildings and was hired out, and Billy was also at work. The well-house, servants' houses, barn and bath house were built almost entirely by enslaved labor.

Part of Slavery in Orange County · 109 events

People: David L. Swain

University trustees name the burying ground the College Graveyard

After Judge William Gaston died in 1844, faculty members asked the trustees for a separate burying ground in sight of the campus for eminent men of the university, starting with Gaston's body brought from Raleigh. The trustees let the petition lapse and in June 1845 named the existing ground the College Graveyard instead.

People: William Gaston

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Caldwell Institute reopens in Hillsborough after leaving Greensboro

The Orange Presbytery's Caldwell Institute, founded at Greensboro, moved to Hillsborough and began its first session there on July 9, 1845, with Alexander Wilson as president. It used the Hillsborough Academy building and absorbed that school.

People: Alexander Wilson

Subject: Hillsborough Academy · Caldwell Institute

James S. Smith offers his estate for sale to pay his debts

In a notice dated August 19, 1845, in the Hillsborough Recorder, James S. Smith offered property he valued at not less than $35,000 to cover debts of $15,000 or $16,000, saying he would act as his own trustee and salesman. NCpedia says he went bankrupt that year and probably then moved from Hillsborough to a house on Smith Level Road outside Chapel Hill.

Witherspoon's farm Tusculum is sold at the courthouse door

Dr. Edmund Strudwick, who had long held the mortgages, bought the farm at public sale. Susan Witherspoon was allowed to stay on at Tusculum by Strudwick's provision.

People: Edmund Strudwick

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough · Tusculum (Witherspoon farm)

Julian Shakespeare Carr, later Carrboro's namesake, is born in Chapel Hill

Julian S. Carr was born in Chapel Hill on October 12, 1845, the son of the Franklin Street merchant John Wesley Carr, and later studied at the university. He built tobacco, banking and textile fortunes in Durham, and his Durham Hosiery Mills went on to own both Carrboro mills; the town took his name in 1913.

People: Julian S. Carr

David L. Swain and Charles Phillips transfer from New Hope to the Chapel Hill church

University president David L. Swain, who first joined a church at New Hope, and Charles Phillips were released by letter to the Presbyterian church at Chapel Hill.

People: Charles Phillips

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church · University Presbyterian Church

Andrew Mickle turns the log schoolhouse at Highlands into a house

The log school built south of the Eno around 1844 was converted to a residence, and Andrew Mickle added a three-bay, two-story side-hall section in 1846. Paul C. Cameron enlarged it again in 1857.

People: Andrew Mickle

Subject: Highlands (Paul Cameron house)

Archibald Currie begins a twenty-year pastorate at Eno

After twelve years of short-term ministers, Eno called Archibald Currie, who served until 1866 and returned briefly in 1895-1896. His son James L. Currie later held the same pulpit.

Subject: Eno Presbyterian Church

Bartholomew F. Moore gives the annual address before the two literary societies

At the 1846 commencement, Moore, an 1820 graduate, was the annual orator before the two student societies. His subject was the claims of the university on her sons for cultivating truth and universal justice.

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Builder John Berry enlarges a St. Mary's Road farmhouse into Sunny Side, his country home

John Berry, the Hillsborough brickmason and builder, enlarged and remodeled an older farmhouse on St. Mary's Road as a home for himself and named it Sunny Side. He kept his library there and lived there until his death in 1870.

Subject: Sunnyside (John Berry farm)

Caroline Mallett Walker conveys the Margaret Lane house to James M. Palmer

In 1846 Caroline Mary Walker conveyed the lateral-hall house at 173 West Margaret Lane, by deed of trust, to James M. Palmer. Palmer, bankrupt, gave it up in 1863, and a later owner, Tom Haise or Hayes, kept a shoemaker's shop there.

People: James M. Palmer

Dialectic and Philanthropic societies draw lots for the east and west buildings

The trustees had the society presidents, William M. Howerton and Matt W. Ransom, cast lots before Governor Graham, President Swain and Charles Manly; the Philanthropic won the east side and the Dialectic the west, and South Building rooms facing north went to the Phis and those facing south to the Dis. The arrangement lasted until 1868.

People: Matt W. Ransom · William A. Graham · David L. Swain · Charles Manly

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies · South Building · Old East · Old West

James Phillips buys the Village Chapel lot for the Presbyterian church

Professor James Phillips, as trustee, bought for $200 the lot where the Union or Village Chapel stood, as a site for the Presbyterian church, on condition that no burials be made there. The old chapel was moved a few hundred yards north, enlarged, and long served as the village public school.

Subject: University Presbyterian Church

John Christmas builds new gallows at Hillsborough

The county's new gallows went up in 1846 and were moved four years later.

Lemuel Lynch is paid to repair the courthouse clock

The old town clock, in storage since the market house came down, was repaired for the new courthouse, where it still hangs in the cupola. Lemuel Lynch was paid $250 for the work and afterward $25 a year to keep it running on time.

People: Lemuel Lynch

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

Nancy Hilliard buys the Watts Hotel from Lucy Watts

Lucy Watts sold the hotel and the land beside it to Nancy Hilliard, already known as a Chapel Hill hotel keeper. A year later Hilliard enlarged it for President Polk's commencement visit.

People: Nancy Hilliard

Subject: Eagle Hotel (Chapel Hill)

Students circulate the Literary Trumpet, a handwritten paper

William M. Howerton edited the Literary Trumpet, a pen-and-ink paper for private circulation, with a lady as nominal co-editor. Battle calls it the first of the university's informal student sheets.

The two-story Pickett log house is built near Cedar Grove

The Pickett House near Cedar Grove is a large log dwelling of two full stories, a size uncommon among the county's log houses. The survey could not settle whether it went up in 1846 or 1864.

University sells the Franklin and Columbia street oak grove to John W. Carr

The trustees conveyed to the merchant John W. Carr, for $300, the oak grove at the northwest corner of Franklin and Columbia streets where villagers gathered to hear candidates speak. It was one of several sales of university land to villagers in the middle 1840s.

People: John Wesley Carr

Mitchell asks the Burwells to sell his wife Mary Ann with him

Mitchell, an enslaved man who had run from his owner, came to Robert Burwell asking that he and his wife Mary Ann, enslaved in the Burwell household, be sold together. He worked at the house for a week; then Burwell told him to go back to his master, and he left on February 17.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 137 events

People: Robert Armistead Burwell

Smallpox at the Turner house sends students out of town

Anna Burwell wrote that William Turner had caught smallpox from the clothes of a brother back from medical lectures in Philadelphia. Twenty or thirty students of the Institute left town, and both Burwell boarders went home, though no second case followed.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 137 events

Albert joins his brother Osborne to plaster the halls at the university

Cosby sent Albert from Smithfield in Virginia to Chapel Hill, where Osborne was already at work on the additions to Old East and Old West. Albert carried a letter to university president David L. Swain saying he came to help his brother plaster the halls and would judge the sand to be used together with Osborne.

People: Dabney Cosby · David L. Swain

Subject: Old East · Old West

Morehead gives the Alumni Association address in Gerrard Hall

With no orator found from the class of thirty years before, the association's president, former governor Morehead, delivered the address at the meeting of 36 alumni in Gerrard Hall.

People: William A. Graham

Subject: Gerrard Hall

William Mercer Green pledges fifteen enslaved people and his Bolin Creek land for a loan

To secure 2,500 dollars borrowed from John H. Bryan, with David L. Swain and Duncan Cameron as his sureties, William Mercer Green conveyed to William H. Battle in trust his land on Bolin Creek near Chapel Hill and fifteen enslaved people: Jenny, Nancy, Lucy, Frances, Ellen, Celia, Anne, Julia, Rachel, Margaret, Peter, Sam, Aaron, Cain and Robert. If the debt went unpaid, they were to be advertised in the Hillsborough Recorder and sold at Chapel Hill to the highest bidder.

People: William Mercer Green · William Horn Battle · David L. Swain · Duncan Cameron

False alarm sets off a panic in the chapel at commencement

During the 1846 commencement someone shouted that the gallery was falling, and the packed crowd rushed for the doors while some jumped from windows, until President Swain, Governor Graham and other trustees calmed it. No one was hurt, and more pillars were placed under the galleries before the next commencement.

People: David L. Swain · William A. Graham

Subject: Gerrard Hall

Union Grove Methodist Church is organized

Union Grove Methodist Church was organized on September 23, 1846. The cornerstone of its later building was laid on the centennial of that day.

Subject: Union Grove Methodist Church

Helen Caldwell dies and is buried with her husband at his monument

Helen Hogg Caldwell, widow of President Caldwell and a leader of village society, died at Chapel Hill on October 30, 1846 while visiting John DeBerniere Hooper. Caldwell's remains were taken up on October 31 and laid beside hers at the base of his monument, with the president and faculty as pallbearers.

People: John DeBerniere Hooper · Elisha Mitchell · Helen Hogg Caldwell

A boys' preparatory school meets in Samuel Phillips's law office

Samuel Phillips's small stuccoed law office on East Franklin Street reportedly housed a preparatory school for boys in 1847. Later in the century William Horn Battle taught law classes in the same building.

People: William Horn Battle

Alumni start a fund for a marble monument to Caldwell

Troubled by the crumbling sandstone monument, the alumni at the 1847 commencement voted on John Y. Mason's motion, supported by President Polk, to raise a marble memorial by gifts of three dollars each, and $210 was subscribed at once. By 1849 only $600 of an estimated $1,000 was in hand and the limit on gifts was dropped.

People: James K. Polk

Dabney Cosby builds the Presbyterian church on Franklin Street

After the university work Cosby built a small Tuscan style church designed by Alexander Jackson Davis for the Chapel Hill Presbyterian congregation, whose members included university president David L. Swain. In March 1848 the congregation member Charles Phillips wrote to Davis that the mason could not match the lilac gray color specified for the outside. The building no longer stands.

People: David L. Swain · Charles Phillips · Alexander Jackson Davis

Subject: University Presbyterian Church

John Wesley Carr builds a home and store at Franklin and Columbia

Carr built his house west of the middle of Lot #7 and a store on its southeast corner at Columbia Street. The store burned partly in the January 1862 fire but stayed in business, and the maps show Carr's general merchandise there through 1868.

Jones Watson buys Barbee's old store and house for a drugstore

Jones Watson acquired Sidney Barbee's former house and store on the south side of the street, the old James Hogg property, and probably ran his drugstore from the store before remodeling both buildings. By 1858 they had become his Central Hotel.

People: Jones Watson

Subject: Central Hotel (Chapel Hill)

Moses Ashley Curtis leaves St. Matthew's for Society Hill, South Carolina

Rector and botanist Moses Ashley Curtis moved from Hillsborough to Society Hill, South Carolina, ending his first period at St. Matthew's.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

Nancy Hilliard adds a castellated annex to the Eagle Hotel for President Polk's visit

For President James K. Polk's visit to the 1847 commencement, Nancy Hilliard, who kept the Eagle Hotel, added a stuccoed two-story wing with a battlemented porch in a medieval manner. The annex stood on the site of today's Graham Memorial; Dabney Cosby likely built it, perhaps to his own design or one by A. J. Davis.

People: Dabney Cosby · Nancy Hilliard

Subject: Eagle Hotel (Chapel Hill)

Robert Loder and William Watson run a dry goods store near Franklin and Columbia

Loder and his father-in-law kept a dry goods store near the corner, probably in a building of Sidney Barbee's. By 1858 Loder was selling men's clothing there on his own, until fire destroyed the store in 1862.

The Eno Friends Meeting closes

The Eno meeting, which never recovered the membership it lost in the eighteenth century, came to an end in 1847.

The Moorefields estate is divided and the house goes to Augusta Moore

The Moorefields lands were divided, and the tract with the house went to Augusta, a daughter of Alfred Moore the younger. The family kept it until 1913.

Subject: Moorefields

The Rev. William Mercer Green buys an East Franklin Street lot and builds a house

Episcopal minister William Mercer Green bought the lot at 513 East Franklin Street in 1847 and had a two-story frame house built there before he sold it, two years later, to Charles Phillips, professor of engineering and mathematics.

People: Charles Phillips

Trustees dispose of Steward's Hall

In 1847 the wings of Steward's Hall, the old college dining hall, were given to President Swain to build a servants' house and the main building was sold. For some years before, it had been rented to keepers who boarded any students who chose to eat there.

People: David L. Swain

Subject: Steward’s Hall

Robert F. Morris buys the Hillsborough House from James Jackson

Robert F. Morris, who said he had kept taverns for several years, bought the Hillsborough House, lately run by James Jackson, and promised to be ready for guests by the February court. He advertised a good table and stables and a bar stocked with liquors.

President James K. Polk returns to Chapel Hill for the university commencement

Polk came from Raleigh by carriage with Sarah Polk and a large party, lodged at the hotel where Nancy Hilliard had built an annex for his stay, was greeted by Elisha Mitchell, the only professor left from his own student days, visited the college room he had lived in, and stayed through commencement on June 3.

People: Elisha Mitchell · Nancy Hilliard

Subject: South Building

Pettigrew graduates first in his class and is offered a post at the Naval Observatory

Pettigrew finished at the head of the class of 1847, sharing first distinction with Matt W. Ransom. Struck by his graduating oration, President Polk, Navy Secretary Mason and Lieutenant Maury invited him to become an assistant at the observatory in Washington, where he worked for six or eight months.

People: Matt W. Ransom · James K. Polk

Caldwell Institute enrollment peaks at 100 in Hillsborough

Under Alexander Wilson the school reached a peak enrollment of 100 students in 1848. Attendance fell back to 68 the next year, and in 1850 the trustees voted to discontinue it.

Subject: Caldwell Institute

Fordyce M. Hubbard is elected professor of Latin

After John DeBerniere Hooper resigned the Latin chair, the trustees elected the Rev. Fordyce M. Hubbard, an Episcopal clergyman then heading Trinity School near Raleigh, professor of Latin. He took up the work the following year and held the chair until 1868.

People: John DeBerniere Hooper

Free Black cabinetmaker Thomas Day supplies woodwork and furniture for the new society halls

Thomas Day, the free Black cabinetmaker of Milton, North Carolina, supplied woodwork and furniture for the halls and libraries of the Dialectic and Philanthropic societies in A. J. Davis's north additions to Old East and Old West. Little names him, with the Virginia builder Dabney Cosby, among the craftsmen who carried out Davis's design.

People: Thomas Day

Subject: Old East · Old West · Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

James B. Donnelly serves as rector of St. Matthew's

James B. Donnelly took charge of the parish in 1848 and served until his death late in 1855.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

James Webb Jr. and his wife buy Over-the-River from the Norwoods and enlarge it

John Wall Norwood and his wife sold Over-the-River to James Webb Jr. and his wife, who added to the two-story wing. In 1936 the house was sold to Mr. and Mrs. James Webb Cheshire.

People: James Webb Jr. · John Wall Norwood

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

Literary societies move into new halls in the enlarged Old East and Old West

The northward extensions of Old East and Old West, designed by A. J. Davis and built by Isaac J. Collier and Kendall B. Waitt for $9,360, were finished in 1848 with debating halls and library alcoves for the two societies. At the Dialectic opening James Mebane, the society's first president in 1795, sat beside the student president, Kemp P. Battle.

People: Samuel (Samuel Field) Phillips · Alexander Jackson Davis · Kemp Plummer Battle · Isaac J. Collier · Samuel Field Phillips · James Mebane · Kendall B. Waitt

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies · Old East · Old West

Robert Burwell buys the house and has John Berry enlarge it

Burwell resigned his pulpit and bought the two lots from the church for $800 and back pay. The builder John Berry added a central hall and two rooms and turned the house to face Churton Street. A deed of trust of July 16, 1850 shows Burwell still owing Berry $2,500 and the church trustees $800, secured on the lots and on enslaved members of the household.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 137 events

People: Robert Armistead Burwell · John Berry

Subject: Burwell School · Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

Samuel Couch builds a two-story hall-parlor farmhouse near Durham

The Couch house is a tall frame dwelling with an off-center door and windows, Greek Revival trim and a corner stair in the main room. The farm also keeps a log granary.

Sarah Kollock becomes the Burwell School's teacher of French and drawing

Sarah Kollock, one of the Burwell School's first pupils, had helped teach the younger children and in 1848 became its full-time teacher of French and drawing. By September 1851 Molly Burwell had taken her place and she was in Oxford.

Subject: Burwell School

The literary societies ask the trustees for a building for dances and alumni meetings

The Dialectic and Philanthropic societies petitioned the university trustees to put up a building for dances and alumni gatherings. The request led to Smith Hall, finished in 1850 and later the Playmakers Theatre.

Subject: Smith Hall (Playmakers Theatre) · Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Aaron F. Olmsted takes charge as rector of the Church of the Atonement

Olmsted, born at Hartford, Connecticut, took charge while the church was being finished and announced a $1,000 loan from a parishioner for the last push. The salary was too small for a married man, and he left later in 1848 for St. Bartholomew's, Pittsboro.

Subject: Chapel of the Cross

Mount Hermon Baptist Church is organized

Mount Hermon Baptist Church was organized on June 24, 1848, with Jesse Howell as its first pastor. Its later church was built about 1913.

Albert M. Shipp elected to the new chair of history and English literature

When William Mercer Green's retirement opened the faculty, the trustees created a professorship of history and English literature and elected the Methodist minister Albert M. Shipp to it. He held the chair until 1859.

Charles Phillips buys the house William Mercer Green built on East Franklin

Professor Charles Phillips bought the house at 513 East Franklin, just east of his father's, from the Rev. William Mercer Green, who had built it a few years earlier and was leaving to become Episcopal bishop of Mississippi. Phillips lived there until his death in 1889.

Dr. Edmund Strudwick leads the revival of the state medical society

Edmund Strudwick of Hillsborough proposed and helped call the 1849 meeting that revived the North Carolina Medical Society, and he became its first president. His teacher James Webb was made an honorary charter member.

People: James Webb

English gardeners lay out the campus grounds

The trustees began spending $1,000 a year on the still wild campus under gardeners trained in England, first Loader and then Paxton, with Black laborers. They cleared useless trees, macadamized much of Cameron Avenue and the main walks, lined walks with roses and screened the hotel stables with hedges.

Solomon Pool studies at the university in Chapel Hill

Solomon Pool entered the University of North Carolina in 1849 at the age of seventeen and graduated in 1853 as the second honor student in a class of fifty-nine. He was a member of the Philanthropic Society while in Chapel Hill.

The Presbyterian church on Franklin Street is finished and dedicated

Built with money and effort from James and Charles Phillips, Elisha Mitchell and President Swain, the small Presbyterian church on the old Grand Avenue ground was completed and formally dedicated.

People: James Phillips · Charles Phillips · Elisha Mitchell · David L. Swain

The university buys the old Caldwell house as President Swain's residence

William Hooper sold his stepfather's former house to the university, which renovated it heavily for President David L. Swain. Professor John Thomas Wheat moved into Swain's old quarters in the Tom Taylor house.

Giles Mebane introduces the bill to form Alamance County from western Orange

On January 1, 1849, Giles Mebane, a member for Orange County, introduced a bill to create a new county from part of Orange. It passed, and he named the county Alamance.

Part of How Orange County’s boundaries changed, 1771–1881 · 11 events

William N. Whitted advertises Lochiel for sale

William N. Whitted offered Lochiel, his place a mile northwest of Hillsborough, for sale: an eleven-room house with barn, ice house and kitchen on 205 acres, with 140 more acres to the northeast. The notice ran in the Recorder into early 1851.

Subject: Lochiel

Trustees let student church members worship at their own churches

Petitions from several denominations reached the board in December 1849 asking to ease compulsory Sunday worship in the college chapel. On January 4, 1850 the trustees voted down a broader plan and adopted Samuel F. Patterson's rule letting communicants attend the church of their choice while all others still attended chapel, a rule that stood about ten years.

People: David L. Swain · William Mercer Green · Samuel Finley Patterson

Subject: Gerrard Hall

A free man is jailed in Hillsborough for giving his free papers to an enslaved man

The 1850 census taker listed the town jail's inmates with their charges. John McAndless, a free laborer of 22, was held for "giving his free papers to a slave".

Subject: Orange County jail, Hillsborough

Builder John Berry holds 44 enslaved people, most working in his building trade

By 1850 the Hillsborough brick mason and builder John Berry held 44 enslaved people, most of them working with him in masonry and construction. Some, including his head carpenter Joseph Nichols, stayed with him after emancipation, and much of the carpentry in Berry's buildings after 1840 was likely Nichols's.

People: John Berry

Caldwell Institute closes in Hillsborough

The Caldwell Institute ended in 1850 after five years in Hillsborough.

Subject: Hillsborough Academy · Caldwell Institute

Circuit rider Alson Gray organizes Orange Chapel Methodist Church

Orange Chapel Methodist Church was organized and built its first church in 1850 under the circuit rider Alson Gray.

Dr. Johnston Blakeley Jones builds a Gothic Revival cottage on West Cameron Avenue

In the 1850s Dr. Jones, one of the village's two physicians before the war, built a board-and-batten cottage at 321 West Cameron with Gothic windows in its front gable, a bay window and a porch of arched latticework. It is the only Gothic Revival cottage known in Chapel Hill, probably based on a pattern book such as Downing's.

People: Johnston Blakeley Jones

Elisha Mitchell builds the stone wall around the Presbyterian churchyard

Elisha Mitchell gave the stone wall around the churchyard and Cornelia Phillips its stone pillars and gates, among the gifts that fitted out the new church in the year or so after its dedication.

People: Cornelia Phillips Spencer

Subject: University Presbyterian Church

English landscape designer Thomas Paxton lays out the Montrose grounds for Mrs. William A. Graham

The terraced landscape at Montrose, running down to the Eno, was first shaped in the 1850s by the English landscape architect Thomas Paxton, working under the direction of Mrs. William A. Graham.

Subject: Montrose

Enslaved workers build the stone dam at Trimm's Mill near Cedar Grove

Enslaved laborers build a large stone dam for Trimm's Mill near Cedar Grove in the 1850s. The dam is all that survived of the mill by 1993.

Ira Ellis's mill, later Hall's Mill, is working on the Eno west of Hillsborough

A mill stands on the Eno west of Hillsborough by the middle of the nineteenth century, part of the Rev. Ira Ellis's home place; it took the name Hall's Mill after Nelson P. Hall acquired the Ellis house and land. Only its stone dam, a stone foundation and the trace of the race survived.

Subject: Rev. Ira Ellis House (Little Ayr Mount)

John Kirkland builds a two-story frame farmhouse near Calvander

A two-story frame house apparently built for John Kirkland in the 1850s stands at Old NC 86 and Homestead Road. It was enlarged about 1900 and later; three early log outbuildings remain.

Most of Orange County's common surnames date back to the 1779 tax list

Forty-nine of the sixty surnames most common in Orange County in 1850 were already on the 1779 tax list, evidence that many families stayed put even as others moved west.

Orange County has 15 academies with 470 pupils

The count for 1850 found fifteen private academies in the county, teaching 470 students.

Orange County residents put up $100,000 for the North Carolina Railroad

Orange County people pledged $100,000 in 1850 toward building the North Carolina Railroad, planned to cross the state from Goldsboro through Hillsborough to Charlotte. Its first rails went down at Greensboro in 1851.

Subject: North Carolina Railroad

President Fillmore makes William A. Graham Secretary of the Navy

Graham, who had declined missions to Spain and Russia in 1849, led the Navy Department from 1850. His department reorganized the coast survey and the officer corps and sent the Perry expedition to Japan and an exploring party to the Amazon.

Samuel Milton Frost is assigned as pastor of the Chapel Hill Methodists

The Annual Conference had named no pastor for Chapel Hill from 1847 through 1849. After his ordination as elder at the 1850 conference in Warrenton, the university student Samuel Milton Frost was given the congregation, which grew under him to 72 white and 16 Black members by 1851.

Subject: University United Methodist Church

Signed marble obelisks go up in the Dialectic and Philanthropic plots

George Lauder signed obelisks for Philanthropic members David White Fisher (died 1850) and Mark Bennett (died 1851) and for Dialectic member John Alexander Smith (died 1855), and the Raleigh firm of Maunder & Campbell signed the obelisk of Joshua P. Perry (died 1856). Signed stones are rare in the cemetery.

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery · Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Smith Hall is built to Alexander Jackson Davis's design as the university library and ballroom

The New York architect Alexander Jackson Davis designed Smith Hall, built from 1850 to 1852 for just over $10,300 and named for the trustee and former governor Benjamin Smith. It served as library and ballroom and is now the Playmakers Theatre.

People: Benjamin Smith

Subject: UNC Libraries · Smith Hall (Playmakers Theatre)

The 1850 census finds Dennis Heartt's printers and apprentices living at Heartsease

The 1850 census listed editor Dennis Heartt's household at Heartsease with his two daughters, his son Edwin with his wife and small daughter, two young printers, and four boys aged eleven to eighteen entered as students who were probably apprentices at the Hillsborough Recorder.

People: Dennis Heartt

Subject: Heartsease

The 1850 census lists four enslaved people on Joseph Faucette's farm

Joseph Faucette, David's son, grew wheat, corn, oats, potatoes and hay on the home farm and held four enslaved people in one household, a number the nomination calls typical of a yeoman farmer.

Subject: David Faucette House (The Elms)

The 1850 census records 47 enslaved people on James H. Pratt's farm by the Eno

James H. Pratt and his wife Malvina worked a farm of 300 improved and 500 unimproved acres with 47 enslaved people, raising wheat, corn, oats, flax and livestock.

People: James H. Pratt

The Lambert Hall House goes up near Caldwell

A two-story frame hall-and-parlor house with a chimney at each end was built near Caldwell in the 1850s, its inside walls lined with wide plain boards. Local informants told the surveyors that dwellings for the people enslaved on the farm once stood in a cluster close to the house.

The Lindsey-Wilson farmstead takes shape on Damascus Church Road

A log farmhouse and log kitchen, a smokehouse, a barn for hay and a two-story frame granary that still holds its grain bins went up around the middle of the nineteenth century. A stretch of the old roadbed with a stone wall survives in the yard.

The Mary Hughes House is built at Cedar Grove

About 1850 a center-hall cottage with Greek Revival touches, louvered shutters and sidelights at both front and back doors was built at Cedar Grove. When surveyed it was little altered outside but badly run down, and its mantels had been removed.

The Morris Lloyd farmhouse is built near White Cross

A farmhouse is built around 1850 on the Morris Lloyd place near White Cross, a farm that keeps an early log house and a half-dovetailed log corn crib. The survey put it on the Study List.

The Smyth House is built near Chapel Hill

A two-story frame hall-parlor house in a restrained Greek Revival manner, its stone chimneys stuccoed and scored to look like cut blocks.

The Taylor log house is built near Carr

A single-pen log house divided into two unequal rooms on the hall-parlor plan, a layout also common in frame houses of the period.

The census counts 5,244 enslaved people in Orange County

The 1850 census found 11,330 white residents, 5,244 enslaved people and 481 free Black people in Orange County. The share of enslaved people had risen sharply since 1790, even though the new Alamance County had taken part of Orange in 1849.

The county court moves the gallows to Gallows Hill

By court order the gallows went back to the old site known as Gallows Hill on the town commons in western Hillsborough.

The old Burwell schoolroom is said to be moved to West Orange Street during John Berry's work on the Burwell School

The west wing of the bungalow at 114 West Orange Street is reputed to be the old Burwell schoolroom, moved there in 1850 while John Berry was renovating the Burwell School. The house around it dates from 1922.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 137 events

People: John Berry

Subject: Burwell School

Three-quarters of Orange County farms hold under 100 acres

By 1850 most farms in the county were small: three in four had less than 100 acres, and only a few ran past 500.

Trustees ban spirituous liquor from commencement balls

After students broke into the ball managers' stores of liquor and held a carousal, the trustees, on William A. Graham's motion, ordered that no spirituous liquor be brought to university balls and entertainments, on pain of dismissal for any manager who broke the rule. The faculty were asked to drop their dismissal of the offending managers.

People: William A. Graham

Samuel W. Hughes is named to Orange County's first board for examining teachers

On March 12, 1850, Samuel Wellwood Hughes was appointed to the first Orange County board to examine teachers for the common schools. In February 1852 he was also appointed to the county Board of Superintendents of Common Schools.

Robert Burwell pledges Mary Ann and her children against his building debts

A deed of trust set out Burwell's debts of $2,500 to the builder John Berry and $800 to the Presbyterian trustees, and offered as security the enslaved seamstress Mary Ann, her four children and any children born to her, and a girl named Ann.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 137 events

People: Robert Armistead Burwell · John Berry · Thomas Webb

Drinking students stone two professors in a night riot

Eight or ten students drinking on the campus turned on two professors who tried to stop them, stoning them until they took refuge in a student's room, and one tried to reach them at the window with a large stone. The ringleader was expelled, and the trustees, meeting at Hillsborough, sent the evidence to the solicitor for prosecution.

Benjamin S. Hedrick graduates from the university with first honors

Hedrick, who had entered the sophomore class in 1848, graduated in 1851 at the head of his class and was strongest in mathematics. On President Swain's recommendation he was then given a clerkship in the Nautical Almanac office at Cambridge, Massachusetts.

People: David L. Swain · William A. Graham

Bethel Baptist Church is organized

Bethel Baptist Church was organized in 1851. The church it used in 1953 went up about 1900.

Subject: Bethel Baptist Church

Cameron Avenue extended west through the university forest

The street now called Cameron Avenue was cut westward through the university's forest and named College Avenue by the village commissioners, and lots along it were put up for sale. Professor Fordyce M. Hubbard persuaded the trustees to build him a house at its corner with Pittsboro Street.

People: Fordyce M. Hubbard

Campus grove is thinned and paved walks laid

Until 1851 the campus was forest with only the underbrush cleared, fenced off from the Raleigh road by rails and a hedgerow and used to pasture the president's cattle. In that year the trees were thinned and the first paved walks were built.

Delta Kappa Epsilon chapter opens as fraternities reach the university

Greek-letter fraternities began entering the university in 1851 without any trustee or faculty vote admitting them. Delta Kappa Epsilon organized that year, Beta Theta Pi in 1852, Sigma Alpha Epsilon in 1857 and Zeta Psi in January 1858, and all had disbanded before the end of the Civil War.

Dr. J. S. Lucas opens a drugstore at Franklin and Henderson

Lucas opened a drugstore on the northeast corner of Henderson and Franklin streets. Richard Benbury Saunders bought it in 1855.

Fordyce M. Hubbard serves as rector of the Chapel of the Cross

While teaching Latin at the university, the Rev. Fordyce M. Hubbard served as rector of the Chapel of the Cross, Chapel Hill's Episcopal church, from about 1851 until 1853. He took charge of the parish again after Francis W. Hilliard resigned in July 1865 and stayed until he left in late 1868.

Subject: Chapel of the Cross

Frederick Strudwick graduates and begins practising law in Hillsborough

Frederick Nash Strudwick, born in Hillsborough on 27 June 1833 and schooled there, graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1851 and then began a law practice in Hillsborough.

Hillsborough Academy is revived under Benjamin Huske and Ralph Graves

After the Caldwell Institute closed, Benjamin R. Huske and Ralph Henry Graves revived the Hillsborough Academy, which ran until 1858.

People: Ralph Henry Graves (1851-1889)

Subject: Hillsborough Academy · Caldwell Institute

Isaac J. Collier finishes a house for Elizabeth Nunn

In a letter of September 24, 1851, Lucy Battle told her husband that Isaac J. Collier was finishing a house for Elizabeth Nunn, widow of a Chapel Hill innkeeper. Collier probably built other modest frame houses in the village as well.

Job Berry and Billy Payne begin the congregation that became Dickerson Chapel

Dickerson Chapel AME Church dates its founding to 1851, when Job Berry, an enslaved painter and its first pastor, began gathering the congregation with Rev. Billy (William) Payne, enslaved by Dr. Edmund Strudwick. With state law barring Black preachers, they met in homes; the congregation moved into the old courthouse on Queen Street in 1866.

People: Job Berry

Subject: Dickerson Chapel AME Church · Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

Paul C. Cameron builds new quarters for enslaved families at Horton Grove

In the decade before the Civil War Paul C. Cameron began a building campaign at the family's Horton Grove farm near Stagville. Four of the dwellings built to house families the Camerons enslaved still stand.

Part of Slavery in Orange County · 109 events

Phi Gamma Delta's Epsilon chapter forms at the university

Defying the trustees' ban on secret societies, the Epsilon chapter of Phi Gamma Delta organized in the fall of 1851, months after Delta Kappa Epsilon.

The Hillsboro Methodist Circuit reports twelve Sunday schools

Methodist reports counted 12 schools on the circuit, with 54 officers and teachers and 415 pupils.

Subject: Hillsborough Methodist Church

Trustees set up a system of county escheators

Rather than surrender the university's right to escheated property, the trustees made the treasurer principal escheator and had him appoint a lawyer in each county to find escheated land and unclaimed estates, paid ten percent of what they recovered. Treasurer Charles Manly's salary was raised to $1,000 for the added work.

People: David L. Swain · Charles Manly

William Strowd builds a two-story frame house near White Cross

A two-story frame house is built in 1851 on the William Strowd place near White Cross.

Zebulon Vance studies law at Chapel Hill

Vance entered the University of North Carolina early in 1851 and spent the rest of the year at Chapel Hill studying law under Judge William H. Battle and Samuel F. Phillips. He obtained his law licence in December 1851 and set up an office at Asheville early in 1852.

People: William Horn Battle · Samuel Field Phillips

The General Assembly passes an act incorporating Chapel Hill under five commissioners

Chapter 330 of the 1850-51 session laws, ratified January 29, 1851, made Manuel Fetter, Jesse Hargrave, Patterson H. McDade, Elisha Mitchell and Jones Watson the commissioners of Chapel Hill, with five commissioners to be elected each February after. They were to choose a magistrate of police, treasurer, constable and clerk and fix the town's bounds.

People: Elisha Mitchell · Jones Watson · Manuel Fetter · Jesse Hargrave · Patterson H. McDade

Night disorder ends with ten students dismissed

Students covered the belfry walls with caricatures of the faculty, exploded gunpowder at the laboratory door, and marched with horns and bells around the professors' houses, stoning one of them. The faculty questioned twenty-one absentees and dismissed ten.

Elizabeth Nunn, who boarded students for fifty years, dies

Mrs. Elizabeth Nunn, widow of the Revolutionary captain William Nunn, died in her ninety-second year after about fifty years of feeding students and unmarried professors at Chapel Hill. As a girl she had lived through the Regulator troubles.

People: William Nunn

Beta Theta Pi charters its Eta chapter at the university

The Eta chapter of Beta Theta Pi was chartered in early 1852, the third fraternity at Chapel Hill.

Subject: Beta Theta Pi Fraternity House

Cane Creek Baptist Church buys ten acres from Thomas Brewer

The congregation bought ten acres from Thomas Brewer; the deed calls it the Regular Missionary Baptist Church of Christ. The committee thinks a third church went up on this land near the old stage road.

Legislature transfers the university's escheats to the common schools

The General Assembly took the right to escheats from the university and gave it to the public schools. Friends of the university soon won repeal, and the Supreme Court later held that the university, as a part of the state, was subject to such legislation.

Nancy Hilliard sells the Eagle Hotel, renamed the Union Hotel

In the early 1850s Miss Nancy Hilliard, long the students' and travelers' landlady, sold her hotel interest for $10,000 to Hugh B. Guthrie, who renamed the Eagle the Union Hotel. She went on to run the North Carolina Railroad eating house at Company Shops.

People: Nancy Hilliard

Subject: North Carolina Railroad · Eagle Hotel (Chapel Hill)

The Whigs nominate William A. Graham for vice president

Graham ran on the Whig ticket with General Winfield Scott in 1852. The ticket lost.

The legislature charters the Chapel Hill and Raleigh Plank Road Company

The charter allowed $40,000 in capital, and the incorporators included W. J. Hogan and Edward Mallett of Chapel Hill.

Trustees honor Benjamin Smith by naming the new hall for him

In 1852 the trustees gave the new library and ballroom building the name of Benjamin Smith of Brunswick, whose gift of 20,000 acres of Tennessee land at the board's first meeting was the first donation to the university.

Subject: Smith Hall (Playmakers Theatre)

Washington Duke completes the farmhouse now called Duke Homestead

Having built up more than three hundred acres from 1847, Washington Duke finished a house for his family on his Orange County farm in time for his marriage to Artelia Roney in December 1852. The house, in the part of the county that became Durham County in 1881, is now Duke Homestead.

Webb and Douglass finish a cotton factory on Little River

Webb and Douglass had finished building a cotton mill on Little River, some thirteen miles east of Hillsborough, by February 1852, and machinery for 1,000 spindles was on its way. Later owners kept it running, for a time as a rope works, until about the 1920s.

Brown and Wilkinson's Eagle Foundry is at work on the Eno

The Eagle Foundry, about three miles east of Hillsborough near Berry's mill, had opened shortly before February 1852 and could barely keep up with orders. It ran for many years.

John W. Carr sits as a justice of the county court

Carr was one of five justices holding the February 1852 term of the Orange County court, which elected a Board of Superintendents of Common Schools and set the county tax.

People: John U. Kirkland · William Nelson

Orange County seats a Board of Superintendents for its common schools

At its February 1852 term the county court elected an eight-man Board of Superintendents of Common Schools, among them William H. Brown, who at some point served as the board's chairman. That year a new state law obliged such boards to name committees to examine would-be teachers rather than merely allowing it.

People: Samuel Wellwood Hughes · William H. Brown

Robert and John Shields ready a woollen factory on the Eno

The Shields brothers built a woollen factory on the Eno about seven miles east of Hillsborough, due to start in February 1852. The Recorder thought it one of the first three or four in the state; it later ran as the Alpha Woolen Mills.

Students revive the University Magazine

At a student meeting Jeremiah J. Slade moved to re-establish the magazine, and the first number appeared in February 1852 with editors from both literary societies and William D. Cooke of Raleigh as publisher. It ran until June 1861, the societies agreeing in 1859 to cover its deficits.

People: Zebulon B. Vance

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Students protest faculty veto of a sub-marshal

When the faculty barred the chief marshal's nominee under a new rule against irregular students representing the university, 183 students voted resolutions that the marshals should refuse to serve. They withdrew the resolutions on May 21, the chief marshal resigned, and the 1852 commencement went on without marshals.

People: Thomas Ruffin

Nathan Hooker's executor advertises his land and town lots for sale

O. Hooker, executor of the late Nathan Hooker, gave notice of a sale on November 24, 1852 at Hooker's former residence: a large tract south of town, Lots 84 and part of 85 in Hillsborough, and a hundred-acre tract half a mile north of town, with furniture, a buggy and cows.

James Strudwick Smith dies

James Strudwick Smith died on December 7, 1852. His family lived out their lives at the Smith Level Road house outside Chapel Hill, and his daughter Mary Ruffin Smith later gave land to the University of North Carolina.

People: Mary Ruffin Smith

Ellington Burnett's grave becomes the earliest dated African American burial in the Chapel Hill graveyard

A brownstone ledger for Ellington Burnett, 1831-1853, son of Cornelius and Caroline Burnett, is the oldest inscribed stone in Section B, the burial ground used for enslaved people. The section was almost certainly in use earlier, its graves marked only by fieldstones.

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Francis L. Hawks takes the leading part in the "Hawks' Commencement" at the university

Hawks, then a New York clergyman and an 1815 graduate, preached the sermon to the graduating class and spoke to the Historical Society in defense of Sir Walter Raleigh. At the alumni meeting he moved that the executive committee plan prizes for undergraduates in literary and scientific subjects.

Isaac Collier builds an I-house on East Rosemary Street

Isaac Collier is thought to have built the two-story I-house at 315 East Rosemary Street between 1853 and 1858. The novelist Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, later lived there.

People: Betty Smith · Isaac J. Collier

Nancy Hilliard builds the house students called the Crystal Palace

After selling her hotel, Hilliard built a large two-story house east of it on land she had bought from Lucy Watts. Students nicknamed it the Crystal Palace for its many big windows.

People: Nancy Hilliard

Orange County's first recorded public school report counts 51 districts

The first written record of Orange's public schools, for 1853, shows 51 districts with schools in all but one. Of 4,447 children, 2,507 attended, and 36 men and one woman were licensed to teach.

Shooting during a hazing raid leads the societies to stop hazing

In 1853 a new student named Evans, a brother of the South Carolina general, met a hazing party with a cocked pistol and wounded its leader, McRae, in the arm. The two literary societies offered to end hazing if the faculty would not dismiss the offenders, and Battle says the bargain held for years.

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

The new Hillsborough Baptist church joins the Beulah Association

On organizing, the Baptist congregation in Hillsborough entered the Beulah Association. It later moved to the Mount Zion Association, formed at Mount Moriah Church.

Thomas Blount Hill buys the Phillips place and makes it the BelleVue villa

Thomas Blount Hill of Halifax County buys the East Tryon Street estate and adds a west wing, a three-story central tower and wide porches, turning the old house into an Italianate villa he names BelleVue. It passed to his daughter Mary Alice and her husband Joseph Cheshire Webb, and in the 1980s opened as the Hillsborough House Inn.

Subject: BelleVue (Phillips-Hill-Webb House)

University library moved from South Building to Smith Hall

The university's books were taken from the president's lecture room in South Building to the new Smith Hall, and Hubbard, Charles Phillips and the librarian were told to prepare a catalogue. At the start of the Civil War the books were stored in a room of the East Building.

People: Charles Phillips · Fordyce M. Hubbard

Subject: UNC Libraries · South Building · Smith Hall (Playmakers Theatre) · Old East

The Hillsborough Recorder calls for a plank road from Hillsborough to Milton

An editorial regretted that no one had asked the last legislature to charter a company to build a plank road from Hillsborough to Milton by way of Roxboro or Yanceyville. It hoped a stock company would form under the general act of 1850-51 while a charter was sought.

Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

Chapel Hill's Methodists dedicate their first church

In July 1853 the Methodist congregation that became University Methodist Church dedicated its first building, at Rosemary and Henderson streets, paid for with about $5,000 that its pastor J. Milton Frost had raised around the state. The congregation had met since about 1840, with Charles F. Deems preaching in the 1840s and Frost stationed there from January 1851.

People: Charles F. Deems

Subject: University United Methodist Church · Old Methodist Church (Rosemary Street)

George Laws becomes clerk of the Orange County court

Laws succeeded Joseph Allison as clerk of the county court of pleas and quarter sessions at Hillsborough. Under the 1868 constitution he became clerk of the superior court and judge of probate.

Witherspoon dies at Tusculum and is buried in the Old Town Cemetery

He died penniless at the Tusculum farmhouse on the thirty-seventh anniversary of the organization of the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church. His funeral was held in that church and he was buried nearby in the Nash-Strudwick plot of the Old Town Cemetery, where the congregation and townspeople paid for the obelisk over his grave.

Subject: Old Town Cemetery, Hillsborough · Hillsborough Presbyterian Church · Tusculum (Witherspoon farm)

First Baptist Church of Hillsborough is organized in the old courthouse

The First Baptist Church was organized in Hillsborough and met in the former 1790 courthouse building, now Dickerson Chapel, until 1862, while it raised its own church building on a lot acquired between 1854 and 1860.

People: Elias Dodson

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough · Dickerson Chapel AME Church

Solomon Pool becomes tutor of mathematics at the university

Pool was appointed tutor of mathematics at the University of North Carolina in December 1853, months after his own graduation. He received an honorary alumni master of arts degree in 1856.

A Delta Psi fraternity chapter is active at the university

Battle learned after his first volume was printed that the Delta Psi Fraternity, with a large membership, was at the university from 1854 until some time during the Civil War. No record at Chapel Hill mentions it.

A railroad depot is built at the Orange-Alamance line and Mebanesville grows up around it

The North Carolina Railroad put a depot on the county line in 1854, and the settlement of Mebanesville, later Mebane, soon formed there.

Subject: North Carolina Railroad

Baptist minister James Pleasant Mason marries Mary Elizabeth Morgan

Mary Elizabeth Morgan (1825-1894) had inherited a tract south of Chapel Hill that came down from early settler Mark Morgan through his son John and grandson Solomon P. Morgan. The couple had four daughters, two of whom died as infants.

Benjamin Hedrick's house with an eight-sided room goes up on East Rosemary Street

Professor Benjamin Hedrick's house at 610 East Rosemary Street, known for its octagonal room, was ready by 1855 and the Hedricks moved in; Preservation Chapel Hill credits the Hillsborough builder John Berry and Hedrick's own design, and Little says he bought an older farmhouse from the university and added the eight-sided room. Horace Williams later owned it, and Preservation Chapel Hill now has its offices there.

People: John Berry

Subject: Horace Williams House

David McCauley and Thomas A. Long take over Jesse Hargrave's store

After Hargrave's death, his business was sold to the two young clerks he had hired in 1850. McCauley and Long's general store appears on the maps through 1868.

People: David McCauley

Hillsborough Presbyterian Church sells the people it held in trust for the Witherspoons

People once held by John Knox Witherspoon had passed to the church in trust for the care of his ailing daughter. The session refused a sale in August 1852, but after Witherspoon's death it agreed, and part of the money went to Mary Witherspoon. The names of those sold are not recorded.

People: John Knox Witherspoon

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

James Phillips keeps weather records at Chapel Hill

From 1854 to 1862 Professor James Phillips kept weather records at Chapel Hill. They survive in the Southern Historical Collection alongside Chapel Hill records kept from December 1879 to 1882 by Professors W. B. Phillips and Francis Preston Venable.

People: Francis Preston Venable · William Battle Phillips

Judge John L. Bailey buys the Norwood house south of the Eno and names it Eno Lodge

Superior court judge John Lancaster Bailey bought the house above the Eno from Joseph C. Norwood, probably added the rear ell and north bay, and called it Eno Lodge. He lived there until about the start of the Civil War, when he moved to Buncombe County.

Subject: Eno Lodge

Paul Cameron tells the county agricultural society the railroad will wake Orange up

Speaking to the Orange County Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, the Mechanic Arts, and Manufactures, Cameron predicted the coming railroad would shake local farmers and businesses out of their old habits.

Peter Brown Ruffin buys the land that became Margaret Lane Cemetery

According to the Alliance for Historic Hillsborough, Peter Brown Ruffin, owner of Occoneechee Farm, bought the land now called Margaret Lane Cemetery as a burial ground for people enslaved by him and his neighbor Cadwalader Jones. Plaques placed in 1987 date burials there from before 1852, and it remained a burial ground for Black residents of Hillsborough until 1931.

Subject: Margaret Lane Cemetery · Occoneechee Farm

Ralph Graves sells the West King Street lot later the Parks-Richmond House to John J. Freeland

In 1854 Ralph Graves, husband of Emma Taylor, sold Lot 18 on West King Street, for many years the home of clerk of court John Taylor, to John J. Freeland. Elbert H. and Emily Pogue owned it from the 1870s.

Richard H. Battle teaches at the university as a tutor

After graduating with first honors in 1854, Richard H. Battle stayed in Chapel Hill as a tutor of mathematics and Greek until 1858, reading law with his father, the law professor William H. Battle, and serving on the vestry of the Chapel of the Cross.

People: William Horn Battle

Samuel F. Phillips teaches in the university law school

From 1854 to 1859 Phillips taught in the university law school at Chapel Hill.

People: William Horn Battle

Subject: UNC School of Law

The Baptists buy W. J. Freeland's lot for a new church

The congregation bought a two-acre lot from W. J. Freeland running from Margaret Lane along Wake Street to King Street, where its present church stands.

The Chapel Hill Baptist Church is received into the Sandy Creek Association

At its constitution on September 15, 1854 the church voted to apply to the Sandy Creek Association and named delegates, and the Association received it at that year's meeting.

Subject: University Baptist Church

The Chapel Hill Methodist church is made a charge separate from Hillsborough

In 1852 the Annual Conference had joined Chapel Hill with the Hillsborough Methodist church as one station under J. L. Fisher. In 1854 it separated the two and sent Peter Doub to Chapel Hill, which then counted 124 white and 36 Black members.

Subject: University United Methodist Church

The Evans families leave Hillsborough for Oberlin, Ohio

Squeezed by laws that stripped free people of color of the vote, the right to preach and schooling, the cabinetmakers Henry and Wilson Bruce Evans took their families to Oberlin, where their sister Delilah Copeland had settled in 1843. Both brothers were jailed there for their part in the 1858 Oberlin-Wellington rescue of a man taken as a fugitive.

People: Henry Evans

Walter A. Thompson sells the old Nunn tavern property to Isaac Hudson

Betsy Nunn's grandson, a butcher who had inherited the run-down tavern and inn in 1852, sold it to Isaac Hudson, ending sixty years of Nunn family ownership. Hudson later built a brick house on the land.

William Nelson goes into partnership in the Alpha Woolen Mills

The Hillsborough merchant William Nelson entered a partnership with John C. Shields in 1854 to operate the Alpha Woolen Mills on the Eno River, some six miles downstream from Hillsborough.