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Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
- 1820s
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Trustees adopt by-laws creating a resident superintendent and a student uniform
On Bartlett Yancey's motion the trustees created a superintendent of university property living at Chapel Hill, who was to receive and pay out all student money, and they prescribed a plain uniform dress and forbade boots. Chapel Hill merchant Thomas H. Taylor was appointed; in January 1829 the office passed to the faculty, who chose Elisha Mitchell.
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Fever outbreak kills three university students
A serious sickness, which Battle identifies as typhoid fever, struck the university in August and September 1825 and three students died, among them William H. Beard and Zenas Johnston. The acting president urged the trustees to engage a resident physician.
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Hillsborough Female Seminary opens under Lavinia Brainerd
A female seminary opened in Hillsborough on August 1, 1825, taught by Lavinia Brainerd under the supervision of the Rev. William M. Green. DNCR says the Hillsborough Female Academy had been incorporated apart from the male academy in 1824.
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The House of Commons postpones the Franklin Library Society's request for a book lottery
Hillsborough's Franklin Library Society asked the General Assembly for leave to raise up to three thousand dollars by lottery to buy useful books for its library. The petition, signed December 14, 1825 by the society's officers including librarian Thomas C. Palmer, was read in the House of Commons on December 23 and indefinitely postponed.
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Caroline Lee Hentz befriends and tutors the poet George Moses Horton in Chapel Hill
While her husband Nicholas Hentz taught languages at the university, Caroline Lee Hentz befriended the enslaved poet George Moses Horton, tutored him in grammar and helped edit his work. She sent some of his poems to the Lancaster Gazette in her Massachusetts hometown, which printed them in 1829.
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Dr. Edmund Strudwick begins practising medicine in Hillsborough
After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1824 and two years in Philadelphia's almshouse and charity hospital, Edmund Strudwick began practising medicine in Hillsborough in 1826. He practised from the town, largely as a surgeon, for more than fifty years.
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Duncan Cameron records tobacco sales of nearly 30,000 pounds
Cameron's accounts for 1826 show close to 30,000 pounds of tobacco sold from the Bennehan-Cameron plantations, where the crop was grown with the labor of enslaved people.
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Hillsborough's market house is torn down
The town clock, which had hung in the market-house tower after leaving the old Episcopal church steeple, was put in storage until the new courthouse was finished.
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John Witherspoon opens a private boarding school
The Raleigh Register announced the Rev. John Witherspoon's Private Boarding School for opening in 1826. The school seems to have run until 1830 or later.
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Nicholas Marcellus Hentz becomes the university's professor of modern languages
Hentz took the chair of modern languages at the university, the first professor at Chapel Hill whose duties were to teach French and Spanish regularly. While there he also studied spiders and published on them in scientific journals.
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The Phillips family, with infant Cornelia, moves to Chapel Hill
James Phillips moved his family from New York to Chapel Hill in 1826 when he became professor of mathematics at the University of North Carolina, where he taught until his death in 1867. His daughter Cornelia, born in Harlem in March 1825, grew up in the village.
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Young Andrew Johnson, walking from Raleigh to Tennessee, is fed and lodged at James Craig's
On his way west on foot, the future president Andrew Johnson stopped at James Craig's farmhouse about a mile west of the village and was given supper, a night's lodging and food for the road. He told the story from the steps of the president's house when he returned for the 1867 commencement.
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Rev. William Bingham dies at his Mount Repose academy
The Rev. William Bingham, who had kept an academy at Mount Repose northwest of Hillsborough for years, died after a few days' illness in his 73rd year. His son William J. Bingham carried on and in 1827 moved the school to Hillsborough.
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St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough is consecrated under its first rector, William Mercer Green
William Mercer Green became first rector of the reorganized St. Matthew's parish in 1825, the year work began on its brick church; state architect William Nichols and brickmaker John Berry were among the builders. Bishop John Stark Ravenscroft consecrated the church on May 21, 1826, during the diocesan convention it hosted.
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Chapel Hill celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of independence
The village marked the semicentennial of the Declaration of Independence with a procession to Person Hall, where Revolutionary veteran Major Henderson read the Declaration and William McCauley gave the oration. A dinner at S. B. Alsobrook's hotel and a ball to Ilai Nunn's violin followed.
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Dr. Hudson Cave builds a house on Franklin Street
Dr. Cave bought the eastern half of Lot #6 from his father-in-law William Barbee and built a house set well back from the street. The frontage maps show the Cave residence there through 1868.
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James Strayhorn builds the Blackwood farmhouse
James Strayhorn built a new farmhouse on the future Blackwood Farm property.
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Trustees name Badger, Yancey and Moore to draft a law against liquor and student credit at Chapel Hill
On President Caldwell's motion the trustees named Bartlett Yancey, George E. Badger and Alfred Moore to prepare a bill forbidding the distilling or selling of spirituous liquors at or near Chapel Hill and barring village merchants from trading with students. It became law; Battle says the liquor ban still stood in 1907 while the trading ban was ignored and later repealed.
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Trustees prescribe a student uniform and forbid boots
The board ordered students to wear dark gray in summer and blue in winter, changing winter to gray six months later, and banned boots, probably because of hard times after the panic of 1825. Seniors were excused from the boot rule at their commencement, and the other classes soon won the same privilege.
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Fire destroys Witherspoon's farmhouse and the Orange Presbytery records
The fire burned the Witherspoons' rural home a mile and a half south of Hillsborough and its contents, including all but one volume of the old records of Orange Presbytery, which Witherspoon held as stated clerk. Losses were put at about 3,000 dollars and the house was rebuilt.
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William James Bingham becomes principal of Hillsborough Academy
After John Rogers resigned, the trustees engaged William James Bingham as principal of Hillsborough Academy, where he taught until he moved his school to the country in 1844.
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Archibald D. Murphey gives the first commencement-eve oration in Person Hall
On June 27, 1827, the day before commencement, Murphey delivered an oration in Person Hall at Chapel Hill under the appointment of the Dialectic Society. Addressing the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies, he argued that a college course only prepared the mind for later learning; the speech was printed and reissued in 1843.
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Dr. Walter A. Norwood opens a medicine shop opposite Alsobrook's hotel
Dr. Norwood's medicine shop stood on Thomas H. Taylor's half of Lot #14, probably in Taylor's old store building, which Norwood later bought. From 1841 the shop housed the practice of Drs. Jones and Moore.
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Farmers of Orange, Chatham and Guilford meet to talk about a railroad
In 1828 farmers from Orange, Chatham and Guilford counties met to discuss building a railroad, the first such meeting in North Carolina. Public meetings on a line through the county went on into the early 1850s.
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Frederick Nash represents the town of Hillsborough in the House of Commons
Having earlier sat for Orange County, Nash represented the town of Hillsborough itself in the House of Commons in 1828 and 1829.
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Orange County sends Hugh Waddell to the House of Commons
Waddell was elected to the House of Commons from Orange County for the 1828-29 session and again in 1835, and then served Orange in the state senate in five sessions between 1836 and 1848, as president of the senate in 1836.
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Orange Superior Court tries Jim, Sherod and Harry, three enslaved men
The 1828 term convicted Jim, held by Willie P. Mangum, of manslaughter in the death of another enslaved man and ordered 39 lashes. Sherod got 15 lashes for larceny, and Harry was sentenced to death for burglary but won a new trial on appeal.
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William W. Holden serves as an apprentice printer at the Hillsborough Recorder
At about age ten Holden was apprenticed as a printer's devil to Dennis Heartt, editor of the Hillsborough Recorder, who was responsible for his early education and political views. He struck out on his own at about sixteen, working first for the Milton Chronicle.
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William A. Graham establishes a law practice in Hillsborough
Graham read law with Thomas Ruffin of Orange County and, having taken his county and superior court licences, had established a practice among the Hillsborough bar by March 1828. He kept a law practice until his death and in time owned three plantations worked by enslaved people.
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Planter William Cabe dies and is buried in the family graveyard on the Eno
William Cabe, who held 1,389 acres of corn and wheat land on the Eno, died without a will. His marked stone is one of two legible among twelve graves in the Cabe family cemetery south of the house.
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Thirty students walk out of Sunday worship in the chapel
One Sunday morning thirty students left divine service in the chapel one by one. The faculty examined each; thirteen gave acceptable excuses and the other seventeen denied any plan, so the case was dropped.
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William Cabe's estate offers his residence and 14 or 15 enslaved people for sale
After a sale of Cabe's household goods, stock and crops set for October 22, 1828, a December notice in the Hillsborough Recorder offered his late residence together with 14 or 15 enslaved people.
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An Orange County mass meeting calls for state aid to roads and river navigation
A county meeting chaired by James Webb, with Dennis Heartt as secretary, adopted an address to the people of Orange in favor of internal improvements and had 500 copies printed for circulation in the county.
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Bethlehem School on Cane Creek offers college preparation under George W. Morrow
Bethlehem School, on Cane Creek twelve miles from Hillsborough, offered studies to prepare boys for college under George W. Morrow in 1829.
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Elijah Graves opens a female school at Walnut Grove
In 1829 Elijah Graves advertised a school for girls that he would run at Walnut Grove, near the Pittsboro road and twelve miles from Hillsborough.
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Eliza Hasell sells her West Queen Street house to Samuel Simpson for his daughter and son-in-law Henry K. Nash
In 1829 Eliza Hasell and her new husband, the Rev. William S. Plumer, sold the house to Samuel Simpson of New Bern, who bought it for his daughter Mary and her husband Henry Kollock Nash. The Nashes lived there until their deaths in 1897, and their daughter Annie Nash kept it until 1919.
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George Laws becomes a deputy sheriff of Orange County
Laws, a carpenter in his early years, became a deputy sheriff in 1829, the start of more than forty years in county offices at Hillsborough.
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George Moses Horton publishes The Hope of Liberty
George Moses Horton’s The Hope of Liberty was published in Raleigh, with supporters hoping sales could finance his freedom.
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Presbyterians begin worshipping together in Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill's Presbyterians began meeting about 1829 in homes and university buildings, with university faculty serving as ministers, according to the church's own history. The congregation's surviving session records begin in 1845, the year Lefler and Wager give for its formal organization, on June 8. Its first sanctuary on Franklin Street was dedicated September 23, 1849, and the congregation took the name University Presbyterian Church in the 1960s.
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Students organize a temperance society
Some students formed a Temperance Society in the summer of 1829, and Battle credits it with reducing drinking of spirits at the college. At its request Elisha Mitchell gave an address on intemperance in 1831 that was printed.
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Thomas Ruffin issues the State v. Mann decision
Thomas Ruffin of Hillsborough, newly seated on the North Carolina Supreme Court, wrote the opinion in State v. Mann, overturning the conviction of John Mann of Edenton for shooting Lydia, an enslaved woman he had hired, as she fled a whipping. Ruffin held that a master's power must be absolute, and abolitionists later cited the ruling widely.
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Commissioners divide William Cabe's 1,389 acres among his heirs
Court-appointed commissioners split Cabe's land into nine lots. Lot three, 160 acres where the Cabe-Pratt-Harris House stands, went to his daughter Jamima, then married to Jehu Brown.
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The county court levies a tax on Black polls to pay for the patrol
Along with its taxes for county costs and the poor, the August 1829 court ordered ten cents collected on each Black poll to pay the patrol, the county's slave patrol.
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Thomas Clancy advertises Lucy and her five children for sale
Pressed for money, Clancy offered a woman named Lucy and her five children, the eldest about thirteen, saying he preferred to sell the family together to a buyer in or near Hillsborough.
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James, an enslaved college servant, escapes from Chapel Hill
Samuel M. Stewart advertised a $20 reward in the Hillsborough Recorder for James, who had worked four years as a college servant at the university. Stewart thought he was headed for Norfolk or Richmond to reach the free states or Africa through the Colonization Society.
- 1830s
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A log homestead is built on the later William Couch farm
About 1830 a log house was built on the Cornwallis Road land where William Couch later put up his two-story frame house. It still stands next to the frame house with four log outbuildings.
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A two-story frame farmhouse is built on the land later called Webb's Happy Acres
The one-room-deep house with a pegged frame, log sills and end chimneys may have been built by Carolina Kirkland and her husband or by earlier owners. Her grandson J. Richard Webb and his wife moved in about 1954, restored it and named it Webb's Happy Acres.
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Anne Royall publishes a hostile account of Chapel Hill
The traveling writer Anne Royall visited Chapel Hill in 1829 and in her Southern Tour, published in 1830, charged that the president's wife, Helen Caldwell, ruled the university. Battle answers with the faculty's account of the student she defended, who had been dismissed for disorder at a Sunday service.
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Caldwell builds the first college observatory in the United States
Caldwell began an astronomical observatory on the campus in 1830 and finished it in 1831, paying more than 400 dollars himself, to house instruments he had bought in Europe in 1824. The DocSouth biography calls it the first American observatory built for teaching.
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Dr. Edmund Strudwick builds a medical office on West King Street
Dr. Edmund Strudwick put up a one-story, two-room frame office at 139 West King Street, on the site of Edmund Fanning's law office. Dr. W. F. Strudwick later practised there and Robert Strudwick used it as a law office.
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Frances Blount buys the Hawks house and the lot beside it
Walker Anderson, acting for Francis L. Hawks, sold the house to Frances Blount, who is thought to have been renting it. She also bought the neighboring lot 180 that year.
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Frances Blount enlarges the house to a center-passage plan
Soon after buying it, Frances Blount added two rooms to the east side of the one-and-a-half-story house, turning its side-hall plan into the center-passage form it keeps today.
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Fred Hartgrove, a free Black man, holds three enslaved people
The 1830 records show Hartgrove holding three people and Lucy Peters, also free and Black, holding one. No free Black resident of Orange held anyone in 1860.
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Orange Methodist Church is organized at the Davis School House
Alexander Gattis and neighbors organized Orange Methodist Church in the Davis School House near the Wash Fowler home. The congregation built its first church about 1838.
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Professor James Phillips hires David Barham from his owner as a college servant
In 1830 Professor James Phillips hired David Barham from William Barham to work as a college servant. A university account book page from the same year shows students paying a two-dollar fee to compensate the slaveholders whose people were hired as servants.
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Robert Donaldson has A. J. Davis design a campus hall for the Philanthropic Society that is never built
In the 1830s alumnus Robert Donaldson, by then living in New York, hired Alexander Jackson Davis to design a hall for the Philanthropic Society on the campus. It was not built, but Donaldson kept up a correspondence with President Swain about gardens, architects and furnishings that led to Davis's later work at Chapel Hill.
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The census finds Orange County's enslaved population at its peak
The 1830 census counted 7,339 enslaved people beside 15,918 white residents, a little under 31 percent of the county. The number fell afterward through sales, migration, manumission and the loss of territory to new counties.
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The census lists the Texas community families as free Negro heads of household
The 1830 federal census for the North District of Orange County listed the Whitmores, Jeffrieses, Corns, Burnettes, Haithcocks and Joneses among free Negro heads of household. Through the nineteenth century county and federal records almost always classed these families as free colored or mulatto, and almost never as Indian.
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The core of the Huskey House is built on East Rosemary Street
The heavily altered house at 215 East Rosemary Street probably dates from the 1830s; only its Greek Revival doorway still shows its age. It is named for a later resident, village blacksmith John Huskey.
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The legislature elects Willie P. Mangum to the United States Senate
Mangum, then a Jacksonian Democrat, was chosen senator in 1830. He broke with Jackson over the bank deposits and resigned when a Democratic legislature instructed him to vote to expunge the censure of Jackson.
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W. Anderson opens a female boarding school near Hillsborough
In 1830 W. Anderson announced Anderson's Female Boarding School within a mile of Hillsborough. It took a limited number of pupils and ran at least through 1836.
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Trustees meet in emergency session over the university's debts
With debts of about $37,500 and only some 82 paying students, a special meeting of trustees at Chapel Hill on June 21, 1830 called the whole board to Raleigh on July 19. There a committee under James Iredell reported on the finances, and the board adopted a memorial drawn by Thomas Ruffin asking the General Assembly for relief.
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Trustees refuse a state loan tied to legislative control of the university
The General Assembly answered the trustees' memorial with an act having the Literary Board lend $25,000 for five years, but only if the loan became a lien on all university property and the trustees agreed that the legislature could take over the charter. The trustees unanimously rejected it and borrowed $4,000 from the Bank of the United States branch at Fayetteville.
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Christopher Barbee turns over his home tract and blacksmith shop to his son William
In 1831 Christopher Barbee sold his son William the village blacksmith property and the tract where he lived, with all adjacent land. He died the next year, and his will left William more land on Morgan Creek and Bolin Creek.
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Giles Mebane stays at Chapel Hill as a university tutor
After graduating from the University of North Carolina in 1831, Giles Mebane remained in Chapel Hill as a tutor before starting to practice law.
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Hentz leaves the university and Chapel Hill for Kentucky
Hentz left the university in 1831. The local Presbyterian community had frowned on his Roman Catholic upbringing and suspected his politics, and after he left French was dropped from the curriculum.
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John DeBerniere Hooper teaches at the university as tutor and professor
After graduating in 1831 Hooper stayed in Chapel Hill as a tutor in languages, became professor of modern languages in July 1836 and professor of Latin in 1838. He and his wife left Chapel Hill in 1848 to teach and farm near Littleton.
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Schoolmaster William J. Bingham builds a house at Churton and Union streets
William James Bingham, then head of the Hillsborough Academy, builds a one-and-a-half-story house at the southeast corner of North Churton and East Union streets and lives there until 1845. Later owners included the Methodist church, which used it for a time as a parsonage.
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Trustees offer the university's Chapel Hill lands for sale
Pressed by debt, the trustees named William Polk, James Mebane and James Webb to offer the unimproved university lands around Chapel Hill for sale. Only a small sum came in, from the sale of the Preparatory School acre; that school had been closed for more than ten years.
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Friends of education organize the North Carolina Institute of Education at Chapel Hill
During commencement week a meeting adopted a constitution on Benjamin M. Smith's motion, elected Simmons J. Baker president and made professors Elisha Mitchell, William Hooper and James Phillips its executive committee. The Institute met at the next few commencements and enrolled about 130 members before it lapsed.
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William Mercer Green delivers the literary societies' oration before commencement
On June 22, 1831, the day before commencement, William Mercer Green delivered an oration at Chapel Hill on the influence of Christianity upon the welfare of nations, under the annual appointment of the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies. Dennis Heartt printed it in Hillsborough the same year.
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Godfrey and Isabella marry at St. Matthew's
The Rev. William Mercer Green married Godfrey and Isabella, the first couple in St. Matthew's register of people of color. Their infant son Milton Alexander was baptized there in November 1835.
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A year-long revival at New Hope adds at least seventy communicants
Under the evangelists Daniel L. Russell, John S. McCutcheon and Philip Pearson, families built tents on the church grounds and lived in them for weeks to attend the meetings. The session record shows at least seventy people admitted to communion.
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A small nondenominational Union Church goes up on the Grand Avenue ground
After the university sold the old Grammar School property, a small church open to all denominations, called the Union Church or the Village Chapel, was built on the Grand Avenue plot facing Franklin Street.
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Benton Utley buys the Hogg house and opens a dry goods store
Gavin Hogg sold the family house to Benton Utley, who shared it with James Hogg and built a dry goods store beside it. The store failed, and Utley sold house and stock to Zachariah Trice in 1837.
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Cadwallader Jones graduates from the University of North Carolina
Jones, the son of Cadwallader and Rebecca Edwards Long Jones of West Hill near Hillsborough, took his degree at Chapel Hill in 1832.
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Fannie Breeze is born enslaved in the household of Samuel Breeze
Fannie Breeze was born in 1832, enslaved in the household of Samuel H. Breeze, a farmer and member of Pleasant Green Methodist church in what was then eastern Orange County. She joined Pleasant Green before the Civil War and later worked as a midwife along the Eno.
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Judge William Gaston predicts the end of slavery in a UNC commencement address
Gaston told the university's graduates and guests that slavery would be overthrown. The book says the audience applauded the speech but rejected its antislavery message.
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Mary W. Burke deeds her Queen Street house to George Johnston, keeping one room
Governor Thomas Burke's daughter Mary W. Burke sold her East Queen Street house and lot, later called Heartsease, to George Johnston for one dollar and kept the use of one room for herself. The next year Johnston gave up his claim for the same sum.
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Mount Zion Christian Church is organized
Thomas Reeves led the organization of Mount Zion Christian Church and built its first church in 1833.
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Orange County counts twenty-one academies
By 1832 Orange County had twenty-one academies, among them Hillsborough Academy, the Bingham school and Cedar Grove Academy, a pace of school founding somewhat ahead of the state as a whole.
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Pleasant Green Methodist Church is organized
Pleasant Green Methodist Church was organized about 1832 by a group of local families.
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The Recorder shop prints Letters on Popular Education
The Hillsborough Recorder office printed Letters on Popular Education Addressed to the People of North Carolina in 1832.
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The university sells the old Grammar School house and grounds
Thirteen years after the Grammar School closed, the university sold its empty schoolhouse and lot. In the meantime the house had been left vacant and then lived in by a hunter's family.
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Archibald D. Murphey dies in Hillsborough
Archibald D. Murphey died in Hillsborough, then his home, on February 1, 1832, after years of rheumatism and debt, and was buried in the town graveyard a few feet from the door of the Presbyterian church. No monument marked his grave when the memoir in his published papers was written.
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Five elders are ordained at New Hope during the revival
William Brown, Alexander Strain, Samuel Hart, David Hart and Allen Petty were added to the session. The two Harts were grandsons of Gilbert Strayhorn, and Strain was a son of the earlier elder Alexander Strain.
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White Cross Church, later an AME congregation, is organized
The church list dates the White Cross congregation and its first building to May 1832. It was rebuilt in 1921 and was an African Methodist Episcopal church by 1953.
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The Institute of Education names Gaston to a committee to petition the legislature on popular education
At its second meeting, held during the 1832 commencement, the North Carolina Institute of Education voted to memorialize the General Assembly on popular education and named William Gaston, Frederick Nash and David L. Swain to the committee.
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Cedar Grove Methodist Church is organized
The Cedar Grove Methodist Episcopal Church was organized on July 23, 1832.
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English Record Commission sends its publications to the university library
Between 1833 and 1841 the British government's Record Commission gave the university 83 folio and 24 octavo volumes, among them a printing of the Domesday Book, with twelve books and many pamphlets by its secretary, Charles Parton Cooper.
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George E. Badger gives the commencement address to the literary societies
At the 1833 commencement, held without the ailing President Caldwell, George E. Badger, chosen by the Dialectic Society, delivered the annual address before the two literary societies at Chapel Hill.
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Isaac J. Collier and Jones Watson open a cabinetmaking business
The two men started making furniture on Franklin Street in 1833. After the partnership dissolved in the later 1830s, Collier kept the business going.
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James Phillips is licensed to preach and later serves New Hope Presbyterian Church
Mathematics professor James Phillips joined the Presbyterian church in 1832 and was licensed to preach by Orange Presbytery in 1833. He was later ordained and installed as minister of New Hope Presbyterian Church, about seven miles outside Chapel Hill, and shared the university chapel work with Elisha Mitchell.
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Peter Dromgoole disappears from Chapel Hill
Peter Pelham Dromgoole came to Chapel Hill in January 1833, failed the university's entrance examination and studied under a tutor. That spring, after bitter letters with his father, he vanished from his lodgings, leaving most of his belongings and a debt to a Chapel Hill merchant.
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Pleasant Henderson leaves Chapel Hill for Tennessee
Still deep in debt, the former steward and storekeeper moved west. His son Dr. Alexander Martin Henderson secured the family home on Franklin Street, and the store on the property was advertised that year as Norfleet and Henderson's.
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The house of tinner Josiah Turner Sr. is built on North Churton Street
The Turner house at 404 North Churton Street is built about 1833 on a five-acre lot bounded by Churton, Orange and Union streets. It appears on John L. Bailey's 1839 map and was the home of Josiah Turner Sr., a tinner, and his family.
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Thomas Ruffin becomes Chief Justice of North Carolina
Ruffin, elected an associate justice in 1829 after putting the state bank back in order, became Chief Justice in 1833 and held the post until he retired to his farm in 1852.
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Trustees name the new chapel Gerrard Hall
The trustees sold Major Charles Gerrard's 2,560-acre service tract in Tennessee for $6,400, voted $2,000 of it toward finishing the new chapel that had stood unfinished since about 1824, and resolved that the building be known forever as Gerrard Hall in his memory.
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William A. Graham represents Hillsborough and then Orange County in the House of Commons
Graham was borough representative from Hillsborough in the legislatures of 1833, 1834 and 1835. After the constitutional reforms of 1835 he represented Orange County in the House of Commons in the 1836, 1838 and 1840 sessions, and he was speaker in the last two.
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William D. Kirksey advertises as the village blacksmith
After Christopher Barbee's death, his corner blacksmith shop passed through his son William, and by 1833 William D. Kirksey was advertising as Chapel Hill's blacksmith. Maps show Kirksey's shop on the corner through 1843.
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New Hope elects George W. Ferrill as pastor
The congregation unanimously elected Ferrill pastor, and he was installed soon after. The pastoral relation was dissolved in July 1836.
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Witherspoon ends seventeen years as pastor at Hillsborough
Witherspoon severed his connection with the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church and moved to Camden, South Carolina. His advocacy of religious education, Sunday schools and preaching for enslaved people had strained relations with his congregation.
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Isaac C. Partridge publishes The Harbinger
Isaac C. Partridge's weekly The Harbinger, one of the county's first literary periodicals, began at Chapel Hill on August 27, 1833, after a prospectus that January, and ran for about a year. It covered the sciences and arts and leaned on professors Elisha Mitchell and William Hooper for its contents.
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Job, later Rev. Job Berry, is baptized at St. Matthew's
Job, enslaved by George W. B. Burgwyn, was baptized at St. Matthew's Episcopal Church by William Mercer Green and confirmed the next April. As Job Berry he later led Hillsborough's first Black congregation.
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Students win the use of Steward's Hall for the commencement ball
A committee chosen by a mass meeting of students, with Christopher C. Battle as its writer, petitioned the trustees on November 6, 1833 for a room in Steward's Hall for the commencement ball, and the trustees agreed. The ball managers then invited leading men of the state, among them Governor Swain.
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Trustee committee advises against moving the university to Raleigh
On James Iredell's motion, Governor Swain named fifteen trustees, none from Orange County, to consider moving the university to the capital. In December 1833 they reported removal inexpedient, and the question never came before the board again.
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Trustees make the senior professor Caldwell's deputy and add an adjunct professor
When Caldwell's illness first forced him to ask for help, the trustees gave the professor of longest standing, Elisha Mitchell, power to act in the president's place and created an adjunct professorship of natural philosophy and astronomy, filled by Walker Anderson. Mitchell served as acting president until Swain arrived.
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Cedar Grove Methodist Episcopal Church builds its first church
The congregation put up a small frame sanctuary facing east on what is now Efland-Cedar Grove Road, on land given by Joseph Allison and John Kelly. It was enlarged on the south side in 1876 and later torn down; its site lies just east of the 1939 stone church.
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Dr. Walter A. Norwood closes his medicine shop and moves to Hillsborough
Norwood gave up his Franklin Street shop and left for Hillsborough. Elisha Mitchell owned the land and building by the end of the year and soon sold them on credit to Isaac Partridge for a hotel.
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Duncan Cameron of Orange is elected president of the state Colonization Society
Cameron, a leading Orange planter and banker, took the presidency of the North Carolina branch of the colonization movement in 1834.
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Fairfield Presbyterian Church is organized
Fairfield Presbyterian Church was organized with Samuel Paisley as its first pastor.
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Former sheriff Thomas D. Watts takes over Alsobrook's hotel
Thomas D. Watts, once sheriff of Orange County, took charge of the hotel on Lot #13, which became known as Watts's hotel. His widow Lucy bought the property in 1839 and ran it until 1846.
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John Wall Norwood becomes treasurer and then a ruling elder of the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church
In 1834 Norwood succeeded the silversmith William Huntington as treasurer of the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church. In 1835 he was confirmed a ruling elder, a post he held until his death.
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Lemuel Lynch and William Huntington work as partners in Hillsborough
Back in Hillsborough by March 1834, the silversmith Lemuel Lynch went into a two-year partnership with William Huntington, in whose shop he had trained. Afterward he kept his shop alone, perhaps with help from his sons or apprentices.
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Lemuel Lynch sets up as a silversmith and jeweler in Hillsborough
Lemuel Lynch, who learned his trade from William Huntington and had kept shops in Greensboro and Concord, begins working in Hillsborough, where he stayed for the rest of his life.
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Samuel Hancock goes bankrupt and Dr. James Webb buys his house and the enslaved man Abram
In 1834 Samuel Hancock went bankrupt. Dr. James Webb bought the Hancocks' house and lot, their furniture and Abram, a man they enslaved, and rented all of them back to Hancock for $1 a year.
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A notice offers Christopher Barbee's livestock and household goods for sale at his late home
Two years after Christopher Barbee died, a public notice offered his horses, cattle, corn, farm tools and household and kitchen furniture for sale at his late residence on The Mountain. His son William, the executor, had his own plantation and a house in the village, and no Barbee seems to have lived there afterward.
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Six enslaved women are baptized into Hillsborough Presbyterian Church
The Rev. S. J. Price baptized six women held by the Nash, Watters, Scott and Waddell households, and Frederick Nash and William J. Bingham received them as members. In the twenty years that followed under Robert Burwell, the church took in only one communicant of color.
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Members of Cane Creek organize Mars Hill Baptist Church
Members of Cane Creek Baptist Church organized Mars Hill Baptist Church, near the old Eno Quaker burying ground off the Hillsborough-Schley road.
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Polly Burke leaves Hillsborough for Alabama
In August 1834 Mary W. Burke sold most of her household goods and moved to Greensboro, Alabama, with her niece's family, part of a wider migration of Hillsborough people to Alabama. After her nephew-in-law died there she settled in Marion, where she taught again for many years.
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Duncan Cameron gives his son Paul C. Cameron forty-one enslaved people
Duncan Cameron deeded his son Paul C. Cameron forty-one enslaved people, with any children the women would bear: Gabriel, Mima, Simeon and Sarah in Orange County, and families at the Mill Quarter plantation in Person County, among them Phillip and Jenny and their children Randol, Jim, Ellen, Nancy and Phill. Cameron acknowledged the deed before Justice William Gaston at Raleigh on January 1, 1835.
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I. C. Patridge opens the University Hotel in Chapel Hill
Patridge advertised in December 1834 that he had opened a public house at Chapel Hill across from Watts' Hotel, with new stables and an ostler.
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A. Mickle serves as Orange County's register of deeds
Lefler and Wager's list of Orange County registers of deeds gives A. Mickle in the office from 1835 to 1849, between J. McKerall and John Laws.
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Dialectic Society prints a catalogue of its library
The Dialectic Society's printed catalogue of 1835 listed 2,954 bound volumes and ten maps, the largest groups being novels and romances, periodicals and history. With the Philanthropic library about the same size, the two societies held some 6,000 books.
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Dr. James Webb builds the Presbyterian Sessions House in the Old Town Cemetery
In 1835 Dr. James Webb took a ninety-nine-year lease on the southeast corner of Hillsborough's Old Town Cemetery lot and built a frame Sessions House with a bell tower there. It served as the Presbyterian Sunday school room and later as a public library until 1934.
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Dr. William Montgomery of Orange is elected to Congress
Montgomery, a Jackson Democrat and longtime state senator for Orange, defeated Daniel A. Barringer, carrying his home county 1,501 to 900. He served three terms.
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Elizabeth Hobbs is brought to Hillsborough in the household of Robert and Anna Burwell
When the Reverend Robert Burwell became minister of the Presbyterian church in Hillsborough, he moved his household from Virginia, bringing the enslaved Elizabeth Hobbs, later Keckly. By her own account she was nearly eighteen.
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Harmony Primitive Baptist Church is organized
Harmony Primitive Baptist Church was organized about 1835. By 1953 it had three members.
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John A. Pettigrew sells the former Paisley farm to Lemuel Pettigrew
By 1835 the log house tract had passed to John A. Pettigrew, who sold it that year to Lemuel Pettigrew. Lemuel later sold it to (John) Elkins Pettigrew, a small farmer whose farm the 1860 census valued at $500.
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Orange County sends physicians William Montgomery and James S. Smith to the 1835 convention
Ten men were put forward at meetings around the county, and the voters chose two physicians, William Montgomery and James S. Smith. Each sided with the majority that abolished borough seats, which cost Hillsborough its own member in the House of Commons.
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Orange County votes overwhelmingly for a constitutional convention
Orange voted 1,648 to 111 for calling a convention to reform representation, and Hillsborough, which stood to lose its borough seat, voted 228 to 23 in favor.
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Paul C. Cameron builds Burnside on the foundation of Thomas Ruffin's old house
Paul Cameron built the town house he named Burnside on South Cameron Street, on the stone foundation of his father-in-law Thomas Ruffin's earlier house. Enslaved workers from Cameron's Fairntosh plantation built it under his master carpenter Jack, and John Berry laid the brick.
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Robert Burwell becomes pastor of the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church
Burwell began a thirteen-year pastorate, and he and his wife opened a school for young women whose income let him serve the church on a small salary. He returned for a second term in the 1850s.
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Slave trader George Lewis advertises in Hillsborough to buy 100 young people
Lewis, a commercial trader visiting the town, announced he would pay cash for one hundred young Black people.
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St. Matthew's adds a gallery for Black worshippers under William Mercer Green
In 1835, during William Mercer Green's rectorship, a gallery was added to St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough to seat Black worshippers. Green also held monthly services at Duncan Cameron's Salem Chapel, where he gave instruction to enslaved people.
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The Rev. Ira Ellis builds Little Ayr Mount, a two-story brick house west of Hillsborough
The Rev. Ira Ellis, who bought 300 acres on the Eno west of Hillsborough in 1835, built the plain two-story brick house later called Little Ayr Mount about that time. With Ayr Mount it is one of the few masonry houses the county survey found from the early nineteenth century.
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The Rev. Ira Ellis buys 300 acres on the Eno near Hall's Mill Road
Ira Ellis, a minister and farmer then in his fifties, bought 300 acres on the Eno River and added 184 more four years later. His three-part Federal brick house, later called Little Ayr Mount, is usually dated to this purchase, and local tradition holds that it took in stagecoach travelers.
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Thomas H. Taylor trades his Franklin Street house to the university
Taylor exchanged Lot #17 and his house for university land in Tennessee and left Chapel Hill. The university gave the Tom Taylor house to its new president, David L. Swain, whose wife disliked the old Caldwell house.
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University trustees pay for a stone wall around the Chapel Hill graveyard
By 1835 about six more marked graves had joined George Clarke's, among them society members James Neal and James Smith, and the trustees set aside $64.41 to enclose the burying ground with a stone wall.
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Trustees create an executive committee to run the university
At Duncan Cameron's instance the board placed management in a seven-member executive committee including the governor, with the powers of the land, appointments and building committees and the right to change studies and dismiss faculty. The first members were Cameron, George E. Badger, William McPheeters, Charles Manly, Frederick Nash, William A. Graham and Governor Swain.
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President Joseph Caldwell dies
The university's first president died after years of a painful illness and was buried in the Chapel Hill village cemetery. The trustees' executive committee adopted a tribute on February 6, 1835, and the students resolved to wear badges of mourning.
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Trustees sell off the university's Tennessee lands
On resolutions drafted by Duncan Cameron, the executive committee sent Charles Manly to Tennessee to close out the lands with agent Samuel Dickens, and 42,345 acres plus the 20,000 Smith acres went to Orme and Gifford of Boston for $56,345.83. Manly's report of November 21, 1835 counted assets of $171,658, which he reckoned would carry the university's yearly costs with a surplus.
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James S. Smith of Orange moves to abolish borough seats at the 1835 convention
At the state constitutional convention in Raleigh, James S. Smith, one of Orange County's two delegates with William Montgomery, moved on June 11, 1835, to abolish borough representation entirely; the motion failed 61 to 67. The convention's committee later recommended taking the House seat from Hillsborough, Halifax and Salisbury while keeping it for four other towns.
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The Recorder prints a county meeting's warning to abolitionists
An Orange County meeting adopted a report warning "northern fanatics" not to stir up the enslaved and predicting lasting hostility between the sections if abolitionists pressed on. Its fourteen-man committee included Frederick Nash, William A. Graham, Hugh Waddell, John U. Kirkland, Dr. Edmund Strudwick and the paper's own editor, Dennis Heartt, as a secretary.
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Philanthropic Society has a cast made of Caldwell's features
In November 1835, at the Philanthropic Society's request, Caldwell's body was taken up so that the artist Alfred S. Waugh could make a plaster cast of his face. The bust made from it stands in Gerrard Hall.
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Clover Garden Methodist Church puts up its building
The Methodist congregation at Clover Garden, organized some time before, erected a church in 1836 with seats for about 150.
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County voters defeat a plan to form a new county from western Orange
After more than ten years of agitation by residents of the industrial west, a county referendum rejected the proposal by a wide margin. Alamance County was not created until 1849.
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Hugh Waddell of Orange serves as Whig Speaker of the state Senate
Waddell, who represented Orange in the Senate for three sessions between 1836 and 1846, presided over the Senate as its Whig Speaker in the 1836-1837 session.
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Isaac J. Collier and Kendall B. Waitt go into partnership in a Chapel Hill cabinet shop
After his short-lived partnership with Jones Watson, Isaac J. Collier had joined Kendall B. Waitt, a Chapel Hill artisan from Massachusetts, in a cabinet shop by 1836. The two worked together for years, later as building contractors.
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James Phillips opens a female school in Chapel Hill
In 1836 mathematics professor James Phillips announced Phillips' Female School in Chapel Hill. Mrs. Phillips and a teacher from Emma Willard's seminary at Troy, New York, did most of the teaching.
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John H. Rhodes advertises a barber shop beside the hotel
Barber John H. Rhodes advertised that his shop stood next to the hotel on Lot #13. The frontage maps show a Rhodes barber shop beside the hotel from 1838 to 1848.
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John Norwood begins forty-eight years as clerk of the Hillsborough Presbyterian session
John Norwood kept the session records from 1836 to 1884, one of the two longest terms in the church's history.
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Jones begins practicing law at Hillsborough
Jones began his legal career in Hillsborough in 1836 and practiced there until he moved his family to a cotton plantation near Rock Hill, South Carolina, in 1857. He sat in the House of Commons for the 1840, 1842, 1848 and 1850 sessions and became solicitor of the Fourth Judicial District in April 1843.
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Orange County's Jacksonian majority narrows as leading men turn Whig
After many county leaders broke with Jackson, Orange gave Martin Van Buren 1,103 votes to 905 for the Whig Hugh L. White. From then until the Civil War the county's presidential majority went to the Whig candidate.
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Schoolmaster William J. Bingham repeatedly beats Elizabeth Hobbs at Anna Burwell's urging
Anna Burwell had William J. Bingham, the Hillsborough schoolmaster, flog Elizabeth Hobbs over a period of weeks in an attempt to break her spirit. Her memoir says Robert Burwell also beat her, and that she was eighteen at the time.
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William Kirkland dies, leaving Ayr Mount to his widow
William Kirkland died in 1836 and left his estate to his wife, Margaret Scott Kirkland; their son John Umstead Kirkland later acquired Ayr Mount from her estate. The inventory taken after his death lists twenty enslaved people, some of whom worked at his store, tannery and other businesses in Hillsborough.
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David L. Swain moves to Chapel Hill as university president
Chosen to succeed the late Joseph Caldwell, former governor David L. Swain moved to Chapel Hill in January 1836 to become president and professor of national and constitutional law. He stayed at the university for the rest of his life, the longest term of any of its presidents.
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Hillsborough Presbyterian Church buys the house as its manse
The church's trustees bought lots 152 and 153 in January 1836, renovated the house, and gave it to their minister, Robert Armistead Burwell, and his family, who had arrived from Virginia late the year before.
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Henry Harris, held as a suspected runaway, is charged with burning the Orange County jail
At the spring term of Superior Court the case against Henry Harris, a man of color charged with setting fire to the county jail, was moved to Caswell County for trial. He had been jailed as a runaway because he could not prove his freedom, and he escaped soon after.
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James Phillips begins nearly thirty years as stated supply at New Hope
The university professor began preaching at New Hope in August 1836 and served it until December 1865, longer than any other minister. Because Chapel Hill long had no Presbyterian church, New Hope heard him almost every Sunday for years.
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A trustee committee under William Gaston makes the faculty's liquor rule a university by-law
In 1837 the faculty made it a dismissable offence to bring liquor into the college buildings or to be publicly drunk. A trustee committee chaired by William Gaston recommended that the rule become a by-law of the university.
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Alexander McKenzie Kirkland subjects Elizabeth Hobbs to about four years of sexual coercion
Alexander McKenzie Kirkland, a white man from a prominent Hillsborough merchant-planter family, repeatedly sexually assaulted Elizabeth Hobbs over about four years. In her memoir she did not name him and wrote that a white man pursued her for four years.
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Alfred Moore the younger dies and leaves Moorefields to Francis Nash Waddell
On the death of Alfred Moore the younger, Moorefields passed to his son-in-law, Francis Nash Waddell.
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Burwell School for young women operates
Robert and Margaret Anna Burwell operated their Hillsborough school for girls from 1837 to 1857.
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Dr. Edmund Strudwick buys Archibald Haralson's house on West Queen Street and enlarges it
Dr. Edmund Strudwick bought the house from Archibald Haralson in 1837, enlarged it, and is thought to have built the brick kitchen that still stands in the rear yard. The house became known as the Haralson-Strudwick House.
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Dr. James Webb builds a house around Polly Burke's log schoolhouse
About twenty years after the one-room log schoolhouse went up on his East Queen Street land, Dr. James Webb built a house around it, with the log room as its living room.
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Edwin Michael Holt builds a cotton mill on Alamance Creek, then in Orange County
During the panic of 1837 Holt opened a cotton mill on Alamance Creek, run as Holt and Carrigan and starting with 528 spindles. The book calls it the first cotton mill in the county, in country that became Alamance in 1849.
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Enslaved plasterers, masons and laborers work on South Building's new roof
Thomas Waitt's bill for 1837 work on South Building, including its tin roof, lists wages for enslaved plasterers and masons Stewart, Chester, Peter, Calvin and Evans and laborers including Lewis, Tom, Redin, Abraham and Jordan.
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George Moses Horton's The Hope of Liberty is reprinted in Philadelphia and Boston
The 1829 collection by the enslaved Chapel Hill poet came out in a second edition in Philadelphia in 1837 and a third in Boston in 1838.
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Gerrard Hall is finished and holds its first commencement
Gerrard Hall, the new chapel begun more than a decade earlier, was completed in 1837 under carpenter Thomas Waitt, and that year's commencement was held in it. The Raleigh Register described a roomy building with large galleries, and the old chapel, Person Hall, was soon given over to classrooms.
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Isaac C. Partridge leaves Chapel Hill and his struggling University Hotel
Partridge, whose newspaper The Harbinger had already failed, ran off to New York and left the hotel, still unpaid for, in the hands of Elisha Mitchell.
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John Berry completes a stone jail at Hillsborough
Building commissioners named in 1836 planned a two-story prison forty-five by twenty-four feet at a cost of no more than $4,000, and Berry won the contract.
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Paul C. Cameron moves to Fairntosh to manage the Cameron plantations
Paul C. Cameron gave up the bar and moved with his wife, Anne Ruffin Cameron, from Burnside in Hillsborough to Fairntosh to manage the Cameron plantations with his uncle Thomas D. Bennehan. They lived there until 1856.
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The Burwell School and the Burwell household
Anna Burwell opened a school for girls in Hillsborough in 1837 that ran until the family moved to Charlotte in 1857. In the same household Elizabeth Hobbs, later Elizabeth Keckly, was enslaved from 1835, beaten at Anna Burwell’s urging and subjected to years of sexual coercion before being sent back to Virginia in 1842; she bought her freedom in 1855.
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The Cane Creek Farmers and Mechanics Company starts a cotton mill
In 1837 the Cane Creek Farmers and Mechanics Company of Orange and Chatham Counties set up a cotton mill in southern Orange County, giving local farmers a place to have their raw cotton spun for sale.
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Trustees put the endowment into Bank of the State stock
After paying pressing debts the trustees bought 100 state certificates of $1,000 each and in 1837 exchanged them for 1,000 shares of the Bank of the State of North Carolina. The dividends, about eight percent, with tuition made up the university's income until the Civil War.
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Trustees raise a sandstone monument to Caldwell on the campus
The trustees adopted a design by Thomas Waitt, the master mechanic in charge of university repairs, for a shaft of local sandstone cut by J. B. Turney. It soon crumbled, and the marble slab meant for its Latin inscription arrived so badly cut that it was smashed, so the monument never bore a name.
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William Mercer Green leaves St. Matthew's to become university chaplain and professor
William Mercer Green accepted a post at the University of North Carolina as chaplain and professor of belles lettres and resigned from St. Matthew's in Hillsborough the following year. The Hillsborough congregation had grown from seventeen communicants in his first year to sixty-seven when he left.
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Orange County citizens gather at Mount Willing each January to celebrate Jackson's New Orleans victory
Citizens met at the Mount Willing crossroads in western Orange County on January 7, 1837, to mark Andrew Jackson's 1815 victory at New Orleans with toasts, cheers and gunfire. The Recorder called the gathering an annual custom by 1842, when about 200 attended, and reported it again in 1844 with a procession from the crossroads.
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Polly Burke's Queen Street house passes to Dennis Heartt's family
Mary W. Burke, daughter of Governor Thomas Burke, moved to Alabama in 1837. On May 4 of that year James Webb, acting as her attorney, sold her East Queen Street house for $750 to Caroline and Henrietta Heartt, daughters of the Hillsborough Recorder editor Dennis Heartt. The whole Heartt family lived there, the house came to be known as Heartsease, and the Heartts added the two-story west wing soon after the purchase.
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Anna Burwell opens a school for girls in Hillsborough
Anna Burwell advertised that she would open a female school in Hillsborough on July 17, 1837, teaching the usual English branches, with music available. She and her husband, the Rev. Robert Burwell, ran it in their home until 1857.
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Manuel Fetter is elected professor of ancient languages
The trustees chose Manuel Fetter of New York to succeed William Hooper as professor of ancient languages. President Swain had first favored Henry Tutwiler of Alabama, but when Tutwiler withdrew he named Fetter over William E. Anderson of Hillsborough.
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Mount Pleasant Academy, later Junto Academy, operates under Daniel W. Kerr
Daniel W. Kerr ran an academy in northern Orange County, advertised as Mount Pleasant Academy in 1837 and by 1838 as Junto Academy, twelve miles northwest of Hillsborough and six miles south of Mason Hall.
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Caldwell's abandoned observatory is burned
The observatory, stripped of its instruments and judged not worth repairing, was set on fire, by a student according to tradition. President Swain reported it to the executive committee in December 1838 and asked whether to bring a criminal prosecution; the sound bricks went into a kitchen for Swain.
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Charles Manly gives the address before the alumni at commencement
At the 1838 commencement in Chapel Hill, Charles Manly, secretary and treasurer of the university's trustees, gave the address before the alumni, an earnest plea for pride in the university. Congressman William B. Shepard gave the annual address.
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Elisha Mitchell builds stone walls around the campus
To keep out the cattle that ran at large, Mitchell, who had charge of the grounds, began in 1838 to quarry stone on university land and build rock walls around the campus buildings. By about the end of 1843 he had put up 212 rods of wall, and the trustees settled his account in 1844. Professors and villagers copied the walls around their own lots.
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Henry H. Prout becomes minister at St. Matthew's
Henry H. Prout took charge at St. Matthew's after William Mercer Green left for Chapel Hill. The parish's unbroken run of vestry records begins the same year.
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Isaiah Spencer builds the Hillsborough inn later called the Colonial Inn
Isaiah Spencer built the two-story inn on West King Street in 1838. Known locally as Spencer's Tavern and advertised as the Orange Hotel, a name it kept for fifty years, it was later the Occoneechee Hotel, the Corbinton Inn and, from 1946, the Colonial Inn. Local lore and a 1953 plate caption put it in the eighteenth century.
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James P. Clark opens Fairfield School northwest of Hillsborough
In 1838 James P. Clark gave public notice of Fairfield School, which lay six miles northwest of Hillsborough.
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Senior tutor becomes the university's librarian
Until 1838 the faculty chose a librarian every half year; after that the senior tutor held the office, and in 1838 Tutor William H. Owen, librarian since 1836, was voted a salary of $100 a year. Owen had counted about 1,900 books in the library in December 1836.
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Students' Ugly Club raids the campus at night
On the first Saturday night of the 1838 session a group calling itself the Ugly Club rang the college bell and made a din with horns and tin pans; nineteen were caught and made to sign pledges. That summer members blacked with lampblack insulted villagers, threatened faculty and damaged private property, and their leader was dismissed.
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Thomas W. Holden opens Holden's English School
In 1838 Thomas W. Holden gave public notice of Holden's English School, kept at his home in Orange County.
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Elizabeth Hobbs writes to her mother from Hillsborough
Elizabeth Hobbs wrote to her mother Agnes Hobbs in Virginia asking for news of home and saying she did not expect to see her family again. She wrote that Anna Burwell planned to go to Petersburg without her and that she had been told she would belong to Elizabeth Burwell once that daughter married. She also wrote that she had been a bridesmaid at Ann Nash's wedding a week before Christmas 1837.
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Frances Armistead Burwell is born to Robert and Anna Burwell of Hillsborough
Frances Armistead Burwell, called Fanny, was the fourth of the twelve children of Robert and Margaret Anna Burwell.
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Paul Cameron sells Burnside to Cadwallader Jones Jr.
Paul Cameron sold Burnside, his three-year-old Hillsborough house, to Cadwallader Jones Jr. for $2,000. Jones sold it back to Cameron in the 1850s when he ran into money trouble.
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Navy captain Jesse D. Elliott gives Greek and Egyptian antiquities to the university
Writing from the USS Constitution at Norfolk, Elliott presented a piece of a column from Marathon and the top of a sarcophagus from Memphis, collected on his Mediterranean cruise, sent by the hand of Sailing Master William P. Muse.
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Trustees split ancient languages into separate chairs of Greek and Latin
In August 1838 the professorship of ancient languages was abolished and separate chairs of Greek and Latin created, with Manuel Fetter in Greek and John DeBerniere Hooper in Latin, while modern languages became a chair of French taught by Charles Marey. The faculty were also told to introduce civil engineering, which was not done.
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The Hillsborough Recorder argues against dividing Orange County
The paper held that a large county was harder for any family, town or company to control and would keep the tax rate low.
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Commissioners seek bids to repair the Eno bridge at Hillsborough
John U. Kirkland was one of five commissioners, with Cadwallader Jones, Edmund Strudwick, Josiah Turner and Catlett Campbell, who advertised for proposals to repair the bridge over the Eno at Hillsborough, with bids due in November.
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Lemuel Lynch signs a Hillsborough town deed as a commissioner
Lynch is among the Hillsborough town commissioners whose names appear on the town's deeds in the county register's records, first on November 3, 1838, before the town had a mayor.
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Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 2, 2026.
