Chronology

New Bethel Methodist Church is organized

John R. McMannan, Jackson Latta and five other men organized New Bethel Methodist Church in 1859. The church it used in 1953 dated from 1925.

Subject: New Bethel Methodist Church

Professor William J. Martin buys the Franklin and Boundary corner and builds a house

Martin, who replaced Elisha Mitchell on the faculty and later served as a Confederate colonel, bought the northeast corner of Franklin and Boundary streets from Charles Phillips and built his home there soon after. He left for Tennessee in 1868.

Samuel F. Phillips closes his law school and shares the office with Judge Battle

Phillips, who had taught law in his Franklin Street office since 1854, closed the school, went back to practice, and shared the building with Judge William Horn Battle.

People: William Horn Battle

Subject: UNC School of Law

The Nash and Kollock School turns the old Nash law office into a music room

After Chief Justice Frederick Nash died, his daughters Sally and Maria Nash and their cousin Sarah Kollock began holding their school's music lessons in his former law office on Margaret Lane.

People: Sarah Kollock · Maria Nash

Subject: Nash and Kollock School · Nash Law Office

The legislature creates North Carolina's first Board of Medical Examiners

In 1859 the state set up its first Board of Medical Examiners by law. The book credits the urging of Hillsborough's Dr. Edmund Strudwick.

People: Edmund Strudwick

Trustees buy a second thousand shares of bank stock on credit

When the old state bank's charter ran out, the trustees put the university's $100,000 into the new Bank of North Carolina and, by a bare majority, subscribed for another thousand shares on credit. Only $10,000 of that debt was ever paid, and after the war the university owed $90,000 on shares that were worthless.

People: David L. Swain · Bartholomew F. Moore

Washington Duke turns from cotton to tobacco on his Orange County farm

After a failed cotton crop, Washington Duke began growing tobacco in 1859 on his farm, then in Orange County, following favorable publicity among Orange County farmers. The farm used the labor of an enslaved girl, Caroline, bought in 1855, and later a leased enslaved man, Jim, who worked in tobacco.

People: Washington Duke

Samuel Wellwood Hughes opens his own school near Cedar Grove

After fourteen years as founder and principal of Cedar Grove Academy, Samuel Wellwood Hughes opened his own classical school five miles northwest of Hillsborough, its first session beginning on the second Monday of January 1859. He taught there until his death in 1884; the surviving schoolhouse, dated about 1862, was later moved to Hillsborough and restored.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Hughes Academy (Cedar Grove Academy)

Calvin E. Parish serves as mayor of Hillsborough

Parish followed Dr. Roscoe Hooker as mayor of Hillsborough in February 1859 and served until A. C. Murdock took office in February 1860.

People: A. C. Murdock

Corporators organize the Hillsborough Savings Institution

The corporators of the Hillsborough Savings Institution, among them Thomas Webb, William A. Graham, James F. Cain and Pride Jones, met in the county court clerk's office on April 1, 1859, adopted the charter and appointed Webb and others to open subscription books. By December 1860 Webb was its cashier.

People: William A. Graham · Pride Jones

Hillsborough Methodist Church builds its church

The Hillsborough Methodist congregation, organized about 1807, bought its lot on April 4, 1859, and John Berry built the church, which was to be dedicated on Sunday, October 6, 1861. The war held up the finishing and the building was not paid for until 1874. Lefler and Wager counted 200 seats, and it was still the congregation's church in 1953.

Subject: Hillsborough Methodist Church

President James Buchanan attends commencement

President Buchanan and Interior Secretary Jacob Thompson, an alumnus, came to the 1859 commencement as guests of President Swain, received callers under the Davie Poplar and saw Buchanan given an honorary doctor of laws. The Wilmington Light Infantry, the first military company to attend a commencement, camped on the campus for the occasion.

People: David L. Swain · James Buchanan

Nash and Kollock School for young ladies opens in Hillsborough

After Chief Justice Frederick Nash died in 1858, his daughters Sarah and Maria Nash and their cousin Sarah Kollock opened a select boarding and day school for girls in the Nash home.

People: Sarah Kollock · Maria Nash

Subject: Nash and Kollock School

Five elders are ordained at New Hope

Samuel S. Claytor, Alexander Dickson, William S. Kirkland, Bryant Strayhorn and George R. Long were ordained and installed. Craig traces each to the founding families except Dickson.

People: Alexander Dickson

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

Bishop Atkinson consecrates St. Mary's Chapel

The St. Mary's Chapel building in eastern Orange County was consecrated by Bishop Atkinson with the Rev. Dr. Curtis taking part.

People: Moses Ashley Curtis

Subject: St. Mary’s Chapel

A one-room log house goes up on the Bryant Nevilles farm near White Cross

By family tradition a one-room log house and log smokehouse on the Nevilles farm near White Cross date to about the Civil War years. Bryant Nevilles (1850-1931), who married Julia Lloyd in 1872, later farmed here, and a frame bungalow was added to the farmstead in 1926. The farm is on the Study List.

Archbishop John Hughes preaches the commencement sermon

Invited again by the senior class, the Roman Catholic Archbishop Hughes preached the baccalaureate sermon, speaking without notes for an hour and three quarters on love of God and of neighbor. Some Protestant critics attacked the choice, and a Hillsborough Recorder correspondent charged that he was treated discourteously, which the university denied.

People: Fordyce M. Hubbard

Subject: Gerrard Hall

Brick quarters for enslaved people are built at the Mangum House on St. Mary's Road

Around 1860 two four-bay brick buildings, likely quarters for enslaved people, and a brick smokehouse were built to serve the Priestly Mangum House on St. Mary's Road. The house later burned, and the Ruffin-Hill House went up near its site in 1877-1878; the quarters still stand at 311 and 313 St. Mary's Road.

Subject: Ruffin-Hill House

Census counts more than 5,000 enslaved people in Orange County

The 1860 census recorded more than 5,000 enslaved people in Orange County, whose labor sustained the county's farms. At emancipation they made up roughly a third of the county's population.

David Moore, a free Black barber in Chapel Hill, holds property worth $4,400

The 1860 census recorded Moore's property at $4,400, the largest holding among the county's 29 free Black property owners, whose combined wealth was $16,175.

Executive committee orders the faculty to stop hazing

The trustees' executive committee resolved that the ridicule and petty harassment of new students by older ones was cruel and contemptible and should be put down peremptorily by the faculty.

First Baptist Church of Hillsborough builds its church

Seven years after organizing in the old courthouse, the First Baptist Church of Hillsborough began its brick church about 1860, to a design by William Percival. The congregation met in the courthouse until 1862 and the war stalled the work; John Berry took over from the first builder, D. Kistler, and finished it. The Baptist State Convention met in the newly completed church in the fall of 1868, when Rev. Thomas H. Pritchard of Raleigh preached the dedication sermon.

People: William A. Graham

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

Four in ten Orange farms now grow bright-leaf tobacco

Between 1850 and 1860 the share of county farms growing bright leaf rose from about 11 to about 41 percent and the crop grew fivefold to over a million pounds. Farms raising 100 bushels of wheat or more rose from 26 to 39 percent.

Hillsborough counts 945 residents

Even with the railroad, the town hardly grew in the 1850s: about 900 people in 1850 and 945 at the end of the decade.

James H. Pratt buys the Jehu Brown tract and a second share of the Cabe land

John Burton, Jamima Cabe's son by her first marriage, sold the 160-acre Jehu Brown tract with the house to Pratt by a deed dated 1860. The same year Pratt bought 130 adjoining acres that had been Nancy Cabe's share of her father's land.

John Kimberly expands laboratory teaching at the university

Back in Chapel Hill after a year of study abroad in 1859, John Kimberly expanded laboratory instruction in chemistry and introduced the university's first laboratory fee for supplies.

John Kirkland builds a log house on Kirkland Road

John Kirkland built a log house east of NC 86 that was widened with a frame section around 1900 and given a Triple-A roof. A kitchen joined by a breezeway, a smokehouse and a dairy on posts stand in the yard.

Merchant Calvin Scott builds a Greek Revival house on West Cameron Avenue

Calvin Scott, a Chapel Hill merchant, is thought to have built the two-story I-house at 400 West Cameron Avenue about 1860. It later belonged to Samuel Mallette Gattis, a UNC alumnus of 1884 and a university trustee from 1909 to 1911.

Most white male household heads in Orange County own no land

Citing Robert Kenzer's study of the county, the report says that in 1860 some 59 percent of white men heading households held no land and 71.5 percent held no slaves. A third held between 1 and 250 acres, and 21.6 percent held from one to nine enslaved people.

New belfry built on South Building

A belfry was raised on South Building to plans by the builder Thomas H. Coates, replacing the one burned in 1856. It was strengthened after the 1875 reopening and still carried the bell in Battle's day.

Subject: South Building

Orange County teaches 57 district schools

In 1860 Orange County taught fifty-seven district schools with forty-five licensed teachers, on about $7,400 in state school money and $1,800 in county taxes, in terms of about four months, two decades after the state's first public school law. The 1860 census, counting differently, listed 25 public schools with 2,163 pupils.

Paul C. Cameron holds 470 people in slavery in Orange County

The 1860 count listed Cameron of Fairntosh as the owner of 470 enslaved people in Orange, and the joined Bennehan-Cameron holdings ran to as much as 30,000 acres worked by about 900 enslaved people.

People: Paul C. Cameron

Seven in ten free Orange County residents hold no one in slavery

In 1860, 70 percent of the free population held no enslaved people. Of the slaveholders, only seven percent held 20 or more, and more than half held fewer than five.

The Hillsborough Military Academy's commandant's house is built

The academy's castellated brick superintendent's house, known locally as the Commandant's House, with a turret at each corner and crenellated battlements, was presumably built about the same time as the barracks, which were complete by 1860. It was the home of Charles C. Tew, his wife Elizabeth and their children.

People: John Berry

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

The Neville House is built

The Neville House, built about 1860, was placed on the state Study List in July 1992 after the Chapel Hill Township survey.

The Pitard Place is built near Cedar Grove

A two-story frame house with a very low hip roof, widely spaced windows and a two-tier entry porch, the broadest local take on the Greek Revival.

The Sikes log house is built

The Sikes log house dates from about 1860 and was placed on the state Study List in July 1993.

The Tally family I-house is built near Cedar Grove

The main house at the Tally Homeplace near Cedar Grove, a two-story I-house, goes up around 1860 and is altered in the 1880s. The farm keeps tobacco barns, two tenant houses of about 1900 and an office, and is on the Study List.

The brick Mason-Lloyd-Wiley House is built on West Cameron Avenue

About 1860 a two-story brick house with carefully laid walls and a sidelighted double entrance went up at 412 West Cameron Avenue, among the biggest houses on the west side of the university. Turner Bynum may have built it.

Thomas Kirkland starts a frame house and finishes it after the Civil War

Thomas Kirkland began a two-room frame house on University Station Road before he left for the war and completed it when he came back.

Subject: University Station

Thomas and Mary Hogan build a farmhouse at Calvander

About 1860, around the time Thomas J. Hogan married Mary, the couple built a story-and-a-half frame farmhouse with Greek Revival trim on the old Hillsborough Road at Calvander; family tradition has their first child born there in 1862. Thomas served in the Civil War, and about 1890 the Hogans raised the house to two stories in the Queen Anne style.

Subject: Thomas and Mary Hogan House

Webb and Whitted's plug tobacco factory is Hillsborough's largest works

The firm made plug tobacco in Hillsborough with 15 workers, the biggest manufacturing concern in present Orange County in the 1860 census.

William H. S. Burgwyn enters the University of North Carolina

Burgwyn entered the University of North Carolina as a freshman in 1860, after schooling near Baltimore and at Horner's School in Oxford. He left in 1861 because of illness.

William Shambley builds a log house before going to war

About 1860 William Shambley raised a one-room log house on Cornwallis Road, finishing it shortly before he left to fight in the Civil War. It remained well kept in 1992.

Walter Clark enters Colonel Tew's military academy in Hillsborough

Walter Clark, then fourteen, enrolled at Colonel C. C. Tew's Military Academy in Hillsborough. He left for Confederate service after the war began.

People: Charles Courtenay Tew

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

Trustees allow students to be excused from chapel worship

Answering a memorial from the Episcopal convention that compulsory chapel on Sunday violated conscience, the trustees adopted Judge Matthias E. Manly's scheme letting the president excuse students whose parents lived in the village, who belonged to another church in town, or who or whose parents objected in writing. Morning and evening prayers stayed compulsory.

People: William Horn Battle

Subject: Gerrard Hall

Sidney Smith speaks for a state convention at an Orange County mass meeting in Hillsborough

At an adjourned mass meeting of Orange County citizens in the Hillsborough courthouse after Lincoln's election, William A. Graham's committee reported resolutions on the crisis. John W. Norwood moved to ask the legislature to call a state convention; Capt. Berry opposed it, Sidney Smith spoke for it, and the amendment was rejected before the committee's resolutions passed.

People: William A. Graham · John Wall Norwood · Dennis Heartt

Andrew Mickle refuses to raise his prices as Confederate money falls

Andrew Mickle was prospering as a merchant when the Civil War began, but he held that it was wrong to raise his prices when his neighbors could hardly get money. As the currency fell he sold his goods for much less than cost and lost his fortune.

At least 1,260 Orange County men serve in the Confederate army

J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton counted 1,260 Orange men in Moore's Roster, of whom 249 died in service and 139 were wounded. He thought all three figures too low.

People: J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton

George Attmore Sparrow is a cadet at the Hillsborough Military Academy

Sparrow, the teenage son of the Washington lawyer Thomas Sparrow, was enrolled as a cadet at the Hillsborough Military Academy in 1861 and 1862. He wrote home to his father from the academy through that period.

People: Thomas Sparrow

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

Hillsborough Methodists refuse to give their church bell to be cast into Confederate cannon

When Confederate authorities, short of cannon, asked the Hillsborough Methodist Church for its bell to melt down, the congregation turned them down.

Subject: Hillsborough Methodist Church

John Wall Norwood and Paul C. Cameron run relief for Orange County soldiers' families

During the Civil War Norwood and Paul C. Cameron acted as superintendents of relief for the families of Orange County soldiers, with Norwood's law office as their headquarters.

People: Paul C. Cameron

Seniors in the army granted diplomas without examinations

With the consent of the trustees, the faculty granted degrees to all members of the senior class, though many had joined the army and did not stand their examinations. Only thirty of the eighty-seven graduates were present in person, and the Latin salutatory was dropped because its speaker was with his regiment at Yorktown.

Subject: Gerrard Hall

Solomon Pool is promoted to adjunct professor of mathematics

Pool was promoted to adjunct professor of mathematics in 1861 and held the position for six years. In 1866 he took leave to become a United States deputy appraiser in North Carolina on the understanding that the university need not reemploy him until it had need of him.

State gives Ebenezer Emmons's geological collection to the university

Needing the space in the Capitol for war business, the state gave the university the rocks and minerals gathered by State Geologist Ebenezer Emmons. Professor William J. Martin spent two weeks sorting them and shipping them to Chapel Hill.

T. M. Jordan preaches to enslaved people in the Baptist church basement

Rev. T. M. Jordan held services for enslaved people of Hillsborough in the basement of the Baptist church and married and baptized many Black members. One night his hearers gave him so much Confederate money that he carried it home in a handkerchief.

The Weavers add a frame front wing to the log house

A plain one-and-a-half-story frame block with two rooms per floor was built across the front, by family account to shelter the wife and children of a Weaver who went off to the Civil War. The log wing got matching Greek Revival doors and sash at about the same time.

Subject: Weaver House

Thirty-five men of the New Hope congregation die in Confederate service

Craig lists thirty-five men from within the bounds of the congregation who died in the Civil War, eight of them Strayhorns and three Craigs.

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

William H. S. Burgwyn enrolls as a cadet at the Hillsborough Military Academy

Later in 1861 Burgwyn entered the Hillsborough Military Academy as a cadet. By the autumn he had been appointed drill master of the camp of instruction near Raleigh, and he was then elected a lieutenant in the Thirty-fifth North Carolina Regiment.

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

Women organize Ladies Aid Societies in Hillsborough and Chapel Hill

Soon after secession women in the two towns formed aid societies, later joined by others, that made clothing and bandages, gathered food and money, met troop trains and nursed the sick and wounded until the war ended.

People: Cornelia Phillips Spencer

Young men enroll at Chapel Hill in the Orange Light Infantry

William F. Strowd and other young men of the area, who had begun organizing a volunteer company on April 6, 1861, met at Chapel Hill on April 22 and enrolled for six months. As the Orange Light Infantry they were mustered into state service at Raleigh on May 13.

A courthouse meeting in Hillsborough calls for a secession convention

Ten days after Fort Sumter, a large crowd from across the county met at the courthouse. With Dr. Edmund Strudwick presiding and Dennis Heartt as secretary, it adopted resolutions asking the legislature to call a convention at once to pass an ordinance of secession.

People: Edmund Strudwick · Dennis Heartt

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

Students petition trustees to close the university for the war

After Fort Sumter the juniors, sophomores and freshmen asked the trustees to suspend exercises until fall, since eight or ten students were leaving each day. The petition was refused, and President Swain issued a circular that the university would go on as before.

People: David L. Swain · Willoughby F. Avery

Orange County elects William A. Graham to the secession convention

Graham had led Union men in defeating a February 1861 referendum to call a convention on disunion. After Fort Sumter he was elected by a large margin to represent Orange County in the Constitutional Convention of May 1861, where he stood unsuccessfully for the presidency of the convention before voting for secession.

The Orange County court sets aside $50,000 for soldiers' families

Recognizing that many volunteers were men of small means, the county court appropriated $50,000 to support their families. The fund lasted until late in the war.

Faculty deny rumors of closing and add military drill

Alarmed by reports that the university had suspended, the faculty issued a circular that there had been no suspension since 1795 and would be none, and that students were being taught military tactics. Drill was led first by a Mr. Lilly and Professor William J. Martin, and on March 18, 1862 tutor Frederick A. Fetter was made drill master.

Presiding elder William Barringer dedicates the new Methodist church in Hillsborough

The brick church that Capt. John Berry built on the Tryon Street lot bought in 1859 was dedicated by William Barringer, presiding elder of the Raleigh District. The first sermon in it was preached by Jesse A. Cunninggim.

People: John Berry

Subject: Hillsborough Methodist Church

A carved brownstone headstone marks Thomas Fletcher's grave in the enslaved people's section

Thomas Fletcher, 1838-1862, received a round-topped brownstone headstone with a monogrammed footstone in Section B, as did George, son of Samuel Barbee (no dates). The rough local stone points to a mason cutting gravestones on the side; with Burnett's ledger they are among the few inscribed antebellum markers in a North Carolina slave cemetery.

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Commencement held without its ball or marshals

The ball managers told the trustees the seniors' ball could not be held unless the board gave $200 or $300, and the trustees did not answer, so it was omitted for the first time. A quarrel between seniors and juniors over the marshal left the commencement without marshals or music.

Subject: Gerrard Hall

Dr. Armand J. DeRosset of Wilmington buys a West Franklin house as a wartime refuge

DeRosset bought Mary Southerland's house and kept it as his family's refuge from the coast for the rest of the war. He sold it to Caroline Frederica Baudry in 1867.

Druggist Richard Benbury Saunders makes blue mass for the Confederacy

Saunders enlisted in 1861 but was back at his Franklin Street drugstore by 1862, compounding blue mass, a mercury purgative the Confederate army counted as essential.

Eagle Lodge's rooftop observatory is taken down and a hipped roof built

In 1862 the glassed-in observatory on the roof of the Masonic hall, said to have predated President Caldwell's 1831 observatory at the university, was removed and the present hipped roof built.

Subject: Eagle Lodge

George Attmore Sparrow leaves the Hillsborough academy to join the Confederate army

Writing from the academy on 21 July 1862, Sparrow told his father he had approval for his discharge and would leave with other cadets when the session ended on 31 July. He was in camp with the Army of the Pamlico by 1863.

Part of Orange County during the Civil War, 1861–1865 · 42 events

People: Thomas Sparrow

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

The legislature elects William A. Graham to the Confederate Senate

Early in the session that began after the 1862 election, the Assembly chose Graham, then Orange's state senator, for the Confederate Senate term starting in May 1864. He kept his state seat until December 1863.

People: William A. Graham · John Berry

William A. Graham's house at Montrose burns

The house the Grahams had enlarged at Montrose burned in 1862, and the family moved to a house on West Tryon Street. Only the law office and outbuildings were left on the land.

Subject: Montrose

Fire destroys Robert Loder's clothing store

Robert Loder's store near Franklin and Columbia burned, and the fire crossed Columbia Street to John Wesley Carr's store before it was put out.

People: John Wesley Carr

New Hope's 1805 church burns

The church burned on a Saturday night, most people believing it was set on purpose. The next morning James Phillips preached to the congregation under the trees, and through the summer of 1862 they worshipped under a large arbor built on the grounds.

People: James Phillips

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

Robert Bingham goes to war with an Orange County militia company

Robert Bingham, a member of an Orange County militia company, enlisted in state service with his fellow members on March 8, 1862, and on March 25 was elected captain of Company G, Forty-fourth North Carolina Infantry. He was captured in June 1863 and held in Union prisons until he was exchanged in 1864.

Hillsborough Savings Institution stockholders vote to stop paying interest

At a called meeting on August 9, 1862, stockholders holding 512 shares resolved to pay no interest on deposit certificates after September 16 and to settle all certificates by then. Cashier John U. Kirkland published the notice.

People: John U. Kirkland

The Baptists sell their old courthouse church to George Bishop of New Bern

Trustees H. C. Strowd, John Cheek and William Ward sold the old Baptist church lot at Churton and Queen streets, part of town lot 80, to George Bishop of New Bern for $750. Bishop later resold it to Philadelphia Friends working for freedpeople, and it became the home of Dickerson's Chapel.

Subject: Dickerson Chapel AME Church

The Collins family buys the former Burwell School and calls it the Beehive

Members of the Collins family of Somerset Place, who had left Union-held eastern North Carolina, paid Robert Burwell $3,500 for the house and four lots. By 1863 about forty family members and enslaved servants lived there, and the family named it the Beehive.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

People: Robert Armistead Burwell

Subject: Burwell School

Thirty Chapel Hill families pool money to buy corn

Amid wartime scarcity, thirty heads of families sent Andrew Mickle to buy corn in a better-supplied district; he brought back about 1,921 bushels by rail to Durham and wagon from there, at $6.75 a barrel delivered. The livery keeper John H. Watson took ninety barrels, President Swain 33 and Judge Battle 24.

People: Charles Phillips · David L. Swain · Andrew Mickle · John H. Watson

Hillsborough meeting resolves to erect a monument to Col. Charles C. Tew

A Hillsborough meeting chaired by M. E. Manly resolved to raise a monument to Col. Tew, killed at Sharpsburg, at or near the front of his Military Academy, and named Dr. Edmund Strudwick, Dr. Pride Jones and Thomas Webb to collect funds and build it.

People: Charles Courtenay Tew · Edmund Strudwick · Pride Jones

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

John Newman acquires the old Federal house on West Queen Street that his family keeps for generations

John Newman acquired the one-story Federal house at 230 West Queen Street in the mid-1860s. It passed to his son William Henry Newman in 1917 and then to his daughters Estelle, Josie and Gertrude, and late 1940s wings were added on each side.

New Hope Presbyterian Church builds its fourth church

In the middle of the Civil War, New Hope Presbyterian Church put up its fourth building, the one still in use in 1953.

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

Two rooms are added to the Nash law office for music practice and Sarah Kollock's lodging

Two rooms were built onto the west side of the old Nash law office to give the Nash and Kollock School more practice rooms and to house Sarah Kollock.

People: Sarah Kollock

Subject: Nash and Kollock School · Nash Law Office

Walter Clark resigns his Confederate commission and graduates first in his class at the university

When his regiment came back to North Carolina in February 1863, Walter Clark resigned his commission as a Confederate officer and went to the university, where he studied under David L. Swain and William H. Battle. He graduated first in his class in June 1864.

People: David L. Swain · William Horn Battle

County commissioners call for builders of a new bridge over the Eno at Hillsborough

In a notice dated March 4, 1863, commissioners William H. Brown and J. W. Norwood announced they would let the building of a bridge over the Eno at Hillsborough to contract at the courthouse on Saturday, March 14. The plan was on view at the county court clerk's office.

Subject: Eno River road bridge, Hillsborough

The county school board names committeemen for all 53 districts in wartime

The Board of Superintendents appointed school committeemen for each of Orange County's 53 districts, a sign the public schools stayed open during the war. That month W. H. Brown's examining committee also called would-be teachers to the courthouse in May.

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

Jim, an enslaved tobacco worker leased to Washington Duke, flees toward Union lines

Jim, an enslaved man whose labor Washington Duke leased to grow and cure tobacco, ran away with three others in June 1863 trying to reach Union lines. After the war he took the surname Cox and became a tobacco sharecropper in the Durham area.

People: Washington Duke

Assessors announce the listing of Orange County property under the Confederate tax

H. M. Stroud and A. M. Angier advertised fourteen places and dates, August 18 to September 4, to list produce, goods and money under the Confederate tax act of April 24, 1863. A tax-in-kind notice followed in December 1864.

Fire destroys the block at the northwest corner of Churton and King streets

A fire that broke out about 1 a.m. destroyed seventeen buildings on the northwest corner of Churton and King streets in Hillsborough, among them the corner store owned by John U. Kirkland and occupied by W. F. and T. J. Strayhorn. The Recorder reported that few owners were insured.

People: Josiah Turner Jr.

Pastor Henry B. Pratt tells the Presbyterian session he will serve the army as a chaplain

Pratt informed the Hillsborough church that he expected to go into Confederate service for the rest of the war once he obtained a chaplain's commission. He returned as pastor in 1867-68.

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

Black and Native American worshippers in Chapel Hill gather under a grape arbor and form the congregation that became St. Paul AME

A group that included William Thompson, Charles Craig, Jerry Hargraves, Kenny Brooks, Green Merritt and Green Cordal began meeting under a grape vine arbor, with Rev. Green Cordal preaching the first service. The congregation was received into the African Methodist Episcopal connection in 1870.

People: Green Cordal

Subject: St. Paul AME Church

Edwin W. Fuller studies at the university in Chapel Hill

Fuller entered the university as a freshman in the fall of 1864 and studied two years in Chapel Hill before going home to Louisburg to help in his father's business.

Hillsborough Baptists begin worshipping in the basement of their unfinished church

With its building money lost in the war, the congregation appears to have moved into the basement of the new Wake Street church around 1864 and met there for some years. The builder John Berry finished the building later.

People: John Berry

Josiah Turner Jr. of Hillsborough is elected to the Confederate Congress

Turner won as an anti-administration candidate in the same year Orange gave Zebulon Vance an 885-vote majority over the peace candidate William W. Holden. In Congress his resolutions supported Graham's push for the Hampton Roads peace conference.

People: Josiah Turner Jr. · Zebulon B. Vance · William W. Holden · William A. Graham

Orange County's roll of justices of the peace reaches 62

The county court had usually been small, and often only five or six magistrates sat at a term, but the number of justices rose sharply during the war. By 1864 Orange had 62.

Wartime woodcutting strips the university forests

To ease the faculty's hardship the trustees let professors, and the widow of tutor George B. Johnston, cut firewood from university land, extending the privilege in December 1864 with Bursar Fetter to mark trees. Neighbors cut freely as well, and many acres near the village were stripped of oaks and hickories.

People: David L. Swain · William Horn Battle · Manuel Fetter

William Bingham takes over the family school at the Oaks and incorporates it

With his brother Robert in the army and his father in declining health, William Bingham was running the school at the Oaks by 1864. That year he incorporated it as the Bingham School, a military and classical academy, and in December moved it to Mebaneville.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

People: William James Bingham

Subject: Bingham School

Confederate War Department refuses to exempt underclassmen

When the exemption Jefferson Davis had granted proved to cover only juniors and seniors, the trustees petitioned Secretary of War Seddon, showing that drafting the lower classes would add almost no soldiers. Seddon refused, and the students liable to conscription volunteered.

People: Charles Manly

Bingham School moves from the Oaks to Mebaneville

William Bingham and Robert Bingham, sons of William James Bingham, moved the school that December to a site east of Mebane's Station on the North Carolina Railroad, after the legislature incorporated it in 1864 as a military and classical academy. The highway marker's 1865 may be when classes began at the new site.

People: Robert Bingham · William Bingham (1835-1873) · William James Bingham

Subject: Bingham School · North Carolina Railroad

Anderson's Confederate cavalry sign their paroles at Paul Cameron's house Highlands

At the end of the Civil War, Confederate troops used Highlands, Paul C. Cameron's house south of the Eno, and the paroles of Anderson's cavalry were signed in the old part of the house.

Part of Orange County during the Civil War, 1861–1865 · 42 events

People: Paul C. Cameron

Subject: Highlands (Paul Cameron house)

Emancipation frees about 6,000 people in Orange County, many of whom become tenants and sharecroppers

About 6,000 enslaved people in Orange County were freed at the end of the Civil War. Many Black families left for Durham and other towns, while some stayed on the land as tenant farmers or sharecroppers.

George Laws carries the Orange magistrates' petition for a jury court to Governor Holden

With no courts open in the county after the Confederate surrender, the magistrates appointed by the provisional governor petitioned for a jury court twice a year. Laws carried the petition to Governor William W. Holden, who refused it.

People: William W. Holden

George Moses Horton leaves Chapel Hill with the Union cavalry

The enslaved poet George Moses Horton, who for decades had written verses for students, lived near Chapel Hill until Federal cavalry arrived in 1865. He left with them and went to Philadelphia with a Union officer after the war.

Hillsborough Military Academy closes for a time at the end of the Civil War

After Charles C. Tew left for the army in 1861, the academy stayed open through the war under Maj. William M. Gordon. Its 1865 term began in February, but that spring, with Sherman's army in the adjoining county, the school closed for a time. Gen. Raleigh E. Colston announced that it would resume under his direction on October 1, 1866, as a polytechnic school on a military basis.

Part of Orange County during the Civil War, 1861–1865 · 42 events

People: Charles Courtenay Tew

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

Orange County sends John Berry and Samuel F. Phillips to the 1865 convention

Orange would have elected Graham to the postwar convention, but his pardon was held up, so he withdrew and voters chose Berry and Phillips.

People: Samuel (Samuel Field) Phillips · William A. Graham · William W. Holden

Orange County voters ratify the ordinances abolishing slavery and repudiating secession

In the 1865 vote on the convention's work, Orange approved the abolition of slavery 169 to 73 and the repudiation of secession 170 to 55.

The legislature elects William A. Graham to the U.S. Senate, but Congress refuses to seat him

Elected to the state Senate in 1865, Graham could not take that seat without a pardon. The legislature then chose him for the U.S. Senate, and he was turned away with the rest of the state's delegation. His pardon arrived in 1867.

People: John Berry

Thomas Ruffin buys the Hillsborough house he called Little Hawfields

The house on East Orange Street, built about 1821 and enlarged in the 1830s, was sold to Thomas Ruffin in 1865. He named it Little Hawfields. The Town of Hillsborough acquired the property in 1972 and made it the Town Hall.

Subject: Ruffin-Roulhac House (Little Hawfields)

Washington Duke begins manufacturing smoking tobacco on his farm

Back from Confederate service, Washington Duke starts making smoking tobacco on his Orange County farm, the start of the business his sons later built into W. Duke and Sons.

People: Washington Duke

Wilson Caldwell walks out with President Swain under a white flag to meet approaching Union troops

When Union troops approached Chapel Hill in 1865, Wilson Caldwell walked out under a white flag with President David L. Swain, Judge W. H. Battle and others to meet the incoming cavalry and seek protection for the town and the university.

People: William Horn Battle · David L. Swain

The county court sets its 1865 levy for poor relief and soldiers' families

The February court matched the state tax on land and polls and split the money: $15,000 for poor relief, $10,000 for county purposes and the rest for soldiers' families. The previous August, presiding justice James C. Turrentine had called all the justices together on the families' support.

Wheeler's Confederate cavalry fought Union pursuers at New Hope Creek east of Chapel Hill

Retreating cavalry under Joseph Wheeler destroyed the bridge over the rain-swollen New Hope and the other bridges on the road toward Chapel Hill, then attacked Union cavalry trying to cross on fallen trees and driftwood at the Atkins plantation, about eight miles from the village. Cornelia Phillips Spencer, writing from Chapel Hill, called it the last skirmish and perhaps the last blood of the war and recorded that several men were killed on both sides.

Part of Orange County during the Civil War, 1861–1865 · 42 events

People: Cornelia Phillips Spencer · Smith D. Atkins

Wheeler's cavalry reaches Chapel Hill and posts a guard on the university

Confederate cavalry under General Joseph Wheeler reached Chapel Hill, and at the request of alumnus James P. Coffin, Wheeler detailed Lieutenant McBurney Broyles and fifteen men to report to President Swain and protect the university's books and apparatus. Wheeler's headquarters were opposite the Episcopal church.

Part of Orange County during the Civil War, 1861–1865 · 42 events

People: David L. Swain · Charles Phillips

Sherman's orders protect the university and village of Chapel Hill

When a Federal officer rode into Chapel Hill at sunset on April 16, President Swain told him of General Sherman's promise to protect the university and village, and the officer said he had received the orders. When Smith D. Atkins's cavalry took the town the next morning, Sherman's orders were obeyed and dwellings and university property were guarded.

People: David L. Swain · Smith D. Atkins

Sherman and Johnston first meet at the Bennitt farm on the Hillsborough Road

William T. Sherman and Joseph E. Johnston met midway between their lines on the Hillsborough Road, seven miles from Durham Station, and moved to James Bennitt's nearby farmhouse. Before talks began Sherman showed Johnston a telegram announcing President Lincoln's assassination; Sherman offered military terms only, and Johnston asked for terms of a permanent peace.

People: Joseph E. Johnston

Johnston accepts Sherman's basis of agreement at the Bennitt farm

At their second meeting at James and Nancy Bennitt's farm on the Hillsborough Road, then in Orange County, Joseph E. Johnston accepted the "basis of agreement" William T. Sherman submitted, which offered an armistice, disbanding of the armies, recognition of state governments and a general amnesty. Jefferson Davis approved the terms, but Washington rejected them.

People: William T. Sherman

Swain asks Sherman to stop the stripping of farms around Chapel Hill

President Swain wrote General Sherman that Wheeler's men and then the Federals had stripped the country of forage and horses, leaving families such as the Rev. George W. Purefoy's fifty people with no food and no work animals. Sherman replied on April 22 that seizures would stop when the war ended.

Part of Orange County during the Civil War, 1861–1865 · 42 events

People: David L. Swain · William T. Sherman

Johnston surrendered to Sherman at the Bennett farm, then in Orange County

After meetings on April 17 and 18 whose terms Washington rejected, Joseph E. Johnston and William T. Sherman met again at the farm of James and Nancy Bennitt and signed a military surrender covering forces in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. North Carolina Historic Sites describes the Bennitt farm as a 325 acre place in Orange County, on the Hillsborough road west of Durham Station.

Part of Orange County during the Civil War, 1861–1865 · 42 events

People: Joseph E. Johnston · William T. Sherman

Charles P. Mallett wrote that federal troops had held Chapel Hill for fourteen days

Writing from Chapel Hill, the merchant Charles P. Mallett reported that Union troops had held the village for fourteen days, that they had behaved tolerably where safeguards were posted but had stripped the surrounding countryside of horses and mules, and that General Judson Kilpatrick had held a review in the village the previous day.

Part of Orange County during the Civil War, 1861–1865 · 42 events

People: Smith D. Atkins

Paul Cameron complains that Jesse Ruffin is raising freedpeople's hopes of land

In May 1865, weeks after the Confederate surrender near Durham, Paul Cameron wrote to his father-in-law Thomas Ruffin that the judge's longtime coachman Jesse had stirred the freedpeople on his place to hope for a freehold in the land they worked, and asked that his name not be linked with Jesse's.

People: Paul C. Cameron · Thomas Ruffin

General Smith D. Atkins married Eleanor Swain, daughter of the university president

The courtship began during the occupation, when Atkins called on President David Lowry Swain, met his daughter Eleanor, had his regimental band serenade her and gave Swain two horses. Atkins was mustered out in June and the two married in Chapel Hill on August 23, 1865; many invited guests stayed away, students tolled the college bell for three hours and hanged Swain and Atkins in effigy.

Part of Orange County during the Civil War, 1861–1865 · 42 events

People: David L. Swain · Smith D. Atkins

Job Berry calls a fair to buy a building for a Black school

The Hillsborough Recorder printed Job Berry's notice that the colored citizens of Hillsborough would hold a fair on September 23 to raise money for a school building. The school later met in the old courthouse at Queen and Churton streets.

People: Job Berry

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

Job Berry buys an acre on South Wake Street

Months after emancipation, Job Berry paid Henry N. Brown $300 for parts of lots 20 and 17 off South Wake Street, next to the Nash and Kollock School, where his wife Rebecca Nash had been enslaved.

People: Job Berry

Bricks at the Coachman's Quarters carry the date Dec 5, '65

Two bricks in a small outbuilding near the Burnside stable in Hillsborough carry the hand-cut inscription 'Dec 5, '65', found during the building's restoration after 2003. The owners and descendants connect it to Jesse Ruffin, a coachman once enslaved by Thomas Ruffin. According to family tradition he cut the date to mark the day after the General Assembly ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which formally ended slavery.

People: Thomas Ruffin

Subject: Burnside

Cornelia Phillips Spencer publishes The Last Ninety Days of the War in North-Carolina

Encouraged by her friend, former governor David L. Swain, Spencer published her first book, an account of the war's last months in North Carolina that describes Wheeler's Confederate cavalry passing through Chapel Hill and the town's occupation by Union cavalry in April 1865.

People: David L. Swain

Fire destroys the Hargrave house on Franklin Street

The large house Dr. Charles Yancey built in 1822, owned by the Hargraves since 1840, burned. Jesse Hargrave's children Molly and Fred stayed on the lot in a much smaller building facing the street.

General Colston takes charge of the reopened Hillsborough Military Academy

After closing at the end of the war, the academy reopened with General R. C. Colston as superintendent. In 1868 he signed a lease with Col. Tew's widow to live in the superintendent's house, but his family later moved to Wilmington.

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

George Laws chairs the stewards of the Hillsborough Methodist church

In 1866, when Hillsborough Station took in Hillsborough, Cedar Grove, Walnut Grove, Lebanon and New Sharon, Laws was chairman of its Board of Stewards. As treasurer in 1867 he told members that if they wanted preaching they must pay for it.

Subject: Hillsborough Methodist Church

John U. Kirkland serves as Orange County's clerk and master in equity

In 1866 John U. Kirkland, as clerk and master in equity at his office in Hillsborough, advertised court-ordered sales of Orange County land.

John W. Graham serves as Orange County solicitor

After the Civil War, John W. Graham of Hillsborough was solicitor for Orange County from 1866 to 1868, before going as a delegate to the 1868 constitutional convention and into the state senate.

John Wall Norwood buys the brick law office facing the courthouse

Attorney Richard Ashe sold the one-room brick law office on Court Street, facing the Orange County Courthouse, to John Wall Norwood for $400. The office, already shown on an 1839 map, is now called the Norwood Law Office.

People: John Wall Norwood

Orange County votes against the proposed state constitution of

Voters rejected the constitution submitted by the reconvened convention, 494 to 392.

The Collins women sell their shares of the Beehive to Dr. Thomas D. Warren

After the war the Collins relatives who had lived at the Beehive left Hillsborough, and the women sold their shares of the house to Dr. Thomas D. Warren, who had married Elizabeth Alethea Collins.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Burwell School

The Methodist conference forms a Hillsborough District, with Hillsborough heading a station of five churches

In 1866 the Methodists created a Hillsborough District, under presiding elder W. H. Bobbitt, and made Hillsborough a station that also took in Cedar Grove, Walnut Grove, Lebanon and New Sharon. W. C. Wilson was pastor.

Subject: Hillsborough Methodist Church

The Union League organizes Black voters in Orange County

The Republican Union League, organized in Orange, Alamance and Guilford by Albion W. Tourgee, its first state president, recruited nearly every Black man who would vote before the 1867 election. It had faded by the end of 1870.

People: William W. Holden · Albion W. Tourgee

Thomas and Anne Ruffin move from the Haw River plantation to Hillsborough

Thomas Ruffin and his wife Anne left their Haw River plantation early in 1866 and moved to Hillsborough, where he had bought the house he called Little Hawfields the year before.

People: Thomas Ruffin

Subject: Ruffin-Roulhac House (Little Hawfields)

Trustees strike Confederate leaders from the commencement ball

The student ball managers named Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, John C. Breckinridge, Zebulon Vance and other Confederate figures as honorary managers without asking them. Fearing hostile action by Congress, the trustees ruled the choice improper.

People: Zebulon B. Vance · David L. Swain · Robert E. Lee

Twenty Black members leave First Baptist Church of Hillsborough and organize Mount Bright Baptist Church

Twenty Black members withdrew from First Baptist Church of Hillsborough in 1866 and organized a congregation of their own, named for its first pastor, Rev. Alfred E. Bright. The widow of Governor William A. Graham gave the group the West Union Street site where the congregation still worships.

Subject: Mount Bright Baptist Church

E. H. Pogue starts making tinware for the wholesale trade in Hillsborough

E. H. Pogue announced that he had begun manufacturing tinware in Hillsborough for merchants and retail dealers, and would also sell it to townspeople at wholesale rates. By early 1867 his store stood west of the courthouse, where he also sold groceries, stoves and tobacco and took country produce in barter.

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

Thomas Lynch becomes stated supply at New Hope after James Phillips

Lynch took up the New Hope pulpit after Phillips stopped preaching there at the end of 1865 and served until the winter of 1867.

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

Charles Phillips is ordained at New Hope Church in Orange County

Phillips was ordained on 14 April 1866 at Orange County's New Hope Church, which had long been under the pastoral charge of his father James Phillips. Orange Presbytery had convened there on Wednesday, April 11, and ordained Phillips and Calvin H. Wiley during the meeting.

People: James Phillips

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

Bodies of Junius and Wesley Lewis Battle brought home for burial

The bodies of Corporal Junius C. Battle, mortally wounded at South Mountain, and Lieutenant Wesley Lewis Battle, killed at Gettysburg, sons of Judge William H. Battle and former students, were brought home to Chapel Hill. The village turned out to meet them, and they lay side by side in the Episcopal church before burial.

People: Cornelia Phillips Spencer · William Horn Battle

Subject: Chapel of the Cross

Calvin H. Wiley is ordained at New Hope

At the last meeting of Orange Presbytery held at New Hope, Calvin H. Wiley was ordained with Charles Phillips, both sine titulo, without a pastoral charge.

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

Jesse and Rebecca Ruffin register the marriage they made in

Jesse Ruffin, coachman to Judge Thomas Ruffin, and Rebecca, who had kept the keys of the Norwood household across the Eno, had married in 1828 while enslaved to different families. They recorded the marriage with the Freedmen's Bureau and later bought a farm.

Rev. Job Berry and the Philadelphia Friends open Hillsborough's first school for Black children and adults

Job Berry, who had advertised a fair in September 1865 to raise money for a school, worked with the Friends of Philadelphia to buy the former Orange County courthouse on Queen Street for twelve hundred dollars and open a freedmen's school in it on June 5, 1866. More than three hundred children and adults learned to read and cipher there.

People: Job Berry

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

Sheriff H. B. Guthrie announces that the county treasury is empty

His notice to taxpayers said no county tax had been levied or collected for 1865, the treasury held not a dollar and the wardens of the poor were deep in debt. He set fifteen collection days in July.

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

Peter and Diannah Benton acquire land south of Hillsborough

A deed from Frances Thompson conveyed land half a mile south of town, where the Chatham and Chapel Hill roads divided (today Mayo Street and Orange Grove Road), to Peter Benton, his wife Diannah and Jimmy Thompson. Peter Benton, a free man, had gardened at the Burwell School in 1855.

Subject: Burwell School

Thomas Ruffin buys six lots next to his Hillsborough house from Pride Jones

Thomas Ruffin bought lots 177, 178, 179, 204, 205 and 206, which adjoined the house he had acquired the year before, from Pride Jones.

People: Pride Jones

Subject: Ruffin-Roulhac House (Little Hawfields)

Allison and Corbin run a plug tobacco factory at Cedar Grove

By the late 1860s Cedar Grove had a plug tobacco factory run by Allison and Corbin that employed fourteen men, the largest workforce of any business in the area. Dr. John J. Allison, a large landowner, was also a partner in dry goods, hardware and grocery stores, and William W. Allison kept a hotel.

Andrew Green Ruffin Lloyd builds a log house on Old Hillsborough Road

Around 1867 Andrew Green Ruffin Lloyd raised the log core of a house that later generations of Lloyds enlarged several times. Frame outbuildings stand on the farm.

Civil War veteran William Couch builds a frame farmhouse east of Hillsborough

William Couch, a Confederate veteran, builds a two-story frame house around 1867 beside an older log house, and adds outbuildings to the farm. The farm is on the Study List, next to the Sam Couch farm.

Cornelia Phillips Spencer moves into Sam Phillips's house and takes in boarders

After her father's death the family had to leave their university-owned home, so Spencer, her widowed mother and her daughter moved into her brother Sam's empty house on East Franklin and took boarders to make ends meet.

J. Morrow and Sons grind flour and corn at Oaks

In the late 1860s and early 1870s J. Morrow and his sons ran a flour and corn mill at Oaks, where a dry goods store and a tannery also operated in the community that had grown up around the Bingham school.

James Webb Jr. advertises his Cheap Cash Store in Hillsborough

Advertisements in the Hillsborough Recorder in 1867 offered garden seeds, white granite cups and saucers, coffee, sugar and candies at the Cheap Cash Store of James Webb Jr.

Rev. Job Berry officiates at more than forty weddings of freed people

Between 1867 and 1877 Job Berry officiated at more than forty weddings of Black couples in and around Hillsborough, among them one held at the Freedmen's School House on September 17, 1868. Orange County marriage books record him as minister, later as AME minister of Bethel.

Sarah J. Woodson teaches at the freedmen's school in Hillsborough

Sarah J. Woodson, an Oberlin graduate from Ohio, was principal of the school for Black children in Hillsborough, which she taught with V. S. Williams. The Freedmen's Bureau's report of January 1868 named it among the large, well-run schools in North Carolina.

Part of Freedom, schools, and Black community-building after emancipation · 45 events

Legislature gives the university North Carolina's land-grant scrip

At President Swain's urging, the General Assembly transferred to the university the state's scrip under the federal Morrill Act, on condition that it set up at least two professorships in agriculture and the mechanic arts. Each county court could send one needy student free of tuition, and students could enter those branches without the usual classical preparation.

People: David L. Swain

James Phillips dies in the college chapel

On the morning of March 14, 1867, James Phillips went early to the college chapel to lead morning prayers and was found dead on the rostrum as the bell rang. He had taught at the university since 1826 and was buried in the Chapel Hill Cemetery.

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery · Gerrard Hall

Job Berry is admitted as a preacher by the A.M.E. Church

Meeting in Greensboro, the church's North Carolina Conference admitted Job Berry on trial and sent him to Mebanesville and Graham, making formal the ministry he had carried on while state law barred Black preachers.

People: Job Berry

President Andrew Johnson attends commencement

Andrew Johnson came to the 1867 commencement with Secretary of State William H. Seward, Postmaster General Alexander Randall and General Daniel E. Sickles, the military governor under the Reconstruction Acts, and recalled passing through Chapel Hill on foot in 1826. Johnson joined the Dialectic Society and Seward the Philanthropic, but a minority of Dialectics blocked Sickles.

People: William H (William Henry) Seward · David L. Swain · Jonathan Worth

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Swain and the faculty resign as trustees plan a new university

At a meeting Governor Jonathan Worth called to face the university's collapse, Charles Phillips presented the resignations of President Swain, Professors Hubbard, Fetter and Smith, law professor William H. Battle and himself, and the trustees adopted Kemp P. Battle's resolution for a committee to plan an elective university system with higher standards.

People: David L. Swain · Charles Phillips · Kemp Plummer Battle · Jonathan Worth

Trustees sell the land-grant scrip at fifty cents an acre

The trustees accepted an offer from G. F. Lewis and Fisher, Booth and Company of Detroit to buy the scrip for 270,000 acres at fifty cents an acre, with most of the money due only after Congress let Southern scrip be located. On William A. Graham's motion $13,500 of the first payments went to general expenses, relieving unpaid officers.

People: William A. Graham

The wardens' yearly count finds 21 people in the poorhouse

The count listed three adult men, thirteen adult women and five children of color, three of whom had white mothers. In October the wardens kept James M. Bain as superintendent at $150 a year, with $25 for his wife.

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

Trustees adopt an elective system of ten schools

Over William A. Graham's dissent, the trustees voted 18 to 3 for Kemp P. Battle's committee plan to replace the fixed four-year course with ten independent schools, from political science to modern languages, beginning in fall 1868. After the new state constitution put the university under a new board, the old trustees on June 4, 1868 reappointed Swain and the faculty and rescinded the plan.

People: William A. Graham · Kemp Plummer Battle

A trustee committee including Albion W. Tourgee finds the university not bound to pay its bank debt

On Edward Cantwell's motion the Reconstruction trustees named Cantwell, Justice E. G. Reade and Albion W. Tourgee to inquire into the university's debts. Their report held that the university was not legally or equitably bound to pay its debt to the bank, since it could not buy bank stock on credit, and that the Cameron and Swain debts should be scaled down.

Charles Phillips is dismissed from the university faculty

When the state's Reconstruction government reorganized the University of North Carolina in 1868, Phillips was dismissed from the faculty. He took a professorship at Davidson College in February 1869.

Part of The university closes and reopens · 46 events

Dialectic and Philanthropic societies hide their books and papers

Believing the societies would not be run under their constitutions after the university changed hands, their last officers gave the Dialectic records to Alexander McIver and the Philanthropic records to William L. Saunders. The property lay safe until the societies revived in 1875.

People: Alexander McIver · William L. Saunders

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Dr. Johnston Blakeley Jones sells his West Franklin home to banker William A. Wright

Bankrupt by 1865, Jones left for a new practice in Charlotte in 1868 and sold his house to William A. Wright, president of the Bank of Cape Fear, who wanted it as a refuge.

Hillsborough Methodist Church opens a lending library for its members

Around 1868 the church began a library of religious and general books, many donated by members and townspeople and some bought by Sunday school classes. Books went out on Sunday mornings, and the record book later counted 937 volumes.

Subject: Hillsborough Methodist Church

Josiah Turner Jr. wins Orange's Senate seat but is excluded under the Fourteenth Amendment

Turner won election as state senator in 1868 but was not seated, since his disabilities under the Fourteenth Amendment were still in force. John W. Graham was elected instead.

People: John W. Graham

Ned Strowd organizes Terrell Creek Baptist Church

Ned Strowd organized Terrell Creek Baptist Church, a Black congregation, on Atwater Road about two miles south of its later site.

Orange County votes against the 1868 constitution and for Thomas S. Ashe over Holden

Orange rejected the new Reconstruction constitution 1,863 to 1,324 and gave Conservative Thomas S. Ashe 1,834 votes to 1,310 for William W. Holden, who carried the state.

People: William W. Holden

Six freedmen's schools are running in Orange County

By 1868 six schools for freed people had been set up in the county, paid for mostly by the Freedmen's Bureau and Quaker missions, with Black families giving what they could.

People: Robert G. Fitzgerald

Solomon Pool's new faculty move into the old professors' houses

With Swain and the old faculty gone, the professors Pool brought in took over their Franklin Street homes: Fisk P. Brewer the Tom Taylor house, David Settle Patrick Swain's house, and James A. Martling the late James Phillips's house.

People: Fisk P. (Fisk Parsons) Brewer

The White Brotherhood, a Ku Klux order, appears in Orange County

The first Klan-type order to reach North Carolina, the White Brotherhood, set up camps including one at Hillsborough. Its Orange County chief was Colonel Joseph C. Webb, followed by Frederick N. Strudwick.

People: Frederick N. Strudwick