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Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
- 1880s
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Pender Store is built at Cedar Grove
The two-story weatherboarded Pender Store, with a classical gable front and a hip-roofed porch, was built at Cedar Grove in the 1880s. Its shelves and display cases were still in place in 1996.
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Robert F. Hoke raises subscriptions to run the railroad toward Chapel Hill
When iron prices rose in 1880 and shipping ore to Pennsylvania furnaces paid, Gen. Robert F. Hoke, who owned most of Iron Mountain north of Chapel Hill, began organizing the branch line from University Station. His Iron Mountain Company put up $6,000, the largest single pledge, and Julian S. Carr was among the other subscribers.
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Robert F. Hoke serves as unpaid superintendent of the State University Railroad
As the branch from University Station toward Chapel Hill got under way, university president Kemp P. Battle became president of the railroad company and General Robert F. Hoke its superintendent, both without salary. John Holt managed the convict work force and Captain Fry was the civil engineer.
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Ruffin Cheek and then Hiram Stone open West End's first general stores
Ruffin Cheek, followed by Hiram Stone, opened grocery and general merchandise stores at West End in the 1880s. The book counts their stores, east of the railroad spur on what became East Main Street, as the start of Carrboro's business district.
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Seniors begin the class tree and Class Day custom
The class of 1880, led by its president Thomas H. Battle, planted a sugar maple at the edge of the Forbidden Ground after Class Day speeches that included one by Charles B. Aycock. Later classes kept the custom, planting a water oak in 1882 and a white pine in 1883.
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State convicts build the University Railroad
Governor Thomas J. Jarvis supplied state convicts at low hire to grade the line from University Station to Chapel Hill, while the Richmond and Danville company laid the rails. A white convict was shot dead while fleeing, and a Black convict named Fries died of gangrene after a whipping by the road's managers, which the solicitor found no ground to prosecute.
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The Caine Roberts farm is built near Hillsborough
A farm complex centered on a two-story frame Triple-A I-house is built around 1880 on the Caine Roberts place near Hillsborough. The survey put it on the Study List.
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The Chapel Hill Baptist Church rebuilds the old academy as its parsonage
The academy building behind the old church, where the Craig family had kept a school, was rebuilt and made into the church's parsonage. In the same decade the church bought its first hymnbooks and a small reed organ.
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The Charles Davis Farm is built
The Charles Davis Farm, built about 1880, was placed on the state Study List in July 1991 at its owner's request.
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The Davis-Eubanks House is built on Mallette Street
The one-story frame house at 129 Mallette Street, with a center front gable, rear ell and turned-post porch, dates from about 1880.
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The Henry Lloyd farm is built around a walled barnyard in Chapel Hill Township
Henry Lloyd, farming in Chapel Hill Township by 1880, probably built his farmhouse in the 1880s; the farm grew in stages, and log and frame outbuildings of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries close in a rectangular barnyard, an arrangement the survey found worth a Study List place.
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The Little River General Store is built on NC 57
A frame general store serving the Little River community goes up on NC 57 late in the nineteenth century.
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The Neville Building, thought to be Carrboro's first store, goes up east of the depot
A one-story frame store later called the Old Neville Building was put up in the 1880s on East Main Street between Broad and Lloyd streets and is believed to be the first store building in Carrboro. Its last tenant was the Carrboro Cash Store, run by Cliff and Wilbur Partin.
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The Phelps farmstead is built north of Hillsborough
The Phelps farm on NC 57 north of Hillsborough grows up in the late nineteenth century around a Triple-A I-house, with a log tenant house and one- and two-pen log barns. It is on the Study List.
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The White Cross Store is built
A country store is built at White Cross in the late nineteenth century. It was later covered in vinyl siding.
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The first McDade Store goes up at McDade crossroads
The first McDade Store, a two-story frame building, was put up in the 1880s at the McDade crossroads just north of Cedar Grove, where it would have stood over the small community. A second McDade store with a canopy for motorists buying gas was built across the road in the early 1920s.
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The upstairs courtroom of the Orange County Courthouse is renovated
In the 1880s the second-floor courtroom of John Berry's 1844-1845 courthouse on East King Street was renovated; the rest of the interior keeps most of its original finish.
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Two cotton gins operate on Cane Creek in Bingham Township
Bingham Township, where cotton was a cash crop, had two cotton gins on Cane Creek in 1880. The township also had three flour and grist mills running full time, two on Cane Creek and one on Turkey Creek, and four sawmills on Morgan, Cane and Tom creeks.
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W. R. Hughes makes bricks at Cedar Grove
The only brickyard in Cedar Grove Township in 1880 belonged to W. R. Hughes. It worked two months of the year and turned out about 100,000 common bricks.
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William Cole buys the Smith plantation seat on Smith Level Road
The Smith family held its large plantation south of Carrboro until the 1880s, when William Cole bought the 1845 house. No bigger pre-war house survives in the township, and in 1992 it stood almost unchanged on 130 acres.
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William George Randall walks from Burke County to Chapel Hill to enter the university
Randall walked to Chapel Hill in the fall of 1880, was interviewed by President Kemp Battle and was helped by the Deems Fund. The Dialectic Society paid him as its librarian, the first year the post carried a salary.
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Chapel Hill's AME congregation issues a public appeal for money to finish its house of worship
Rev. G. W. Offley, preacher in charge of the African Methodist Episcopal church in Chapel Hill, signed a circular dated January 5, 1880 asking the public to help the congregation complete its house of worship and naming Brother George Trice to solicit subscriptions. The Chapel Hill Ledger printed it in full on January 10, 1880.
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Mary R. Smith gives the Chapel of the Cross an organ
The parish formally thanked Miss Mary R. Smith for her gift to the Chapel of the Cross of a fine and costly organ.
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Joseph Blount Cheshire is ordained priest two years after coming to Chapel Hill
Cheshire was ordained priest on 30 May 1880 by Bishop Theodore B. Lyman in St. Paul's Church, Winston, two years after going to Chapel Hill. While based at the Chapel of the Cross he also organized a mission at Durham and built a church there named for St. Philip the Deacon.
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The student YMCA first takes part in commencement
The 1880 commencement opened with an address to the Young Men's Christian Association by the Rev. F. C. Woodward of Elizabeth City, the association's first part in commencement exercises. By 1884 it met regularly in its own hall in South Building.
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Charles J. Curtis resigns as rector of St. Matthew's
Charles J. Curtis, who had followed his father Moses Ashley Curtis in charge of the parish, resigned on July 24, 1880, and held his last service on August 8. The church had no settled rector until Joseph W. Murphy took charge the next July.
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The school board forms Center school district
A new District No. 57, called Center, was created with 34 white children and one Black child.
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The Orange County Observer begins publication at Hillsborough
Joseph A. Harris started the Orange County Observer at Hillsborough in October 1880 as its publisher and one of its editors, numbering it a new series of a paper established in 1878. The paper ran until about 1917.
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The Chapel Hill Baptist Church petitions the legislature against liquor
The church sent the General Assembly a memorial condemning the making and selling of liquor in North Carolina. Howell suggests the new pastor, Needham Bryan Cobb, was behind it.
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Dr. William P. Mallett builds a house on the old Henderson lot
Dr. Mallett bought the burned-out lot from the heirs of Anna Ashe and built a large two-story house, keeping a chemist's shop at its southeast corner. After his death in 1889 his widow ran the house as a boarding house where new professors stayed.
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James Webb Jr. builds Mid-Lawn at East Queen and North Cameron streets
James Webb Jr. built a two-story Italianate house, later called Mid-Lawn, on the northwest corner of East Queen and North Cameron streets. David and Elizabeth Patterson bought it in 1919.
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John Manning teaches law at the university
Elected professor of law in 1881, John Manning taught at Chapel Hill while keeping a private practice, and law enrollment grew from seven students to eighty-seven by 1897-98.
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Joseph Blount Cheshire leaves Chapel Hill to become rector at Charlotte
In the spring of 1881 Cheshire accepted a call to St. Peter's Church in Charlotte, ending about three years at the Chapel of the Cross. He was elected bishop of North Carolina in 1893.
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Joseph W. Murphy serves as rector of St. Matthew's
Joseph W. Murphy was rector of the parish for eleven years. His family later gave the brass alms basin in his memory.
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Kappa Alpha charters a chapter at the university
Kappa Alpha was chartered at Chapel Hill in 1881, four years before the trustees lifted the ban on fraternities.
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Mebaneville, the railroad village on the Orange-Alamance line, is incorporated
The settlement that grew along the North Carolina Railroad from 1854 was incorporated in 1881 and shortened its name to Mebane in 1883. Part of the town lies in Orange County.
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St. Matthew's vestry asks Joseph Blount Cheshire to be its rector
The vestries of St. Matthew's and the Burlington church asked Joseph Blount Cheshire to take charge of their parishes. He would have come to his wife's home town, but Bishop Lyman wanted him to stay in Chapel Hill.
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The General Assembly makes its first regular appropriation to the university
In 1881 the General Assembly voted the university its first regular appropriation for maintenance, secured under President Kemp Battle. Until then the state had given no specific money for its upkeep.
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The literary societies agree to stop hazing
The Dialectic and Philanthropic societies adopted a joint rule, under heavy penalty, against entering another student's room against his will, laying hands on him or otherwise annoying him. It held for several years before hazing resumed in disguise.
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Typhoid kills the two surviving Mason daughters, and their father sets aside a family burial ground
Martha James Mason and Carolina Varina Mason both died of typhoid fever in 1881; their father caught it as well but recovered. James P. Mason marked off a small plot on the family land where all four daughters and later both parents were buried inside an iron fence, beside the graves of Solomon and Ann Morgan.
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The commissioners allow gates across the roads at Orange Factory
The board ordered a gate on the road from Orange Factory to the Durham and Roxboro road near the old Douglas place, and another across the road on the opposite side of the river on S. W. Holman's land.
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Voters approve forming Durham County from eastern Orange and part of Wake
Under an act ratified February 28, 1881, voters in the territory cut from eastern Orange and western Wake approved the new county on April 14, 1881, the Orange portion voting 1,464 to 250. Governor Thomas J. Jarvis then proclaimed Durham County established.
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George Laws dies in office as Orange County's clerk of superior court
Laws died in May 1881 while serving as judge of probate and clerk of the superior court of Orange County, after about half a century in the county's service.
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Commencement celebrates the railroad's arrival, and Battle calls Hoke its father
At the 1882 commencement an hour was set aside in Gerrard Hall to celebrate the railroad's coming to Chapel Hill. Kemp P. Battle told the history of the line and called General Robert F. Hoke the source of the enterprise and the father of the State University Railroad Company.
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From West End to Carrboro: railroad, mills, and a new town
In 1882 a university railroad spur ended a mile west of Chapel Hill, and the settlement of West End grew around its boxcar depot. Thomas Lloyd opened a gin and grist mill in 1883 and the Alberta Cotton Mill in 1899, which Julian Carr's Durham Hosiery bought in 1909. Incorporated as Venable in 1911, the town became Carrboro in 1913.
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Henry H. 'Hoot' Patterson opens a general merchandise store
Henry Houston 'Hoot' Patterson, a Civil War veteran married to Dr. Thomas Hogan's daughter Mary, started a general merchandise business in the building Andrew Mickle had used. Bryant calls it very successful.
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Hillsborough Presbyterian Church shares a pastor with the Chapel Hill church
During J. L. Williamson's short pastorate of 1882-83 the Hillsborough church was grouped with the Presbyterian church at Chapel Hill.
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Jones Watson serves as mayor of Chapel Hill
Jones Watson, one of the five commissioners named in the town's 1851 charter, was mayor of Chapel Hill in 1882, an office the town's charter had created in 1879. His brother John H. Watson followed him in 1883.
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Joshua W. Gore joins the university as professor of natural philosophy and engineering
The trustees unanimously chose Joshua Walker Gore, a Virginia-born civil engineer who had studied at Richmond College, the University of Virginia and Johns Hopkins, to succeed Carey D. Grandy as professor of natural philosophy and engineering. He was the first appointee in years to take permanent charge of the subject.
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Lisbon Berry becomes Orange County's first Black lawyer
Lisbon Payne Berry, born enslaved in Hillsborough in 1850, studied law in Hillsborough and was admitted to the North Carolina bar in 1882, becoming the first Black attorney in Orange County.
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William N. Pritchard and Thomas F. Lloyd open a general store on East Franklin Street
William N. 'Captain Billy' Pritchard and T. F. Lloyd opened a general store on East Franklin Street, probably in the building where John R. Hutchins had sold clothing.
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Railroad service reaches West End
The first passenger train on the University Railroad left Chapel Hill on Monday, February 6, 1882, and ran through University Station to Raleigh. The line ended about a mile west of the village at West End, where a boxcar served as the depot, and the settlement that became Carrboro grew up around it.
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The Mount Zion congregation buys an acre for its first church
The Black congregation then known as Poplar Springs, which had met in a schoolhouse and on members' farms, bought a one-acre lot from S. W. Hughes and Margaret J. Hughes for $10. Its first church there was a small frame building with benches made by members.
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Fire destroys the Bingham School buildings near Mebaneville
A fire that started in a cadet's quarters about 9:30 in the morning burned the barracks, office and library, the academy hall, the infirmary and the mess hall. About 175 cadets were in barracks, no one was hurt, and the loss was put at about $30,000.
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Julia Spencer drives a last spike to celebrate the finished University railroad
Chapel Hill celebrated the completed State University Railroad with speeches and the driving of the last spikes, one by Julia J. Spencer, daughter of Cornelia Phillips Spencer, and one by the railroad's agent, J. G. Cooley. Passenger trains had been running to the West End terminus since February.
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The commissioners call a fence-law election in Hillsborough Township
On a petition from the township, the board ordered a vote at each Hillsborough Township precinct for and against the fence law on June 10, 1882 and named the men to hold it. The result is not given; an 1885 act later put Hillsboro and three other townships under the stock law.
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Bingham School finishes new buildings after the spring fire
Less than three months after the fire, the rebuilt Bingham School stood nearly complete, with timber cut and sawed nearby. Thomas C. Oakley of Durham was the builder.
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Cross Roads Baptist Church is organized as Betheden
W. P. Roberts and S. S. Cates led the founding of a Baptist church first called Betheden and later Cross Roads, with R. A. Patterson as first pastor. It built a 300-seat church in 1910.
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Dr. Pride Jones serves as Orange County clerk of superior court
Dr. Pride Jones followed George Laws, clerk for thirty years, as clerk of the superior court of Orange County and held the office from 1883 to 1888, when Samuel M. Gattis succeeded him.
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Horace Williams earns a master's degree at the university
Williams entered the state university at Chapel Hill in 1879 and in 1883 took both the B.A. and an M.A. His M.A. and William Battle Phillips's Ph.D., conferred at the same commencement, were the first advanced degrees the reopened university granted for further study. Before 1875 any graduate could receive the A.M. three years after the B.A.
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The Berry family moves to Sunnyside south of Hillsborough
Dr. John and Mary Strayhorn Berry moved from their West King Street house, now known as Two Chimneys, to Sunnyside, the Berry family plantation two miles south of town. Mary Berry tutored her daughter Harriet at home until she was twelve.
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Thomas Lloyd and William Pritchard build a grist mill and cotton gin at the West End depot
Thomas F. Lloyd, a Confederate veteran, and his partner William Pritchard built a steam-powered grist mill and cotton gin in a two-story frame building just north of the railroad depot at West End in 1883. Farmers from southern Orange County brought grain and cotton there, and Lloyd bought out Pritchard's share in 1886.
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Venable co-founds the Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society
Venable was a co-founder and the first president of the Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society, a society of university scientists named for the geologist Elisha Mitchell.
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William Battle Phillips receives the university's first doctorate after the reopening
In 1883 William Battle Phillips, one of the five graduates of 1877, received a Doctor of Philosophy, the first doctorate in Battle's list of degrees granted since the 1875 reopening.
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William H. S. Burgwyn is appointed a trustee of the University of North Carolina
Burgwyn was appointed a trustee of the University of North Carolina in 1883, the year after he returned to the state and settled at Henderson.
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Tenant farmer Jessa Buttler mortgages his horse and crop to landowner C. R. Miller
Orange County tenant Jessa Buttler signed a chattel mortgage pledging his horse and his entire crop of corn, wheat, oats and tobacco to landowner C. R. Miller for a debt of $88.20. By October 1890 the debt stood at $106.04 despite partial payments.
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Charles White, merchant and postmaster at Bingham School, dies
Charles White, who kept the store and post office at Bingham School near Mebane, died on Thursday, May 24, 1883. The Observer called him successful in business; his widow, Mary E. White, qualified as executrix of his will.
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Governor Jarvis promises a commencement crowd a hall large enough for all
With Gerrard Hall overflowing at the 1883 commencement, President Kemp Battle asked Governor Thomas J. Jarvis to promise a bigger building, and Jarvis made the promise to applause. He backed the plan at the next trustees meeting and offered bricks from the state penitentiary on easy terms, and the project became Memorial Hall.
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St. Matthew's installs a new organ
After several years of fundraising, St. Matthew's set up a new organ on August 24, 1883, at a cost of $1,040.
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Memorial Hall rises at UNC under Paul C. Cameron's building committee
The cornerstone of Swain Memorial Hall was laid on September 25, 1883, and the hall was dedicated on June 3, 1885, honoring President David L. Swain, faculty and the university's Confederate dead. Paul C. Cameron, president of the Alumni Association and chairman of the building committee, raised money for it and gave money himself.
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Kemp P. Battle gives a University Day address on the history of the campus buildings
In Gerrard Hall on University Day, President Kemp P. Battle traced each university building from the laying of the Old East cornerstone in 1793 to Memorial Hall, then under construction. The address was printed as a pamphlet.
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Work on Memorial Hall stops for the winter after a cost miscalculation
Battle told the students that construction of Memorial Hall would pause over the winter because the architect had underestimated the cost and the treasury needed refilling. Builders also advised letting the green roof timbers dry under cover before work resumed in the spring.
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A brick saloon and barber shop stands at 106 North Churton Street
The two-story brick building at 106 North Churton Street appears as a saloon and barber shop on the Sanborn maps from 1884 through 1911. By 1924 it held bank offices, and its storefront was redone in the Colonial Revival style about the 1930s.
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Adam A. Kluttz takes over management of Dr. Roberson's general store
Adam Alexander Kluttz became the active manager of Dr. Abner Benton Roberson's general store. He later opened stores of his own and built a brick store on East Franklin in 1893 and 1894.
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Alphonso J. McDade serves as mayor of Chapel Hill
A. J. McDade was mayor of Chapel Hill in 1884, an office the town charter had created in 1879. John H. Watson held it the year before and the two years after.
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Beta Theta Pi is reestablished at UNC and takes in the Mystical Seven chapter
The Eta chapter was revived in 1884, absorbing the Star of the South chapter of the Mystical Seven, once the strongest fraternity in the South.
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Election fight splits the Philanthropic Society
A quarrel over whether two South Building students could join the Philanthropic Society at the last meeting of a term, in time to swing its election, led some members to secede in 1884, and a split nearly followed in the Dialectic. Professors Winston and Manning could not bring the seceders back.
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Foxes Knob School opens as a one-room log school near Mebane
Foxes Knob School opened in the mid-1880s in a single log room. It gained a frame addition about 1900 and was later turned into a house.
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Francis P. Venable brings tennis to Chapel Hill
Venable laid out a tennis court in the grove south of his house about 1884, when sport at the university was otherwise limited to casual baseball and an old-style kicking football.
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Governor Jonathan Worth's portrait is given to the university
At the 1884 commencement John Manning presented an oil portrait of Worth on behalf of the late governor's grandsons, recalling his nearly thirty years as a university trustee. President Battle accepted it, Governor Jarvis spoke, and the portrait was hung beside those of Davie, Caldwell and Swain.
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Hillsborough Methodists report their Sunday school's hundredth anniversary
In 1884 H. N. Brown reported that the Hillsborough Methodist Sunday school had celebrated its centennial; it then had thirty-five pupils and seven teachers and a library of church literature.
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Orange County reports 33 white and 31 Black public schools
In 1884 Orange had 33 white and 31 Black public schools, with 1,369 white and 1,134 Black pupils, a term under ten weeks, and mostly log buildings. School property was valued at $3,500 for white schools and $2,500 for Black schools.
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Randall speaks on North Carolina folklore at commencement
Graduating with the class of 1884, Randall was class prophet at the Class Day exercises in the Chapel and gave the commencement speech 'North Carolina Folk Lore', which met with unusual applause.
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Robert Strange MacRae buys Dr. Harris's drugstore and its building
MacRae bought the drug business from Dr. Thomas W. Harris and the building it occupied, at Franklin and Henderson streets, from David McCauley. He sold the drugstore to Dr. R. H. Whitehead in 1893.
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Students and Black residents nearly come to blows on election night in Chapel Hill
While votes were being counted on the night of a Chapel Hill election in 1884, a young Black man from the country tried to trip a student, and students and Black townspeople gathered on both sides before the crowd broke up with little harm. Students afterward whipped Eli, a Black man who waited on the West Building, for cheering the other side.
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The Park Building, a brick general store, stands on North Churton Street
The two-story pressed-brick building at 128 North Churton Street, one of the oldest commercial buildings in the district, is built as a general store and is labeled the Park Building on Sanborn maps from 1884 to 1911. It now serves as a bank with drive-through lanes.
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The university makes Governor Jarvis a doctor of laws
At the 1884 commencement, his last as governor and president of the trustees, Jarvis received an honorary LL.D. and told the graduates that they were the university. Kemp Battle said the university owed him more than any other man for its railroad, Memorial Hall and money in times of need.
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Pleasant H. Dalton is installed as pastor of New Hope
After nearly ten years as stated supply, Dalton was installed as the church's pastor.
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The University Summer Normal School holds its last session
The eighth and last session enrolled 305 teachers, after which the legislature divided the $2,000 yearly appropriation among four normal schools chosen by the Board of Education. Battle counted 2,480 enrollments at Chapel Hill from 1877 through 1884.
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A Hillsborough doctor has the picnic grounds and paths on Occoneechee Mountain put in order
A Dr. Wilson raised money to fix up the picnic grounds near the mountain spring and the paths to Sofa Rock and the Panther's Den, so the town could reach them easily. The Orange County Observer thanked him for the people of Hillsboro.
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A building of Mrs. Charles White's used by Bingham School cadets as a mess burns
Early on Tuesday morning, August 19, 1884, fire destroyed a building owned by Mrs. Charles White that some Bingham School cadets used as a messing club. Its insurance had lapsed and the loss was put at about $1,000.
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Old students start a subscription for a monument over Nancy Hilliard's grave
E. T. McKethan of Fayetteville began collecting money from former Chapel Hill students to put a plain stone over Nancy Hilliard's neglected grave, and Cornelia Phillips Spencer endorsed the plan. The stone records the alumni's gratitude for her kindness and hospitality.
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A farmstead with a center-hall house and five outbuildings is built on Mount Moriah Road
In 1885 a story-and-a-half center-hall frame house went up with five frame outbuildings, all of which survived in good condition in 1992.
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A stock law ends open range in four Orange County townships
An 1885 act barred cattle from running at large in Cedar Grove, Little River, Hillsboro and Bingham townships and had the commissioners fence those townships from a special tax. A second act let Chapel Hill Township adopt the stock law on a petition of three-fourths of its freeholders.
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Alumni build the university's first gymnasium off university land
After the dancing ban, a chartered Gymnasium Association sold $10 shares to alumni and built a hall 110 by 45 feet on its own land, rented to the university for exercise and used for the 1885 commencement ball. The building later became Commons Hall, the student dining hall.
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Chapel Hill's Black residents begin burying their dead in Section A
Section A, beside the old slave section on the west side of the cemetery, came into general use by Chapel Hill's African American community in the mid-1880s. Its later markers include cast concrete headstones common in Black cemeteries of the period.
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Dr. William P. Mallett begins handing out Chapel Hill's mail from his lot
Dr. Mallett and his daughter started distributing the village mail. The post office building he put up on the southwest corner of his East Franklin Street lot also held his doctor's office at the back, and after his death Thomas Kirkland ran the post office there.
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Edward Atkins Rosemond buys the East Tryon Street lot where he builds his house
Deeds show Edward Atkins Rosemond bought the property at 115 East Tryon Street in 1885. His two-story I-house went up between 1888 and 1894, was enlarged by 1905 and 1911, and passed to his daughter and granddaughter.
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Orange County sets up its first postwar Board of Education
Under an 1885 law, Orange created its first Board of Education since the Civil War, chosen by the justices of the peace and county commissioners together. The Rev. J. L. Currie became superintendent in June 1885.
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Professor Adolphus Mangum buys the Collier house on East Rosemary Street
Professor Adolphus W. Mangum bought the house at 315 East Rosemary Street in 1885 and owned it for five years.
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The General Assembly adds $15,000 a year to the university's support
An Act for the Maintenance of the University, introduced by Lee S. Overman and passed by the House 58 to 32, added $15,000 a year, payable quarterly. Because the $2,000 normal school grant was moved to other schools, the net gain was $13,000, and the act also ended the rule that county scholarship students must teach.
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The faculty requires most students to join a literary society
A faculty law made membership in the Dialectic or Philanthropic Society compulsory for all students except those in medicine, law, graduate and special study, and barred non-members from rooming in university buildings without permission.
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The trustees allow fraternities at the university
On a petition from Alpha Tau Omega, Kappa Alpha and Phi Kappa Sigma, the faculty recommended and the trustees granted the admission of all Greek-letter societies, on condition that they give the faculty their members' names and pledge to serve no liquor at banquets in Chapel Hill.
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The trustees bar dancing from university buildings
Pressed by church members who opposed the modern dance, the trustees prohibited the commencement ball in Smith Hall or any other university building. Battle welcomed the ban because he wanted Smith Hall kept as a library.
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Thomas F. Lloyd buys the brick house on West Cameron Avenue later called the Lloyd-Wiley House
With his West End gin and grist mill doing well, Thomas F. Lloyd bought a two-story brick house on West Cameron Avenue in Chapel Hill in 1885. It has been known since as the Lloyd-Wiley House.
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Mrs. William L. DeRosset and others give St. Matthew's a Bible
Mrs. William L. DeRosset, with family and friends, presented the church's Bible as an Easter offering.
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A rector's chair is given to St. Matthew's in memory of Sarah Mary Matthews Murphy
Her husband and children gave the rector's chair on the south side of the altar in memory of Sarah Mary Matthews Murphy.
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The university dedicates Memorial Hall
Memorial Hall, the big arched-roof auditorium near the west end of Cameron Avenue, was dedicated in June 1885. It had no heat and swallowed speakers' voices, so it served mainly during commencement week and at times as a gymnasium until it was judged unsafe and torn down.
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Emile Alexander de Schweinitz is awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree
At the 1885 commencement, held in the newly dedicated Memorial Hall, the university conferred the Ph.D. on de Schweinitz, who became a government chemist and a professor in Washington.
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The trustees elect Nelson B. Henry to a new chair of the science and art of teaching
Using the new appropriation, the trustees filled a chair of the science and art of teaching with Nelson B. Henry of Missouri, and the university opened a normal department with a teachers' course. Winston later called it the first chair of pedagogy in North Carolina or any Southern university.
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The trustees enlarge the faculty from nine to fifteen
Meeting in Raleigh, the trustees chose from several hundred applicants Thomas Hume for English, Walter D. Toy for modern languages, William B. Phillips for agricultural chemistry and mining and James Lee Love for mathematics. A faculty circular then announced postgraduate courses toward the A.M., Ph.M. and Ph.D., free of tuition to graduates of any college.
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The new Board of Education sets aside $50 for an institute for Black teachers
At its first meeting in the Hillsboro courthouse, the board created under the 1885 school law organized with Joseph Harris as chairman and voted fifty dollars to hold a training institute for the county's Black teachers.
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The school board requires the superintendent to visit every school and grade its teachers
On resolutions offered by Professor Winston, the board told Superintendent Currie to spend a day at each public school while in session, give each teacher a mark for practical skill, meet each district committee and report on where districts and schoolhouses should be, at $2.50 a day.
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Chapel Hill Methodists vote to build a second church
At the quarterly conference, pastor R. B. John moved that a five-member committee build a new church, and former pastor Adolphus W. Mangum spoke to the need. By June 1887 the walls were ready for the roof, and the building was finished early in 1889.
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James H. Pratt's will leaves the Cabe farm to the family of Lucinda Harris
Pratt left the 140-acre Cabe tract and the 160-acre Jehu Brown tract to Lucinda Harris for life and then to her daughters Emma and Jane, keeping a promise to provide for the family after her husband Benton Harris died in the Civil War. The Harrises held the farm until 1942.
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Mary Ruffin Smith dies and leaves the university a Chatham County plantation
Smith, daughter of the Orange County doctor and congressman James S. Smith, left about 1,500 acres in Chatham County to the university to educate poor students, the Francis Jones Smith Fund. She left small bequests to people formerly enslaved in her household and most of her estate to the Episcopal Church, with Kemp Battle as executor.
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Eben Alexander comes to Chapel Hill as professor of Greek
Eben Alexander, who had taught ancient languages at East Tennessee University for thirteen years, accepted the professorship of Greek at the University of North Carolina in 1886 and moved to Chapel Hill.
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James Lee Love becomes University Librarian and secretary of the faculty
In the 1886-87 session the mathematics professor James Lee Love took on the posts of librarian and secretary of the faculty, after representing the university in the merger of the literary societies' libraries with its own.
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Miss Heartt keeps a private primary school in Hillsborough, later with Mrs. Bragg
A small private school for young children run by Miss Heartt appears in the Hillsborough paper by June 1886. From 1890 she taught it with Mrs. Bragg, and the two advertised each August that they would resume classes, the last such notice found being for August 28, 1911.
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Robert L. Strowd marries and likely builds a two-story L-plan house on land from his father
Strowd, a farmer who also kept a store on Franklin Street, received the tract from his father in 1886 and married Frances (Fannie) Headen that year; the house at 51 Davie Circle probably went up then. It stood alone at the edge of town until the area filled in during the 1910s and 1920s.
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The university begins leasing its Franklin Street land to faculty for houses
Because a federal court had ruled about 600 acres around the campus inalienable, the trustees leased a Franklin Street parcel to James Lee Love for fifty years, followed by leases to Charles Baskerville and Francis K. Ball. Later, on legal advice, such lots were sold outright to faculty members.
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Thomas F. Lloyd buys out his partner and adds a flour mill by the depot
Lloyd bought William Pritchard's share of the steam grist mill and cotton gin the two had built north of the station in 1883, and had a flour mill built on the property.
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Two rear wings are added to Person Hall as chemistry laboratories
The university's only other building work of the late 1800s besides Memorial Hall was a pair of wings on the back of Person Hall, added in 1886 and 1892 to hold its first chemistry laboratories.
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Wilson Caldwell is elected to the Chapel Hill board of commissioners
Placed on the Republican ticket without seeking it, Wilson Caldwell, head of the university's labor force, was elected a Chapel Hill commissioner in 1886, defeating Professor Ralph Graves.
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E. H. Pogue & Co. hold the opening sale at the Hillsboro Tobacco Warehouse
The Hillsboro Tobacco Warehouse, run by E. H. Pogue & Co., held its opening sale on Tuesday, January 5, 1886, and the Observer reported a heavy break with good prices. Three days earlier Pogue and fourteen other men had incorporated the Orange County Tobacco Association to buy and sell leaf tobacco.
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W. V. Andrews takes Professor Winston's seat on the county Board of Education
Professor Winston of the university left the new Orange County Board of Education six months after its first meeting, and W. V. Andrews was named in his place.
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Superintendent Currie's first annual report lists each district schoolhouse as log or frame
Currie's report read to the board in January 1886 gave the first district-by-district inventory of schoolhouses for both races, most of them log buildings valued at $50 to $200, and a school term averaging ten weeks.
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Professor John DeBerniere Hooper dies
Hooper, a first-honor graduate of 1831 who taught French, Latin and then Greek at Chapel Hill before and after the war, died soon after resigning in 1885 because of failing health. Student Solomon C. Weill taught his Greek classes until Eben Alexander arrived.
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Dickerson's Chapel trustees buy the old courthouse from the Philadelphia Friends
Trustees of the Philadelphia Friends' association for the relief of freedmen sold the old Baptist church lot, with the former courthouse on it, to the trustees of Hillsborough's African Methodist Episcopal church for $800. The congregation had worshipped and kept school there for twenty years.
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The annual YMCA convention meets at Chapel Hill
The Young Men's Christian Association's annual convention met at Chapel Hill, with sessions in Gerrard Hall, reports from associations around the state and a Sunday talk to townspeople in the Baptist church. Professor J. W. Gore was chosen its president.
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The literary societies merge their libraries with the university's
The Philanthropic Society voted almost unanimously and the Dialectic 42 to 30 to join their books to the university library in Smith Hall, to be called the Library of the University of North Carolina endowed by the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies and opened every weekday. Borrowing rose from 3,657 books in 1885-86 to 4,761 the next year.
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Haywood Craig, a Black man, is received into the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church
The session received Haywood Craig on profession of faith; the book records him under a heading for the church's Black members.
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D. C. Parks is elected a Hillsborough town commissioner
At a quiet town election Hillsborough chose George C. Corbin mayor and elected A. W. Graham, James Webb Jr., J. W. Hooker, William Anderson, D. M. Laws, D. C. Parks and William H. Newman commissioners.
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Superintendent Currie reports a teachers' institute in session for the county's white teachers
Currie wrote to the Orange County Observer that the institute for white teachers was in session with eighteen enrolled. Professor Henry and Mr. Shields of Chapel Hill taught methods of teaching by day, and a public lecture on education was given each night.
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The school board asks the commissioners for a special tax to keep schools open four months
Superintendent Currie found the schools needed $2,000 beyond their apportionment to run the four months the law required, and the board petitioned the county commissioners to levy it. The board also set a floor of $40 for each white school and $30 for each Black school.
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The Charleston earthquake shakes Chapel Hill
The earthquake that wrecked Charleston rattled windows and moved bottles on the shelves of the chemical laboratory at Chapel Hill without doing damage. Some students in the New East Building fled outdoors.
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Student Jacob A. Freeze is shot dead during a clash between students and Black residents
After a student quarreled with a Black man, Pat Brewer, a group of students besieged Jack Barbee's house in Chapel Hill, where Brewer and others had gathered, and a shot from inside killed Jacob A. Freeze, a first-year student from Rowan County, about 1 a.m. on Sunday, October 10, 1886. After the state Supreme Court upheld the sentences in December 1887, Brewer went to the penitentiary for ten years and Frank Kirby and Jesse Harris for five each. Battle, writing later, gives Pat seven years and says he escaped.
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Frank Porter Graham was born
Frank Porter Graham was born in Fayetteville; he later led UNC.
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Students hold the first of a series of gymnastic contests
On Thanksgiving Day students competed on the horizontal and parallel bars, ladders, Indian clubs and swings and in a half-mile race, a tug of war and a high jump, with Francis P. Venable calling the events. It was the first of a series of such contests.
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Fire destroys the old president's house on Christmas morning
The house Helen Hooper built, later home to Presidents Caldwell and Swain, burned the day after Professor Thomas Hume's family moved in. Fire spread from boxes and straw in an outbuilding, and Chapel Hill had no fire engine or ladder company to stop it.
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Pleasant H. Dalton's pastorate at New Hope is dissolved amid a divided session
Dalton offered his resignation in February 1886, but most of the congregation would not accept it; the relation was dissolved that December after the session fell into disagreement. The church stood vacant about a year while a presbytery commission settled the trouble.
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Berry's Grove Baptist Church is organized
Berry's Grove Baptist Church was organized in 1887 with A. T. Hord as first pastor and built a 400-seat church the next year.
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Edmund Strudwick of Norfolk buys the Turner house on North Churton Street for his mother and sisters
Norfolk cotton merchant Edmund Strudwick bought the house built for tinner Josiah Turner Sr. and enlarged it for his mother and sisters, apparently adding the gables, bay windows and new sash that give it a Victorian look.
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Francis D. Winston becomes a trustee of the university
Francis D. Winston of Bertie County joined the university's board of trustees in 1887, eight years after he graduated. He served on the board for more than half a century and attended sixty-one consecutive commencements.
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James Lee Love builds a house on East Franklin Street for his wife, June Spencer
Professor James Lee Love built the one-story house at 410 East Franklin Street in 1887, on the lot of the old president's house that burned the Christmas before, for his wife June, the only daughter of Cornelia Phillips Spencer. It is known as the Spencer House after his mother-in-law.
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Professor Thomas Hume buys the house across from the Baptist church
Burned out of the president's house, Professor Thomas Hume bought the West Franklin Street house opposite the Baptist church. It had been home to the Baptist minister Needham Byron Cobb until the congregation turned its school building into a parsonage.
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Stephen B. Weeks publishes a register of the Philanthropic Society
Stephen Beauregard Weeks, class of 1886, published a 72-page catalogue of Philanthropic Society members since 1795, with a short history of the society and notes on members' careers.
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Stephen B. Weeks teaches as the university's instructor in English
For the 1887-88 session the university made Stephen B. Weeks, who had just taken his master's degree, its instructor in English, while Claudius Dockery became instructor in Latin.
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The county school board adds nine new school districts under Superintendent Currie
In the first years of the 1885 board, Superintendent James L. Currie laid out school districts and appointed committeemen, and by 1887 nine more districts had been created. In June 1886 he had told the board it needed $2,000 to keep the schools open four months.
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The legislature moves the land-grant income from the university to a new A. and M. College
After a campaign led by Leonidas L. Polk, the General Assembly of 1887 took the $7,500 yearly land-scrip interest from the university for a separate Agricultural and Mechanical College at Raleigh, leaving the university $20,000 a year. A House bill to cut that to $12,500 was tabled, and the university dropped pedagogics, mining engineering, animal breeding and practical horticulture.
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The revived Hillsboro Recorder moves Dennis Heartt's old press into its office
The new Hillsboro Recorder reported that it had just moved the press and some wood type Dennis Heartt brought from Connecticut for the first Recorder of 1820 out of a Hillsborough cellar, where they had sat since 1867, and into its own office.
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The school board forms the Mary Smith school district along the Chatham line
A new district in Chapel Hill Township next to Chatham County was created and its school named the Mary Smith School, District 39.
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The Webb & Co. tobacco partnership in Hillsborough is dissolved
James Webb Jr., Joseph C. Webb and George C. Corbin gave notice that their tobacco manufacturing firm, Webb & Co., was dissolved, leaving the two Webbs to collect its debts and wind up its business. The firm had been making tobacco in Hillsborough since at least 1881.
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The school board pays H. O. Strain for an acre to build the Orange Church school
The board allowed H. O. Strain $20 for one acre on which to build a schoolhouse for white children of the Orange Church district.
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James L. Currie is installed as pastor of New Hope
Currie, who had preached there briefly in 1874, was installed as pastor; the relation was dissolved in November 1889 after new troubles in the session.
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Battle Lane is cut along the edge of the president's house lot
After the president's house burned, the eastern edge of its lot on East Franklin Street was opened as Battle Lane, and the rest of the eastern part was leased to Professor James Lee Love for fifty years at $15 a year.
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David S. Payne marries Eliza Mayo
The marriage joined two Black Hillsborough families tied to the Burwell School: Eliza was a granddaughter of the school's laundress Eliza Chavious, and David was the son of Bettie Payne and a grandson of Rev. William Payne, a founder of Dickerson Chapel.
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Frederick Strudwick co-owns and edits the Hillsborough Recorder
On 11 August 1887 Strudwick and C. E. Parish became co-owners and editors of the Hillsborough Recorder. Their first issue promised a firm and conservative stand on matters of public welfare and a thoroughly Democratic line in politics. Strudwick left the paper after the issue of 8 March 1888.
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Julius I. Foust heads the Caldwell Institute at Caldwell
The Caldwell Institute, a school for boys and girls in northern Orange County, advertised with Julius I. Foust as principal, offering primary through higher studies and music.
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The school board forms Occoneechee school district from land south of the Eno
The board created District 41, Occoneechee, from land south of the Eno River and part of the Hillsboro district.
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The school board condemns a lot for a school for Black children at Walnut Grove
After two committees were named in March and September 1887 to condemn half an acre in the Walnut Grove district, the board had the deed for the site of a schoolhouse for Black children recorded on October 1.
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The superintendent's report shows Black schools running half the term of white schools
Currie's annual report counted 33 white and 25 Black public schools. White schools averaged close to nine weeks of teaching and Black schools under four and a half, and Black women teachers earned $17 a month against $24 for white women.
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A carved eagle lectern at the Chapel of the Cross memorializes Mary Ruffin Smith
A lectern topped by a carved wooden eagle was placed in the Chapel of the Cross nave in memory of Mary Ruffin Smith, with an inscription on its base dated 1888.
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Alphonso J. McDade returns as mayor of Chapel Hill
McDade served a second stretch as mayor from 1888 through 1890, following W. N. Pritchard. John H. Watson succeeded him in 1891.
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Edward Atkins Rosemond builds his house on East Tryon Street
Edward Atkins Rosemond built a two-story I-house on the East Tryon Street lot he had bought in 1885. It was enlarged at the rear by 1905 and given a front-gabled east wing by 1911.
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Hillsborough's commissioners sell the Public Spring Lot
The town sold its Public Spring Lot, one of the public lots set aside when Hillsborough was laid out, for $100. The finance committee's report for the year ending May 1, 1889 lists the sale.
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Piney Grove Baptist Church is organized
W. M. Ray organized Piney Grove Baptist Church, a Black congregation, and served as its first pastor.
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Richison Nichols buys the old Orange Hotel and builds its piazza over the West King Street sidewalk
Richison Nichols bought Isaiah Spencer's inn, apparently in 1888, and built the two-story piazza that reaches the street. The 1888 Sanborn map shows it as the Occoneechee Hotel, the name it kept until 1908.
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Samuel M. Gattis becomes chairman of the Orange County Democratic executive committee
In the year he began practicing law in Hillsborough, Gattis was elected chairman of the Orange County Democratic executive committee and a delegate to the party's national convention.
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St. Mary's Chapel is reorganized as a mission
Twenty years after losing its standing as a parish, St. Mary's Chapel was reorganized in 1888 as a mission served from Hillsborough. Murphy wished it had long since been joined with Salem Chapel and Flat River under a minister of its own.
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Thomas West Harris, first dean of UNC's medical school, is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
Thomas West Harris (1839-1888), the first dean of the university's medical school, was buried in the cemetery.
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UNC plays its first intercollegiate football season
Organized football began at UNC in 1888.
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University Lodge No. 408 is chartered at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill Masons revived their lodge under a new charter as University Lodge No. 408, with W. N. Pritchard as first Master. It met for years above a store on Franklin Street.
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The school board authorizes a countywide summer institute for teachers
The board empowered Superintendent Currie to hold a teachers' institute for the whole county that summer.
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Judge Walter Clark gives the annual address at the 1888 commencement
Chosen by the Philanthropic Society, Walter Clark gave the annual address on the Wednesday of the 1888 commencement, speaking on the opportunities before young men and the duties that came with them.
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Stephen B. Weeks receives the university's first doctorate in English
At the 1888 commencement Weeks was the one candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy, with a thesis on 'The Maid of France and Schiller Versus Shakespeare.' It was the first doctorate given in English at the university.
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Black parents in the Cool Spring district petition for Black school committeemen
Black residents of the Cool Spring district asked the board to replace their school committee with Black members of their own choosing. The board tabled the request.
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The school board creates Cole's District at Walnut Grove on Anthony Cole's petition
After Anthony Cole petitioned for a school for about 65 children, the superintendent held a public meeting and the board set up Cole's District, No. 42, cut from parts of the Caldwell, Little River, Oak Grove and Walnut Grove districts.
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The school board forms Bethel district for the Bethel Church community
On a petition from the Bethel Church community the board created a new district, Bethel, No. 43.
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Fire destroys the Parish and Berry buildings and the Recorder printing office in Hillsborough
A fire before dawn burned Postmaster Harry L. Parish's brick building, which held the post office, his store and the Hillsboro Recorder's printing office, then spread to the three-story Berry building next door. The Recorder lost its press, type and subscription books.
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Hillsborough church men organize a Young Men's Christian Association at the Presbyterian manse
Men from the town's churches met at the Presbyterian manse on a Monday night, adopted a constitution and bylaws, and elected Charles M. Parks president and Joseph A. Harris secretary. The next meeting was called for the manse on December 10.
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The school board runs Harmony School directly when no committee can be found
Unable to find anyone to serve as its committee, the board placed Harmony School under its own supervision so a school could be taught there.
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Samuel M. Gattis becomes clerk of the Orange County superior court
Judge Gilmer appointed the young Hillsborough lawyer clerk of the superior court after Dr. Pride Jones resigned. Gattis was elected to the office in 1889 and held it until 1894.
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A small office from the Turner-Strudwick grounds is moved to East Orange Street
A one-story frame office on the Turner-Strudwick House lot, shown on John Bailey's 1839 map when the lot belonged to Josiah Turner Sr., was moved next door to 110 East Orange Street, two years after Edmund Strudwick of Norfolk bought the property. It was later enlarged into a house and rebuilt in 1987. It is not Dr. Edmund Strudwick's medical office on West King Street.
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Barbee Drive is cut beside Algernon Barbee's house lot
A road was opened along the eastern edge of Algernon S. Barbee's residential lot on Franklin Street and named Barbee Drive.
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Chapel Hill physician William Peter Mallett dies
Mallett, the village's leading doctor, who had lived in Chapel Hill for more than thirty years, died in the fall of 1889.
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Cornelia Phillips Spencer compiles a catalogue of every student since
For the 1889 centennial the university issued a general catalogue of students from 1795 to 1889, prepared by Cornelia Phillips Spencer after long correspondence and checked by Eben Alexander. It held 5,422 names, with Battle's sketches of the university's history.
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First Baptist Church of Hillsborough repairs its church and ties the walls with rods
In 1889 the Romanesque Revival brick church at 201 West King Street, which John Berry finished by 1868, was fully repaired, including reinforcing its walls with rods.
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Fred Smith begins about fifty years as conductor on the Chapel Hill branch train
Captain Fred Smith became conductor on the University Station branch in 1889 and kept the job for about half a century, until passenger service ended.
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James Lee Love leaves Chapel Hill for Harvard
Love left the university with his family in 1889 to teach mathematics at Harvard. His mother-in-law, Cornelia Phillips Spencer, stayed on in his East Franklin Street house.
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Law professor John Manning builds his house on East Franklin Street
Before 1892 Laura Phillips sold John Manning the lot west of the Presbyterian manse, and he built his home there. Manning had earlier set up the university's law school, and his daughter Mary stayed on in the house after he died in 1899.
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Membership in the literary societies becomes voluntary
For many years every student had to join the Dialectic or Philanthropic Society. As the law, medical and pharmacy students grew in number and unwilling members disrupted meetings, joining was made voluntary in 1889.
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Mount Adar Baptist Church is organized
W. H. Whitted and A. J. Compton organized Mount Adar Baptist Church. A. T. Hord, first pastor at Berry's Grove two years earlier, was its first pastor too.
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Orange County names its first superintendent of health
Ten years after the 1879 law allowing county boards of health, Orange organized one, and the state health board's report for 1889-90 lists Dr. D. C. Parris of Hillsborough as part-time superintendent. Dr. C. D. Jones succeeded him in 1898 and served until the full-time department began in 1935.
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Students found the Order of Gimghoul after hearing the Dromgoole story
Five undergraduates founded a secret society after hearing university president Kemp Battle tell the Dromgoole story. They first called it the Order of Dromgoole and later shortened the name to Gimghoul.
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The Keystone Bridge Company replaces the wooden railroad bridge over the Eno at Hillsboro with an iron one
Crews of the Keystone Bridge Company of Pittsburgh began replacing the wooden railroad bridge over the Eno near the Hillsboro depot with an iron bridge, expecting to finish by August 10. Trains kept running across it at three miles an hour.
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The Presbyterian church buys the Phillips house on East Franklin Street for a manse
After Charles Phillips left Chapel Hill and died in 1889, the Chapel Hill Presbyterian church bought his former home at 513 East Franklin Street and made it the minister's residence. Bryant dates the purchase to 1891.
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The YMCA takes charge of regular gymnasium training
The trustees accepted a YMCA plan to put gymnasium exercises on a system, with each student paying a small fee, and Lacy L. Little, a recent honor graduate and former football captain trained at Springfield, was hired as trainer.
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The university offers Mary Ruffin Smith's Jones Grove tract for sale in lots
A committee of Kemp P. Battle, John Manning and A. H. Merritt advertised for sale, in lots, the 1,500-acre Jones Grove tract just over the line in Chatham County that Mary Ruffin Smith had left the university. The sales took years and brought about $15,000, part of it later lent to start Chapel Hill's first electric plant.
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Orange Presbytery decides an estate dispute that had divided New Hope's session
A quarrel over a member's settlement of an estate, which Craig thought belonged in the civil courts, had been brought before the session. An adjourned meeting of the presbytery decided it, and the ruling deepened the split in the session.
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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 3, 2026.
