Chronology

Search and filters

Entries

1. Revolution and early republic · 1775–1799

2. August 10, 1793
   Construction or physical change · Chapel Hill Commissioners mark out the sites of the university's buildings and grounds

   Davie, Alfred Moore, Alexander Mebane and Thomas Blount met on the Chapel Hill tract and fixed the building sites, with land set aside for offices, avenues and ornamental grounds.

3. October 12, 1793
   Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill The first town lots in Chapel Hill are sold at auction

   After the Old East cornerstone was laid, the commissioners auctioned the village lots on the spot; 29 lots brought more than 1,500 pounds, and one was held back for the president's house.

Suggest a correction to an entry →

A dated event is a fact, filed on the page of the subject it belongs to: a person, a place, a theme, or a named event or history. Pages are subjects, with their own works and sources; the Place, community, or institution filter also gathers the institutions that recur in the entries without a page of their own. The page opens on the highlights; a search or any filter looks through every dated event and storyline, and each filter’s counts say how many entries choosing it would show alongside the others. A storyline is a longer history that gathers related dated events, and each storyline’s page lists its own. Counts give dated events and storylines separately. Dates come from the sources named on the cards and from the index’s event pages; where sources disagree, the card follows the county records. Entries marked approximate or needing research say so on the card; the rest were checked against the source named on it. The correction link under the entries opens the contact form; name the entry and its date and the Friends will check the source. Suggest an event →

Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 2, 2026.