Search and filters
Search and filters · 1 active
8 dated events match your filters.
Searched the full chronology of 7,415 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–8.Back to highlights
- Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
-
James Phillips buys Ben and Dilsey, an enslaved married couple, soon after reaching Chapel Hill
Soon after he arrived in Chapel Hill, professor James Phillips bought a married couple, Ben and Dilsey. They lived with the family for decades and appear throughout Spencer's letters.
People: James Phillips · Benjamin Craig · Dilsey Craig
- Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
-
James Phillips pays Dilsey her first wages as a free woman
Dilsey and her husband Ben stayed with the Phillips family after emancipation, and in 1866 James Phillips paid Dilsey her first wages as a freedwoman with the first five-dollar gold piece he received after the war.
People: Dilsey Craig
-
Ben and Dilsey leave the Phillips household to live on their own
Ben and Dilsey, held by the Phillips family since the 1820s and kept on as servants after emancipation, left Cornelia Phillips Spencer's household in February 1868. Spencer wrote that she hoped the parting was only for a time.
People: Benjamin Craig · Cornelia Phillips Spencer · Dilsey Craig
-
St. Paul AME buys a church lot from Benjamin and Dilsy Craig
The congregation paid fifty-five dollars on April 15, 1878 for a church lot bought from Benjamin and Dilsy Craig, and was raising money in December 1879 and January 1880 to finish a church there. In 1892 it built its present church across Merritt Mill Road from the earlier one, on land the 1983 Carrboro inventory says the Hargraves and Caldwell families gave about 1890.
People: Benjamin Craig · Dilsey Craig
Subject: St. Paul AME Church
-
Dilsey Craig, enslaved in the household of professor James Phillips, dies
Dilsey Craig (1802-1894) and Ben Craig were enslaved by the family of mathematics professor James Phillips and lived in the brick kitchen behind 501 East Franklin Street. Dilsey remained with the family long after freedom, and a memorial marks her in the old Chapel Hill Cemetery.
People: Dilsey Craig
Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
- Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
-
June Spencer Love sets a stone on Dilsey Craig's grave in the Chapel Hill cemetery
When June Spencer Love placed grave markers in the Chapel Hill cemetery for her mother, her grandparents, and her uncle Samuel Phillips and his wife, she also put one on the grave of Dilsey, who had been enslaved in the James Phillips household and stayed on as its cook after freedom. Love writes that both June and her mother had looked after Dilsey in her old age.
People: Dilsey Craig · June Spencer Love
Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
-
A Phillips grandchild sets a headstone for Dilsey Craig
A small granite headstone was placed over the grave of Dilsey Craig, who died in 1894 after sixty years enslaved, mostly in the household of Professor James Phillips. Its inscription says a Phillips grandchild erected it, and its style suggests the 1930s.
People: James Phillips · Dilsey Craig
Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
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 3, 2026.
