Search and filters
Search and filters · 1 active
3 dated events match your filters.
Searched the full chronology of 6,892 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–3.Back to highlights
Entries
Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
-
Robert Donaldson has A. J. Davis design a campus hall for the Philanthropic Society that is never built
In the 1830s alumnus Robert Donaldson, by then living in New York, hired Alexander Jackson Davis to design a hall for the Philanthropic Society on the campus. It was not built, but Donaldson kept up a correspondence with President Swain about gardens, architects and furnishings that led to Davis's later work at Chapel Hill.
-
Trustees tell Swain to ask Robert Donaldson about plans for society halls and a landscape gardener
In October 1843 the board directed President Swain to write to Robert Donaldson in New York about how best to get plans for new literary society halls and to find someone skilled in laying out the grounds, and at what price.
-
Swain authorizes Donaldson to bring architect A. J. Davis to the university
In a letter from Raleigh dated November 28, 1843, Swain told Donaldson he might invite Alexander Jackson Davis to Chapel Hill to make working drawings and specifications, with $100 for travel. The letter opened Davis's service as the university's architect and planner of its grounds.
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.
