Search and filters
Search and filters · 1 active
19 dated events match your filters.
Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–19.Back to highlights
Entries
Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
-
John Sprunt Hill endows a fellowship in history
In his 1903 alumni address John Sprunt Hill gave the interest on $4,000 to set up a fellowship in the department of history. The first year's interest was to go toward a YMCA building.
-
John Sprunt Hill endows the North Carolina Collection
John Sprunt Hill gave the university library money for collecting historical and literary material about North Carolina, the start of what became the North Carolina Collection.
-
Branson's University News Letter publishes its first issue
E. C. Branson's University News Letter, a weekly one-page sheet packed with facts about North Carolina gathered by him and his students, first appeared in mid-November 1914 with a run of four thousand copies. Its items were widely reprinted by the state's papers, and circulation grew to fifteen thousand.
-
Horace Williams's war remarks bring a trustee inquiry that clears the faculty
After the Charlotte Observer quoted philosophy professor Horace Williams in May 1917 calling the war a clash of national interests, critics questioned his loyalty, and trustee John Sprunt Hill pressed the matter. The trustees' visiting committee investigated and in June 1918 cleared Williams and the faculty of disloyalty.
-
Eugene C. Branson proposes calling the planned social science school the School of Public Welfare
Branson had urged a school of social science on Graham in 1916. In 1919, worried that "social science" sounded like socialism to North Carolinians, he proposed the name School of Public Welfare, which John Sprunt Hill endorsed, and suggested Hill endow it.
-
John Sprunt Hill offers the Graves lot and $10,000 for an alumni hotel
Hill offered the Graves property across from the west entrance plus $10,000 if 1,000 to 1,500 alumni would each give $100 toward a hotel whose profits would go to the University. The investors did not come, so he built the Carolina Inn himself.
-
A hard-surface road links Chapel Hill and Durham
A new eighteen-foot concrete road ran from the center of Chapel Hill to Durham, credited to trustee John Sprunt Hill as a state highway commissioner. Franklin Street merchants declined to pay for paving its edges, so mud borders remained.
-
John Sprunt Hill chairs the trustees' buildings committee
As a university trustee, John Sprunt Hill chaired the committee on university buildings during the campus building program of 1923 to 1931.
-
Trustees ask $350,000 to start a four-year medical college, and the legislature ignores it
With the joint plan dead, the trustees heard delegations from Raleigh, Charlotte, Greensboro and Durham, chose no site, and voted to ask the General Assembly for $350,000 toward a four-year medical college. The legislature did not act; in June 1923 the trustees voted for a four-year program at Chapel Hill.
-
John Sprunt Hill lets the building contract for the Carolina Inn
John Sprunt Hill, for the incorporators of the Carolina Club, let the contract for the Carolina Inn to H. L. Smith of Durham. The old Graves house on the site, at the west gate of the campus, was to be moved south of the inn and joined to it for use as a student boarding house.
-
The Carolina Inn is built
John Sprunt Hill built the Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill.
-
Trustees adopt higher law school standards over Governor Morrison's objection
At a four-hour meeting in the governor's office, attended by about half the trustees, 45 of them lawyers, Morrison argued against stiffer entrance rules, but a voice vote approved Chase's plans. The board put off naming a dean rather than accept Chase's out-of-state choice.
-
Manning Hall is dedicated as the law school's new home
Supreme court justices, superior court judges, lawyers and alumni, 200 or more, came for the dedication and lunched at the new Carolina Inn with John Sprunt Hill as host.
-
Kenan Memorial Stadium opens
Kenan Memorial Stadium, the gift of William Rand Kenan Jr., hosted its first event on November 12, 1927, when Carolina beat Davidson 27 to 0. It was formally dedicated before the Thanksgiving Day game against Virginia on November 24, when Governor Angus McLean accepted it for the state and the University.
-
Farmers of Durham and nearby counties organize the Farmers Exchange cooperative
About 400 farmers and farm leaders formed the Farmers Exchange in March 1930 to market farm products and buy supplies at cost. John Sprunt Hill of Durham backed it, and by 1952 it served about 4,100 members in five counties including Orange.
-
The old Carnegie Library is dedicated as the music building
After the library moved to its new building, the Carnegie Library was remodeled for the music department with an auditorium and a Reuter organ, most of the cost given by the Hill family. It was dedicated on November 14, 1930, and named Hill Music Hall by trustee resolution in the summer of 1931.
-
The new Memorial Hall is dedicated
Chase had found the money for the replacement auditorium within university accounts, helped by $5,000 from John Sprunt Hill, but none was left to furnish it. Guests at the dedication sat on the scarred heart-pine benches saved from the old hall, along with its marble tablets to the Civil War dead.
-
The Hill family gives the Carolina Inn to the university
John Sprunt Hill and his family gave the Carolina Inn, which he had built in 1924, to the university on the condition that its income support the North Carolina Collection.
-
The Carolina Inn completes the first of its rear additions
The Carolina Inn, which Arthur Nash designed for John Sprunt Hill, gained a rear addition in 1940, the first of three (later ones in 1970 and 1995) that tracked the university's growth.
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 1, 2026.
