Chronology

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1. Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865

2. 1854
   Property or economic transaction · McCauley & Long store, East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill David McCauley and Thomas A. Long take over Jesse Hargrave's store

   After Hargrave's death, his business was sold to the two young clerks he had hired in 1850. McCauley and Long's general store appears on the maps through 1868.

3. Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899

4. between 1869 and 1873
   Property or economic transaction · Union Hotel (later Chapel Hill Hotel), Franklin Street, Chapel Hill David McCauley buys the Union Hotel and renames it the Chapel Hill Hotel

   McCauley bought the Union Hotel, the house Nancy Hilliard had once kept as the Eagle Hotel, and gave it the name Chapel Hill Hotel. He also bought the building at the northeast corner of Franklin and Henderson streets where Richard Benbury Saunders had kept his drugstore.

5. between 1869 and 1873
   Chapel Hill David McCauley lets Nancy Hilliard live rent free in her old hotel

   After losing her house and failing at hotel work in Raleigh, Nancy Hilliard came back to Chapel Hill destitute, and David McCauley, who now owned her former Eagle Hotel, let her live rent free in a room there. Former students sent her money until her death in 1873.

6. 1872
   Property or economic transaction · David McCauley's general store, Franklin Street, Chapel Hill David McCauley buys out his store partner Thomas A. Long

   Merchant David McCauley bought out his partner, Thomas A. Long, and kept the Franklin Street general store on his own. Bryant credits the store's success, and McCauley's 1873 marriage to a daughter of Sidney Mulholland Barbee, for the property he was able to buy afterward.

7. 1878
   Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill Hotel, Franklin Street, Chapel Hill John H. Watson buys the Chapel Hill Hotel from David McCauley

   John H. Watson, a brother of Jones Watson, bought the Chapel Hill Hotel from McCauley. By 1891 he had taken W. W. Pickard as a partner.

8. 1884
   Property or economic transaction · Northeast corner of Franklin and Henderson streets, Chapel Hill 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.

9. Early twentieth century · 1900–1944

10. about 1910
    Construction or physical change · 220 McCauley Street, Chapel Hill Thomas W. Strowd builds a two-story house on McCauley Street

    At 220 McCauley Street, on lots he bought from David McCauley in 1901, Thomas Strowd built about 1910 a big frame Queen Anne house, hip-roofed, with a scallop-trimmed two-story bay and a porch that wraps around it, part of the wave of such houses in west Chapel Hill after 1900.

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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 2, 2026.