Chronology

Elisha Mitchell arrives in Chapel Hill as professor of mathematics

Elisha Mitchell, a Yale graduate from Connecticut, arrived at the University of North Carolina in January 1818 as professor of mathematics and natural philosophy. He taught at Chapel Hill until his death in 1857, moving to chemistry, geology and mineralogy in 1825.

Elisha Mitchell is ordained by the Presbytery of Orange at Hillsborough

In 1821 the Presbytery of Orange, meeting in Hillsborough, ordained Professor Elisha Mitchell, who had been licensed to preach by the Congregational Church.

Trustees vote to raise Old East a story and build Old West

At Caldwell's urging, and against the faculty's plea to spend on books and apparatus, the board voted to enlarge Old East, build Old West to match and start a new chapel, borrowing from banks against Tennessee land sales. Architect William Nichols ran the work, and the South Building's Prayer Hall became a chemistry laboratory.

People: Joseph Caldwell · Elisha Mitchell · William Nichols

Subject: South Building · Gerrard Hall · Old East · Old West

Bethlehem Presbyterian Church is organized

Elisha Mitchell, Elijah Graves and Samuel Child led the organization of Bethlehem Presbyterian Church, which built its first church the next year.

People: Elisha Mitchell · John Knox Witherspoon

Subject: Bethlehem Presbyterian Church

Professor Denison Olmsted is hired to make the state's geological survey

The Board of Agriculture, created in 1822, was allowed in 1823 to employ someone to survey the state's geology and minerals at $250 a year. It chose Olmsted, whose published report Battle thought probably the first of any state, and Elisha Mitchell later carried on the work.

People: Elisha Mitchell

Faculty and Orange County trustees expel two students who attacked professors

Two students, drunk from the village grog shop and armed with a club and a pistol, went out after members of the faculty and assaulted two of them. The trustees living in Orange County were called to sit with the faculty, and the two were expelled.

People: Elisha Mitchell · Duncan Cameron · Thomas Ruffin · James Webb

Trustees adopt by-laws creating a resident superintendent and a student uniform

On Bartlett Yancey's motion the trustees created a superintendent of university property living at Chapel Hill, who was to receive and pay out all student money, and they prescribed a plain uniform dress and forbade boots. Chapel Hill merchant Thomas H. Taylor was appointed; in January 1829 the office passed to the faculty, who chose Elisha Mitchell.

People: Elisha Mitchell

Fever outbreak kills three university students

A serious sickness, which Battle identifies as typhoid fever, struck the university in August and September 1825 and three students died, among them William H. Beard and Zenas Johnston. The acting president urged the trustees to engage a resident physician.

People: Elisha Mitchell

Students organize a temperance society

Some students formed a Temperance Society in the summer of 1829, and Battle credits it with reducing drinking of spirits at the college. At its request Elisha Mitchell gave an address on intemperance in 1831 that was printed.

People: Elisha Mitchell

Friends of education organize the North Carolina Institute of Education at Chapel Hill

During commencement week a meeting adopted a constitution on Benjamin M. Smith's motion, elected Simmons J. Baker president and made professors Elisha Mitchell, William Hooper and James Phillips its executive committee. The Institute met at the next few commencements and enrolled about 130 members before it lapsed.

People: Benjamin Smith · Elisha Mitchell · James Phillips

Isaac C. Partridge publishes The Harbinger

Isaac C. Partridge's weekly The Harbinger, one of the county's first literary periodicals, began at Chapel Hill on August 27, 1833, after a prospectus that January, and ran for about a year. It covered the sciences and arts and leaned on professors Elisha Mitchell and William Hooper for its contents.

People: Elisha Mitchell · William Hooper

Trustees make the senior professor Caldwell's deputy and add an adjunct professor

When Caldwell's illness first forced him to ask for help, the trustees gave the professor of longest standing, Elisha Mitchell, power to act in the president's place and created an adjunct professorship of natural philosophy and astronomy, filled by Walker Anderson. Mitchell served as acting president until Swain arrived.

People: Elisha Mitchell

Isaac C. Partridge leaves Chapel Hill and his struggling University Hotel

Partridge, whose newspaper The Harbinger had already failed, ran off to New York and left the hotel, still unpaid for, in the hands of Elisha Mitchell.

People: Elisha Mitchell

Elisha Mitchell builds stone walls around the campus

To keep out the cattle that ran at large, Mitchell, who had charge of the grounds, began in 1838 to quarry stone on university land and build rock walls around the campus buildings. By about the end of 1843 he had put up 212 rods of wall, and the trustees settled his account in 1844. Professors and villagers copied the walls around their own lots.

Elisha Mitchell preaches the university's first baccalaureate sermon

At the 1839 commencement Mitchell, chosen by the faculty, preached the first of the baccalaureate sermons to the graduating class. The choice of preacher was later given to the senior class.

Subject: Gerrard Hall

Fresh Treat riot and a textbook rebellion bring dismissals

In the fall of 1840 a drinking feast paid for by new students turned into a riot in which tutors' windows were broken, faculty were stoned, classrooms were wrecked and professors' horses were ridden, and soon after all the blackboards were burned. Several students were dismissed, three more for defying James Phillips's rule against books in recitation, and the trustees approved a faculty resolution to prosecute serious outrages in the courts.

People: James Phillips · David L. Swain · Elisha Mitchell

University buys the Vienna cabinet of minerals

Through John Randolph Clay, the American secretary of legation at Vienna, the university bought for about $1,500 a mineral collection that the curator of the emperor's cabinet valued at over 3,000 florins; Mitchell reported the invoice and insurance in November 1841. The trustees gave Clay an honorary master's degree in 1845.

People: Elisha Mitchell

Mitchell demonstrates electromagnetic motion at commencement

When the 1842 society orator could not come, Elisha Mitchell showed the audience electromagnetic apparatus the university had just bought in Boston and produced rapid motion by magnetism alone. He judged that the cost of copper and zinc would keep it from competing with steam.

Subject: Gerrard Hall

Helen Caldwell dies and is buried with her husband at his monument

Helen Hogg Caldwell, widow of President Caldwell and a leader of village society, died at Chapel Hill on October 30, 1846 while visiting John DeBerniere Hooper. Caldwell's remains were taken up on October 31 and laid beside hers at the base of his monument, with the president and faculty as pallbearers.

People: John DeBerniere Hooper · Elisha Mitchell

President James K. Polk returns to Chapel Hill for the university commencement

Polk came from Raleigh by carriage with Sarah Polk and a large party, lodged in an annex Nancy Hilliard built onto the Eagle Hotel for his stay, visited his old room in South Building and met Elisha Mitchell, and stayed through commencement on June 3.

People: Elisha Mitchell · Nancy Hilliard

Subject: South Building

The Presbyterian church on Franklin Street is finished and dedicated

Built with money and effort from James and Charles Phillips, Elisha Mitchell and President Swain, the small Presbyterian church on the old Grand Avenue ground was completed and formally dedicated.

People: James Phillips · Charles Phillips · Elisha Mitchell · David L. Swain

The General Assembly passes an act incorporating Chapel Hill under five commissioners

Chapter 330 of the 1850-51 session laws, ratified January 29, 1851, made Manuel Fetter, Jesse Hargrave, Patterson H. McDade, Elisha Mitchell and Jones Watson the commissioners of Chapel Hill, with five commissioners to be elected each February after. They were to choose a magistrate of police, treasurer, constable and clerk and fix the town's bounds.

People: Manuel Fetter · Elisha Mitchell · Jones Watson

Trustees buy Elisha Mitchell's books and minerals after his death

Elisha Mitchell, senior professor, died on June 27, 1857, in a fall while surveying the Black Mountains. The trustees paid his salary to the year's end, let his family keep their house rent-free for six months, and bought his books for $3,500 and his apparatus and mineral cabinet for $1,000.

Venable co-founds the Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society

Venable was a co-founder and the first president of the Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society, a society of university scientists named for the geologist Elisha Mitchell.

People: Elisha Mitchell

UNC moves the Mitchell family graves from the campus to the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery

Four graves of Elisha Mitchell's infant sons and grandsons, in the old Mitchell garden near the center of campus, were exhumed under archaeologist Joffre Coe to make room for the expansion of the university's television and communications work. They were reburied in the Horace Williams plot in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery with the Rev. Vance Barron officiating.

Subject: Old Chapel Hill Cemetery