Chronology

Search and filters

Entries

1. Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865

2. Commencement 1846
   Chapel Hill Bartholomew F. Moore gives the annual address before the two literary societies

   At the 1846 commencement, Moore, an 1820 graduate, was the annual orator before the two student societies. His subject was the claims of the university on her sons for cultivating truth and universal justice.

3. 1859
   Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill Trustees buy a second thousand shares of bank stock on credit

   When the old state bank's charter ran out, the trustees put the university's $100,000 into the new Bank of North Carolina and, by a bare majority, subscribed for another thousand shares on credit. Only $10,000 of that debt was ever paid, and after the war the university owed $90,000 on shares that were worthless.

4. Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899

5. 1866
   Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill Trustees mortgage all university property to settle its debts

   Facing $103,000 of debt against worthless bank stock and Confederate securities, the trustees compromised with the Bank of North Carolina and other creditors at a quarter of the debt in gold, pledging all the university's property at Chapel Hill and its Buncombe County lands. The General Assembly also voted $7,000 for one year to pay the officers.

6. Commencement 1868
   Chapel Hill The university gives Bartholomew F. Moore an honorary LL.D.

   At the 1868 commencement, which Battle calls the last of the old regime, the university granted the degree of Doctor of Laws to ex-Governor Seymour and to Moore, a Raleigh lawyer and active trustee.

7. February 1, 1873
   Protest or organizing · Chapel Hill Alumni meet in Raleigh to plan the university's revival

   At the invitation of trustees led by Superintendent Alexander McIver, fifty-five alumni met in the state Senate chamber with B. F. Moore in the chair. Their committee proposed that the alumni association nominate a new board for the Board of Education to appoint, but most of the 1868 trustees did not resign and the plan lapsed.

8. July 1873
   Protest or organizing · Chapel Hill State educational convention calls for reviving the university

   A convention called by the State Board of Education, with B. F. Moore presiding, resolved that the university should be revived as soon as practicable. It added that the revival was impossible except on a basis impartial between denominations and political parties, after Braxton Craven, Thomas H. Pritchard and A. W. Mangum argued over church representation.

9. May 1874 to January 1875
   Law, policy or court · Orange County Superior Court, Hillsborough The new trustees sue Solomon Pool and Alexander McIver at Orange Superior Court and win possession of the university in the Supreme Court

   At the May 1874 term of Orange Superior Court the new board brought one action against Superintendent Alexander McIver, who held the university's seal and books and had agreed to a friendly test suit, and another against Solomon Pool for the buildings. Judge Albion W. Tourgee ruled against the trustees; John W. Graham and James A. Graham of Hillsborough argued for them without fee, as did B. F. Moore and William H. Battle on appeal in June 1874. At its January term 1875 the state Supreme Court decided for the university on every point, and possession passed to Andrew Mickle, the board's agent, with the seal, books and papers going to Treasurer Kemp Battle.

10. 1875
    Chapel Hill Bartholomew F. Moore gives $1,000 toward reopening the university

    Moore's $1,000 was among the largest gifts on the list of subscriptions paid in 1875 for the revival of the university.

11. August 19, 1875
    Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill Trustees burn the repudiated railroad bonds

    As the act restoring the land-scrip fund required, trustees B. F. Moore, David M. Carter and Kemp P. Battle burned 160 special tax bonds of $1,000 each issued for the Western North Carolina Railroad, with Seaton Gales as witness. In return the state had given the university its bond for the $125,000 fund, paying $7,500 a year.

12. 1878
    Chapel Hill Bartholomew F. Moore leaves the university $5,000 for scholarships

    Moore, who died in November 1878, left the university $5,000 by will to fund scholarships. Battle later reported three young men studying on the Moore scholarships.

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 2, 2026.