Chronology

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1. Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865

2. 1854–1862
   Statistic or record · Chapel Hill James Phillips keeps weather records at Chapel Hill

   From 1854 to 1862 Professor James Phillips kept weather records at Chapel Hill. They survive in the Southern Historical Collection alongside Chapel Hill records kept from December 1879 to 1882 by Professors W. B. Phillips and Francis Preston Venable.

3. Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899

4. between 1877 and 1881
   Chapel Hill James Cole Taylor works as an assistant at the state experiment station in Smith Hall

   James C. Taylor and William B. Phillips, Chapel Hill graduates of 1877, worked as assistants at the state's fertilizer control and experiment station at the university, with W. Warnecke of Germany and A. D. Mickle of Chapel Hill. The station had four rooms in Smith Hall.

5. June 1877
   Award or honor · Chapel Hill The reopened university graduates its first class

   At the 1877 commencement five men took degrees, William Battle Phillips of Chapel Hill a Ph.B. and Julian M. Baker, Frank M. Fremont, Joseph C. Powell and James C. Taylor the B.S. The 1876 commencement had had no graduates.

6. 1883
   Life event · Chapel Hill Horace Williams earns a master's degree at the university

   Williams entered the state university at Chapel Hill in 1879 and in 1883 took both the B.A. and an M.A. His M.A. and William Battle Phillips's Ph.D., conferred at the same commencement, were the first advanced degrees the reopened university granted for further study. Before 1875 any graduate could receive the A.M. three years after the B.A.

7. 1883
   Award or honor · Chapel Hill William Battle Phillips receives the university's first doctorate after the reopening

   In 1883 William Battle Phillips, one of the five graduates of 1877, received a Doctor of Philosophy, the first doctorate in Battle's list of degrees granted since the 1875 reopening.

8. Early twentieth century · 1900–1944

9. 1919
   Naming or commemoration · Chapel Hill, Phillips Hall Phillips Hall opens, named for three Phillips family teachers

   Phillips Hall opened on the Chapel Hill campus in 1919, honoring three members of the Phillips family who taught at the university in the nineteenth century: James Phillips, his son Charles Phillips and his grandson William Battle Phillips.

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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.