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Orange County Indexed

Chronology

Key events from Orange County history: 100 highlights to start, then the full chronology of 6,368 dated events and 63 storylines, each connected to the index. A storyline gathers many dated events into one history, such as the Regulator crisis.

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Searched the full chronology of 6,368 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–10.Back to highlights

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10 dated events
1868Reconstruction and the New South
  1. Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
  2. Dialectic and Philanthropic societies hide their books and papers

    Closing or ending · Chapel Hill

    Believing the societies would not be run under their constitutions after the university changed hands, their last officers gave the Dialectic records to Alexander McIver and the Philanthropic records to William L. Saunders. The property lay safe until the societies revived in 1875.

    People: Alexander McIver · William L. Saunders

    Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

  3. William L. Saunders of Chapel Hill refuses to answer the congressional Klan committee

    Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill

    Called before the joint committee on affairs in the insurrectionary states, Saunders, whom the book names as head of the Invisible Empire in North Carolina, declined to answer 53 questions about the Ku Klux.

    People: William L. Saunders

  4. The General Assembly elects sixty-four trustees, who organize under William A. Graham with Kemp Battle as secretary and treasurer

    Appointment, election or service · Citizens National Bank, Raleigh

    By an act of January 28, 1874, the legislature elected sixty-four university trustees by joint ballot, only two of them from the Reconstruction board, and fourteen of them men removed in 1868. The new board first met on February 18, 1874, in the Citizens National Bank in Raleigh, elected William A. Graham of Hillsborough its president and Kemp P. Battle its secretary and treasurer, named an executive committee, and the next day sent a committee to inspect Chapel Hill, after Governor Tod R. Caldwell declined to preside because he held the legislature had no power to elect trustees.

    People: William A. Graham · Kemp Plummer Battle · Paul C. Cameron · John Manning · Tod Robinson Caldwell · William L. Saunders

  5. Walter Steele and Paul Cameron inspect the derelict campus and Solomon Pool refuses to surrender the keys

    Statistic or record · Chapel Hill

    On April 3, 1874, trustees Walter L. Steele and Paul C. Cameron came to Chapel Hill for the new board. Solomon Pool declined their written request for the keys and possession of the buildings, since the governor had not recognized the board, but let them inspect as visitors. Their report to the trustees on April 9 described broken doors and fallen plaster, the lower passage of Old West fouled by cattle and horses, rotted gates and axe-scarred oaks, 7,490 books in the Dialectic library and 6,901 in the Philanthropic, and recommended an immediate suit against Pool for possession.

    People: Paul C. Cameron · Solomon Pool · William L. Saunders

    Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies · Old West

  6. The Dialectic and Philanthropic societies meet again

    Founding or opening · Chapel Hill

    On the evening of the reopening celebration the two literary societies were revived, the Dialectic called together by its last secretary, Thomas M. Argo, with Judge William H. Battle as temporary president. William L. Saunders, who had kept the Philanthropic Society's books since its last meeting in 1868, called that society together.

    People: William Horn Battle · William L. Saunders

    Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

  7. William L. Saunders becomes secretary of the university, and later its treasurer as well

    Chapel Hill

    After Seaton Gales died in 1878, the trustees chose Saunders as the university's secretary; once President Battle gave up the treasurership, Saunders held both offices, which he kept until his death in 1891.

    People: Kemp Plummer Battle

  8. Trustees elect Richard H. Battle secretary and treasurer of the university

    Chapel Hill

    At the 1891 commencement meeting the trustees elected Richard H. Battle of Raleigh, a trustee since 1879, secretary and treasurer of the university in place of the late William L. Saunders. He held the office until his death in 1912.

    People: William L. Saunders

  9. Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
  10. UNC trustees name a new classroom building for William L. Saunders

    Chapel Hill

    The trustees named one of the new buildings Saunders Hall to honor Saunders as a Confederate veteran, a university trustee and a leader of the state Ku Klux Klan. It was built for the history department.

  11. Recent decades · 1976–2026
  12. Students call for William L. Saunders's name to come off Saunders Hall

    Chapel Hill

    The Real Silent Sam Coalition, a student group, began a campaign to remove Saunders's name from the building because of his leadership in the Ku Klux Klan. The trustees renamed it Carolina Hall in May 2015.

  13. Saunders Hall is renamed Carolina Hall

    Naming or commemoration · Chapel Hill

    UNC trustees approved the name change in May 2015; the building received its new name that August.

    Part of Silent Sam · 15 events

    People: William L. Saunders

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.

Two mice reading back to back against a leaf, with the hand-lettered words Friends of the Orange County Public Library
Illustration by Caldecott Medalist Matthew Cordell, gifted to the Friends 2026