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Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
- 1820s
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The Phillips family, with infant Cornelia, moves to Chapel Hill
James Phillips moved his family from New York to Chapel Hill in 1826 when he became professor of mathematics at the University of North Carolina, where he taught until his death in 1867. His daughter Cornelia, born in Harlem in March 1825, grew up in the village.
- 1860s
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Women organize Ladies Aid Societies in Hillsborough and Chapel Hill
Soon after secession women in the two towns formed aid societies, later joined by others, that made clothing and bandages, gathered food and money, met troop trains and nursed the sick and wounded until the war ended.
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Wheeler's Confederate cavalry fought Union pursuers at New Hope Creek east of Chapel Hill
Retreating cavalry under Joseph Wheeler destroyed the bridge over the rain-swollen New Hope and the other bridges on the road toward Chapel Hill, then attacked Union cavalry trying to cross on fallen trees and driftwood at the Atkins plantation, about eight miles from the village. Cornelia Phillips Spencer, writing from Chapel Hill, called it the last skirmish and perhaps the last blood of the war and recorded that several men were killed on both sides.
Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
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Cornelia Phillips Spencer publishes The Last Ninety Days of the War in North-Carolina
Encouraged by her friend, former governor David L. Swain, Spencer published her first book, an account of the war's last months in North Carolina that describes Wheeler's Confederate cavalry passing through Chapel Hill and the town's occupation by Union cavalry in April 1865.
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Bodies of Junius and Wesley Lewis Battle brought home for burial
The bodies of Corporal Junius C. Battle, mortally wounded at South Mountain, and Lieutenant Wesley Lewis Battle, killed at Gettysburg, sons of Judge William H. Battle and former students, were brought home to Chapel Hill. The village turned out to meet them, and they lay side by side in the Episcopal church before burial.
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Freedpeople hold a Black Fourth of July celebration
Cornelia Phillips Spencer's journal records that the Black residents of Chapel Hill marched in procession behind a banner, heard an address by Colonel J. J. Guthrie and a reading of part of the Declaration of Independence by Jurdon Swain, then sat down to a dinner they had provided themselves on the ground bought from the Craigs for their new school house. The banner mottoes were "Respect for Former Owners" and "Our Hope is in God".
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Cornelia Phillips Spencer moves into Sam Phillips's house and takes in boarders
After her father's death the family had to leave their university-owned home, so Spencer, her widowed mother and her daughter moved into her brother Sam's empty house on East Franklin and took boarders to make ends meet.
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The university closes and reopens
Reconstruction Republicans took control of the trustees in 1868 and dismissed the old faculty; Solomon Pool's presidency drew almost no students, and the university closed in February 1871. The legislature revived it in March 1875, Cornelia Phillips Spencer rang the bell, and it reopened in September under a rebuilt faculty.
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Cornelia Phillips Spencer describes the emptied campus and village
In a letter to the Sentinel written under the Old Poplar, Spencer described the shut buildings and reported that nearly twenty of Chapel Hill's leading families were leaving and six places now sold liquor openly. She named the departing faculty, among them Judge William H. Battle, and called the town the Deserted Village of the South.
- 1870s
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Lightning strikes the Davie Poplar
Lightning split the Old Poplar's bark from top to bottom while the university was closed, and its friends took it as an omen, but the tree survived. It then measured 14 feet 6 inches around at two feet above the ground, and Cornelia Phillips Spencer wrote a lament for it in a Raleigh paper.
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Nancy Hilliard, longtime Chapel Hill hotel keeper, dies
Nancy Segur Hilliard, whose family moved to Chapel Hill in 1817 and who fed students and stage travelers for decades, died on November 8, 1873. Cornelia Phillips Spencer appealed to alumni to help her in her last illness and to pay for her burial and a modest monument.
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Charles Phillips returns to Chapel Hill and chairs the faculty
When the University of North Carolina reopened in 1875, Phillips was invited back as professor of mathematics and served as chairman of the faculty during his first year. Illness forced his retirement in 1879, when he became the first professor emeritus named by the trustees.
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Women's groups give scientific apparatus to the reopened university
At the board's request Cornelia Phillips Spencer gathered gifts of instruments from women around the state, including Plateau's apparatus from the pupils of the Nash and Kollock school in Hillsborough. The women of Hillsborough gave a Holtz electrical machine in memory of William A. Graham, which Paul C. Cameron presented at the 1877 commencement.
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Cornelia Phillips Spencer learns on her fiftieth birthday that the university will reopen
A telegram from Raleigh on March 20, 1875, reported that the legislature had passed a bill letting the closed University of North Carolina reorganize with some state support. Spencer, whose letters to state leaders had pressed for the reopening, and a few friends entered South Building and tolled the college bell to celebrate.
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Historical Society of North Carolina is incorporated
The legislature chartered the Historical Society of North Carolina, chiefly so it could receive the books and papers of the old university society held by President Swain's widow, with William A. Graham as its first president and Cornelia Phillips Spencer among the incorporators. Eleanor Swain refused to give up the papers until she later found proof that the bound books belonged to the society.
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Kemp Battle's subscription drive raises $20,167 and Paul Cameron repairs the campus for the reopening
After the trustees on May 5, 1875, appointed a committee to seek gifts for the revival, Kemp P. Battle canvassed Raleigh, Goldsboro, Rocky Mount and Tarboro in person and the rest of the state by letter, reporting $18,787 in six weeks and $20,167 in twelve, at a total expense of $62.66; Zebulon B. Vance and Charles W. Broadfoot collected in Charlotte and Fayetteville, and women's groups sent scientific apparatus through Cornelia Phillips Spencer. Paul C. Cameron, without contractor or pay, spent the summer at Chapel Hill directing the repairs and reported on August 31 that he had spent $10,677.76 on the buildings and $2,249.09 on gas works and apparatus.
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University Day is established
At Kemp P. Battle's request, seconded by Zebulon B. Vance, the executive committee made October 12, the anniversary of the laying of Old East's cornerstone in 1793, a permanent holiday. At the first observance in Gerrard Hall, decorated by Cornelia Phillips Spencer and village women, Battle spoke on the charter and the cornerstone.
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Cornelia Phillips Spencer edits the Chapel Hill Weekly Ledger
For some months in 1879 Cornelia Phillips Spencer edited the Chapel Hill Weekly Ledger, with students R. P. Pell and Francis D. Winston as assistants. The book calls her the county's only woman editor; Charles B. Aycock took over from her.
- 1880s
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Old students start a subscription for a monument over Nancy Hilliard's grave
E. T. McKethan of Fayetteville began collecting money from former Chapel Hill students to put a plain stone over Nancy Hilliard's neglected grave, and Cornelia Phillips Spencer endorsed the plan. The stone records the alumni's gratitude for her kindness and hospitality.
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James Lee Love builds a house on East Franklin Street for his wife, June Spencer
Professor James Lee Love built the one-story house at 410 East Franklin Street in 1887, on the lot of the old president's house that burned the Christmas before, for his wife June, the only daughter of Cornelia Phillips Spencer. It is known as the Spencer House after his mother-in-law.
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Cornelia Phillips Spencer compiles a catalogue of every student since
For the 1889 centennial the university issued a general catalogue of students from 1795 to 1889, prepared by Cornelia Phillips Spencer after long correspondence and checked by Eben Alexander. It held 5,422 names, with Battle's sketches of the university's history.
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James Lee Love leaves Chapel Hill for Harvard
Love left the university with his family in 1889 to teach mathematics at Harvard. His mother-in-law, Cornelia Phillips Spencer, stayed on in his East Franklin Street house.
- 1890s
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UNC gives Cornelia Phillips Spencer an honorary LL.D., its first honorary degree to a woman
The University of North Carolina awarded Spencer the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws in 1895, the first honorary degree it gave to a woman. She had moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, the year before to live with her daughter.
Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1900s
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Chapel Hill holds a memorial service for Cornelia Phillips Spencer
Cornelia Phillips Spencer died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on March 11, 1908. On May 17 the university held a service in her memory in Gerrard Hall, opening with the hymn she wrote for the 1875 reopening.
- 1920s
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Hope Summerell Chamberlain's Old Days in Chapel Hill is published
Chamberlain's life and letters of Cornelia Phillips Spencer, illustrated with her own drawings, was published in 1926. The University of North Carolina Press was still advertising it in the Chapel Hill Weekly in 1927 and 1930.
Recent decades · 1976–2026
- 2000s
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UNC retires the Cornelia Phillips Spencer Bell Award after Yonni Chapman's campaign
Chancellor James Moeser retired the Bell Award, given yearly since 1994 to a woman for outstanding contributions to the university, after graduate student Yonni Chapman led a campaign against it over Spencer's white supremacist and sexist views.
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