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Chronology

Key events from Orange County history: 100 highlights to start, then the full chronology of 6,171 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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David L. Swain
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64 dated events match your filters.

Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–64.Back to highlights

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  1. Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865

  2. 1830s
  3. Chapel Hill The Institute of Education names Gaston to a committee to petition the legislature on popular education

    At its second meeting, held during the 1832 commencement, the North Carolina Institute of Education voted to memorialize the General Assembly on popular education and named William Gaston, Frederick Nash and David L. Swain to the committee.

  4. Law, policy or court · Steward's Hall Students win the use of Steward's Hall for the commencement ball

    A committee chosen by a mass meeting of students, with Christopher C. Battle as its writer, petitioned the trustees on November 6, 1833 for a room in Steward's Hall for the commencement ball, and the trustees agreed. The ball managers then invited leading men of the state, among them Governor Swain.

  5. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Trustee committee advises against moving the university to Raleigh

    On James Iredell's motion, Governor Swain named fifteen trustees, none from Orange County, to consider moving the university to the capital. In December 1833 they reported removal inexpedient, and the question never came before the board again.

  6. Property or economic transaction · Tom Taylor house, Lot #17, East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill Thomas H. Taylor trades his Franklin Street house to the university

    Taylor exchanged Lot #17 and his house for university land in Tennessee and left Chapel Hill. The university gave the Tom Taylor house to its new president, David L. Swain, whose wife disliked the old Caldwell house.

  7. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Trustees create an executive committee to run the university

    At Duncan Cameron's instance the board placed management in a seven-member executive committee including the governor, with the powers of the land, appointments and building committees and the right to change studies and dismiss faculty. The first members were Cameron, George E. Badger, William McPheeters, Charles Manly, Frederick Nash, William A. Graham and Governor Swain.

  8. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill Trustees sell off the university's Tennessee lands

    On resolutions drafted by Duncan Cameron, the executive committee sent Charles Manly to Tennessee to close out the lands with agent Samuel Dickens, and 42,345 acres plus the 20,000 Smith acres went to Orme and Gifford of Boston for $56,345.83. Manly's report of November 21, 1835 counted assets of $171,658, which he reckoned would carry the university's yearly costs with a surplus.

  9. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina David L. Swain moves to Chapel Hill as university president

    Chosen to succeed the late Joseph Caldwell, former governor David L. Swain moved to Chapel Hill in January 1836 to become president and professor of national and constitutional law. He stayed at the university for the rest of his life, the longest term of any of its presidents.

  10. Disaster or outbreak · Chapel Hill Caldwell's abandoned observatory is burned

    The observatory, stripped of its instruments and judged not worth repairing, was set on fire, by a student according to tradition. President Swain reported it to the executive committee in December 1838 and asked whether to bring a criminal prosecution; the sound bricks went into a kitchen for Swain.

  11. 1840s
  12. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Faculty keeps students out of the Log Cabin campaign

    During the 1840 presidential campaign the faculty asked the county candidates not to speak at Chapel Hill and forbade three students chosen to manage a Whig dinner in the village to serve.

  13. Violence or armed conflict · Chapel Hill 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.

  14. Construction or physical change · UNC campus Swain asks architect David Paton about coating the college buildings

    In 1840 President David L. Swain wrote to David Paton, the Scottish architect then finishing the State Capitol in Raleigh, about covering the brick college buildings with a tinted mix of cement, lime and water. The coating began the stucco finish the campus buildings wore for the rest of the century.

  15. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill Charles F. Deems joins the UNC faculty

    President David L. Swain brought Deems, a young Methodist preacher, onto the faculty in 1842 as adjunct professor of rhetoric and logic, to have a Methodist among the professors. He resigned in 1848 for Randolph-Macon College.

  16. Founding or opening · Gerrard Hall Graduates receive Bibles at commencement for the first time

    The 1842 commencement was the first at which each member of the graduating class was given a Bible bearing the president's autograph, a custom still kept in 1907.

  17. Law, policy or court · UNC campus Trustees tell Swain to ask Robert Donaldson about plans for society halls and a landscape gardener

    In October 1843 the board directed President Swain to write to Robert Donaldson in New York about how best to get plans for new literary society halls and to find someone skilled in laying out the grounds, and at what price.

  18. Appointment, election or service · UNC campus Swain authorizes Donaldson to bring architect A. J. Davis to the university

    In a letter from Raleigh dated November 28, 1843, Swain told Donaldson he might invite Alexander Jackson Davis to Chapel Hill to make working drawings and specifications, with $100 for travel. The letter opened Davis's service as the university's architect and planner of its grounds.

  19. Construction or physical change · Chapel of the Cross, East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill Swain reports the Chapel of the Cross walls up to a plan by Thomas U. Walter

    Writing to Charles Manly, university president David L. Swain noted that the Episcopalians had raised the brick walls of their church and that it was planned by Walter of Philadelphia. The nomination treats this letter as the main evidence that architect Thomas U. Walter designed the chapel, which had long been credited to Richard Upjohn.

  20. Property or economic transaction · University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Dabney Cosby takes the masonry subcontract for the lengthening of Old East and Old West

    Chapel Hill contractors Isaac J. Collier and Kendall B. Waitt subcontracted the masonry of the university additions to Cosby, who put enslaved workmen including the brothers Osborne and Albert on the job. Cosby and the architect Alexander Jackson Davis quarrelled over the drawings, and president David L. Swain asked the Hillsborough builder John Berry to look at the brickwork, which Berry reported was defective.

  21. Founding or opening · Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina David L. Swain organizes the Historical Society of the University of North Carolina

    In January 1844 President David L. Swain announced the Historical Society of the University of North Carolina, with himself as president and the whole faculty as its executive committee. It set out to copy colonial records in British repositories and to collect North Carolina books, newspapers and papers at the university.

  22. Appointment, election or service · UNC campus Alexander Jackson Davis makes his first visit to the university

    Davis came to Chapel Hill in February 1844, and that year trustee John Motley Morehead met with him and Swain there about the design of a new hall, later Smith Hall. Davis stayed in touch with Swain and the trustees about campus work until the mid-1850s.

  23. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill Charles Phillips returns to Chapel Hill as a tutor of mathematics

    Phillips accepted a call from President David L. Swain in July 1844 to return to the University of North Carolina as his father's assistant. He held the post of tutor of mathematics until 1853.

  24. Founding or opening · Chapel Hill Samuel F. Phillips opens a law practice in Chapel Hill

    Phillips, who had grown up in Chapel Hill after his family moved there in 1826, studied law under President David L. Swain and in the new university law school, then began practising in Chapel Hill when he came of age in 1845.

  25. Slavery and freedom · Chapel Hill Enslaved workers build and tend the Battle household in Chapel Hill

    Letters between Lucy and William H. Battle in March 1845 describe enslaved men at their Chapel Hill house: Ben planted shrubs and flowers, Harry worked on the outbuildings and was hired out, and Billy was also at work. The well-house, servants' houses, barn and bath house were built almost entirely by enslaved labor.

  26. Life event · New Hope David L. Swain and Charles Phillips transfer from New Hope to the Chapel Hill church

    University president David L. Swain, who first joined a church at New Hope, and Charles Phillips were released by letter to the Presbyterian church at Chapel Hill.

  27. Property or economic transaction · Old East Dialectic and Philanthropic societies draw lots for the east and west buildings

    The trustees had the society presidents, William M. Howerton and Matt W. Ransom, cast lots before Governor Graham, President Swain and Charles Manly; the Philanthropic won the east side and the Dialectic the west, and South Building rooms facing north went to the Phis and those facing south to the Dis. The arrangement lasted until 1868.

  28. Slavery and freedom · University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Albert joins his brother Osborne to plaster the halls at the university

    Cosby sent Albert from Smithfield in Virginia to Chapel Hill, where Osborne was already at work on the additions to Old East and Old West. Albert carried a letter to university president David L. Swain saying he came to help his brother plaster the halls and would judge the sand to be used together with Osborne.

  29. Slavery and freedom · Bolin Creek, near Chapel Hill William Mercer Green pledges fifteen enslaved people and his Bolin Creek land for a loan

    To secure 2,500 dollars borrowed from John H. Bryan, with David L. Swain and Duncan Cameron as his sureties, William Mercer Green conveyed to William H. Battle in trust his land on Bolin Creek near Chapel Hill and fifteen enslaved people: Jenny, Nancy, Lucy, Frances, Ellen, Celia, Anne, Julia, Rachel, Margaret, Peter, Sam, Aaron, Cain and Robert. If the debt went unpaid, they were to be advertised in the Hillsborough Recorder and sold at Chapel Hill to the highest bidder.

  30. Disaster or outbreak · Gerrard Hall False alarm sets off a panic in the chapel at commencement

    During the 1846 commencement someone shouted that the gallery was falling, and the packed crowd rushed for the doors while some jumped from windows, until President Swain, Governor Graham and other trustees calmed it. No one was hurt, and more pillars were placed under the galleries before the next commencement.

  31. Construction or physical change · Chapel Hill Dabney Cosby builds the Presbyterian church on Franklin Street

    After the university work Cosby built a small Tuscan style church designed by Alexander Jackson Davis for the Chapel Hill Presbyterian congregation, whose members included university president David L. Swain. In March 1848 the congregation member Charles Phillips wrote to Davis that the mason could not match the lilac gray color specified for the outside. The building no longer stands.

  32. Property or economic transaction · Steward's Hall Trustees dispose of Steward's Hall

    In 1847 the wings of Steward's Hall, the old college dining hall, were given to President Swain to build a servants' house and the main building was sold. For some years before, it had been rented to keepers who boarded any students who chose to eat there.

  33. Naming or commemoration · Presbyterian Church, East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill 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.

  34. Property or economic transaction · Caldwell house, Lot #19, East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill The university buys the old Caldwell house as President Swain's residence

    William Hooper sold his stepfather's former house to the university, which renovated it heavily for President David L. Swain. Professor John Thomas Wheat moved into Swain's old quarters in the Tom Taylor house.

  35. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Trustees let student church members worship at their own churches

    Petitions from several denominations reached the board in December 1849 asking to ease compulsory Sunday worship in the college chapel. On January 4, 1850 the trustees voted down a broader plan and adopted Samuel F. Patterson's rule letting communicants attend the church of their choice while all others still attended chapel, a rule that stood about ten years.

  36. 1850s
  37. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Trustees set up a system of county escheators

    Rather than surrender the university's right to escheated property, the trustees made the treasurer principal escheator and had him appoint a lawyer in each county to find escheated land and unclaimed estates, paid ten percent of what they recovered. Treasurer Charles Manly's salary was raised to $1,000 for the added work.

  38. Construction or physical change · UNC campus A. J. Davis returns to Chapel Hill with designs for new and enlarged college buildings

    With the dormitories overflowing, Swain asked the faculty and trustees in 1855 for leave to build new residence halls, and the university turned again to Davis, who visited in the summer of 1856 and offered several designs. When the trustees acted in 1858 they hired William Percival instead.

  39. Disaster or outbreak · Chapel Hill Old belfry burns and the college bell is destroyed

    During a student game of throwing alcohol-soaked fireballs, the old belfry caught fire and burned and its bell was destroyed. The executive committee sent the facts to the Orange solicitor, but no bill went to the grand jury, and the two literary societies agreed to fine any member $25 for wanton damage to university property.

  40. Protest or organizing · Chapel Hill Senior class invites Archbishop John Hughes to preach

    A majority of the seniors present voted to invite the Roman Catholic Archbishop John Hughes to preach the commencement sermon, and the invitation was sent before the faculty could object. President Swain told the class it was unwise, the executive committee backed him, and the archbishop declined.

  41. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina The university dismisses Benjamin S. Hedrick over his Free Soil views

    In 1856 faculty member Benjamin S. Hedrick admitted and defended in the newspapers his preference for the Free Soil party. President David L. Swain disapproved of his speaking out, and the trustees' executive committee dismissed Hedrick; Swain objected only that the committee had taken authority belonging to the full board.

  42. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill Trustees create a professorship of modern languages

    After a dispute between the French instructor Henri Harrisse and President Swain, the trustees created a professorship of modern languages and elected Hildreth H. Smith, president of Catawba College, to fill it. Smith held the chair until the university closed in 1868.

  43. Violence or armed conflict · Chapel Hill Students of a lawless club riot and are sued for damages

    A club of students sworn to back each other in breaking rules rang and stole the bell, stoned the faculty and piled the classroom benches and blackboards for a bonfire. The leaders were expelled and, sued in Orange Superior Court, made to repay the university about $200.

  44. Statistic or record · Chapel Hill University enrollment reaches its antebellum peak

    The university's catalogue for the 1858-59 session counted 456 students, its highest college enrollment before the Civil War. Counting eight independent law students, the 1857-58 total had been 461.

  45. 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.

  46. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill President James Buchanan attends commencement

    President Buchanan and Interior Secretary Jacob Thompson, an alumnus, came to the 1859 commencement as guests of President Swain, received callers under the Davie Poplar and saw Buchanan given an honorary doctor of laws. The Wilmington Light Infantry, the first military company to attend a commencement, camped on the campus for the occasion.

  47. 1860s
  48. Chapel Hill UNC remains open during the Civil War

    President David Lowry Swain kept the university in session as students left Chapel Hill at eight to ten a day to enlist in late April 1861. Enrollment fell to 91 by September 1861, Swain won a Confederate draft exemption for some students in 1863, and only four students graduated in 1865.

  49. Protest or organizing · Chapel Hill Students petition trustees to close the university for the war

    After Fort Sumter the juniors, sophomores and freshmen asked the trustees to suspend exercises until fall, since eight or ten students were leaving each day. The petition was refused, and President Swain issued a circular that the university would go on as before.

  50. Health or relief action · Chapel Hill Thirty Chapel Hill families pool money to buy corn

    Amid wartime scarcity, thirty heads of families sent Andrew Mickle to buy corn in a better-supplied district; he brought back about 1,921 bushels by rail to Durham and wagon from there, at $6.75 a barrel delivered. The livery keeper John H. Watson took ninety barrels, President Swain 33 and Judge Battle 24.

  51. Chapel Hill Walter Clark resigns his Confederate commission and graduates first in his class at the university

    When his regiment came back to North Carolina in February 1863, Walter Clark resigned his commission as a Confederate officer and went to the university, where he studied under David L. Swain and William H. Battle. He graduated first in his class in June 1864.

  52. Construction or physical change · Chapel Hill Wartime woodcutting strips the university forests

    To ease the faculty's hardship the trustees let professors, and the widow of tutor George B. Johnston, cut firewood from university land, extending the privilege in December 1864 with Bursar Fetter to mark trees. Neighbors cut freely as well, and many acres near the village were stripped of oaks and hickories.

  53. Violence or armed conflict · Chapel Hill Wilson Caldwell walks out with President Swain under a white flag to meet approaching Union troops

    When Union troops approached Chapel Hill in 1865, Wilson Caldwell walked out under a white flag with President David L. Swain, Judge W. H. Battle and others to meet the incoming cavalry and seek protection for the town and the university.

  54. Violence or armed conflict · Chapel Hill Wheeler's cavalry reaches Chapel Hill and posts a guard on the university

    Confederate cavalry under General Joseph Wheeler reached Chapel Hill, and at the request of alumnus James P. Coffin, Wheeler detailed Lieutenant McBurney Broyles and fifteen men to report to President Swain and protect the university's books and apparatus. Wheeler's headquarters were opposite the Episcopal church.

  55. Violence or armed conflict · Chapel Hill Union troops occupy Chapel Hill

    Wheeler's Confederates left Chapel Hill at midday on Easter Sunday, April 16, and a small Federal party rode in at sunset, met President David Lowry Swain and returned to camp. Smith D. Atkins's cavalry took possession about 8 a.m. on Monday, April 17, posting guards from the Ninth Michigan at houses that asked for them and quartering officers and horses in the college buildings.

  56. Health or relief action · Chapel Hill Swain asks Sherman to stop the stripping of farms around Chapel Hill

    President Swain wrote General Sherman that Wheeler's men and then the Federals had stripped the country of forage and horses, leaving families such as the Rev. George W. Purefoy's fifty people with no food and no work animals. Sherman replied on April 22 that seizures would stop when the war ended.

  57. Life event · Chapel Hill General Smith D. Atkins married Eleanor Swain, daughter of the university president

    The courtship began during the occupation, when Atkins called on President David Lowry Swain, met his daughter Eleanor, had his regimental band serenade her and gave Swain two horses. Atkins was mustered out in June and the two married in Chapel Hill on August 23, 1865; many invited guests stayed away, students tolled the college bell for three hours and hanged Swain and Atkins in effigy.

  58. Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899

  59. Publication, speech or performance · Chapel Hill 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.

  60. 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.

  61. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Trustees strike Confederate leaders from the commencement ball

    The student ball managers named Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, John C. Breckinridge, Zebulon Vance and other Confederate figures as honorary managers without asking them. Fearing hostile action by Congress, the trustees ruled the choice improper.

  62. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Legislature gives the university North Carolina's land-grant scrip

    At President Swain's urging, the General Assembly transferred to the university the state's scrip under the federal Morrill Act, on condition that it set up at least two professorships in agriculture and the mechanic arts. Each county court could send one needy student free of tuition, and students could enter those branches without the usual classical preparation.

  63. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill President Andrew Johnson attends commencement

    Andrew Johnson came to the 1867 commencement with Secretary of State William H. Seward, Postmaster General Alexander Randall and General Daniel E. Sickles, the military governor under the Reconstruction Acts, and recalled passing through Chapel Hill on foot in 1826. Johnson joined the Dialectic Society and Seward the Philanthropic, but a minority of Dialectics blocked Sickles.

  64. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill Swain and the faculty resign as trustees plan a new university

    At a meeting Governor Jonathan Worth called to face the university's collapse, Charles Phillips presented the resignations of President Swain, Professors Hubbard, Fetter and Smith, law professor William H. Battle and himself, and the trustees adopted Kemp P. Battle's resolution for a committee to plan an elective university system with higher standards.

  65. Protest or organizing · Chapel Hill Swain protests his removal to Governor Holden

    Learning that the new Reconstruction trustees had declared his 1867 resignation final, David L. Swain wrote Governor William W. Holden, as chairman of the board, that no charge had been made against him and that a resignation accepted by a board that no longer existed could not be revived. He asked for reconsideration, but died later that month.

  66. Life event · Chapel Hill David L. Swain dies after a buggy accident

    Weeks after the Reconstruction board of trustees accepted his resignation, David L. Swain was thrown on August 11, 1868, from a buggy pulled by the horse General Sherman had given him. He seemed to be recovering but died on August 27 and was buried on August 29 in the garden of his Chapel Hill home; Charles Phillips preached his funeral sermon.

  67. Life event · Swain family graves, Chapel Hill; reburied in the old city cemetery, Raleigh The remains of David L. Swain and his daughter Annie are taken from Chapel Hill to Raleigh for reburial

    An undertaker, K. P. Waitt, carried the coffins of the former governor and university president and his daughter Annie from their graves in Chapel Hill to Raleigh, where they were buried side by side in the old city cemetery with only family and a few friends present.

  68. 1880s
  69. Construction or physical change · Memorial Hall, UNC, Chapel Hill Memorial Hall rises at UNC under Paul C. Cameron's building committee

    The cornerstone of Swain Memorial Hall was laid on September 25, 1883, and the hall was dedicated on June 3, 1885, honoring President David L. Swain, faculty and the university's Confederate dead. Paul C. Cameron, president of the Alumni Association and chairman of the building committee, raised money for it and gave money himself.

  70. Disaster or outbreak · Chapel Hill Fire destroys the old president's house on Christmas morning

    The house Helen Hooper built, later home to Presidents Caldwell and Swain, burned the day after Professor Thomas Hume's family moved in. Fire spread from boxes and straw in an outbuilding, and Chapel Hill had no fire engine or ladder company to stop it.

  71. Early twentieth century · 1900–1944

  72. 1910s
  73. Naming or commemoration · Chapel Hill, Swain Hall Swain Hall is built as the university dining hall

    The university built Swain Hall in 1913 and 1914 as a dining hall on the site of the first president's house and named it for David L. Swain. It served as the dining hall until 1940 and later became the first home of the communications department.

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