Search and filters
Search and filters · 1 active
3,090 dated events and 37 storylines match your filters.
Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 201–400 of 3,127, 200 to a page.Back to highlights
Entries
Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
- 1830s
-
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.
-
Philanthropic Society has a cast made of Caldwell's features
In November 1835, at the Philanthropic Society's request, Caldwell's body was taken up so that the artist Alfred S. Waugh could make a plaster cast of his face. The bust made from it stands in Gerrard Hall.
-
James Phillips opens a female school in Chapel Hill
In 1836 mathematics professor James Phillips announced Phillips' Female School in Chapel Hill. Mrs. Phillips and a teacher from Emma Willard's seminary at Troy, New York, did most of the teaching.
-
John H. Rhodes advertises a barber shop beside the hotel
Barber John H. Rhodes advertised that his shop stood next to the hotel on Lot #13. The frontage maps show a Rhodes barber shop beside the hotel from 1838 to 1848.
-
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.
-
A trustee committee under William Gaston makes the faculty's liquor rule a university by-law
In 1837 the faculty made it a dismissable offence to bring liquor into the college buildings or to be publicly drunk. A trustee committee chaired by William Gaston recommended that the rule become a by-law of the university.
-
Enslaved plasterers, masons and laborers work on South Building's new roof
Thomas Waitt's bill for 1837 work on South Building, including its tin roof, lists wages for enslaved plasterers and masons Stewart, Chester, Peter, Calvin and Evans and laborers including Lewis, Tom, Redin, Abraham and Jordan.
-
George Moses Horton's The Hope of Liberty is reprinted in Philadelphia and Boston
The 1829 collection by the enslaved Chapel Hill poet came out in a second edition in Philadelphia in 1837 and a third in Boston in 1838.
-
Gerrard Hall is finished and holds its first commencement
Gerrard Hall, the new chapel begun more than a decade earlier, was completed in 1837 under carpenter Thomas Waitt, and that year's commencement was held in it. The Raleigh Register described a roomy building with large galleries, and the old chapel, Person Hall, was soon given over to classrooms.
-
Isaac C. Partridge leaves Chapel Hill and his struggling University Hotel
Partridge, whose newspaper The Harbinger had already failed, ran off to New York and left the hotel, still unpaid for, in the hands of Elisha Mitchell.
-
Trustees put the endowment into Bank of the State stock
After paying pressing debts the trustees bought 100 state certificates of $1,000 each and in 1837 exchanged them for 1,000 shares of the Bank of the State of North Carolina. The dividends, about eight percent, with tuition made up the university's income until the Civil War.
-
Trustees raise a sandstone monument to Caldwell on the campus
The trustees adopted a design by Thomas Waitt, the master mechanic in charge of university repairs, for a shaft of local sandstone cut by J. B. Turney. It soon crumbled, and the marble slab meant for its Latin inscription arrived so badly cut that it was smashed, so the monument never bore a name.
-
William Mercer Green leaves St. Matthew's to become university chaplain and professor
William Mercer Green accepted a post at the University of North Carolina as chaplain and professor of belles lettres and resigned from St. Matthew's in Hillsborough the following year. The Hillsborough congregation had grown from seventeen communicants in his first year to sixty-seven when he left.
-
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.
-
Elisha Mitchell builds stone walls around the campus
To keep out the cattle that ran at large, Mitchell, who had charge of the grounds, began in 1838 to quarry stone on university land and build rock walls around the campus buildings. By about the end of 1843 he had put up 212 rods of wall, and the trustees settled his account in 1844. Professors and villagers copied the walls around their own lots.
-
Senior tutor becomes the university's librarian
Until 1838 the faculty chose a librarian every half year; after that the senior tutor held the office, and in 1838 Tutor William H. Owen, librarian since 1836, was voted a salary of $100 a year. Owen had counted about 1,900 books in the library in December 1836.
-
Students' Ugly Club raids the campus at night
On the first Saturday night of the 1838 session a group calling itself the Ugly Club rang the college bell and made a din with horns and tin pans; nineteen were caught and made to sign pledges. That summer members blacked with lampblack insulted villagers, threatened faculty and damaged private property, and their leader was dismissed.
-
Navy captain Jesse D. Elliott gives Greek and Egyptian antiquities to the university
Writing from the USS Constitution at Norfolk, Elliott presented a piece of a column from Marathon and the top of a sarcophagus from Memphis, collected on his Mediterranean cruise, sent by the hand of Sailing Master William P. Muse.
-
Trustees split ancient languages into separate chairs of Greek and Latin
In August 1838 the professorship of ancient languages was abolished and separate chairs of Greek and Latin created, with Manuel Fetter in Greek and John DeBerniere Hooper in Latin, while modern languages became a chair of French taught by Charles Marey. The faculty were also told to introduce civil engineering, which was not done.
-
Seceders try to form a third literary society, the Delphian
Members who had left the Dialectic Society, joined by one from the Philanthropic, asked the trustees on November 29, 1838 to recognize a Delphian Society and give it a third of the society rooms. In January 1839 the trustees found a third society inexpedient, and after a hearing at Chapel Hill and an appeal by Charles Manly the Delphians disbanded.
-
Lucy Watts buys the hotel on Lot #13
Lucy Watts, widow of Thomas D. Watts, bought the hotel lot and the western half of Lot #15 from Dr. James Webb and kept the house open as the Watts Hotel until 1846.
-
Sidney Mulholland Barbee and L. S. Tower buy Zachariah Trice's store
After Trice, like Utley before him, failed as a storekeeper, he sold the store and house to Barbee and Tower. Barbee moved into the house and the partners made the business pay, the start of Barbee's run as one of the street's main merchants.
-
Faculty appoints the first chief marshal of commencement
For the commencement of June 27, 1839, attended by every living former governor but one, the faculty named the first chief marshal, Thomas Davis Meares, who had led the Delphian seceders. The choice of marshal soon passed to the students.
-
Elisha Mitchell preaches the university's first baccalaureate sermon
At the 1839 commencement Mitchell, chosen by the faculty, preached the first of the baccalaureate sermons to the graduating class. The choice of preacher was later given to the senior class.
- 1840s
-
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.
-
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.
-
Jesse Hargrave opens a general store whose upstairs room serves the Methodists
Jesse Hargrave, in Chapel Hill since 1835, had a general store on Franklin Street by 1840. The Methodists, who had no church yet, held services in a second-floor room of the store. Hargrave bought the Yancey house the same year.
-
Jones serves as a trustee of the University of North Carolina
Jones was a trustee of his own university from 1840 until 1857, the years he was practicing law at Hillsborough.
-
The Hogan-Rogers House was built on the Hogan plantation on Purefoy Road
The two-story frame house on Purefoy Road, on land now owned by St. Paul AME Church, dates to the 1840s or 1850s; the 1992 township survey recorded it as the Lloyd-Rogers House at 1612 Purefoy Road, the only house in the township on a raised basement. A fireplace in that basement led the Preservation Society's director to conclude that enslaved people on the Hogan plantation probably lived and worked there. INDY Week reported in 2012 that many Rogers-Eubanks residents descend from people held on the plantation.
-
Drs. Johnston Blakeley Jones and George Moore open a medical practice and teach medicine
Dr. Jones moved to Chapel Hill and took over the old medicine shop, and with Dr. George Moore ran a practice that also trained medical students. The maps show the two doctors' office there through 1868.
-
University buys the Vienna cabinet of minerals
Through John Randolph Clay, the American secretary of legation at Vienna, the university bought for about $1,500 a mineral collection that the curator of the emperor's cabinet valued at over 3,000 florins; Mitchell reported the invoice and insurance in November 1841. The trustees gave Clay an honorary master's degree in 1845.
-
Chapel Hill Episcopalians buy a church lot from the university
William Mercer Green told the 1842 diocesan convention that the new Chapel Hill congregation, then fifteen communicants, had bought a lot from the university for its church and had let a contract for part of the building materials.
-
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.
-
Charles F. Deems preaches to Chapel Hill Methodists in the hall he names Bethesda
While a professor, Deems preached to the village Methodists, at their invitation, in the upper story of Jesse Hargrave's store, a former Masonic lodge room he named Bethesda. After he left the university in 1848, ministers were regularly appointed to the Chapel Hill charge.
-
Fayetteville carver George Lauder makes Lewis Bowen Holt's tomb-table in the Dialectic Society plot
The marble tomb-table over Dialectic Society member Lewis Bowen Holt, who died in 1842, carries a carved desert scene of a broken fountain and cistern drawn from Ecclesiastes 12. It is unsigned but matches a signed Lauder stone in Fayetteville's Cross Creek Cemetery.
-
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.
-
Mitchell demonstrates electromagnetic motion at commencement
When the 1842 society orator could not come, Elisha Mitchell showed the audience electromagnetic apparatus the university had just bought in Boston and produced rapid motion by magnetism alone. He judged that the cost of copper and zinc would keep it from competing with steam.
-
Person Hall is partitioned into four classrooms
With Gerrard Hall now the chapel, the old chapel, Person Hall, was divided by thick walls and chimneys into four recitation rooms for the professors of Latin, Greek and rhetoric and the tutor of ancient languages.
-
William Mercer Green organizes an Episcopal parish in Chapel Hill
In May 1842 William Mercer Green presided over the organization of the Church of the Atonement, an Episcopal parish in Chapel Hill with fifteen communicants, which met in members' homes for five years while its church was built. A record of subscribers for building the church, dated 1843, survives in Green's papers.
-
Trustees outlaw secret societies at the university
On Charles L. Hinton's motion the board declared secret societies and clubs harmful to the literary societies and to good morals, ordered the faculty to suppress them and barred admission to any student who would not pledge not to join one. The Dialectic and Philanthropic societies agreed to fine members who broke the rule.
-
An armed posse captures Tom, a freedom seeker who had hidden for months in the woods east of Chapel Hill
Tom, enslaved by Samuel Morgan, ran away after being sold to a trader bound for the Southwest and hid in a rock shelter in the woods and in a cave on Morgan's Creek. Men with shotguns beat the woods, shot him in the legs and sent him south for sale; the shelter became known as the Robber's Den or Tom's Lair.
-
John Wesley Carr buys his mother-in-law's Franklin Street house
Carr married Elizabeth, daughter of Martha Bullock, in 1839; the couple moved in with her in 1841, and in 1843 he bought Martha Bullock's house.
-
Samuel Phillips builds a law office with a Tudor entrance porch on East Franklin Street
About 1843 Samuel Phillips, a lawyer who taught at the university, put up a small law office on East Franklin Street; by 1847 a boys' preparatory school was meeting in it. Its stepped-gable Tudor porch matches the Eagle Hotel annex built for Polk's 1847 visit. Dabney Cosby probably built it, and the design may be his or A. J. Davis's.
-
The Episcopal parish begins building the Chapel of the Cross on East Franklin Street
A year after organizing, Chapel Hill's Episcopal parish started work in 1843 on its Gothic Revival chapel at 302 East Franklin Street, designed by the architect Thomas U. Walter. The building took until 1848 to finish.
-
William Horn Battle moves his family to Chapel Hill and buys a house beside the campus
Judge William H. Battle moved his family from Raleigh to Chapel Hill in 1843 so his sons could attend the university. He bought a house near the campus and enlarged it, adding quarters for the people the family enslaved.
-
Alumni gather at Chapel Hill and organize the university's Alumni Association
Graduates meeting at commencement organized the Alumni Association with former governor Morehead in the chair. At the 1844 meeting they adopted a constitution and chose Morehead as the association's first president.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Chapel Hill's Presbyterians and Methodists circulate subscription papers for church buildings
Swain's letter of November 1843 reported that the village Presbyterians and Methodists each had subscription papers going round to pay for churches, while the Episcopalians already had the brick walls of theirs standing. The Presbyterian church was finished in 1848 and the Methodist in 1853.
-
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.
-
Juniors hold a mock funeral for Euripides's Medea
After Professor Manuel Fetter failed all but three of the junior class on the Medea, the class dressed the book in black crape, marched past his house and buried it near the Davie Poplar under a sandstone slab carved Hic Jacet Medea.
-
Sidney Mulholland Barbee builds a house and three stores on Franklin Street
After buying out his partner, Barbee used the store's profits to buy land on the north side of the street, where he built a large house, two stores just west of it, and a third near the northeast corner of Franklin and Columbia.
-
Students found the University Magazine at Chapel Hill
UNC students established the University Magazine in 1844. Apart from one short gap it ran for 104 years and was long the state's only cultural periodical; the Carolina Quarterly later carried on its tradition.
-
The Union Church is moved off Franklin Street and becomes a school
When the university sold the Grand Avenue ground to Andrew Mickle and Richard James Ashe and the Presbyterians, the little Union Church was moved away from Franklin Street and later used as the village school.
-
University ends student commons at Steward's Hall
1844 was the last year the university ran Steward's Hall, the frame dining house in the middle of what is now Cameron Avenue where students had taken their meals. It was rented as a private house the next year and later sold, and part of it went into the village school building.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Brothers Albert and Osborne, enslaved by Dabney Cosby, plaster the lengthened Old East
The additions to Old East and Old West, contracted in December 1844 and finished in 1848, used the labor of Albert and Osborne, brothers enslaved by Dabney Cosby, who plastered the lengthened Old East in 1845 and 1846. Cosby praised Albert's plastering as first-rate work.
-
Faculty turns away a fencing and boxing instructor
A Major Roberts, backed by letters from leading trustees, asked to teach the students athletics including fencing and boxing. The faculty refused to let him form a class after learning he advertised teaching the bowie knife at the University of Virginia and boasted of having been a London prize fighter.
-
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.
-
The Mallette-Wilson-Maurice House is built on West Cameron Avenue
A story-and-a-half Greek Revival house with a low gable roof and short upper windows went up about 1845 at 215 West Cameron Avenue, one of the oldest houses on the street. A small guest house stands beside it facing Wilson Street.
-
Trustees bar students from bringing their own enslaved servants to the university
After 1845 the trustees prohibited students from bringing enslaved people of their own to Chapel Hill. The university went on hiring enslaved college servants by the year from local slaveholders.
-
William Horn Battle becomes the university's professor of law
After teaching law from his office in Chapel Hill, Battle was professor of law at the university by 1845, and the university began offering the bachelor of law degree.
-
Osborne begins the masonry on the additions to Old East and Old West
Dabney Cosby, who held the masonry subcontract for the university additions, sent Osborne to Chapel Hill carrying a letter to the main contractors saying that Osborne would have his mortar made up. Cosby ordered meal and bacon for him and wrote that what Osborne said could be relied on.
-
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.
-
University trustees name the burying ground the College Graveyard
After Judge William Gaston died in 1844, faculty members asked the trustees for a separate burying ground in sight of the campus for eminent men of the university, starting with Gaston's body brought from Raleigh. The trustees let the petition lapse and in June 1845 named the existing ground the College Graveyard instead.
-
Julian Shakespeare Carr, later Carrboro's namesake, is born in Chapel Hill
Julian S. Carr was born in Chapel Hill on October 12, 1845, the son of the Franklin Street merchant John Wesley Carr, and later studied at the university. He built tobacco, banking and textile fortunes in Durham, and his Durham Hosiery Mills went on to own both Carrboro mills; the town took his name in 1913.
-
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.
-
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.
-
James Phillips buys the Village Chapel lot for the Presbyterian church
Professor James Phillips, as trustee, bought for $200 the lot where the Union or Village Chapel stood, as a site for the Presbyterian church, on condition that no burials be made there. The old chapel was moved a few hundred yards north, enlarged, and long served as the village public school.
-
Nancy Hilliard buys the Watts Hotel from Lucy Watts
Lucy Watts sold the hotel and the land beside it to Nancy Hilliard, already known as a Chapel Hill hotel keeper. A year later Hilliard enlarged it for President Polk's commencement visit.
-
Students circulate the Literary Trumpet, a handwritten paper
William M. Howerton edited the Literary Trumpet, a pen-and-ink paper for private circulation, with a lady as nominal co-editor. Battle calls it the first of the university's informal student sheets.
-
University sells the Franklin and Columbia street oak grove to John W. Carr
The trustees conveyed to the merchant John W. Carr, for $300, the oak grove at the northwest corner of Franklin and Columbia streets where villagers gathered to hear candidates speak. It was one of several sales of university land to villagers in the middle 1840s.
-
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.
-
Morehead gives the Alumni Association address in Gerrard Hall
With no orator found from the class of thirty years before, the association's president, former governor Morehead, delivered the address at the meeting of 36 alumni in Gerrard Hall.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Helen Caldwell dies and is buried with her husband at his monument
Helen Hogg Caldwell, widow of President Caldwell and a leader of village society, died at Chapel Hill on October 30, 1846 while visiting John DeBerniere Hooper. Caldwell's remains were taken up on October 31 and laid beside hers at the base of his monument, with the president and faculty as pallbearers.
-
A boys' preparatory school meets in Samuel Phillips's law office
Samuel Phillips's small stuccoed law office on East Franklin Street reportedly housed a preparatory school for boys in 1847. Later in the century William Horn Battle taught law classes in the same building.
-
Alumni start a fund for a marble monument to Caldwell
Troubled by the crumbling sandstone monument, the alumni at the 1847 commencement voted on John Y. Mason's motion, supported by President Polk, to raise a marble memorial by gifts of three dollars each, and $210 was subscribed at once. By 1849 only $600 of an estimated $1,000 was in hand and the limit on gifts was dropped.
-
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.
-
John Wesley Carr builds a home and store at Franklin and Columbia
Carr built his house west of the middle of Lot #7 and a store on its southeast corner at Columbia Street. The store burned partly in the January 1862 fire but stayed in business, and the maps show Carr's general merchandise there through 1868.
-
Jones Watson buys Barbee's old store and house for a drugstore
Jones Watson acquired Sidney Barbee's former house and store on the south side of the street, the old James Hogg property, and probably ran his drugstore from the store before remodeling both buildings. By 1858 they had become his Central Hotel.
-
Nancy Hilliard adds a castellated annex to the Eagle Hotel for President Polk's visit
For President James K. Polk's visit to the 1847 commencement, Nancy Hilliard, who kept the Eagle Hotel, added a stuccoed two-story wing with a battlemented porch in a medieval manner. The annex stood on the site of today's Graham Memorial; Dabney Cosby likely built it, perhaps to his own design or one by A. J. Davis.
-
Robert Loder and William Watson run a dry goods store near Franklin and Columbia
Loder and his father-in-law kept a dry goods store near the corner, probably in a building of Sidney Barbee's. By 1858 Loder was selling men's clothing there on his own, until fire destroyed the store in 1862.
-
The Rev. William Mercer Green buys an East Franklin Street lot and builds a house
Episcopal minister William Mercer Green bought the lot at 513 East Franklin Street in 1847 and had a two-story frame house built there before he sold it, two years later, to Charles Phillips, professor of engineering and mathematics.
-
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.
-
President James K. Polk returns to Chapel Hill for the university commencement
Polk came from Raleigh by carriage with Sarah Polk and a large party, lodged in an annex Nancy Hilliard built onto the Eagle Hotel for his stay, visited his old room in South Building and met Elisha Mitchell, and stayed through commencement on June 3.
-
Free Black cabinetmaker Thomas Day supplies woodwork and furniture for the new society halls
Thomas Day, the free Black cabinetmaker of Milton, North Carolina, supplied woodwork and furniture for the halls and libraries of the Dialectic and Philanthropic societies in A. J. Davis's north additions to Old East and Old West. Little names him, with the Virginia builder Dabney Cosby, among the craftsmen who carried out Davis's design.
-
Literary societies move into new halls in the enlarged Old East and Old West
The northward extensions of Old East and Old West, designed by A. J. Davis and built by Isaac J. Collier and Kendall B. Waitt for $9,360, were finished in 1848 with debating halls and library alcoves for the two societies. At the Dialectic opening James Mebane, the society's first president in 1795, sat beside the student president, Kemp P. Battle.
-
The literary societies ask the trustees for a building for dances and alumni meetings
The Dialectic and Philanthropic societies petitioned the university trustees to put up a building for dances and alumni gatherings. The request led to Smith Hall, finished in 1850 and later the Playmakers Theatre.
-
The Chapel of the Cross is consecrated
Bishop Levi Silliman Ives consecrated the Episcopal church at Chapel Hill as the Chapel of the Holy Cross. Designed by Thomas U. Walter for the parish William Mercer Green organized in 1842, it was built of bricks fired by enslaved people at kilns on Green's farm and included a wooden gallery for enslaved worshippers.
-
Albert M. Shipp elected to the new chair of history and English literature
When William Mercer Green's retirement opened the faculty, the trustees created a professorship of history and English literature and elected the Methodist minister Albert M. Shipp to it. He held the chair until 1859.
-
Charles Phillips buys the house William Mercer Green built on East Franklin
Professor Charles Phillips bought the house at 513 East Franklin, just east of his father's, from the Rev. William Mercer Green, who had built it a few years earlier and was leaving to become Episcopal bishop of Mississippi. Phillips lived there until his death in 1889.
-
English gardeners lay out the campus grounds
The trustees began spending $1,000 a year on the still wild campus under gardeners trained in England, first Loader and then Paxton, with Black laborers. They cleared useless trees, macadamized much of Cameron Avenue and the main walks, lined walks with roses and screened the hotel stables with hedges.
-
Solomon Pool studies at the university in Chapel Hill
Solomon Pool entered the University of North Carolina in 1849 at the age of seventeen and graduated in 1853 as the second honor student in a class of fifty-nine. He was a member of the Philanthropic Society while in 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.
-
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.
-
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.
- 1850s
-
Dr. Johnston Blakeley Jones builds a Gothic Revival cottage on West Cameron Avenue
In the 1850s Dr. Jones, one of the village's two physicians before the war, built a board-and-batten cottage at 321 West Cameron with Gothic windows in its front gable, a bay window and a porch of arched latticework. It is the only Gothic Revival cottage known in Chapel Hill, probably based on a pattern book such as Downing's.
-
Signed marble obelisks go up in the Dialectic and Philanthropic plots
George Lauder signed obelisks for Philanthropic members David White Fisher (died 1850) and Mark Bennett (died 1851) and for Dialectic member John Alexander Smith (died 1855), and the Raleigh firm of Maunder & Campbell signed the obelisk of Joshua P. Perry (died 1856). Signed stones are rare in the cemetery.
-
Smith Hall is built to Alexander Jackson Davis's design as the university library and ballroom
The New York architect Alexander Jackson Davis designed Smith Hall, built from 1850 to 1852 for just over $10,300 and named for the trustee and former governor Benjamin Smith. It served as library and ballroom and is now the Playmakers Theatre.
-
The Smyth House is built near Chapel Hill
A two-story frame hall-parlor house in a restrained Greek Revival manner, its stone chimneys stuccoed and scored to look like cut blocks.
-
Trustees ban spirituous liquor from commencement balls
After students broke into the ball managers' stores of liquor and held a carousal, the trustees, on William A. Graham's motion, ordered that no spirituous liquor be brought to university balls and entertainments, on pain of dismissal for any manager who broke the rule. The faculty were asked to drop their dismissal of the offending managers.
-
Drinking students stone two professors in a night riot
Eight or ten students drinking on the campus turned on two professors who tried to stop them, stoning them until they took refuge in a student's room, and one tried to reach them at the window with a large stone. The ringleader was expelled, and the trustees, meeting at Hillsborough, sent the evidence to the solicitor for prosecution.
-
Cameron Avenue extended west through the university forest
The street now called Cameron Avenue was cut westward through the university's forest and named College Avenue by the village commissioners, and lots along it were put up for sale. Professor Fordyce M. Hubbard persuaded the trustees to build him a house at its corner with Pittsboro Street.
-
Campus grove is thinned and paved walks laid
Until 1851 the campus was forest with only the underbrush cleared, fenced off from the Raleigh road by rails and a hedgerow and used to pasture the president's cattle. In that year the trees were thinned and the first paved walks were built.
-
Delta Kappa Epsilon chapter opens as fraternities reach the university
Greek-letter fraternities began entering the university in 1851 without any trustee or faculty vote admitting them. Delta Kappa Epsilon organized that year, Beta Theta Pi in 1852, Sigma Alpha Epsilon in 1857 and Zeta Psi in January 1858, and all had disbanded before the end of the Civil War.
-
Dr. J. S. Lucas opens a drugstore at Franklin and Henderson
Lucas opened a drugstore on the northeast corner of Henderson and Franklin streets. Richard Benbury Saunders bought it in 1855.
-
Phi Gamma Delta's Epsilon chapter forms at the university
Defying the trustees' ban on secret societies, the Epsilon chapter of Phi Gamma Delta organized in the fall of 1851, months after Delta Kappa Epsilon.
-
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.
-
Zebulon Vance studies law at Chapel Hill
Vance entered the University of North Carolina early in 1851 and spent the rest of the year at Chapel Hill studying law under Judge William H. Battle and Samuel F. Phillips. He obtained his law licence in December 1851 and set up an office at Asheville early in 1852.
-
The General Assembly passes an act incorporating Chapel Hill under five commissioners
Chapter 330 of the 1850-51 session laws, ratified January 29, 1851, made Manuel Fetter, Jesse Hargrave, Patterson H. McDade, Elisha Mitchell and Jones Watson the commissioners of Chapel Hill, with five commissioners to be elected each February after. They were to choose a magistrate of police, treasurer, constable and clerk and fix the town's bounds.
-
Night disorder ends with ten students dismissed
Students covered the belfry walls with caricatures of the faculty, exploded gunpowder at the laboratory door, and marched with horns and bells around the professors' houses, stoning one of them. The faculty questioned twenty-one absentees and dismissed ten.
-
Elizabeth Nunn, who boarded students for fifty years, dies
Mrs. Elizabeth Nunn, widow of the Revolutionary captain William Nunn, died in her ninety-second year after about fifty years of feeding students and unmarried professors at Chapel Hill. As a girl she had lived through the Regulator troubles.
-
Beta Theta Pi charters its Eta chapter at the university
The Eta chapter of Beta Theta Pi was chartered in early 1852, the third fraternity at Chapel Hill.
-
Legislature transfers the university's escheats to the common schools
The General Assembly took the right to escheats from the university and gave it to the public schools. Friends of the university soon won repeal, and the Supreme Court later held that the university, as a part of the state, was subject to such legislation.
-
Nancy Hilliard sells the Eagle Hotel, renamed the Union Hotel
In the early 1850s Miss Nancy Hilliard, long the students' and travelers' landlady, sold her hotel interest for $10,000 to Hugh B. Guthrie, who renamed the Eagle the Union Hotel. She went on to run the North Carolina Railroad eating house at Company Shops.
-
The legislature charters the Chapel Hill and Raleigh Plank Road Company
The charter allowed $40,000 in capital, and the incorporators included W. J. Hogan and Edward Mallett of Chapel Hill.
-
Students revive the University Magazine
At a student meeting Jeremiah J. Slade moved to re-establish the magazine, and the first number appeared in February 1852 with editors from both literary societies and William D. Cooke of Raleigh as publisher. It ran until June 1861, the societies agreeing in 1859 to cover its deficits.
-
Students protest faculty veto of a sub-marshal
When the faculty barred the chief marshal's nominee under a new rule against irregular students representing the university, 183 students voted resolutions that the marshals should refuse to serve. They withdrew the resolutions on May 21, the chief marshal resigned, and the 1852 commencement went on without marshals.
-
James Strudwick Smith dies
James Strudwick Smith died on December 7, 1852. His family lived out their lives at the Smith Level Road house outside Chapel Hill, and his daughter Mary Ruffin Smith later gave land to the University of North Carolina.
-
Ellington Burnett's grave becomes the earliest dated African American burial in the Chapel Hill graveyard
A brownstone ledger for Ellington Burnett, 1831-1853, son of Cornelius and Caroline Burnett, is the oldest inscribed stone in Section B, the burial ground used for enslaved people. The section was almost certainly in use earlier, its graves marked only by fieldstones.
-
Isaac Collier builds an I-house on East Rosemary Street
Isaac Collier is thought to have built the two-story I-house at 315 East Rosemary Street between 1853 and 1858. The novelist Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, later lived there.
-
Nancy Hilliard builds the house students called the Crystal Palace
After selling her hotel, Hilliard built a large two-story house east of it on land she had bought from Lucy Watts. Students nicknamed it the Crystal Palace for its many big windows.
-
Shooting during a hazing raid leads the societies to stop hazing
In 1853 a new student named Evans, a brother of the South Carolina general, met a hazing party with a cocked pistol and wounded its leader, McRae, in the arm. The two literary societies offered to end hazing if the faculty would not dismiss the offenders, and Battle says the bargain held for years.
-
University library moved from South Building to Smith Hall
The university's books were taken from the president's lecture room in South Building to the new Smith Hall, and Hubbard, Charles Phillips and the librarian were told to prepare a catalogue. At the start of the Civil War the books were stored in a room of the East Building.
-
Chapel Hill's Methodists dedicate their first church
In July 1853 the Methodist congregation that became University Methodist Church dedicated its first building, at Rosemary and Henderson streets, paid for with about $5,000 that its pastor J. Milton Frost had raised around the state. The congregation had met since about 1840, with Charles F. Deems preaching in the 1840s and Frost stationed there from January 1851.
-
Solomon Pool becomes tutor of mathematics at the university
Pool was appointed tutor of mathematics at the University of North Carolina in December 1853, months after his own graduation. He received an honorary alumni master of arts degree in 1856.
-
A Delta Psi fraternity chapter is active at the university
Battle learned after his first volume was printed that the Delta Psi Fraternity, with a large membership, was at the university from 1854 until some time during the Civil War. No record at Chapel Hill mentions it.
-
Baptist minister James Pleasant Mason marries Mary Elizabeth Morgan
Mary Elizabeth Morgan (1825-1894) had inherited a tract south of Chapel Hill that came down from early settler Mark Morgan through his son John and grandson Solomon P. Morgan. The couple had four daughters, two of whom died as infants.
-
Benjamin Hedrick's house with an eight-sided room goes up on East Rosemary Street
Professor Benjamin Hedrick's house at 610 East Rosemary Street, known for its octagonal room, was ready by 1855 and the Hedricks moved in; Preservation Chapel Hill credits the Hillsborough builder John Berry and Hedrick's own design, and Little says he bought an older farmhouse from the university and added the eight-sided room. Horace Williams later owned it, and Preservation Chapel Hill now has its offices there.
-
Chapel Hill Baptist Church is organized
Chapel Hill Baptists organized the Baptist Church of Chapel Hill in 1854 under William Henry Merritt, George W. Purefoy and Brantley J. Hackney, with Elder J. P. Mason as first pastor. Its first building went up in 1854–55, and the congregation is now University Baptist Church.
-
David McCauley and Thomas A. Long take over Jesse Hargrave's store
After Hargrave's death, his business was sold to the two young clerks he had hired in 1850. McCauley and Long's general store appears on the maps through 1868.
-
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.
-
Samuel F. Phillips teaches in the university law school
From 1854 to 1859 Phillips taught in the university law school at Chapel Hill.
-
Walter A. Thompson sells the old Nunn tavern property to Isaac Hudson
Betsy Nunn's grandson, a butcher who had inherited the run-down tavern and inn in 1852, sold it to Isaac Hudson, ending sixty years of Nunn family ownership. Hudson later built a brick house on the land.
-
School for the Application of Science to the Arts opens
Under a trustee resolution of 1852 the university opened a scientific school with departments of civil engineering, under Charles Phillips, and of chemistry applied to agriculture and the arts, under Benjamin S. Hedrick, with a laboratory in the basement of Smith Hall. Its students could earn a Bachelor of Science in about two and a half years.
-
Benjamin Hedrick is appointed the university's professor of analytical and agricultural chemistry
The university appointed Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick to its new chair of analytical and agricultural chemistry. He held it until the trustees' executive committee dismissed him in October 1856.
-
North Carolina Railroad finished to Durham's Station
The railroad was completed to Durham's Station, then a single house on Dr. Bartlett Durham's plantation in Orange County, and the company gave legislators a free ride there. From then until 1882 a two-horse hack line between Chapel Hill and Durham replaced the four-horse stage to Raleigh.
-
Caldwell Lodge No. 180 is chartered at Chapel Hill
Members of the defunct University Lodge took out a new charter as Caldwell Lodge No. 180, honoring the late university president Joseph Caldwell.
-
Chapel Hill merchants, John W. Carr among them, agree not to sell to minor students on credit
After the state's new laws on student contracts were sent to them, most of the village merchants pledged not to sell on credit to students under age without written leave from a parent or guardian, for eighteen months and subject to the faculty's approval. John W. Carr was one of nine signers.
-
Revised Code tightens the laws around the university
The state's Revised Code barred the sale of liquor within two miles of Chapel Hill, public gaming tables within five, and shows, concerts and performances within five miles without seven days' written leave from the president or faculty. It also voided students' contracts with merchants made without faculty permission and restored escheated real estate to the university.
-
Richard Benbury Saunders buys the Lucas drugstore
Saunders, a UNC graduate of 1854, bought Dr. Lucas's drugstore at Franklin and Henderson and ran it until he moved to Raleigh in 1868.
-
Richard H. Battle hosts the first class reunion dinner on record
At the 1855 commencement Richard H. Battle of the class of 1854 gave a dinner for all his returning classmates. Battle calls it the first class dinner recorded in the public prints.
-
The legislature charters four plank road companies through Orange County
The 1855 charters were for roads from Chapel Hill to Morrisville and to Durhamsville, from Hillsborough to Chapel Hill, and from Hillsborough to Milton, with capital from $20,000 to $150,000. The book could not say which, if any, were built.
-
Warrenton builder Jacob Holt puts up an Italianate house for Mary Southerland on West Franklin Street
In the mid-1850s Mary Southerland engaged Jacob Holt, the Warrenton builder, for a house on West Franklin a little west of Columbia Street, done in his heavy Italianate style with sawn brackets, corner pilasters and arched windows. She had bought the lot from Dr. Johnston B. Jones in 1851. The house has been torn down; University Square now occupies the lot.
-
The Baptist Church of Chapel Hill opens its first church
Services began on Sunday, May 6, 1855 in the brick meeting house, with vestibule, belfry and bell, that the Baptist congregation put up after it organized in September 1854. The building later became the Masonic temple of University Lodge.
-
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.
-
E. Hunt opens a photography studio and student boarding house
Hunt took over the building that had been Isaac Partridge's University Hotel and used it for a photographic studio and rooms for students. He had closed both and left Chapel Hill before 1863.
-
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.
-
Samuel Phillips builds a gable-and-wing house beside his law office
In 1856 Samuel Phillips built his family a two-story house at 407 East Franklin Street, beside his law office. With a projecting front wing and arched French doors and casements, it was the first house in the village to break from the box-like Federal and Greek Revival plan.
-
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.
-
The Lambda chapter of Phi Kappa Sigma is active at the university
Phi Kappa Sigma's Lambda chapter flourished at the university from 1856 to 1862, and many members served as Confederate officers. After the 1875 reopening it was the first fraternity to be reinstated.
-
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.
-
Charles Phillips serves as stated supply for the Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church
Phillips was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Orange in December 1857 and served as stated supply for the Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church from 1857 to 1868. He taught and superintended the church Sunday school and with his wife started a Sunday school for Black residents.
-
Sigma Alpha Epsilon establishes a chapter at the university
Sigma Alpha Epsilon set up a chapter at the university in 1857, one of several fraternities to arrive in the 1850s. It withdrew before the end of the Civil War.
-
The Baptists build a schoolhouse, and the lane beside it becomes Church Street
A schoolhouse went up next to the new Baptist church on West Franklin Street, and the dirt road just east of the two buildings took the name Church Street.
-
Trustees buy Elisha Mitchell's books and minerals after his death
Elisha Mitchell, senior professor, died on June 27, 1857, in a fall while surveying the Black Mountains. The trustees paid his salary to the year's end, let his family keep their house rent-free for six months, and bought his books for $3,500 and his apparatus and mineral cabinet for $1,000.
-
University awards its first Bachelor of Science degree
At the 1857 commencement James E. Lindsay received the first Bachelor of Science degree in the university's history, from the new scientific school. Six more B.S. degrees followed in 1859 and five in 1860.
-
Snowstorm closes the university for the first time
A night of wind and snow left about eighteen inches of icy snow, and the cold kept wood wagons off the roads for a week. For the first time in the university's history all duties were suspended, from Sunday until Tuesday.
-
John Kimberly is elected the university's professor of agricultural chemistry
The university elected John Kimberly, a Harvard-trained chemist then teaching in eastern North Carolina, to the chair of agricultural chemistry in place of the dismissed Benjamin Hedrick.
-
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.
-
Adolphus W. Mangum serves as pastor of the Chapel Hill Methodist church
The Methodist minister Adolphus Williamson Mangum, born at Locust Grove on the Flat River in what was then Orange County, was pastor of the Methodist church in Chapel Hill in 1858 and 1859.
-
Charles P. Mallett keeps the University Bookstore on Franklin Street
Mallett's University Bookstore was one of four businesses the book first maps in 1858, along with Andrew Mickle's dry goods, John R. Hutchins's clothing store and C. Gottenburg's mattress shop. All may have opened before 1853.
-
John W. Graham joins the university faculty as a Latin tutor
A year after taking his A.B. in 1857, John W. Graham became a tutor in Latin at the University of North Carolina. He finished a law degree there in 1860.
-
Jones Watson opens the Central Hotel
Watson remodeled and enlarged the old James Hogg house and the Barbee store beside it into the Central Hotel, which had several shops on the ground. It appears on the maps through 1868.
-
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.
-
The General Assembly lets Emily Hooper, a citizen of Liberia, return to slavery in Chapel Hill
A private act allowed Emily Hooper, who had emigrated to Liberia, to come back and live again as the enslaved property of her former owner, Sally Mallet of Chapel Hill.
-
The brick McDade House is built on West Franklin Street
The two-story brick I-house at 113 West Franklin Street, with late Greek Revival touches and a long rear ell, was built after Isaac Hudson bought the old Nunn lot in 1854, probably for him about 1858-60, and stood by 1865. The 1992 survey's "about 1850" is a guess from its style. The McDades did not own it until 1894.
-
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.
-
Zeta Psi organizes a chapter at the university
The Zeta Psi chapter at the university was organized in January 1858. Battle counts four colonels among its members who served the Confederacy, and nine members killed.
-
A marble monument to Joseph Caldwell is dedicated in McCorkle Place
A marble obelisk to Caldwell was dedicated north of the Davie Poplar. Its inscription names the President of the United States, the Governor and other alumni as donors and praises his advocacy of common schools and internal improvements. Caldwell and his wife still lay by the old sandstone shaft near New West; their remains, with her son's, were moved to the monument's east base in July 1904.
-
New East and New West are built to William Percival's design
To house more students, the university built two dormitories with classrooms and debating society halls on either side of Old East and Old West, to designs by the English architect William Percival, with Thomas Coates as contractor. Work began in June 1858, and the faculty announced on July 31, 1861 that the buildings were ready to occupy.
-
Beta Theta Pi's Eta chapter goes inactive
After a strong start the Eta chapter lapsed in 1859 as the Civil War approached.
-
Professor William J. Martin buys the Franklin and Boundary corner and builds a house
Martin, who replaced Elisha Mitchell on the faculty and later served as a Confederate colonel, bought the northeast corner of Franklin and Boundary streets from Charles Phillips and built his home there soon after. He left for Tennessee in 1868.
-
Samuel F. Phillips closes his law school and shares the office with Judge Battle
Phillips, who had taught law in his Franklin Street office since 1854, closed the school, went back to practice, and shared the building with Judge William Horn Battle.
-
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.
-
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.
- 1860s
-
Archbishop John Hughes preaches the commencement sermon
Invited again by the senior class, the Roman Catholic Archbishop Hughes preached the baccalaureate sermon, speaking without notes for an hour and three quarters on love of God and of neighbor. Some Protestant critics attacked the choice, and a Hillsborough Recorder correspondent charged that he was treated discourteously, which the university denied.
-
David Moore, a free Black barber in Chapel Hill, holds property worth $4,400
The 1860 census recorded Moore's property at $4,400, the largest holding among the county's 29 free Black property owners, whose combined wealth was $16,175.
-
Executive committee orders the faculty to stop hazing
The trustees' executive committee resolved that the ridicule and petty harassment of new students by older ones was cruel and contemptible and should be put down peremptorily by the faculty.
-
John Kimberly expands laboratory teaching at the university
Back in Chapel Hill after a year of study abroad in 1859, John Kimberly expanded laboratory instruction in chemistry and introduced the university's first laboratory fee for supplies.
-
Merchant Calvin Scott builds a Greek Revival house on West Cameron Avenue
Calvin Scott, a Chapel Hill merchant, is thought to have built the two-story I-house at 400 West Cameron Avenue about 1860. It later belonged to Samuel Mallette Gattis, a UNC alumnus of 1884 and a university trustee from 1909 to 1911.
-
New belfry built on South Building
A belfry was raised on South Building to plans by the builder Thomas H. Coates, replacing the one burned in 1856. It was strengthened after the 1875 reopening and still carried the bell in Battle's day.
-
The Neville House is built
The Neville House, built about 1860, was placed on the state Study List in July 1992 after the Chapel Hill Township survey.
-
The brick Mason-Lloyd-Wiley House is built on West Cameron Avenue
About 1860 a two-story brick house with carefully laid walls and a sidelighted double entrance went up at 412 West Cameron Avenue, among the biggest houses on the west side of the university. Turner Bynum may have built it.
-
William H. S. Burgwyn enters the University of North Carolina
Burgwyn entered the University of North Carolina as a freshman in 1860, after schooling near Baltimore and at Horner's School in Oxford. He left in 1861 because of illness.
-
Trustees allow students to be excused from chapel worship
Answering a memorial from the Episcopal convention that compulsory chapel on Sunday violated conscience, the trustees adopted Judge Matthias E. Manly's scheme letting the president excuse students whose parents lived in the village, who belonged to another church in town, or who or whose parents objected in writing. Morning and evening prayers stayed compulsory.
-
Andrew Mickle refuses to raise his prices as Confederate money falls
Andrew Mickle was prospering as a merchant when the Civil War began, but he held that it was wrong to raise his prices when his neighbors could hardly get money. As the currency fell he sold his goods for much less than cost and lost his fortune.
-
Seniors in the army granted diplomas without examinations
With the consent of the trustees, the faculty granted degrees to all members of the senior class, though many had joined the army and did not stand their examinations. Only thirty of the eighty-seven graduates were present in person, and the Latin salutatory was dropped because its speaker was with his regiment at Yorktown.
-
Solomon Pool is promoted to adjunct professor of mathematics
Pool was promoted to adjunct professor of mathematics in 1861 and held the position for six years. In 1866 he took leave to become a United States deputy appraiser in North Carolina on the understanding that the university need not reemploy him until it had need of him.
-
State gives Ebenezer Emmons's geological collection to the university
Needing the space in the Capitol for war business, the state gave the university the rocks and minerals gathered by State Geologist Ebenezer Emmons. Professor William J. Martin spent two weeks sorting them and shipping them to 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.
-
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.
-
Young men enroll at Chapel Hill in the Orange Light Infantry
William F. Strowd and other young men of the area, who had begun organizing a volunteer company on April 6, 1861, met at Chapel Hill on April 22 and enrolled for six months. As the Orange Light Infantry they were mustered into state service at Raleigh on May 13.
-
Orange County companies mobilize for Confederate service
Answering Governor John W. Ellis's call, Capt. R. J. Ashe's Orange Light Infantry was to report at state headquarters on April 27, 1861, with about $1,000 raised by Chapel Hill residents, and was made the first company of the First Regiment of North Carolina Volunteers. The Orange Guards were drilling at Fort Macon by early May.
-
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.
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.
