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Revolution and early republic · 1775–1799
- 1780s
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The convention adopts a declaration of rights and twenty-six amendments to be laid before Congress before ratification
On Thomas Person's motion the convention concurred with its committee of the whole, resolving that a declaration of rights of twenty articles and twenty-six amendments to the most ambiguous and exceptionable parts of the Constitution be laid before Congress and a convention of the states before North Carolina would ratify. On Willie Jones's motions it also recommended a state impost matching whatever Congress laid, urged redemption of the paper currency, and ordered the resolutions sent to Congress and the twelve other states.
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The convention directs its president to send its resolutions to Congress and the other twelve states
A unanimous resolution asked Samuel Johnston to forward the resolution on the Constitution, with the impost and paper money resolutions, to Congress and to the executives of the twelve other states.
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The convention recommends that North Carolina collect an impost for the use of Congress
Having neither ratified nor rejected the Constitution, the convention adopted by a large majority Willie Jones's resolution asking the legislature to lay a duty on goods imported into North Carolina whenever Congress laid an impost in the ratifying states, and to pay the money to Congress.
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The convention unanimously urges the Assembly to redeem the state's paper currency
On Willie Jones's motion, seconded by James Galloway, the convention asked the General Assembly to retire the state's paper currency as quickly as the people's circumstances allowed.
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The convention adjourns sine die after fixing the seat of government at Isaac Hunter's in Wake County
With the Constitution neither ratified nor rejected, the convention turned to its second charge, the seat of government. A ballot on August 2 fixed it at Isaac Hunter's in Wake County, and on Monday, August 4, after approving the ordinance for it, the convention adjourned sine die.
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The House pays the men who carried the state treasury out of Hillsborough
On November 10, 1789 the House of Commons voted to pay John Armstrong of Orange County three pounds for taking the Treasury's books and papers from Hillsborough to Fayetteville, and five pounds each to nine men of the Orange Company of Horse who guarded the money on the road. The treasurer's office had been kept in the town since 1786 in the confiscated store known as the Blue House, and its records had already been carted to Tarboro and back in 1787 and 1788.
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A second convention at Fayetteville ratifies the Constitution 195 to 77
Sixteen months after the Hillsborough convention withheld ratification, a second convention that opened at Fayetteville on the third Monday of November 1789 voted to adopt and ratify the Constitution, 195 to 77, and adjourned the next day. Congress had by then sent the states the amendments that became the Bill of Rights.
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University of North Carolina is chartered
Meeting in Fayetteville, the General Assembly adopted William R. Davie's bill chartering the University of North Carolina. The act named some forty trustees and, instead of an appropriation, gave the school escheated property and uncollected debts; the trustees later placed it in southern Orange County, where Chapel Hill grew up around it.
- 1790s
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The county tax list counts 36 white polls and 82 taxable enslaved people in Hillsborough town
Orange County's 1790 tax list returned 2,272 polls and 406,106 acres across its eight districts, with a separate list for Hillsborough town showing 36 white polls against 82 black polls. William Hooper was charged for 22 of them, John Taylor for 10 and Francis Childs for 5.
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Richard Stanford opens an academy in the Hawfields
Richard Stanford, who had come to the Hawfields district of Orange County from Maryland in 1789, opened an academy there. Thomas Hart Benton was among his early pupils.
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William Hooper dies in Hillsborough
Hooper, one of North Carolina's three signers of the Declaration of Independence, died at Hillsborough in his forty-ninth year and was buried there.
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General Assembly orders a new district courthouse built at Hillsborough
Alexander Mebane of Orange brought in the bill, and the act named William Watters, Absalom Tatom and Jeduthan Harper commissioners to raise a courthouse on the lot where the burned one had stood and to sell off its brick and remains. It was paid for by a poll and land tax on Orange and by lighter taxes on Wake, Chatham, Caswell, Granville and Randolph, the counties of the Hillsborough district.
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Eagle Lodge is chartered at Hillsborough
Eagle Lodge No. 19 was chartered at Hillsborough in 1791, among the first lodges under the Grand Lodge of North Carolina, with George Doherty as its first secretary. It stayed active until 1799 and then lay dormant until the masons revived it in 1819 under a new charter and a new number.
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Faucett's grist mill is working at the Eno ford northwest of Hillsborough
The county's architectural survey records the Faucett Mill in operation by at least 1792, at a place where a wagon road forded the Eno River northwest of Hillsborough, and says it may have been built as early as the 1760s by the Quaker milling family of Isaac Lowe. Mills of this kind ground the corn and wheat that Orange farmers hauled north to Petersburg or south toward the Cape Fear, and doubled as gathering places; the Faucett family later added a house that served as an inn and tavern.
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Hillsborough builders add a Federal-style house at Cain's Pleasant Grove
The Cains commissioned the Hillsborough builders Martin Palmer and Samuel Hopkins to build a second, Federal-style house about ten feet from the original 1775 Georgian house at Pleasant Grove.
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James Hogg of Hillsborough gathers Orange County land and money for the university site
Hogg, a Hillsborough merchant who sat on the commission that fixed the university's place, brought in pledges of land and about 1,600 dollars from people in Orange County for the New Hope Chapel Hill site. The ground chosen lay roughly twelve miles from Hillsborough on the road running from Petersburg through the town and on south to Pittsboro.
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Willie Jones views New Hope Chapel Hill as a university commissioner and signs for the site
Jones was one of six commissioners the trustees sent to fix the seat of the university. On November 5, 1792 he handed the commissioners Joel Lane's offer of 640 acres in Wake County; the commissioners then went on to view New Hope Chapel Hill in Orange County, where they took offers of 1,390 acres and about 798 pounds. Jones signed the report.
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Hillsborough gets the first post office in Orange County
David Ray was appointed Hillsborough's first postmaster about December 18, 1792, and the office appears in post office lists from March 20, 1793, the first in the county; Chapel Hill followed on July 1, 1795. Letters were left at the office for recipients to collect, and for decades it moved from one Churton Street or King Street business to another.
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Alexander Mebane takes his seat as Orange County's first member of Congress
Alexander Mebane of the Hawfields, a former Orange County sheriff, sits in the Third Congress, the first on the book's list of congressmen from Orange.
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Walter Alves serves as a university trustee and board treasurer
Walter Alves of Orange County was a trustee of the University of North Carolina from 1795 to 1813 and treasurer of its board from 1795 to 1799.
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UNC’s Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies take shape
UNC students held the first recorded meeting of a Debating Society on June 3, 1795, and voted on July 2 to split in two, the new body being the Concord Society. They took the names Dialectic and Philanthropic in late August 1796 and for over a century served as debating clubs, student government and keepers of large libraries.
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UNC holds its first public examination, announced by Governor Spaight
The University's first public examination took place at Chapel Hill on July 13, 1795, after notice appeared in the newspapers over the signature of Governor Richard Dobbs Spaight. The governor's wife, Mary Spaight, was the only woman present, and about a dozen men attended, including William R. Davie, James Hogg, Alfred Moore and James Glasgow.
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John Cabe, Gilbert Strayhorn's son-in-law, sits in the legislature
John Cabe, who married Strayhorn's daughter Mary and settled near New Hope, served in the legislature in 1796.
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Richard Stanford begins about twenty years as congressman for the Hillsborough district
Richard Stanford, who was not born in Orange, won the Hillsborough district seat in Congress in 1796 and kept it for about twenty years. He started out a Jeffersonian Republican and later broke with Jefferson.
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Thomas Person gives $1,050 to complete the university chapel, later named Person Hall
Trustee Thomas Person gave $1,050 to finish the chapel then under construction at Chapel Hill. The trustees thanked him for his liberality and the building, completed in 1798, was named Person Hall.
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The Assembly orders the sale of the ruinous St. Matthew's church building
An act of 1797 authorised the sheriff to sell the old Anglican church on Lot 98, described as in a ruinous and decayed situation and not used for divine worship for a number of years. The building went soon afterwards, and around 1800 the town had no church at all.
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A free Black distiller works on East King Street as the county counts its Black residents
Africa Parker, a free Black man, was running a distillery on East King Street near William Courtney's house in Hillsborough in 1799. The census the next year counted 3,327 enslaved people and 100 free Black people in Orange County alongside 12,222 white residents.
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Archibald D. Murphey graduates from the university and joins its faculty
Archibald D. Murphey graduated with honors from the University at Chapel Hill in 1799 and was hired at once as a tutor. The next year he became professor of languages, one of three faculty members, and also served as librarian before resigning to study law in Hillsborough.
Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
- 1800s
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William Cain is the largest landowner in Orange County, enslaving 30 people
By 1800 William Cain owned 4,417 acres, the most of any landowner in Orange County, and enslaved 30 people at Pleasant Grove, a number he increased to 95 by 1830.
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Archibald D. Murphey marries Jane Armistead Scott and settles at the Hermitage
After leaving the University to read law in Hillsborough under William Duffy, Murphey married Jane Armistead Scott on November 5, 1801, and made his home at the Hermitage, her father's farm on Great Alamance Creek about eighteen miles west of Hillsborough, in the part of Orange County that is now Alamance. He built his law practice around the Hillsborough courthouse.
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William Norwood gives $100 toward finishing South Building
William Norwood of Hillsborough contributed $100 toward finishing South Building at the university.
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Hillsborough Academy trustees engage Thomas Baron after George Johnston fails to arrive
The academy trustees, Walter Alves among them, announced that George Johnston had not taken charge as promised and that they had engaged Thomas Baron, a Harvard graduate, to teach languages, arithmetic, geography and mathematics.
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Pleasant Henderson writes to trustee Walter Alves about a student secession at the university
Pleasant Henderson wrote to Walter Alves that about 45 students had left the university in protest over the trustees' rule requiring student monitors to take an oath, and urged Alves and the board to act.
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William Norwood represents the borough of Hillsborough in the House of Commons
Hillsborough lawyer William Norwood was elected to the House of Commons for the borough of Hillsborough in 1806 and reelected in 1807.
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Frederick Nash is elected a trustee of the University of North Carolina
Nash was elected a trustee of the University of North Carolina in 1807 and remained an active supporter of the university. It awarded him an LL.D. in 1853.
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Frederick Nash moves from New Bern to Hillsborough
Nash and his wife left New Bern for Hillsborough in 1807 seeking a healthier climate. There he bought a small one-story house, an office and cabins for slave quarters from Duncan Cameron.
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Thomas Ruffin qualifies to practice law and settles at Hillsborough
Ruffin finished his legal studies under Archibald D. Murphey in Rockingham County and qualified to practice law in 1808. He moved to Hillsborough on June 9, 1809, and built his practice there; William A. Graham later read law with him.
- 1810s
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William R. Davie receives the university's first honorary Doctor of Laws
The University of North Carolina awarded William R. Davie an honorary LL.D. in 1811, the first Doctor of Laws it conferred; honorary master's degrees had gone to Joseph Caldwell and others in 1799. Davie had sat on the board of trustees from 1789 to 1807.
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Archibald D. Murphey serves Orange County in the state senate
Archibald D. Murphey was elected to the legislature from Orange County in 1812 and sat in the state senate until 1818. There he proposed a publicly financed system of schools in a report he finished on November 29, 1817, and in 1819 he followed it with his memoir on internal improvements.
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Thomas Ruffin represents Hillsborough in the House of Commons
Ruffin sat for the town of Hillsborough in the North Carolina House of Commons in 1813, 1815 and 1816, until he was elected a Superior Court judge at the age of twenty-nine.
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Thomas Ruffin serves on the University of North Carolina Board of Trustees
Ruffin served on the university's Board of Trustees from 1813 to 1831 and again from 1842 to 1868. The residence hall completed in 1922 was named for him and for his son Thomas Ruffin Jr.
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Frederick Nash represents Orange County in the House of Commons
Nash sat for Orange County in the House of Commons in 1814, 1816 and 1817. He was speaker of the house in 1814.
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Thomas Ruffin of Hillsborough is chosen Speaker of the House of Commons
Ruffin, sitting for the borough of Hillsborough, was elected Speaker in the 1816 session, his last in the legislature before he became a superior court judge.
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William Norwood becomes a trustee of Hillsborough Academy
William Norwood was a trustee of Hillsborough Academy by 1816 and chaired its board in 1826.
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John Motley Morehead serves as a tutor at the university
After graduating in 1817, Morehead was one of the university's two tutors for that year, with Priestly Hinton Mangum.
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Hillsborough physician James S. Smith serves in Congress
James Strudwick Smith, an Orange County-born physician who had studied medicine with Dr. James Webb of Hillsborough, represented the Hillsborough district in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Congresses from March 4, 1817, to March 3, 1821. He was defeated when he sought a third term.
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Willie P. Mangum represents Orange County in the House of Commons
In 1818, a year after his admission to the bar, Willie P. Mangum was elected to the House of Commons for Orange County, where he promoted constitutional reform.
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William Woods Holden is born near Hillsborough
William Woods Holden, later editor of the North Carolina Standard and governor, was born near Hillsborough to Thomas Holden and Priscilla Woods. His grandfather had moved to Orange County to farm, and from age six he was raised by his stepmother, Sally Nichols Holden.
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General Assembly appoints commissioners for the Town of Chapel Hill
The General Assembly named Joseph Caldwell, Pleasant Henderson, Thomas Taylor, Ezekiel Trice and William Barbee commissioners for the town of Chapel Hill, with power to fix its boundaries and make bylaws. Elected commissioners and a corporate charter followed in the 1850-51 session.
- 1820s
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Josiah Turner Jr. is born in Hillsborough
Josiah Turner Jr. was born in Hillsborough, the eldest son of Josiah and Eliza Evans Turner. His father was a longtime sheriff and large landowner in Orange County.
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Hugh Waddell begins practising law in Hillsborough
Waddell, an 1818 graduate of the university, began to practise law in Hillsborough and Orange County in 1823 and kept his practice there until 1867, when he moved to Wilmington.
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Willie P. Mangum begins his service in the U.S. House of Representatives
Mangum, a former superior court judge, took a seat in Congress for the district in 1823 and served two terms before resigning in 1826.
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James S. Smith's building commission starts Hillsborough's brick Masonic Hall
In July 1823 commissioners James S. Smith, Thomas Clancy and J. P. Sneed advertised in the Hillsborough Recorder for proposals to build a brick Masonic Hall in the town. The cornerstone was laid on November 23, 1823, for the Greek Revival hall designed by William Nichols and built by local brickmasons John Berry and Samuel Hancock.
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Orange County votes for Andrew Jackson in the presidential election
Orange gave Jackson 638 votes to 591 for William H. Crawford, even though its congressman Willie P. Mangum backed Crawford. The county voted for Jackson again in 1828 (1,036 to 440) and 1832 (759 to 170 for Clay).
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William Norwood is elected first junior warden of the reorganized St. Matthew's Church
When St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Hillsborough was reorganized, William Norwood was elected its first junior warden.
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Archibald D. Murphey gives the first commencement-eve oration in Person Hall
On June 27, 1827, the day before commencement, Murphey delivered an oration in Person Hall at Chapel Hill under the appointment of the Dialectic Society. Addressing the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies, he argued that a college course only prepared the mind for later learning; the speech was printed and reissued in 1843.
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Frederick Nash represents the town of Hillsborough in the House of Commons
Having earlier sat for Orange County, Nash represented the town of Hillsborough itself in the House of Commons in 1828 and 1829.
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Orange County sends Hugh Waddell to the House of Commons
Waddell was elected to the House of Commons from Orange County for the 1828-29 session and again in 1835, and then served Orange in the state senate in five sessions between 1836 and 1848, as president of the senate in 1836.
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William W. Holden serves as an apprentice printer at the Hillsborough Recorder
At about age ten Holden was apprenticed as a printer's devil to Dennis Heartt, editor of the Hillsborough Recorder, who was responsible for his early education and political views. He struck out on his own at about sixteen, working first for the Milton Chronicle.
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William A. Graham establishes a law practice in Hillsborough
Graham read law with Thomas Ruffin of Orange County and, having taken his county and superior court licences, had established a practice among the Hillsborough bar by March 1828. He kept a law practice until his death and in time owned three plantations worked by enslaved people.
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Thomas Ruffin issues the State v. Mann decision
Thomas Ruffin of Hillsborough, newly seated on the North Carolina Supreme Court, wrote the opinion in State v. Mann, overturning the conviction of John Mann of Edenton for shooting Lydia, an enslaved woman he had hired, as she fled a whipping. Ruffin held that a master's power must be absolute, and abolitionists later cited the ruling widely.
- 1830s
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The legislature elects Willie P. Mangum to the United States Senate
Mangum, then a Jacksonian Democrat, was chosen senator in 1830. He broke with Jackson over the bank deposits and resigned when a Democratic legislature instructed him to vote to expunge the censure of Jackson.
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Giles Mebane stays at Chapel Hill as a university tutor
After graduating from the University of North Carolina in 1831, Giles Mebane remained in Chapel Hill as a tutor before starting to practice law.
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Cadwallader Jones graduates from the University of North Carolina
Jones, the son of Cadwallader and Rebecca Edwards Long Jones of West Hill near Hillsborough, took his degree at Chapel Hill in 1832.
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Archibald D. Murphey dies in Hillsborough
Archibald D. Murphey died in Hillsborough, then his home, on February 1, 1832, after years of rheumatism and debt, and was buried in the town graveyard a few feet from the door of the Presbyterian church. No monument marked his grave when the memoir in his published papers was written.
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William A. Graham represents Hillsborough and then Orange County in the House of Commons
Graham was borough representative from Hillsborough in the legislatures of 1833, 1834 and 1835. After the constitutional reforms of 1835 he represented Orange County in the House of Commons in the 1836, 1838 and 1840 sessions, and he was speaker in the last two.
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A. Mickle serves as Orange County's register of deeds
Lefler and Wager's list of Orange County registers of deeds gives A. Mickle in the office from 1835 to 1849, between J. McKerall and John Laws.
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Dr. William Montgomery of Orange is elected to Congress
Montgomery, a Jackson Democrat and longtime state senator for Orange, defeated Daniel A. Barringer, carrying his home county 1,501 to 900. He served three terms.
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Orange County sends physicians William Montgomery and James S. Smith to the 1835 convention
Ten men were put forward at meetings around the county, and the voters chose two physicians, William Montgomery and James S. Smith. Each sided with the majority that abolished borough seats, which cost Hillsborough its own member in the House of Commons.
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Orange County votes overwhelmingly for a constitutional convention
Orange voted 1,648 to 111 for calling a convention to reform representation, and Hillsborough, which stood to lose its borough seat, voted 228 to 23 in favor.
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James S. Smith of Orange moves to abolish borough seats at the 1835 convention
At the state constitutional convention in Raleigh, James S. Smith, one of Orange County's two delegates with William Montgomery, moved on June 11, 1835, to abolish borough representation entirely; the motion failed 61 to 67. The convention's committee later recommended taking the House seat from Hillsborough, Halifax and Salisbury while keeping it for four other towns.
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County voters defeat a plan to form a new county from western Orange
After more than ten years of agitation by residents of the industrial west, a county referendum rejected the proposal by a wide margin. Alamance County was not created until 1849.
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Hugh Waddell of Orange serves as Whig Speaker of the state Senate
Waddell, who represented Orange in the Senate for three sessions between 1836 and 1846, presided over the Senate as its Whig Speaker in the 1836-1837 session.
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Jones begins practicing law at Hillsborough
Jones began his legal career in Hillsborough in 1836 and practiced there until he moved his family to a cotton plantation near Rock Hill, South Carolina, in 1857. He sat in the House of Commons for the 1840, 1842, 1848 and 1850 sessions and became solicitor of the Fourth Judicial District in April 1843.
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Orange County's Jacksonian majority narrows as leading men turn Whig
After many county leaders broke with Jackson, Orange gave Martin Van Buren 1,103 votes to 905 for the Whig Hugh L. White. From then until the Civil War the county's presidential majority went to the Whig candidate.
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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.
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Orange County citizens gather at Mount Willing each January to celebrate Jackson's New Orleans victory
Citizens met at the Mount Willing crossroads in western Orange County on January 7, 1837, to mark Andrew Jackson's 1815 victory at New Orleans with toasts, cheers and gunfire. The Recorder called the gathering an annual custom by 1842, when about 200 attended, and reported it again in 1844 with a procession from the crossroads.
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Commissioners seek bids to repair the Eno bridge at Hillsborough
John U. Kirkland was one of five commissioners, with Cadwallader Jones, Edmund Strudwick, Josiah Turner and Catlett Campbell, who advertised for proposals to repair the bridge over the Eno at Hillsborough, with bids due in November.
- 1840s
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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.
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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.
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William A. Graham of Hillsborough is elected to the United States Senate
After seven years in the House of Commons, twice as Speaker, Graham was sent to the U.S. Senate in 1840. He left when Democrats controlled the Assembly of 1842-1843.
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Hugh Waddell opens a school for law students in Hillsborough
In 1842 Waddell opened a school in Hillsborough to prepare young men for the bar.
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Willie P. Mangum builds Walnut Hall at Red Mountain
Willie P. Mangum built Walnut Hall from 1842 to 1845 as an addition to his father's house of about 1800. His wife ran the 600-acre plantation, where Mangum enslaved 20 people in 1850.
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Willie P. Mangum serves as president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate
Mangum, by then a leading Whig, presided over the Senate as president pro tempore for three years. He had turned down the Whig vice-presidential nomination in 1840.
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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.
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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.
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Giles Mebane represents Orange County in the House of Commons
Giles Mebane sat for Orange County in the House of Commons from 1844 to 1849, until the western part of the county, where he was from, became Alamance County.
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John Berry builds the Orange County Courthouse
County magistrates ordered a new Hillsborough courthouse in early 1844 and set aside $6,000, and its cornerstone was set to be laid with Masonic ceremonies on September 7, 1844. John Berry designed and built the Greek Revival temple-form building, which was standing by May 1845; the town clock went into its cupola in July 1846.
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Orange County's William A. Graham is elected governor
Graham, the Whig nominee chosen unanimously in 1843, won the governorship in 1844 and was re-elected in 1846. He served from 1845 to 1849.
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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.
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John U. Kirkland is elected a Warden of the Poor for Orange County
At an election in April 1844 Orange County chose Cadwallader Jones, Dr. James Webb, Green Jordan, Nathaniel Bain, James Faucett, John U. Kirkland and Samuel N. Tate as Wardens of the Poor.
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Eagle Lodge Masons lay the cornerstone of the new Orange County courthouse
Masons of Eagle Lodge, with brethren from University Lodge, laid the cornerstone of the new courthouse in Hillsborough, with Dr. James S. Smith acting as deputy grand master. The Rev. William M. Green gave the oration in the old courthouse nearby.
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Josiah Turner Jr. is admitted to the bar after studying law in Hillsborough
After schooling at the Caldwell Institute in Greensboro and a year at the University of North Carolina, Josiah Turner Jr. studied law for two years in Hillsborough and was admitted to the bar in about 1845. He soon built a large practice.
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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.
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Lemuel Lynch becomes Hillsborough's first mayor
The silversmith Lemuel Lynch takes office as the first mayor of Hillsborough, which until then had been run by town commissioners and a magistrate of police.
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James S. Smith offers his estate for sale to pay his debts
In a notice dated August 19, 1845, in the Hillsborough Recorder, James S. Smith offered property he valued at not less than $35,000 to cover debts of $15,000 or $16,000, saying he would act as his own trustee and salesman. NCpedia says he went bankrupt that year and probably then moved from Hillsborough to a house on Smith Level Road outside Chapel Hill.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Giles Mebane introduces the bill to form Alamance County from western Orange
On January 1, 1849, Giles Mebane, a member for Orange County, introduced a bill to create a new county from part of Orange. It passed, and he named the county Alamance.
- 1850s
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Frederick Strudwick graduates and begins practising law in Hillsborough
Frederick Nash Strudwick, born in Hillsborough on 27 June 1833 and schooled there, graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1851 and then began a law practice in Hillsborough.
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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.
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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.
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The Whigs nominate William A. Graham for vice president
Graham ran on the Whig ticket with General Winfield Scott in 1852. The ticket lost.
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John W. Carr sits as a justice of the county court
Carr was one of five justices holding the February 1852 term of the Orange County court, which elected a Board of Superintendents of Common Schools and set the county tax.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Samuel F. Phillips teaches in the university law school
From 1854 to 1859 Phillips taught in the university law school at Chapel Hill.
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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.
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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.
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Hillsborough elects a Know Nothing slate in its town elections
In the 1855 municipal election Hillsborough voters chose a Nativist (American Party) ticket. The same year the county's congressional vote went to the Know Nothing candidate.
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Willie P. Mangum is made a justice of the peace on his return to Orange County
According to the book, Mangum was made a justice of the peace on his return to Orange County in 1855, so that the county court could draw on his knowledge and experience.
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Orange County reports its county taxes to the state for the first time
County taxes, all on property and polls, came to $9,432.53 in 1856: $6,153.98 for county costs, $1,583.92 for the poor and $1,694.63 for common schools. By 1864 the county levy had grown to $35,106.63.
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Samuel F. Phillips represents Orange County in the House of Commons
A Whig, Phillips was elected to the House of Commons in 1856 and 1858 and again in 1864 and 1865, representing Orange, and was chosen speaker in 1865. He moved to Raleigh in 1867.
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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.
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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.
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Pride Jones and John W. Norwood are elected to the House of Commons for Orange
Orange County elected Democrats Pride Jones and John W. Norwood to the state House of Commons in the August 1858 election.
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Frederick Nash dies in Hillsborough and is buried in the Old Town Cemetery
Nash fell ill returning from a synod meeting at New Bern and died in December 1858 at his Hillsborough home, while serving as chief justice of the state supreme court. He was buried in the Hillsborough Old Town Cemetery.
- 1860s
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Thomas Kirkland starts a frame house and finishes it after the Civil War
Thomas Kirkland began a two-room frame house on University Station Road before he left for the war and completed it when he came back.
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William Shambley builds a log house before going to war
About 1860 William Shambley raised a one-room log house on Cornwallis Road, finishing it shortly before he left to fight in the Civil War. It remained well kept in 1992.
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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.
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Hillsborough Methodists refuse to give their church bell to be cast into Confederate cannon
When Confederate authorities, short of cannon, asked the Hillsborough Methodist Church for its bell to melt down, the congregation turned them down.
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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.
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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.
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Thirty-five men of the New Hope congregation die in Confederate service
Craig lists thirty-five men from within the bounds of the congregation who died in the Civil War, eight of them Strayhorns and three Craigs.
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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.
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Orange County voters reject a secession convention
In the February 28, 1861 vote on calling a state convention, Orange County voted 1,436 against and 458 for, and chose Unionists William A. Graham and John Berry as delegates over secession candidates Henry K. Nash and Pride Jones. The governor's count showed the convention defeated statewide, 46,603 to 46,409, before Davie County reported.
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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.
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A courthouse meeting in Hillsborough calls for a secession convention
Ten days after Fort Sumter, a large crowd from across the county met at the courthouse. With Dr. Edmund Strudwick presiding and Dennis Heartt as secretary, it adopted resolutions asking the legislature to call a convention at once to pass an ordinance of secession.
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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.
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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.
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Orange County during the Civil War
Students left Chapel Hill to enlist from late April 1861, and Hillsborough Military Academy's founder, Charles Tew, left in May to command a Confederate regiment. The university stayed open as enrollment fell to about a dozen. Federal cavalry held Chapel Hill from April 17 to May 3, 1865, as many newly freed people left town or joined the army.
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Orange County sends delegates to the secession convention
On May 13, 1861, after Fort Sumter and Lincoln's call for troops, Orange County voters again chose William A. Graham and John Berry as delegates to the state convention, over Paul C. Cameron and Henry K. Nash. The Recorder printed the precinct returns and noted the convention would meet in Raleigh on May 20.
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North Carolina secedes from the Union
Meeting in Raleigh on May 20, 1861, the state convention, with Orange County's delegates William A. Graham and John Berry among its members, unanimously adopted an ordinance dissolving North Carolina's union with the United States and the same day ratified the provisional Confederate constitution.
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Orange County elects William A. Graham to the secession convention
Graham had led Union men in defeating a February 1861 referendum to call a convention on disunion. After Fort Sumter he was elected by a large margin to represent Orange County in the Constitutional Convention of May 1861, where he stood unsuccessfully for the presidency of the convention before voting for secession.
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The Orange County court sets aside $50,000 for soldiers' families
Recognizing that many volunteers were men of small means, the county court appropriated $50,000 to support their families. The fund lasted until late in the war.
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Faculty deny rumors of closing and add military drill
Alarmed by reports that the university had suspended, the faculty issued a circular that there had been no suspension since 1795 and would be none, and that students were being taught military tactics. Drill was led first by a Mr. Lilly and Professor William J. Martin, and on March 18, 1862 tutor Frederick A. Fetter was made drill master.
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Commencement held without its ball or marshals
The ball managers told the trustees the seniors' ball could not be held unless the board gave $200 or $300, and the trustees did not answer, so it was omitted for the first time. A quarrel between seniors and juniors over the marshal left the commencement without marshals or music.
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Dr. Armand J. DeRosset of Wilmington buys a West Franklin house as a wartime refuge
DeRosset bought Mary Southerland's house and kept it as his family's refuge from the coast for the rest of the war. He sold it to Caroline Frederica Baudry in 1867.
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Druggist Richard Benbury Saunders makes blue mass for the Confederacy
Saunders enlisted in 1861 but was back at his Franklin Street drugstore by 1862, compounding blue mass, a mercury purgative the Confederate army counted as essential.
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The legislature elects William A. Graham to the Confederate Senate
Early in the session that began after the 1862 election, the Assembly chose Graham, then Orange's state senator, for the Confederate Senate term starting in May 1864. He kept his state seat until December 1863.
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Fire destroys Robert Loder's clothing store
Robert Loder's store near Franklin and Columbia burned, and the fire crossed Columbia Street to John Wesley Carr's store before it was put out.
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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.
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The county school board names committeemen for all 53 districts in wartime
The Board of Superintendents appointed school committeemen for each of Orange County's 53 districts, a sign the public schools stayed open during the war. That month W. H. Brown's examining committee also called would-be teachers to the courthouse in May.
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Assessors announce the listing of Orange County property under the Confederate tax
H. M. Stroud and A. M. Angier advertised fourteen places and dates, August 18 to September 4, to list produce, goods and money under the Confederate tax act of April 24, 1863. A tax-in-kind notice followed in December 1864.
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Fire destroys the block at the northwest corner of Churton and King streets
A fire that broke out about 1 a.m. destroyed seventeen buildings on the northwest corner of Churton and King streets in Hillsborough, among them the corner store owned by John U. Kirkland and occupied by W. F. and T. J. Strayhorn. The Recorder reported that few owners were insured.
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Pastor Henry B. Pratt tells the Presbyterian session he will serve the army as a chaplain
Pratt informed the Hillsborough church that he expected to go into Confederate service for the rest of the war once he obtained a chaplain's commission. He returned as pastor in 1867-68.
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Josiah Turner Jr. of Hillsborough is elected to the Confederate Congress
Turner won as an anti-administration candidate in the same year Orange gave Zebulon Vance an 885-vote majority over the peace candidate William W. Holden. In Congress his resolutions supported Graham's push for the Hampton Roads peace conference.
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Orange County's roll of justices of the peace reaches 62
The county court had usually been small, and often only five or six magistrates sat at a term, but the number of justices rose sharply during the war. By 1864 Orange had 62.
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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.
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Confederate War Department refuses to exempt underclassmen
When the exemption Jefferson Davis had granted proved to cover only juniors and seniors, the trustees petitioned Secretary of War Seddon, showing that drafting the lower classes would add almost no soldiers. Seddon refused, and the students liable to conscription volunteered.
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Anderson's Confederate cavalry sign their paroles at Paul Cameron's house Highlands
At the end of the Civil War, Confederate troops used Highlands, Paul C. Cameron's house south of the Eno, and the paroles of Anderson's cavalry were signed in the old part of the house.
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Orange County sends John Berry and Samuel F. Phillips to the 1865 convention
Orange would have elected Graham to the postwar convention, but his pardon was held up, so he withdrew and voters chose Berry and Phillips.
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The legislature elects William A. Graham to the U.S. Senate, but Congress refuses to seat him
Elected to the state Senate in 1865, Graham could not take that seat without a pardon. The legislature then chose him for the U.S. Senate, and he was turned away with the rest of the state's delegation. His pardon arrived in 1867.
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Thomas Ruffin buys the Hillsborough house he called Little Hawfields
The house on East Orange Street, built about 1821 and enlarged in the 1830s, was sold to Thomas Ruffin in 1865. He named it Little Hawfields. The Town of Hillsborough acquired the property in 1972 and made it the Town Hall.
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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.
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The county court sets its 1865 levy for poor relief and soldiers' families
The February court matched the state tax on land and polls and split the money: $15,000 for poor relief, $10,000 for county purposes and the rest for soldiers' families. The previous August, presiding justice James C. Turrentine had called all the justices together on the families' support.
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Wheeler's Confederate cavalry fought Union pursuers at New Hope Creek east of Chapel Hill
Retreating cavalry under Joseph Wheeler destroyed the bridge over the rain-swollen New Hope and the other bridges on the road toward Chapel Hill, then attacked Union cavalry trying to cross on fallen trees and driftwood at the Atkins plantation, about eight miles from the village. Cornelia Phillips Spencer, writing from Chapel Hill, called it the last skirmish and perhaps the last blood of the war and recorded that several men were killed on both sides.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Johnston surrendered to Sherman at the Bennett farm, then in Orange County
After meetings on April 17 and 18 whose terms Washington rejected, Joseph E. Johnston and William T. Sherman met again at the farm of James and Nancy Bennitt and signed a military surrender covering forces in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. North Carolina Historic Sites describes the Bennitt farm as a 325 acre place in Orange County, on the Hillsborough road west of Durham Station.
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Charles P. Mallett wrote that federal troops had held Chapel Hill for fourteen days
Writing from Chapel Hill, the merchant Charles P. Mallett reported that Union troops had held the village for fourteen days, that they had behaved tolerably where safeguards were posted but had stripped the surrounding countryside of horses and mules, and that General Judson Kilpatrick had held a review in the village the previous day.
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Confederate leaders gather at Hillsborough
Wade Hampton and Joseph E. Johnston used the Dickson farm on the edge of Hillsborough as a temporary headquarters while Johnston negotiated with Sherman, and Confederate officials including Secretary of War John C. Breckinridge came there to work on terms. Johnston and his staff rode from the Dickson place along the old Hillsborough to Durham road to complete the surrender.
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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.
Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
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John U. Kirkland serves as Orange County's clerk and master in equity
In 1866 John U. Kirkland, as clerk and master in equity at his office in Hillsborough, advertised court-ordered sales of Orange County land.
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John W. Graham serves as Orange County solicitor
After the Civil War, John W. Graham of Hillsborough was solicitor for Orange County from 1866 to 1868, before going as a delegate to the 1868 constitutional convention and into the state senate.
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Orange County votes against the proposed state constitution of
Voters rejected the constitution submitted by the reconvened convention, 494 to 392.
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Sheriff H. B. Guthrie announces that the county treasury is empty
His notice to taxpayers said no county tax had been levied or collected for 1865, the treasury held not a dollar and the wardens of the poor were deep in debt. He set fifteen collection days in July.
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Freedpeople hold a Black Fourth of July celebration
Cornelia Phillips Spencer's journal records that the Black residents of Chapel Hill marched in procession behind a banner, heard an address by Colonel J. J. Guthrie and a reading of part of the Declaration of Independence by Jurdon Swain, then sat down to a dinner they had provided themselves on the ground bought from the Craigs for their new school house. The banner mottoes were "Respect for Former Owners" and "Our Hope is in God".
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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.
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Black men vote in Orange County's first Reconstruction election
Under the 1867 Reconstruction Acts, Black men registered and voted alongside white men in the November 19-20, 1867 election for a state constitutional convention. Orange County elected E. M. Holt and J. W. Graham as delegates.
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Trustees adopt an elective system of ten schools
Over William A. Graham's dissent, the trustees voted 18 to 3 for Kemp P. Battle's committee plan to replace the fixed four-year course with ten independent schools, from political science to modern languages, beginning in fall 1868. After the new state constitution put the university under a new board, the old trustees on June 4, 1868 reappointed Swain and the faculty and rescinded the plan.
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Dialectic and Philanthropic societies hide their books and papers
Believing the societies would not be run under their constitutions after the university changed hands, their last officers gave the Dialectic records to Alexander McIver and the Philanthropic records to William L. Saunders. The property lay safe until the societies revived in 1875.
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Governor Holden appoints Wilson Caldwell a justice of the peace
In 1868 Governor William W. Holden appointed Wilson Swain Caldwell a justice of the peace. Caldwell had been enslaved by university president David L. Swain and had worked at the university since boyhood; he taught school for a time before returning to the university in 1875.
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Josiah Turner Jr. wins Orange's Senate seat but is excluded under the Fourteenth Amendment
Turner won election as state senator in 1868 but was not seated, since his disabilities under the Fourteenth Amendment were still in force. John W. Graham was elected instead.
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Orange County votes against the 1868 constitution and for Thomas S. Ashe over Holden
Orange rejected the new Reconstruction constitution 1,863 to 1,324 and gave Conservative Thomas S. Ashe 1,834 votes to 1,310 for William W. Holden, who carried the state.
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Solomon Pool's new faculty move into the old professors' houses
With Swain and the old faculty gone, the professors Pool brought in took over their Franklin Street homes: Fisk P. Brewer the Tom Taylor house, David Settle Patrick Swain's house, and James A. Martling the late James Phillips's house.
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Reconstruction Republicans reshape UNC governance
The 1868 constitution gave the choice of university trustees to the state Board of Education, controlled by Governor William W. Holden. In July 1868 the new trustees removed President David L. Swain and his faculty, and a Republican faculty under Solomon Pool reopened classes in March 1869 amid strong partisan opposition.
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The university closes and reopens
Reconstruction Republicans took control of the trustees in 1868 and dismissed the old faculty; Solomon Pool's presidency drew almost no students, and the university closed in February 1871. The legislature revived it in March 1875, Cornelia Phillips Spencer rang the bell, and it reopened in September under a rebuilt faculty.
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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.
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Orange County's first elected board of commissioners takes office
Elected in April 1868 at the election that ratified the new constitution, five commissioners qualified at the courthouse and chose Lemuel Lynch chairman, replacing the old county court of justices. Within days the newly elected sheriff, treasurer, register of deeds and clerk of superior court gave their bonds.
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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.
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Cornelia Phillips Spencer describes the emptied campus and village
In a letter to the Sentinel written under the Old Poplar, Spencer described the shut buildings and reported that nearly twenty of Chapel Hill's leading families were leaving and six places now sold liquor openly. She named the departing faculty, among them Judge William H. Battle, and called the town the Deserted Village of the South.
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Alexander McIver joins the reorganized faculty as professor of mathematics
McIver, a Moore County native who had graduated first in the class of 1853 and taught briefly as a tutor, came from Davidson College to teach mathematics on the Republican faculty that reopened the university under Solomon Pool.
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Solomon Pool accepts the presidency of the university
Pool accepted the presidency of the University of North Carolina in 1869 at a salary of fifteen hundred dollars and was permitted to keep his federal appraiser post at the same time. Governor William W. Holden had taken charge of the board of trustees to secure a president with Republican affiliations.
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Solomon Pool buys Nancy Hilliard's house, the Crystal Palace, at a sheriff's sale
When the hotel keeper Nancy Hilliard went bankrupt, university president Solomon Pool bought her Franklin Street home, known as the Crystal Palace, at a sheriff's sale for $150. He let Col. Hugh B. Guthrie and his wife Jane, a daughter of Hudson Cave, move in, which Bryant reads as a way of forcing Hilliard out.
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University treasurer puts the land-grant fund into railroad bonds later repudiated
Treasurer Robert W. Lassiter invested the $125,000 land-scrip fund in North Carolina bonds, including $160,000 face value of special tax bonds issued for the Western North Carolina Railroad. The legislature repealed the acts behind those bonds on March 8, 1870, and the fund earned nothing until 1875.
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Federal court dismisses the state's suit to void the university's bank mortgage
The Reconstruction trustees had the state sue in the United States Circuit Court, returnable at the June 1869 term, to cancel the university's mortgage to the Bank of North Carolina, but Judges Hugh L. Bond and George W. Brooks dismissed the bill for want of jurisdiction. On July 20, 1871 the trustees present advised against an appeal.
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The Pool faculty holds its first commencement
After a first term that began March 3, the university reported on June 10, 1869 three sophomores and seven freshmen and gave an A.B. to Abdel Kader Tenney. At the thinly attended commencement Governor William W. Holden argued for educating both races in one university, whites at Chapel Hill and Black students elsewhere.
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Chapel Hill's town board holds the earliest meeting with surviving minutes
The oldest surviving town minutes record a meeting of commissioners H. C. Thompson, James F. Craige and Greene Brewer. The town census taker, W. S. Guthrie, reported 937 residents, 483 white and 454 Black.
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Orange County holds its first township elections
Voters in each township chose magistrates, a clerk, a constable and school committeemen for the first time. In Chapel Hill Township 540 of 565 registered voters cast ballots.
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Washington Morrow, Thomas Jefferson Morrow and Daniel Morrow are lynched
Early on August 7, 1869, about 100 disguised white men took Washington Morrow and his brother Nelson from the Hillsborough jail, where they were held on barn-burning charges, and shot Washington as they fled; he died of the wound. On October 14 a mob hanged their father, Thomas Jefferson Morrow, and their uncle, Daniel Morrow.
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Governor Holden warns Orange County it may be declared in insurrection
Holden's proclamation of October 20, 1869, named Lenoir, Jones, Orange and Chatham counties and said that in Orange the jail had been forced, two Black prisoners taken out and shot, and three other Black men hanged. He warned that he would declare those counties in a state of insurrection and use the whole power of the state if the violence continued.
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Orange County in the Kirk–Holden War
Governor Holden named Orange County in his October 1869 warning about Klan violence, Hillsborough men were named in a Klan plot against Senator T. M. Shoffner, and Kirk's militia arrested Josiah Turner Jr. at Hillsborough in August 1870. Orange men Frederick N. Strudwick, William A. Graham and John W. Graham then helped bring, prosecute and decide Holden's impeachment.
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Bursar reports the plundering of university property
Professor David Settle Patrick reported that when exercises were suspended in 1868 many in Chapel Hill believed the university's property belonged to the people. Books had been taken from the libraries and tools carried off, and only some had been returned.
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Klansmen from Hillsborough ride to kill Senator T. M. Shoffner and turn back
A Klan party coming from Orange County that included Hillsborough legislator Frederick N. Strudwick and A. Hedgepeth of Hillsborough gathered at a Bradshaw home in Alamance County to kill state senator T. M. Shoffner, author of the anti-Klan militia bill. Dr. John A. Moore, sent by James E. Boyd, told them Shoffner had gone to Greensboro, and they turned back.
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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.
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