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Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
- 1870s
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Trustees refuse land for a Black school in Chapel Hill
The Chapel Hill school committee of Morgan Closs, W. H. Bunch and H. C. Andrews asked the trustees for two acres on the Pittsboro Road next to the Hubbard lot for a school for Black children, saying friends of education would pay for a schoolhouse. The board declined because the land was under mortgage.
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McIver moves that the faculty step aside for the university's revival
At a faculty meeting without President Pool, McIver offered a resolution that no member wished to stand in the way of reviving the university, since the faculty lacked public confidence. It passed with McIver and Patrick for and Brewer against.
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Solomon Pool asks alumni and friends to pay the university's debts
In January 1871 Pool addressed alumni and friends of the university and pleaded for money to pay off its debts. The appeal came too late, and the trustees decided that the institution should close on 1 February 1871.
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The University of North Carolina closes
Under President Solomon Pool and the Reconstruction board of trustees, the university shut down on February 1, 1871, after years of few students, little money and public opposition. It reopened on Monday, September 6, 1875.
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Orange County names a three-man Board of Education and a panel of teacher examiners
Under the Reconstruction school law the county had a Board of Education of W. N. Patterson, J. T. Hogan and Jones Watson in 1872. Samuel W. Hughes and Charles Curtis were among the county examiners who licensed teachers that year.
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Paul C. Cameron buys the Hillsborough Military Academy at public sale
Two years after Elizabeth Tew's death in 1870, the academy property was sold at public auction to Paul C. Cameron. His heirs sold it to the Farmers' State Alliance in 1891.
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The county school board settles the school fund account with Treasurer David C. Parks
The Board of Education settled the school fund account with county treasurer D. C. Parks up to March 7, 1872. It showed $9,245.36 received from the state apportionments for 1869 to 1872 and the 1871 school poll tax, and $3,869.54 paid out to the townships.
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The school board refuses back pay to a Mangum Township teacher accused of misconduct
Thomas Anderson asked the board to pay him for two months he taught without a contract. The board sided with the township committee, finding he had no contract after March 7, 1872 and citing poor discipline and improper conduct toward girls in his school.
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Robert Bingham takes charge of the Bingham School near Mebane
When his brother William died in 1873, Robert Bingham became headmaster of the Bingham School, which had moved from the Oaks to Mebane. In May 1879 he bought out his cousin William B. Lynch's interest and became sole proprietor.
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Alumni meet in Raleigh to plan the university's revival
At the invitation of trustees led by Superintendent Alexander McIver, fifty-five alumni met in the state Senate chamber with B. F. Moore in the chair. Their committee proposed that the alumni association nominate a new board for the Board of Education to appoint, but most of the 1868 trustees did not resign and the plan lapsed.
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The Board of Education divides the 1872 school fund among the townships by race
At its March 5, 1873 meeting the board named a teacher examining committee and apportioned the 1872 fund at the same rate per child for both races: $4,219.60 for 3,080 white children and $2,402.98 for 1,754 Black children across eight townships.
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State educational convention calls for reviving the university
A convention called by the State Board of Education, with B. F. Moore presiding, resolved that the university should be revived as soon as practicable. It added that the revival was impossible except on a basis impartial between denominations and political parties, after Braxton Craven, Thomas H. Pritchard and A. W. Mangum argued over church representation.
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The Board of Education appoints Hazel Norwood county examiner
The board filled the county examiner's post with Hazel Norwood after Dr. Morgan Clop resigned, and settled its account with the treasurer, who held a balance of $7,686.92 from the state's 1872 apportionment.
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A constitutional amendment returns the election of university trustees to the General Assembly
An amendment taking the election of the university's trustees from the governor-controlled Board of Education and giving it back to the General Assembly became part of the state constitution in August 1873, after a vote of the people and a two-thirds vote of a second legislature. Friends of the university had first carried it through the General Assembly in 1871 by the required three-fifths, the credit going to two alumni and brothers-in-law, the Democrat Montford McGehee and the Republican Richard C. Badger.
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A county school census finds 24 more schoolhouses are needed
An 1874 count of school-age children by township found 2,380 Black children and set the need at 24 additional schoolhouses, ten of them in Hillsboro Township.
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Charles Phillips returns to Chapel Hill and chairs the faculty
When the University of North Carolina reopened in 1875, Phillips was invited back as professor of mathematics and served as chairman of the faculty during his first year. Illness forced his retirement in 1879, when he became the first professor emeritus named by the trustees.
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George Tayloe Winston joins the faculty of the reopened university
Winston, a Cornell graduate who had also studied at UNC, came to Chapel Hill in 1875 as professor of Latin and German when the university reopened.
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John DeBerniere Hooper returns as professor of Greek and French when the university reopens
When the university reopened in 1875 Hooper was appointed professor of Greek and French. He resigned in October 1885 because of illness and died at his Chapel Hill home in January 1886.
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Ralph Henry Graves joins the faculty of the reopened university
Ralph Henry Graves returned to Chapel Hill in 1875 as professor of engineering at the newly reopened University of North Carolina. He later taught mathematics and held his professorship until his death in 1889.
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Rufus L. Patterson moves a loan to repair the university buildings and offers to stand surety
At the trustees' reorganization meeting, Patterson moved that the treasurer be allowed to borrow $5,000 if needed to repair the Chapel Hill buildings, and volunteered to be surety for the university.
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UNC reopens
The university resumed classes on Monday, September 6, 1875, after more than four years closed, with Charles Phillips as chairman of the faculty, and held a public celebration on September 15. Kemp P. Battle, then secretary of the trustees, was elected president in 1876.
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Kemp Plummer Battle buys his father's Chapel Hill house and names it Senlac
Returning to Chapel Hill in 1876 to become university president, Battle bought the family house from his father, added a one-story wing on each side and named it Senlac. The house stands on Battle Lane.
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The school board orders a landowner to stop fencing off the Bethany Meeting House school
Told that William Jackson had fenced in the schoolhouse of District 15 at Bethany Meeting House and would not let school be taught, the board warned him to return the lot to the district committee or face legal action.
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McIver heads mathematics at the university's summer normal schools
Then principal of the Greensboro graded schools, McIver was chief of the mathematics department at the 1877 Summer Normal School in Chapel Hill and taught mathematics, English grammar and physiology at the 1878 session.
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The university holds its first summer session, a state normal school for teachers
In the summer of 1877 the university hosted a statewide Summer Normal School, set up by the General Assembly in March 1877 to train white teachers for the common schools. President Kemp Battle and the Board of Education admitted white women to its classes, though state money could not be spent on them.
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William Horn Battle returns to Chapel Hill to teach law
Battle had left for Raleigh in 1868 when Reconstruction politics disrupted the university. When his law school reopened at Chapel Hill in January 1877, while his son Kemp was president, he returned as professor of law, and he taught until he resigned in January 1879, shortly before his death that March.
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The school board approves Piney Mountain as school District 53
The board recognized Piney Mountain as District No. 53 and named its committeemen. At the same meeting it ordered that no committee contract teachers beyond the money apportioned for the year.
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Fairfield School is allowed to draw water from the county poorhouse spring
The board let the Fairfield school in District 21 use the spring at the county poorhouse for its water.
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The school board names committeemen for 52 numbered school districts
The board's 1877 appointments name every district school in the county, from North East and Deals Creek to Prospect Hill and Orange Factory, with three committeemen for each.
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Bursar Andrew Mickle helps poor teachers through the university's summer normal school
At the summer normal school the university lent its dormitories and bedding and let teachers cook for themselves, so that many lived on $4 or $5 a month. Andrew Mickle, the school's business agent, worked tirelessly to advise and help those who needed it.
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Teachers at the Normal School form a State Teachers' Association
Teachers attending the 1878 University Normal School organized a State Teachers' Association with Kemp P. Battle as president and began forming county associations. They also petitioned the legislature to continue the school.
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Summer Normal School offers the state's first kindergarten training
Emily M. Coe of New York taught a class of teachers the kindergarten method at the university's 1878 Summer Normal School, with 53 children drilled daily. Battle believed it the first normal kindergarten class in North Carolina; the session enrolled 402 teachers, 190 of them women.
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Charles B. Aycock edits the Ledger in Chapel Hill
Aycock, then a university student, took over as editor of the weekly Chapel Hill Ledger in 1879, succeeding Cornelia Phillips Spencer. The paper ran until 1880.
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Legislature extends Normal School benefits to women
The 1877 act limited state money for the Summer Normal School to men, though women attended by invitation. When the two-year act ran out it was renewed with the restriction as to sex removed.
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UNC establishes its School of Medicine
UNC began a medical program in 1879.
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The school board creates Buckhorn school district from four neighboring districts
On petition, the board formed District No. 56, Buckhorn, from the corners of the Gravelly Hill, Ridge Meeting House, Tom's Creek and Woody's Road districts so the school would sit at their center. Elerby (No. 54) and Vickers (No. 55) districts had been formed shortly before.
- 1880s
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Francis P. Venable is offered the chair of chemistry at the university
Venable, a University of Virginia chemistry graduate then studying in Germany, was offered the university's chair of chemistry in 1880. He taught at Chapel Hill until he retired in 1930.
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Locke Craig teaches at the university and at a Chapel Hill school
After graduating from the university at nineteen, Locke Craig taught chemistry there for a short time and taught at a private school in Chapel Hill. Kemp Battle listed him among graduates then teaching as "Craig at Chapel Hill."
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The school board forms Center school district
A new District No. 57, called Center, was created with 34 white children and one Black child.
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Lisbon Berry becomes Orange County's first Black lawyer
Lisbon Payne Berry, born enslaved in Hillsborough in 1850, studied law in Hillsborough and was admitted to the North Carolina bar in 1882, becoming the first Black attorney in Orange County.
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Fire destroys the Bingham School buildings near Mebaneville
A fire that started in a cadet's quarters about 9:30 in the morning burned the barracks, office and library, the academy hall, the infirmary and the mess hall. About 175 cadets were in barracks, no one was hurt, and the loss was put at about $30,000.
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Bingham School finishes new buildings after the spring fire
Less than three months after the fire, the rebuilt Bingham School stood nearly complete, with timber cut and sawed nearby. Thomas C. Oakley of Durham was the builder.
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Horace Williams earns a master's degree at the university
Williams entered the state university at Chapel Hill in 1879 and in 1883 took both the B.A. and an M.A. His M.A. and William Battle Phillips's Ph.D., conferred at the same commencement, were the first advanced degrees the reopened university granted for further study. Before 1875 any graduate could receive the A.M. three years after the B.A.
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Venable co-founds the Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society
Venable was a co-founder and the first president of the Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society, a society of university scientists named for the geologist Elisha Mitchell.
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William Battle Phillips receives the university's first doctorate after the reopening
In 1883 William Battle Phillips, one of the five graduates of 1877, received a Doctor of Philosophy, the first doctorate in Battle's list of degrees granted since the 1875 reopening.
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William H. S. Burgwyn is appointed a trustee of the University of North Carolina
Burgwyn was appointed a trustee of the University of North Carolina in 1883, the year after he returned to the state and settled at Henderson.
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Charles White, merchant and postmaster at Bingham School, dies
Charles White, who kept the store and post office at Bingham School near Mebane, died on Thursday, May 24, 1883. The Observer called him successful in business; his widow, Mary E. White, qualified as executrix of his will.
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Foxes Knob School opens as a one-room log school near Mebane
Foxes Knob School opened in the mid-1880s in a single log room. It gained a frame addition about 1900 and was later turned into a house.
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Orange County reports 33 white and 31 Black public schools
In 1884 Orange had 33 white and 31 Black public schools, with 1,369 white and 1,134 Black pupils, a term under ten weeks, and mostly log buildings. School property was valued at $3,500 for white schools and $2,500 for Black schools.
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The University Summer Normal School holds its last session
The eighth and last session enrolled 305 teachers, after which the legislature divided the $2,000 yearly appropriation among four normal schools chosen by the Board of Education. Battle counted 2,480 enrollments at Chapel Hill from 1877 through 1884.
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A building of Mrs. Charles White's used by Bingham School cadets as a mess burns
Early on Tuesday morning, August 19, 1884, fire destroyed a building owned by Mrs. Charles White that some Bingham School cadets used as a messing club. Its insurance had lapsed and the loss was put at about $1,000.
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Orange County sets up its first postwar Board of Education
Under an 1885 law, Orange created its first Board of Education since the Civil War, chosen by the justices of the peace and county commissioners together. The Rev. J. L. Currie became superintendent in June 1885.
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The trustees elect Nelson B. Henry to a new chair of the science and art of teaching
Using the new appropriation, the trustees filled a chair of the science and art of teaching with Nelson B. Henry of Missouri, and the university opened a normal department with a teachers' course. Winston later called it the first chair of pedagogy in North Carolina or any Southern university.
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The new Board of Education sets aside $50 for an institute for Black teachers
At its first meeting in the Hillsboro courthouse, the board created under the 1885 school law organized with Joseph Harris as chairman and voted fifty dollars to hold a training institute for the county's Black teachers.
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The school board requires the superintendent to visit every school and grade its teachers
On resolutions offered by Professor Winston, the board told Superintendent Currie to spend a day at each public school while in session, give each teacher a mark for practical skill, meet each district committee and report on where districts and schoolhouses should be, at $2.50 a day.
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Eben Alexander comes to Chapel Hill as professor of Greek
Eben Alexander, who had taught ancient languages at East Tennessee University for thirteen years, accepted the professorship of Greek at the University of North Carolina in 1886 and moved to Chapel Hill.
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Miss Heartt keeps a private primary school in Hillsborough, later with Mrs. Bragg
A small private school for young children run by Miss Heartt appears in the Hillsborough paper by June 1886. From 1890 she taught it with Mrs. Bragg, and the two advertised each August that they would resume classes, the last such notice found being for August 28, 1911.
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W. V. Andrews takes Professor Winston's seat on the county Board of Education
Professor Winston of the university left the new Orange County Board of Education six months after its first meeting, and W. V. Andrews was named in his place.
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Superintendent Currie's first annual report lists each district schoolhouse as log or frame
Currie's report read to the board in January 1886 gave the first district-by-district inventory of schoolhouses for both races, most of them log buildings valued at $50 to $200, and a school term averaging ten weeks.
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The school board asks the commissioners for a special tax to keep schools open four months
Superintendent Currie found the schools needed $2,000 beyond their apportionment to run the four months the law required, and the board petitioned the county commissioners to levy it. The board also set a floor of $40 for each white school and $30 for each Black school.
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The county school board adds nine new school districts under Superintendent Currie
In the first years of the 1885 board, Superintendent James L. Currie laid out school districts and appointed committeemen, and by 1887 nine more districts had been created. In June 1886 he had told the board it needed $2,000 to keep the schools open four months.
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The school board forms the Mary Smith school district along the Chatham line
A new district in Chapel Hill Township next to Chatham County was created and its school named the Mary Smith School, District 39.
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The school board pays H. O. Strain for an acre to build the Orange Church school
The board allowed H. O. Strain $20 for one acre on which to build a schoolhouse for white children of the Orange Church district.
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David S. Payne marries Eliza Mayo
The marriage joined two Black Hillsborough families tied to the Burwell School: Eliza was a granddaughter of the school's laundress Eliza Chavious, and David was the son of Bettie Payne and a grandson of Rev. William Payne, a founder of Dickerson Chapel.
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Julius I. Foust heads the Caldwell Institute at Caldwell
The Caldwell Institute, a school for boys and girls in northern Orange County, advertised with Julius I. Foust as principal, offering primary through higher studies and music.
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The school board forms Occoneechee school district from land south of the Eno
The board created District 41, Occoneechee, from land south of the Eno River and part of the Hillsboro district.
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The school board condemns a lot for a school for Black children at Walnut Grove
After two committees were named in March and September 1887 to condemn half an acre in the Walnut Grove district, the board had the deed for the site of a schoolhouse for Black children recorded on October 1.
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The superintendent's report shows Black schools running half the term of white schools
Currie's annual report counted 33 white and 25 Black public schools. White schools averaged close to nine weeks of teaching and Black schools under four and a half, and Black women teachers earned $17 a month against $24 for white women.
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The school board authorizes a countywide summer institute for teachers
The board empowered Superintendent Currie to hold a teachers' institute for the whole county that summer.
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Black parents in the Cool Spring district petition for Black school committeemen
Black residents of the Cool Spring district asked the board to replace their school committee with Black members of their own choosing. The board tabled the request.
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The school board creates Cole's District at Walnut Grove on Anthony Cole's petition
After Anthony Cole petitioned for a school for about 65 children, the superintendent held a public meeting and the board set up Cole's District, No. 42, cut from parts of the Caldwell, Little River, Oak Grove and Walnut Grove districts.
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The school board forms Bethel district for the Bethel Church community
On a petition from the Bethel Church community the board created a new district, Bethel, No. 43.
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The school board runs Harmony School directly when no committee can be found
Unable to find anyone to serve as its committee, the board placed Harmony School under its own supervision so a school could be taught there.
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Orange County names its first superintendent of health
Ten years after the 1879 law allowing county boards of health, Orange organized one, and the state health board's report for 1889-90 lists Dr. D. C. Parris of Hillsborough as part-time superintendent. Dr. C. D. Jones succeeded him in 1898 and served until the full-time department began in 1935.
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Justices and commissioners elect a new board of education and school superintendent
In joint session on June 3 the justices and commissioners chose John Thompson, W. V. Andrews and D. S. Parker as the county board of education. The next day, at a joint meeting of the commissioners and the new board, B. C. Patton was elected county superintendent of public instruction in place of the Rev. J. L. Currie, who had resigned.
- 1890s
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B. C. Patton's report finds most Orange County schoolhouses still built of logs
Patton's annual report to the state counted 43 white and 41 Black schools with 1,425 white and 1,048 Black pupils. Thirty of the 43 white schoolhouses and 17 of the 24 Black ones were log buildings, and terms ran about twelve weeks.
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Breeze School is built near Caldwell
A plain two-room frame schoolhouse with shuttered windows was probably built at Breeze, near Caldwell, in the 1890s. It is one of the few nineteenth-century schools left in the county.
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Horace Williams begins teaching philosophy at the University of North Carolina
Williams joined the faculty in 1890 as professor of philosophy and chaired the department from 1890 until 1935. He taught at Chapel Hill for fifty years, until his death in 1940.
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Jule Gilmer Korner remodels the former Burwell School
In the 1890s the old Burwell School house was remodeled by Jule Gilmer Korner of Kernersville, who gave it a bracketed cornice, a sawnwork porch, a new hall stair and new mantels, including a marble one in the parlor. Several of the older mantels were lost in the work, which was done for an owner thought to be Mrs. Charles M. Parks.
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Robert Worth Bingham wins the university's Representative Medal
As a University of North Carolina student, Robert Worth Bingham won the Representative Medal in 1890 for his oration "Manifest Destiny and Manifest Duty."
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The state superintendent tells Orange County to make its sheriff pay over the school taxes
Teachers were holding $500 in unpaid orders with nothing in the school treasury because Sheriff John Knox Hughes had not turned over the taxes he collected. Asked for advice, the state superintendent advised Patton to collect from the sheriff or take him to court.
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John W. Thompson of Cedar Grove becomes superintendent of the Orange County schools
John W. Thompson, a Cedar Grove teacher, took over the county schools from B. C. Patton in June 1890. He held the post until the board was abolished in 1895 and stayed on as supervisor under the county commissioners.
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The school board rebukes teachers who skipped Charles McIver's institute
Told that some teachers had not attended the state institute taught by Charles D. McIver, the board passed a resolution regretting their want of zeal and noting that attendance was required by law.
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Bingham School leaves Orange County for Asheville
After fire destroyed the academic buildings and dormitories at the Mebane campus in December 1890, Robert Bingham moved the school to Asheville in 1891. Owen W. Bingham ran a separate school, the William Bingham School, at the Mebane site.
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George Tayloe Winston serves as president of the university
Elected president when Kemp Plummer Battle resigned in 1891, Winston led the university for five years, during which enrollment tripled to almost six hundred. In 1896 he left Chapel Hill to become the first president of the University of Texas.
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Nash and Kollock School closes as a boarding school
The Nash and Kollock boarding school closed at the end of its 1890 to 1891 session after thirty-one years. The Misses Nash and Kollock went on with a day school from August 6, 1891.
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The Farmers' State Alliance buys the old Hillsborough Military Academy grounds
The former academy property west of Hillsborough passed in 1891 to the Farmers' State Alliance, the statewide farmers' organization, which bought the land. A 1913 plat of the neighborhood labels the old barracks as the Farm Life School building.
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The school board hires D. H. Thompson to audit the sheriff's school accounts
Rather than sue, the board engaged Major D. H. Thompson to go through Sheriff Hughes's accounts of school money, hoping to settle the matter without a lawsuit.
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Collier Cobb joins the UNC faculty to teach geology
Cobb returned to Chapel Hill as assistant professor of geology and later headed the geology department. He taught at the university for forty years.
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Edwin Alderman leaves Greensboro to teach at the university
Alderman, an 1882 graduate of the university and a founder of the State Normal in Greensboro, accepted a teaching position at UNC in 1893.
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Annie L. Hughes keeps Cedar Grove Academy
Annie L. Hughes carried on a Cedar Grove Academy from 1894 until 1915, a decade after the death of Samuel W. Hughes ended his Hughes Academy.
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Colonel George Tate is allowed to sell his county map to school committees
The board gave Colonel George Tate, maker of a map of Orange County, leave to offer it for sale to the school committee of every district.
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Dixie Lee Bryant teaches at the summer school in Chapel Hill
Bryant, head of science at the State Normal and Industrial School in Greensboro, was on the faculty of the 1894 Summer School for Teachers and Students in Chapel Hill, teaching physical geography and botany.
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James Long is elected to the county Board of Education after James Cole resigns
When James Cole left the Orange County Board of Education in 1894, James Long was chosen for the vacancy, a year before the legislature abolished the county boards.
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The university opens a Summer School for Teachers and Students to women and men
The four-week school under Edwin A. Alderman admitted both sexes for a $5 fee and enrolled seventy-five, with academic and teaching departments staffed by university professors and teachers from the State Normal and city schools. It was one of four summer schools the university ran that year.
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County commissioners take charge of the Orange County schools
From 1895 to 1897 Orange had no Board of Education or superintendent; the county commissioners ran the schools. John W. Thompson, superintendent before and after, returned in June 1897.
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Dr. John S. Spurgeon buys the former Burwell School
The dentist paid Charles Parks $2,500 for lots 152 and 153. The Spurgeons, whose household included Carrie Waitt Spurgeon, daughter of a Burwell student, lived there for about seventy years and added electricity and plumbing.
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The county is divided into five school townships, each with a five-man committee
When the county commissioners took over the schools, the county was regrouped into five school townships (Cedar Grove, Little River, Hillsboro, Bingham and Chapel Hill), each run by a committee of five in place of the many district committees.
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The school board cuts its per-child apportionment and ties teacher pay to attendance
With little of the last tax levy collected, the board lowered its planned $1.35 a child to $1.25 for the county's 4,814 children, $6,017.50 in all, and barred the superintendent from signing pay orders for schools averaging under ten pupils.
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Alfred Moore Waddell gives the oration at UNC's centennial celebration
Waddell, a Hillsborough native who studied at the university from 1850 to 1853, delivered the oration at the celebration of the University of North Carolina's centennial. It was printed in Wilmington that year as The Ante-Bellum University.
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Edwin Alderman serves as president of the university
Alderman was named president in 1896 and held the office until 1900, when he left to lead Tulane University. His inauguration, first set for University Day 1896, was put off into 1897 because of that year's heated political campaigns.
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John W. Canada starts the Canada School in Chapel Hill
Soon after graduating from the university in 1896, John W. Canada organized a private school in Chapel Hill that prepared students for college. He ran it with his brother Charles, Sallie Wilson and a Miss Hendon until he left for Texas soon after 1900.
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The Canada School takes over Dr. Roberson's Patterson Hotel building
The Canada School had outgrown its rooms behind the post office, so in 1896 John W. Canada hired more teachers and moved into the Patterson Hotel building, which Dr. Abner Benton Roberson owned. The building's run as a hotel was short.
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A new state act restores the Orange County Board of Education under C. P. Burch
After two years of the commissioners running the schools, a legislative act brought back the county board with C. P. Burch as chairman and Albert Holmes and James Monk as members. Capt. John P. Lockhart took Monk's seat when he resigned, and the board made John W. Thompson superintendent again.
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Horace Williams buys the house at 610 East Rosemary Street
Williams bought the 1854 house built by the university chemistry professor Benjamin Hedrick and owned it until he died. Preservation Chapel Hill now has its offices there and opens the house to the public.
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Women enroll at UNC for the first time
After the trustees opened UNC's post-graduate courses to women early in 1897, four women registered in September for the 1897–98 session, which The Tar Heel called the start of coeducation: Dixie Lee Bryant, Sallie Walker Stockard, Cecye Dodd and Mary MacRae. President Edwin Alderman let women enter junior and senior classes as well.
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The school board tells township committees to build frame schoolhouses and stop patching log ones
The board urged every township committee to provide more comfortable frame schoolhouses and to spend nothing more repairing old log walls.
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A new mill house on Center Street becomes the community's first school
The Alberta Cotton Mill built the house at 109 Center Street about 1898, apparently the first on that side of the street, and it was soon put to use as the village school. It went back to being a house when the Carrboro Public School opened on West Main Street about 1908.
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Louis H. Hackney becomes principal of the Quaker School
Louis H. Hackney served as principal of Chapel Hill’s Quaker school from 1898 to 1912.
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M. C. S. Noble joins the university as professor of pedagogy
Marcus Cicero Stephens Noble, superintendent of the Wilmington schools, was invited to return to the University of North Carolina in 1898 as professor of pedagogy. He also directed the university's summer school.
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Sallie Walker Stockard becomes UNC's first woman graduate
Sallie Walker Stockard, a Guilford College graduate, entered UNC's senior class in the fall of 1897, the first year the university admitted women. She became the first woman to graduate from UNC when the class of 1898 received its degrees on June 1, 1898, and she earned a master's degree there in 1900.
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Wilson Caldwell dies and is buried in the Chapel Hill town cemetery
Wilson Caldwell, head of the university's campus workforce, died on July 8, 1898 and was buried the next day in the Chapel Hill town cemetery, now the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery; Kemp Battle gave the funeral address.
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R. D. W. Connor graduates from the university and edits its student publications
Connor took his Ph.B. at Chapel Hill in 1899, the year he served as editor-in-chief of all three student publications.
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Robert Worth Bingham endows a debate prize at the university
Robert Worth Bingham, a UNC alumnus practicing law in Louisville, endowed the university's Robert Worth Bingham prize in debate.
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The 1899 school report shows two and a half times as much spent on white schools as Black
Supervisor John Thompson's report for 1899 counted 50 white and 25 Black schools and $4,391.51 spent on white schools against $1,688.09 on Black schools. Almost half the schoolhouses of each race were still log.
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The General Assembly incorporates the Caldwell Institute in Orange County
Among the private schools chartered by the 1899 legislature was the Caldwell Institute at Caldwell. A bill to incorporate it had been introduced in 1891.
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A legislature-appointed Board of School Directors takes over the Orange County schools
An 1899 act abolished the county Board of Education, which met for the last time on March 7, and put in its place a Board of School Directors named by the legislature. The Orange directors organized in April.
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Orange County adopts an American Book Company contract for school textbooks
The county commissioners, with the directors' consent, accepted the American Book Company's offer to supply textbooks and take old books in exchange, adopting a list headed by McGuffey's Eclectic Primer at ten cents.
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Charles E. Maddry begins teaching Strains School near his boyhood home
Maddry, who had been a pupil there, took charge of the one-room Strains School below Nunn's Mountain northwest of Chapel Hill with sixty pupils aged five to twenty-one. Two years later he became county superintendent.
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The school board names committees for every district school, township by township
The July 1899 appointments list about 55 district schools in five townships, among them schools marked as Black at Payne's Chapel, North Side and Hillsboro, and white schools at Breeze, Efland, Rail Road and Flat Rock.
Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1900s
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A one-room school for Black children is built at Hickory Grove
Hickory Grove, near White Cross, gets a one-room front-gable schoolhouse for African American children early in the twentieth century.
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Eben Alexander becomes the university's first dean of the faculty
Back from diplomatic service in Greece, Eben Alexander was named the first dean of the faculty under President Francis P. Venable in 1900, heading the College of Liberal Arts and graduate studies and supervising the library until poor health forced a leave in 1909.
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Francis P. Venable serves as president of the university
Elected president in 1900, Venable enlarged the student body, faculty and campus and built an administration for a growing institution. He asked for leave in 1913 and resigned in 1914, returning to teaching and research.
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Orange County replaces log schoolhouses and opens forty rural libraries
Between 1900 and 1910 the county went from no rural libraries to forty. Log schoolhouses for white children fell from twenty-two to none, while those for Black children fell only from twenty to eight. School terms grew from seventy to eighty-nine days for white pupils and from sixty-five to eighty-two for Black pupils.
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The Foxes Knob schoolhouse is enlarged and becomes a house
Soon after 1900 the one-room log Foxes Knob School near Mebane is enlarged; after its school years it served as a residence.
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A state Supreme Court ruling unseats a legislature-named school director in Orange
Following a North Carolina Supreme Court decision on the 1899 school act, the county board reorganized: director Stephen Forrest lost his seat and A. R. Holmes of the old Board of Education returned to finish a term running to July 1900.
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The school board rules the Cannadas' Chapel Hill school is not a public school
The Chapel Hill district had contracted J. W. and C. S. Cannada to teach all its school-age children, but the teachers had not met the school law. The board declared the school was not a public school and withheld pay until they complied.
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The university opens its first summer term of regular courses
For the first time the university offered a twelve-week summer term of regular courses that counted toward a degree, opening on June 12, 1900, alongside the four-week Summer School for Teachers. Tuition was twenty dollars.
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Hillsboro's commissioners refuse to deed the old Female Academy to the town school
The board had asked the town to deed the old Hillsboro Female Academy lot, near E. A. Rosemond's house, to the school committee. The town offered only a ten-year lease, which the board said the law did not allow it to accept, and it told the committee to find another site.
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Charles E. Maddry serves as superintendent of the Orange County schools
While a student at the University of North Carolina, Charles Edward Maddry served as superintendent of the Orange County schools.
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John W. Canada's school closes and its building becomes a rooming house
The John W. Canada School closed, and the old building on the southwest corner of Franklin and Columbia streets where it had met became a rooming house. The brick building beside it was used as a Masonic hall.
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The pharmacy department is made part of the university
The department of pharmacy, run by Dean Edward V. Howell, was formally incorporated into the university in 1901. Its laboratory and lecture space was then doubled.
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The Hillsboro school committee buys the town's first public schoolhouse and lot
The committee bought a house on a two-acre lot, known as the Wash Bruce or Gill lot, from E. S. Cooley for $500. Pender says Hillsboro had never before owned a school building; the county board furnished it and paid for repairs.
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The school board refuses to let Mormon elders preach in county schoolhouses
Among grievances heard in January 1901, the board went on record against allowing Mormon missionaries to preach in Orange County school buildings.
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A school district is created south of White Cross on donated land
The board approved a new district south of White Cross whose land and building were given on condition that they revert when no longer used for a public school, with Sunday school and preaching allowed. Children of the Old Field school were moved to it.
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Charles E. Maddry is pastor of First Baptist Church, Hillsborough
Charles Edward Maddry was pastor of the First Baptist Church in Hillsborough while finishing his studies at the University of North Carolina.
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Cedar Grove district finishes a new $279 schoolhouse with county help
The board paid $150 from the general fund toward the new schoolhouse of Cedar Grove District No. 6, which cost $279.
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The county pays $214 toward a schoolhouse at Pleasant Green
The board paid Pleasant Green, District No. 1 of Little River Township, $214 for its school building.
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Buckhorn residents build an academy that will also house the public school
The board approved a Gravelly Hill committee's plan to build an academy at Buckhorn and locate the public school there, retiring the old Buckhorn schoolhouse. The trustees guaranteed the board use of the building for school purposes permanently.
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Caldwell Institute gets a large new school district
A committee from Caldwell Institute asked for one district made from parts of the Wilson, Little River and Poplar Grove districts. The board approved and had the boundary surveyed.
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Charles E. Maddry is ordained at the Chapel Hill Baptist Church
Charles Edward Maddry was ordained to the Baptist ministry at the Chapel Hill Baptist Church, now University Baptist Church.
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Caldwell asks for an election on a rural graded school
The Caldwell community asked for a vote on establishing a rural graded school, and the board asked the county commissioners to call the election.
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George Howe is elected professor of Latin at the university
The trustees elected George Howe, who held a Ph.D., professor of Latin for 1903-04 in place of Dr. H. F. Linscott, who had died in December. Howe kept the chair until 1936.
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A Phi Beta Kappa chapter is established at the university
As dean of the faculty, Eben Alexander, himself a Phi Beta Kappa member from Yale, helped establish a chapter of the honor society at the University of North Carolina in 1904.
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The university organizes a Graduate Department with C. Alphonso Smith as dean
By the 1904 commencement the university had organized its Graduate Department, with Dr. C. Alphonso Smith as dean. An alumni committee on the university's condition praised the step.
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Orange County teachers are offered the university summer school and pay tied to exam scores
The board accepted Dr. Venable's offer to admit county teachers to the University Summer School and set pay by the July examination: $35 a month for an average of 95 and $40 for 98.
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Mebane School District becomes the first to tax itself for a longer school term
After a district election, the commissioners gave the sheriff a tax list for the Mebane district at 30 cents per $100 and 90 cents a poll. By 1910 special school taxes were collected in six districts.
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The Rev. John C. Hocutt replaces Charles Maddry as county school superintendent
Maddry resigned in July 1904 to study at the Southern Baptist seminary, and the board chose his friend and former pastor John C. Hocutt to serve out the term. Hocutt stayed until 1908.
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Merchant John Edward Clark builds a two-room schoolhouse on Old Oxford Road
Clark, a Chapel Hill storekeeper, replaced a one-room school he had also built on the site at 108 Old Oxford Road. In 1992 it was the only schoolhouse known in Chapel Hill from before school consolidation.
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The county counts 17 rural school libraries for white children and one for Black children
The 1905 annual statistical report found 18 rural school libraries in the county, holding 1,581 volumes in white schools and 92 in the single Black school library.
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The school board helps Chestnut Ridge Institute after its dormitory burns
Taking account of the loss of its dormitory building by fire, the board paid Chestnut Ridge Institute the $15 balance owed for painting, patrons having raised $37.
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James Finch Royster joins the university's English department
James Finch Royster came to the university's English department in the fall of 1907 and taught there for seven years.
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N. W. Walker revives the UNC summer school
Walker, professor of secondary education since 1905, revived the university's summer school in 1907 and directed it for twenty-seven years. In 1921 he became acting dean of the School of Education.
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Sarah Kollock dies and the Nash law office stops serving as a music studio
The former Nash law office remained a music studio until the death of Sarah Kollock, the last of the teachers of the Nash and Kollock School.
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The school board divides the Hillsboro district and orders a two-teacher school at West Hill
The board split the Hillsboro district and ordered a school with two teachers built at West Hill, the mill section west of town.
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UNC's Carnegie Library opens
UNC's new library, built with a gift from Andrew Carnegie first offered in 1905 as $50,000 and later raised to $55,000, was finished in the summer of 1907 and opened to students that fall once its furniture arrived. It served as the main library until Wilson Library opened in 1929 and was renamed for John Sprunt Hill in 1931.
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Andrew Henry Patterson becomes the university's professor of physics
Andrew Henry Patterson, an 1891 graduate of the university, came from the University of Georgia in 1908 to be professor of physics and held the chair for the rest of his life.
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E. M. Highsmith becomes the first superintendent of the Chapel Hill schools
The book's list of Chapel Hill school superintendents begins with E. M. Highsmith, 1908 to 1910. Chapel Hill ran its schools as a separate unit under a special legislative charter.
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The Carrboro Public School is built on West Main Street
The one-story frame school at 114 West Main Street replaced the first school, held in a Center Street mill house, and taught seven grades under Mr. McDuffie, also the Baptist pastor. After the graded school opened late in 1921 it became the Methodist parsonage, serving until 1955.
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The county board builds the first room of Carr School for $300
Carr School in northwest Orange County, a gable-roofed weatherboarded schoolhouse, went up in 1908 with one room costing $300. The nomination names it among the few surviving frame schools the county built for Black children; it stands long vacant.
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The university opens Davie Hall for botany and zoology
Ordered by the trustees in June 1907 and begun late that year, the university's new building for botany and zoology, named William R. Davie Hall, was finished for the fall 1908 session. It was renovated and expanded in 1967.
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Thomas Wingate Andrews is elected superintendent of the Orange County schools
When Hocutt resigned to give full time to church work, the board on June 1, 1908 elected T. Wingate Andrews, a new UNC graduate and grandson of the Calvander schoolmaster Calvin Andrews, to fill the unexpired term; he took office that October. He served until 1911 and prepared the county's ten-year school report for 1900-1910.
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The university creates a School of Applied Science with Charles H. Herty as dean
At the 1908 commencement President Venable announced that the trustees had made Charles H. Herty dean of the School of Applied Science and James E. Latta professor of electrical engineering.
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The legislature creates the Chapel Hill Graded School District
An act ratified February 26, 1909 created the Chapel Hill Graded School District, with a special school tax and six trustees, among them Charles H. Herty and N. W. Walker, who ran its schools free of the Orange County board. Voters had to approve it in May; the city school system dates its founding to 1909.
- 1910s
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Six Orange County districts levy special taxes for graded schools for white children
In 1910 six school districts taxed themselves to build and run larger graded schools, all of them for white children only, while Black schools stayed in one-room buildings.
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Student YMCA members run eight Sunday schools around Chapel Hill
In 1910-11 the university YMCA organized Sunday schools at Calvander, Clark's Chapel, Williams' Chapel, Ephesus, Mount Carmel, Orange Church, Rankin's Chapel and Smith's Level, enrolling 321 pupils.
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The Bellevue mill superintendent's house is built on South Nash Street
The two-story house built for the mill superintendent, with corbelled brick chimneys, a canted bay and a wraparound porch, is the most decorative early house in the surveyed area and stands out beside the plain mill houses next to it.
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The Carrs open a night school for Carrboro children working in the mills
In the early 1910s the Carr family's company started a night school for children who spent their days in the Carrboro mills. It soon closed because the pupils were too tired after work and had chores waiting at home.
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The Damascus Church School is built
A one-story frame school is built near Damascus Church southwest of Chapel Hill around 1910.
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The Smith Level School is built for white children south of Carrboro
A frame one-and-a-half-story rural school with a front gable went up on Smith Level Road about 1910. It became a dwelling in the 1930s, which cost it much of its original character.
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The county board builds a new school for white children at Efland
The board sought a state loan of $750 for a new Efland building, chose a three-acre lot of Jordan land south of the railroad, and had the superintendent hire carpenters while patrons supplied the framing and free hauling from West Hillsboro depot. It paid Mary W. Jordan $246 for the land in 1911 and sold the old Efland schoolhouse to J. R. Riley for $50 in February 1912.
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The county counts 25 rural primary schools for Black children, eight of them log
The school board recorded 25 rural primary schools for Black children in 1910, all but one run by a single teacher; eight were log buildings and the rest frame. White children had high schools in Hillsboro and Chapel Hill and 42 rural primary schools.
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The school at University is burned, and the board offers a reward for the arsonist
Fire destroyed the school building in the University community in the fall of 1910, and on November 3 the board asked the state for a $700 loan to rebuild it. In April 1911 the board offered a $100 reward, if the law allowed, for conviction of whoever had set the fire.
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Walter Clark helps teach the university's Summer Law School
Chief Justice Walter Clark assisted in the university's Summer Law School, which enrolled thirty-seven students.
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The county board auctions the sites of five abandoned schools
The Orange County Board of Education sold the grounds of the old Orange Church, Barbee, Cool Spring, Mill and Couch schools to the highest bidders, most of them neighbors of the sites, for sums between $5 and $20.
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A county report finds no factory-made desks in any school for Black children
In the 1911-12 term seven of the 23 Orange County schools for Black children were log buildings. Eleven had homemade desks and the rest only benches; none had factory desks, while 28 of the 47 frame white schools did.
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Andrew Henry Patterson becomes dean of the School of Applied Science
From 1911 Patterson was also dean of the university's School of Applied Science, a post he held until his death in 1928.
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Eight new rural schoolhouses go up in Orange County in one school year
Lockhart's report for 1911-12 counted four new schoolhouses for white children and four for Black children, built for $4,515 in all. Seven Black schools still met in log houses, while no white school did.
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Graham proposes a faculty committee on university extension
The committee formed at Graham's urging started a high school debating contest and a statewide high school track meet that drew hundreds of students to Chapel Hill by 1913. President Venable gave it little support, seeing extension as a drain on teaching at home.
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The Peabody Fund gives $40,000 for an education building
At the 1911 commencement Venable announced a $40,000 gift from the Peabody Fund trustees for a School of Education building. The legislature that year gave $87,000 a year for upkeep and $50,000 a year for four years for improvements.
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The county board buys 2.46 acres from Mary E. Jordan for an Efland school
Early in Lockhart's term the board bought 2.46 acres at Efland from Mrs. Mary E. Jordan, paying $246, as the site for the Efland School.
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Samuel Paul Lockhart becomes superintendent of the Orange County schools
Lockhart, a Bingham and UNC student from the New Hope area, took over the county schools in August 1911 and set to work with the board on new schoolhouses. He served until his cousin R. H. Claytor defeated him in 1917.
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The county board agrees to pay half the cost of new schoolhouses built by local districts
At its meeting of October 10, 1911, early in Lockhart's term, the board planned new schoolhouses in several districts, the county paying half the cost and each community raising the other half.
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Harriet Cole's house is moved to clear a site for a public school
Mrs. Harriet Cole's house was moved several hundred feet east along West Franklin Street to make room for a planned public school.
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Louis H. Hackney opens a school for Black students in Chapel Hill
Louis H. Hackney, minister of Rock Hill Baptist Church, opened Hackney's Industrial and Educational Institute, a private school for Black students on Merritt Mill Road in Chapel Hill.
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Summer School students perform the colonial play Esther Wake
In the summer of 1912 the Summer School for Teachers presented Esther Wake, a play by instructor Adolf Vermont about colonial North Carolina, on the steps of Smith Hall.
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The university names a new McCorkle Place residence hall for Kemp Plummer Battle
In 1912 the university named a new residence hall on McCorkle Place for Battle, its president from 1876 to 1891. It was one section of a three-part dormitory whose other sections honored J. Johnston Pettigrew and Zebulon B. Vance.
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Work begins on an education building on Cameron Avenue
In 1911-12 the university began a building for the Department of Education on Cameron Avenue next to Commons Hall, paid for with the Peabody Fund gift.
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Edward Kidder Graham serves as acting president while Venable is in Europe
Graham, head of the English department and dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Chapel Hill, acted as president in 1913 during President Francis P. Venable's absence in Europe.
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Edwin Greenlaw joins the UNC faculty
Greenlaw, a Renaissance scholar, came to the University of North Carolina in the fall of 1913 at the age of 39.
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Swain Hall is built as the university dining hall
The university built Swain Hall in 1913 and 1914 as a dining hall on the site of the first president's house and named it for David L. Swain. It served as the dining hall until 1940 and later became the first home of the communications department.
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The School of Education is established with M. C. S. Noble as dean
The university formally established its School of Education as a professional school in 1913, with M. C. S. Noble as dean. He held the post until 1921 and kept teaching until he retired in 1934.
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The new School of Education building is dedicated
Before the 1913 commencement Venable presided at the dedication of the building for the university's new School of Education, later called the Peabody Building.
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The university organizes a Bureau of Extension under Louis Round Wilson
Set up as Venable left for Europe in mid-1913 and run by university librarian Louis Round Wilson with no budget of its own, the bureau started programs to take the university's work into the state; the trustees endorsed it in January 1914.
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Acting president Graham pledges to carry the university to the whole state
In his University Day remarks in Memorial Hall, Graham said the new Bureau of Extension would put the university in close touch with every problem of North Carolina life, a break with Venable's narrower view, and he answered charges that students cared mostly for football. Raleigh and Greensboro papers praised the idea the next day.
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Eugene C. Branson shows students how to survey their home counties
During a five-day stay as Graham's guest at Bulrushes, the Georgia rural sociologist led classes and seminars and coached the Johnston County club on gathering facts about illiteracy, tenancy, crops and the tax burden, a report meant to serve as the model for the other county clubs.
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Andrew Henry Patterson builds a house on East Franklin Street
Patterson was one of several faculty members and townspeople who built new homes in the East Franklin Street residential district in these years.
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Carrboro Methodists build their first church
Organized in 1910 as a mission of the Chapel Hill Methodists, the congregation met in the public school until early 1914, when it built a plain frame church on the large lot east of the school, later the Britt Building site. From about 1900 the town's Methodists had shared Union Chapel with the Baptists.
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Edward Kidder Graham is elected president of the university
The board of trustees elected Graham president by unanimous vote in 1914, succeeding Francis P. Venable. He had been at Chapel Hill since 1899, first as librarian and then through the English department to the deanship.
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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.
