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Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
- 1860s
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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 The legislature repealed the acts behind those bonds on March 8, 1870, and the fund earned nothing until 1875.
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Wilson Caldwell resigns from the university and founds a school for Black children
In 1869 Wilson Caldwell, who had worked at the university as an enslaved servant and janitor, resigned and started a school for children of color in Chapel Hill.
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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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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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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.
- 1870s
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The Camerons move a two-story building thought to be slave quarters to Burnside
In the late nineteenth century the Cameron family moves a two-story frame building, thought to have been built as quarters for enslaved people, to the southeast corner of the Burnside house at 201 South Cameron Street. It was joined to the main house at the second floor in the 1950s.
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Thomas Ruffin dies at his Hillsborough home
Ruffin died in the northeast room of the house on January 15, 1870, and his widow Anne inherited the estate. He was buried at St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough, on ground he had given for the church, where he had served on the vestry.
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Historical society reorganized at the university's 1870 commencement
During commencement on June 8 and 9, 1870, a meeting with Professor Alexander McIver in the chair organized the North Carolina Historical Society with Col. John H. Wheeler as president and McIver as secretary and treasurer. A committee was named to recover from Eleanor H. Swain the books and manuscripts the society claimed.
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The trustees vote to suspend the university's exercises and stop faculty salaries from February 1
On the motion of the Rev. James Reid of Franklin County, the Reconstruction board of trustees voted on December 1, 1870, to suspend the university's exercises until further orders, and on James B. Mason's motion fixed February 1, 1871, as the day the faculty's salaries ended. The same day President Solomon Pool laid before the board a plan to lease the Chapel Hill property and bring the state's colleges under the university, which its committees dropped on February 1.
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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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John U. Kirkland is appointed a magistrate of Hillsborough township
When James B. McDade resigned as one of the township's magistrates, the board of trustees appointed John U. Kirkland to fill the vacancy, a choice the Recorder called admirable.
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November Caldwell, once enslaved by President Joseph Caldwell, dies
November Caldwell (1791-1872), held in slavery by Joseph Caldwell, brought firewood to the students, who were fond of him for his humor. A memorial in the old Chapel Hill Cemetery on the campus honors him.
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Fuller's Sea-Gift, the first novel set partly in Chapel Hill, is published
Fuller turned his student years into Sea-Gift, which follows John Smith through the university and the Civil War and draws on the Dromgoole duel legend of Piney Prospect. Students later called it the Freshman's Bible.
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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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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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Lightning strikes the Davie Poplar
Lightning split the Old Poplar's bark from top to bottom while the university was closed, and its friends took it as an omen, but the tree survived. It then measured 14 feet 6 inches around at two feet above the ground, and Cornelia Phillips Spencer wrote a lament for it in a Raleigh paper.
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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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Andrew Mickle serves as Chapel Hill's magistrate of police
Under the town charter the commissioners chose a magistrate of police to preside at their meetings, and Andrew Mickle held the office in 1874 and 1875. In March 1870 a rival group of citizens claiming to be the town's officers had named him to the post, which the sitting board said was without authority of law.
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Commissioner's report keeps the campus and 600 acres for the university
Commissioner George H. Snow inspected Chapel Hill in the summer of 1874 with trustees Paul C. Cameron, John Manning and Kemp P. Battle, and on Judge Bond's advice to be liberal the court left the university its campus, faculty houses, libraries and 600 acres. The outlying land, including about seventy acres at Piney Prospect, was sold, and Cameron bought the parcels along with the escheated mountain lands to secure his sister Mildred Cameron's debt.
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John Manning serves on the university's Board of Trustees
John Manning became a trustee of the University of North Carolina in 1874 and held the post for two decades, through the university's 1875 reopening.
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The General Assembly elects sixty-four trustees, who organize under William A. Graham with Kemp Battle as secretary and treasurer
By an act of January 28, 1874, the legislature elected sixty-four university trustees by joint ballot, only two of them from the Reconstruction board, and fourteen of them men removed in 1868. The new board first met on February 18, 1874, in the Citizens National Bank in Raleigh, elected William A. Graham of Hillsborough its president and Kemp P. Battle its secretary and treasurer, named an executive committee, and the next day sent a committee to inspect Chapel Hill, after Governor Tod R. Caldwell declined to preside because he held the legislature had no power to elect trustees.
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Walter Steele and Paul Cameron inspect the derelict campus and Solomon Pool refuses to surrender the keys
On April 3, 1874, trustees Walter L. Steele and Paul C. Cameron came to Chapel Hill for the new board. Solomon Pool declined their written request for the keys and possession of the buildings, since the governor had not recognized the board, but let them inspect as visitors. Their report to the trustees on April 9 described broken doors and fallen plaster, the lower passage of Old West fouled by cattle and horses, rotted gates and axe-scarred oaks, 7,490 books in the Dialectic library and 6,901 in the Philanthropic, and recommended an immediate suit against Pool for possession.
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The new trustees sue Solomon Pool and Alexander McIver at Orange Superior Court and win possession of the university in the Supreme Court
At the May 1874 term of Orange Superior Court the new board brought one action against Superintendent Alexander McIver, who held the university's seal and books and had agreed to a friendly test suit, and another against Solomon Pool for the buildings. Judge Albion W. Tourgee ruled against the trustees; John W. Graham and James A. Graham of Hillsborough argued for them without fee, as did B. F. Moore and William H. Battle on appeal in June 1874. At its January term 1875 the state Supreme Court decided for the university on every point, and possession passed to Andrew Mickle, the board's agent, with the seal, books and papers going to Treasurer Kemp Battle.
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Federal court rules the campus cannot be sold for the bank debt
In the suit of Charles Dewey, assignee in bankruptcy of the Bank of North Carolina, to sell the university's property under its mortgage, Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite with Judges Hugh L. Bond and George W. Brooks held the debt valid. They ruled that neither the trustees nor a creditor could sell the property that made up the life of the institution, as distinct from its endowment.
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Adolphus W. Mangum joins the faculty of the reopened university
When the university reopened in 1875 Mangum became professor of mental and moral science, history and English language and literature. He taught until he died in Chapel Hill in May 1890 and was buried in the old Chapel Hill Cemetery.
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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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John Kimberly returns as professor of agriculture at the reopened university
When the university reorganized and reopened in 1875, John Kimberly was elected professor of agriculture. He resigned the next year to return to his farm in Buncombe County.
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John W. Carr gives $100 toward reopening the university
John W. Carr of Chapel Hill paid $100 to the subscription of nearly $20,000 raised to revive the university in 1875, alongside $500 from his son Julian S. Carr of Durham.
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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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Solomon Pool sells his West Cameron Avenue house to Dr. Thomas W. Harris
Solomon Pool owned the Greek Revival I-house at 206 West Cameron Avenue, built about 1870, until about 1875, when physician Thomas W. Harris bought it. Harris went on to found and lead the university's medical school.
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The reopened university adopts an honor pledge on examinations
From the reopening each student signed a pledge that he had neither given nor received help on an examination, and a student convicted of cheating had to leave. Battle says cheating had been widely tolerated before 1868.
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Wilson Caldwell returns to the reopened university and later heads its labor force
When the university reopened in 1875 Wilson Caldwell went back to work there. He became curator of South Building and head of the campus labor corps, and held the post until his death in 1898.
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Women's groups give scientific apparatus to the reopened university
At the board's request Cornelia Phillips Spencer gathered gifts of instruments from women around the state, including Plateau's apparatus from the pupils of the Nash and Kollock school in Hillsborough. The women of Hillsborough gave a Holtz electrical machine in memory of William A. Graham, which Paul C. Cameron presented at the 1877 commencement.
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Cornelia Phillips Spencer learns on her fiftieth birthday that the university will reopen
A telegram from Raleigh on March 20, 1875, reported that the legislature had passed a bill letting the closed University of North Carolina reorganize with some state support. Spencer, whose letters to state leaders had pressed for the reopening, and a few friends entered South Building and tolled the college bell to celebrate.
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Trustees adopt a six-college plan and set aside ground for athletics
The trustees adopted Kemp P. Battle's committee report to reopen the university on the first Monday of September with colleges of agriculture, engineering, natural science, literature, mathematics and philosophy, meant to satisfy the 1862 land-grant act. They also reserved the eastern part of the campus along the Raleigh Road for athletics and a parade ground.
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Kemp Battle's subscription drive raises $20,167 and Paul Cameron repairs the campus for the reopening
After the trustees on May 5, 1875, appointed a committee to seek gifts for the revival, Kemp P. Battle canvassed Raleigh, Goldsboro, Rocky Mount and Tarboro in person and the rest of the state by letter, reporting $18,787 in six weeks and $20,167 in twelve, at a total expense of $62.66; Zebulon B. Vance and Charles W. Broadfoot collected in Charlotte and Fayetteville, and women's groups sent scientific apparatus through Cornelia Phillips Spencer. Paul C. Cameron, without contractor or pay, spent the summer at Chapel Hill directing the repairs and reported on August 31 that he had spent $10,677.76 on the buildings and $2,249.09 on gas works and apparatus.
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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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Andrew Mickle becomes bursar of the reopened university
Electing the reopened university's professors, the trustees broke with the old practice of making a professor bursar and chose Andrew Mickle, the Chapel Hill merchant who had acted as their agent, at $400 a year. He held the post until he left to live with his children in Texas in the early 1880s.
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Trustees burn the repudiated railroad bonds
As the act restoring the land-scrip fund required, trustees B. F. Moore, David M. Carter and Kemp P. Battle burned 160 special tax bonds of $1,000 each issued for the Western North Carolina Railroad, with Seaton Gales as witness. In return the state had given the university its bond for the $125,000 fund, paying $7,500 a year.
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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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The Dialectic and Philanthropic societies meet again
On the evening of the reopening celebration the two literary societies were revived, the Dialectic called together by its last secretary, Thomas M. Argo, with Judge William H. Battle as temporary president. William L. Saunders, who had kept the Philanthropic Society's books since its last meeting in 1868, called that society together.
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Francis D. Winston is the first student to arrive for the reopening
Battle names Francis Donnell Winston of Bertie County the first student on the Hill in 1875, arriving a day ahead of other entrants with his brother Robert and Charles Bond. Bond was the only student to enter the agricultural department on opening day, and Battle calls him the first student of the first college of agriculture in the state.
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Faculty dismisses five students for a mock revival meeting
During a revival in a village church, a group of students staged a burlesque meeting with mock sermons, and the faculty dismissed five of them despite petitions from townswomen and both literary societies. When classmates marched the five out of town, Charles Phillips stopped the procession at his house and turned it back, and four of the five later returned and graduated.
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John W. Graham serves on the university board of trustees
John W. Graham sat on the University of North Carolina board of trustees from 1876 until his death in 1928, and from 1891 he was an elected member of its executive committee.
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Kemp Plummer Battle becomes president and reorganizes the university
Kemp Plummer Battle became president in 1876 and reorganized the reopened university that year. He served until 1891 and later wrote its two-volume history.
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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 university begins keeping Washington's Birthday as a holiday
The reopened faculty set the precedent of a holiday on February 22, and the literary societies later chose a Washington orator for the day. At the first or second observance Francis D. Winston displayed a battered hatchet he claimed had felled the cherry tree.
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Former professor William Hooper dies at Chapel Hill
William Hooper, who had brought his bride to Chapel Hill in 1816 to teach at the university, died on August 25, 1876 after a trip to Philadelphia for a meeting of descendants of the Declaration's signers. At his request he was buried beside his mother and her second husband, President Joseph Caldwell, and in 1904 the remains were moved to the new Caldwell monument.
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Professor William H. Smith publishes a guide to collecting specimens
William H. Smith, professor of natural history, issued a pamphlet with directions for skinning and preserving birds and mammals and for keeping reptiles, insects, plants, rocks and soils, to build up the university museum. Battle calls it probably the first such guide in the state.
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Dr. Thomas W. Harris opens a drugstore at Franklin and Henderson streets
Dr. Thomas W. Harris, the first dean of the university's medical school, opened a drugstore on the northeast corner of Franklin and Henderson streets. He sold the business to Robert Strange MacRae in 1884.
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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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Phi Kappa Sigma is rechartered at the reopened university
Although the trustees still discouraged fraternities after 1875, Phi Kappa Sigma regained its charter in 1877 and met in secret, often off campus.
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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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Fire guts Person Hall
Person Hall, the old chapel finished in 1798 and recently given to the chemistry department, burned on February 6, 1877, apparently from a stovepipe set too close to a roof rafter. The thick walls stood, the loss came to about $1,000, and gifts from A. F. Redd, J. S. Carr and others paid to restore it.
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Latin salutatory and valedictory orations are dropped from commencement
A month after the Person Hall fire the university abolished the Latin Salutatory and Valedictory speeches, though for several years the top graduate was still called the valedictorian.
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Andrew Mickle is appointed Chapel Hill postmaster
Andrew Mickle was appointed postmaster at Chapel Hill on May 19, 1877, succeeding Hugh B. Guthrie. Thomas M. Kirkland followed him on January 31, 1881.
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Charles F. Deems preaches the commencement sermon and receives an honorary degree
At the 1877 commencement, Deems, then pastor of the Church of the Strangers in New York, preached the baccalaureate sermon, and the university conferred on him the honorary Doctor of Laws.
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The reopened university graduates its first class
At the 1877 commencement five men took degrees, William Battle Phillips of Chapel Hill a Ph.B. and Julian M. Baker, Frank M. Fremont, Joseph C. Powell and James C. Taylor the B.S. The 1876 commencement had had no graduates.
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University Day is established
At Kemp P. Battle's request, seconded by Zebulon B. Vance, the executive committee made October 12, the anniversary of the laying of Old East's cornerstone in 1793, a permanent holiday. At the first observance in Gerrard Hall, decorated by Cornelia Phillips Spencer and village women, Battle spoke on the charter and the cornerstone.
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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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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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Alpha Tau Omega charters a chapter at the university
Alpha Tau Omega received a charter at Chapel Hill in 1879, while fraternities were still barred and met out of sight.
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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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UNC establishes its School of Medicine
UNC began a medical program in 1879.
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Baptist minister James P. Mason speaks at University Day
At the 1879 University Day exercises, after President Kemp Battle's historical address, short talks were given by the Rev. Joseph Blount Cheshire, the Rev. James Pleasant Mason, the Methodist minister Mr. Heitman and several professors.
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Charles F. Deems starts the Deems Fund for student loans
Deems sent the university $300 to begin a fund lending both principal and interest to students on security, in memory of his son Theodore Disosway Deems, who was born in Chapel Hill and killed at Gettysburg. William H. Vanderbilt later added $10,000 through him.
- 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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Seniors begin the class tree and Class Day custom
The class of 1880, led by its president Thomas H. Battle, planted a sugar maple at the edge of the Forbidden Ground after Class Day speeches that included one by Charles B. Aycock. Later classes kept the custom, planting a water oak in 1882 and a white pine in 1883.
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William George Randall walks from Burke County to Chapel Hill to enter the university
Randall walked to Chapel Hill in the fall of 1880, was interviewed by President Kemp Battle and was helped by the Deems Fund. The Dialectic Society paid him as its librarian, the first year the post carried a salary.
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The student YMCA first takes part in commencement
The 1880 commencement opened with an address to the Young Men's Christian Association by the Rev. F. C. Woodward of Elizabeth City, the association's first part in commencement exercises. By 1884 it met regularly in its own hall in South Building.
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John Manning teaches law at the university
Elected professor of law in 1881, John Manning taught at Chapel Hill while keeping a private practice, and law enrollment grew from seven students to eighty-seven by 1897-98.
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Kappa Alpha charters a chapter at the university
Kappa Alpha was chartered at Chapel Hill in 1881, four years before the trustees lifted the ban on fraternities.
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The General Assembly makes its first regular appropriation to the university
In 1881 the General Assembly voted the university its first regular appropriation for maintenance, secured under President Kemp Battle. Until then the state had given no specific money for its upkeep.
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The literary societies agree to stop hazing
The Dialectic and Philanthropic societies adopted a joint rule, under heavy penalty, against entering another student's room against his will, laying hands on him or otherwise annoying him. It held for several years before hazing resumed in disguise.
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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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Memorial Hall rises at UNC under Paul C. Cameron's building committee
The cornerstone of Swain Memorial Hall was laid on September 25, 1883, and the hall was dedicated on June 3, 1885, honoring President David L. Swain, faculty and the university's Confederate dead. Paul C. Cameron, president of the Alumni Association and chairman of the building committee, raised money for it and gave money himself.
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Beta Theta Pi is reestablished at UNC and takes in the Mystical Seven chapter
The Eta chapter was revived in 1884, absorbing the Star of the South chapter of the Mystical Seven, once the strongest fraternity in the South.
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Election fight splits the Philanthropic Society
A quarrel over whether two South Building students could join the Philanthropic Society at the last meeting of a term, in time to swing its election, led some members to secede in 1884, and a split nearly followed in the Dialectic. Professors Winston and Manning could not bring the seceders back.
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Randall speaks on North Carolina folklore at commencement
Graduating with the class of 1884, Randall was class prophet at the Class Day exercises in the Chapel and gave the commencement speech 'North Carolina Folk Lore', which met with unusual applause.
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Students and Black residents nearly come to blows on election night in Chapel Hill
While votes were being counted on the night of a Chapel Hill election in 1884, a young Black man from the country tried to trip a student, and students and Black townspeople gathered on both sides before the crowd broke up with little harm. Students afterward whipped Eli, a Black man who waited on the West Building, for cheering the other side.
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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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Old students start a subscription for a monument over Nancy Hilliard's grave
E. T. McKethan of Fayetteville began collecting money from former Chapel Hill students to put a plain stone over Nancy Hilliard's neglected grave, and Cornelia Phillips Spencer endorsed the plan. The stone records the alumni's gratitude for her kindness and hospitality.
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Alumni build the university's first gymnasium off university land
After the dancing ban, a chartered Gymnasium Association sold $10 shares to alumni and built a hall 110 by 45 feet on its own land, rented to the university for exercise and used for the 1885 commencement ball. The building later became Commons Hall, the student dining hall.
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The General Assembly adds $15,000 a year to the university's support
An Act for the Maintenance of the University, introduced by Lee S. Overman and passed by the House 58 to 32, added $15,000 a year, payable quarterly. Because the $2,000 normal school grant was moved to other schools, the net gain was $13,000, and the act also ended the rule that county scholarship students must teach.
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The faculty requires most students to join a literary society
A faculty law made membership in the Dialectic or Philanthropic Society compulsory for all students except those in medicine, law, graduate and special study, and barred non-members from rooming in university buildings without permission.
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The trustees allow fraternities at the university
On a petition from Alpha Tau Omega, Kappa Alpha and Phi Kappa Sigma, the faculty recommended and the trustees granted the admission of all Greek-letter societies, on condition that they give the faculty their members' names and pledge to serve no liquor at banquets in Chapel Hill.
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The trustees bar dancing from university buildings
Pressed by church members who opposed the modern dance, the trustees prohibited the commencement ball in Smith Hall or any other university building. Battle welcomed the ban because he wanted Smith Hall kept as a library.
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The university dedicates Memorial Hall
Memorial Hall, the big arched-roof auditorium near the west end of Cameron Avenue, was dedicated in June 1885. It had no heat and swallowed speakers' voices, so it served mainly during commencement week and at times as a gymnasium until it was judged unsafe and torn down.
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Emile Alexander de Schweinitz is awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree
At the 1885 commencement, held in the newly dedicated Memorial Hall, the university conferred the Ph.D. on de Schweinitz, who became a government chemist and a professor in Washington.
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The trustees enlarge the faculty from nine to fifteen
Meeting in Raleigh, the trustees chose from several hundred applicants Thomas Hume for English, Walter D. Toy for modern languages, William B. Phillips for agricultural chemistry and mining and James Lee Love for mathematics. A faculty circular then announced postgraduate courses toward the A.M., Ph.M. and Ph.D., free of tuition to graduates of any college.
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Mary Ruffin Smith dies and leaves the university a Chatham County plantation
Smith, daughter of the Orange County doctor and congressman James S. Smith, left about 1,500 acres in Chatham County to the university to educate poor students, the Francis Jones Smith Fund. She left small bequests to people formerly enslaved in her household and most of her estate to the Episcopal Church, with Kemp Battle as executor.
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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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James Lee Love becomes University Librarian and secretary of the faculty
In the 1886-87 session the mathematics professor James Lee Love took on the posts of librarian and secretary of the faculty, after representing the university in the merger of the literary societies' libraries with its own.
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The university begins leasing its Franklin Street land to faculty for houses
Because a federal court had ruled about 600 acres around the campus inalienable, the trustees leased a Franklin Street parcel to James Lee Love for fifty years, followed by leases to Charles Baskerville and Francis K. Ball. Later, on legal advice, such lots were sold outright to faculty members.
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Two rear wings are added to Person Hall as chemistry laboratories
The university's only other building work of the late 1800s besides Memorial Hall was a pair of wings on the back of Person Hall, added in 1886 and 1892 to hold its first chemistry laboratories.
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Wilson Caldwell is elected to the Chapel Hill board of commissioners
Placed on the Republican ticket without seeking it, Wilson Caldwell, head of the university's labor force, was elected a Chapel Hill commissioner in 1886, defeating Professor Ralph Graves.
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Professor John DeBerniere Hooper dies
Hooper, a first-honor graduate of 1831 who taught French, Latin and then Greek at Chapel Hill before and after the war, died soon after resigning in 1885 because of failing health. Student Solomon C. Weill taught his Greek classes until Eben Alexander arrived.
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The literary societies merge their libraries with the university's
The Philanthropic Society voted almost unanimously and the Dialectic 42 to 30 to join their books to the university library in Smith Hall, to be called the Library of the University of North Carolina endowed by the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies and opened every weekday. Borrowing rose from 3,657 books in 1885-86 to 4,761 the next year.
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The Charleston earthquake shakes Chapel Hill
The earthquake that wrecked Charleston rattled windows and moved bottles on the shelves of the chemical laboratory at Chapel Hill without doing damage. Some students in the New East Building fled outdoors.
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Student Jacob A. Freeze is shot dead during a clash between students and Black residents
After a student quarreled with a Black man, Pat Brewer, a group of students besieged Jack Barbee's house in Chapel Hill, where Brewer and others had gathered, and a shot from inside killed Jacob A. Freeze, a first-year student from Rowan County, about 1 a.m. on Sunday, October 10, 1886. After the state Supreme Court upheld the sentences in December 1887, Brewer went to the penitentiary for ten years and Frank Kirby and Jesse Harris for five each. Battle, writing later, gives Pat seven years and says he escaped.
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Frank Porter Graham was born
Frank Porter Graham was born in Fayetteville; he later led UNC.
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Stephen B. Weeks publishes a register of the Philanthropic Society
Stephen Beauregard Weeks, class of 1886, published a 72-page catalogue of Philanthropic Society members since 1795, with a short history of the society and notes on members' careers.
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The legislature moves the land-grant income from the university to a new A. and M. College
After a campaign led by Leonidas L. Polk, the General Assembly of 1887 took the $7,500 yearly land-scrip interest from the university for a separate Agricultural and Mechanical College at Raleigh, leaving the university $20,000 a year. A House bill to cut that to $12,500 was tabled, and the university dropped pedagogics, mining engineering, animal breeding and practical horticulture.
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Thomas West Harris, first dean of UNC's medical school, is buried in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery
Thomas West Harris (1839-1888), the first dean of the university's medical school, was buried in the cemetery.
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UNC plays its first intercollegiate football season
Organized football began at UNC in 1888.
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University Lodge No. 408 is chartered at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill Masons revived their lodge under a new charter as University Lodge No. 408, with W. N. Pritchard as first Master. It met for years above a store on Franklin Street.
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Judge Walter Clark gives the annual address at the 1888 commencement
Chosen by the Philanthropic Society, Walter Clark gave the annual address on the Wednesday of the 1888 commencement, speaking on the opportunities before young men and the duties that came with them.
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Cornelia Phillips Spencer compiles a catalogue of every student since
For the 1889 centennial the university issued a general catalogue of students from 1795 to 1889, prepared by Cornelia Phillips Spencer after long correspondence and checked by Eben Alexander. It held 5,422 names, with Battle's sketches of the university's history.
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James Lee Love leaves Chapel Hill for Harvard
Love left the university with his family in 1889 to teach mathematics at Harvard. His mother-in-law, Cornelia Phillips Spencer, stayed on in his East Franklin Street house.
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Law professor John Manning builds his house on East Franklin Street
Before 1892 Laura Phillips sold John Manning the lot west of the Presbyterian manse, and he built his home there. Manning had earlier set up the university's law school, and his daughter Mary stayed on in the house after he died in 1899.
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Membership in the literary societies becomes voluntary
For many years every student had to join the Dialectic or Philanthropic Society. As the law, medical and pharmacy students grew in number and unwilling members disrupted meetings, joining was made voluntary in 1889.
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Students found the Order of Gimghoul after hearing the Dromgoole story
Five undergraduates founded a secret society after hearing university president Kemp Battle tell the Dromgoole story. They first called it the Order of Dromgoole and later shortened the name to Gimghoul.
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Professor emeritus Charles Phillips dies
Phillips, who came to Chapel Hill at four, graduated in 1841, taught mathematics for decades and chaired the faculty at the 1875 reopening, died ten years after retiring. He was buried in the Chapel Hill cemetery, and a tablet in the Presbyterian church records his work in building it.
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The university celebrates the centennial of its charter
Alumni from Colorado to Florida filled Memorial Hall for a roll call of classes back to 1824, then sat down to a banquet for three hundred in Gerrard Hall with delegates from Harvard, Yale, Virginia and other schools. The reunion led to an annual alumni banquet, branch alumni associations and a drive to endow a chair of history.
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Mathematics professor Ralph Henry Graves dies
Graves, head of mathematics since the reopening, fell into deep depression, sought treatment in Baltimore and took his own life. His widow raised their four children in Chapel Hill and sent the sons through the university.
- 1890s
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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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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 university confers an honorary doctorate of laws on Zebulon Vance
The University of North Carolina awarded Vance an honorary LL.D. in 1890, listing him as a student who had entered in 1851.
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The university starts a student medical fee
Each student paid $5 a year for medical care without further charge. The university's infirmary building followed in 1894.
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The university's medical school reopens under Richard H. Whitehead
After Dean T. W. Harris left in 1886, the medical school closed for three years for lack of money. It reopened in 1890 as the Medical Department under Dr. Richard H. Whitehead.
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Thomas Hume leads the university Shakespeare Club's study of All's Well That Ends Well
In the 1890-91 session Dr. Thomas Hume chaired a Shakespeare Club meeting on All's Well That Ends Well, gave a paper on the play's mixed styles and closed with notes on new books. Other members gave papers on the plot's source in Boccaccio and on its characters.
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William Cain is elected to head mathematics and engineering
To succeed Ralph H. Graves the trustees elected William Cain of the South Carolina Military Academy, an author on bridge building, which let the faculty begin teaching civil engineering at little added cost.
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William James Battle publishes a register of the Dialectic Society
The Dialectic Society catalogue, edited by William James Battle, was published in 1890. Its 168 pages hold a history of the society, members' recollections and sketches of members since 1795.
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Professor Adolphus W. Mangum dies
Mangum, a Methodist minister who had taught mental and moral science, history and English since the reopening, died after a long illness. Josephus Daniels gave a memorial address in Gerrard Hall on May 31, 1891.
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Alumni pledge an endowment for a chair of history
At the 1890 commencement banquet, alumni answered a call to endow a chair of history: Julian S. Carr pledged $10,000 and Judge James Grant offered to make up the balance. Battle then visited alumni in the larger towns to complete the fund.
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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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Mary Ann Smith's bequest endows the university's chemistry chair
Smith of Raleigh had willed half her estate to the university in 1861 for a chair of chemistry applied to the useful arts, with free tuition for needy students. When she died in 1891 after many years in an asylum, the university settled its claim for $37,000, and her name went to the Smith professorship of chemistry and later the Mary Ann Smith dormitory.
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Trustee Paul C. Cameron dies
Cameron, who had held nearly two thousand people in slavery before emancipation, chaired the building committees for the 1875 repairs and for Memorial Hall and lent $8,000 to finish the hall. After his death his heirs accepted ten Cameron Scholarships, each giving one student free tuition, in settlement of the loan.
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Kemp Battle resigns the presidency to take the new chair of history
Battle told the trustees in February 1891 that he would leave the presidency at the end of the session after fifteen years, and he became professor of history in the newly endowed chair. The trustees adopted resolutions of thanks.
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Charles Baskerville plays fullback for Carolina
Baskerville was fullback and manager of the Carolina football squads of 1892, 1893 and 1894.
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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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The faculty delays fraternity membership to end a campus feud
After non-fraternity students threatened to take their grievances to the trustees and the legislature, President Winston and a faculty committee ruled that no student could join a fraternity until a year after matriculation. In 1896 the trustees set October of the sophomore year and forbade pledging in advance.
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Watson and Pickard rebuild the Chapel Hill Hotel and add the University Inn Annex
With money from W. G. Peckham, a New York lawyer, John H. Watson and his partner W. W. Pickard tore down the old hotel except for the Polk apartment, rebuilt it, and added a large new section called the University Inn Annex.
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Baths and a sewer line are installed with the repair appropriation
With the $10,000 repair appropriation of 1893 the university planned baths and water closets in the basement of Smith Hall, under the library. By about 1895 bathtubs, shower baths and closets were in use there, with a sewer run into Chapel branch south of the campus, and the university had contracted for an infirmary cottage.
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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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The legislature rejects a bill to strip the university of undergraduates
A bill drafted by Davidson College president Shearer would have abolished the university's four undergraduate classes over ten years. After a joint committee hearing at which President Winston defended the university, the General Assembly of 1893 instead voted it $10,000 for repairs.
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The university pipes well water to its buildings
Until 1892 only the chemical laboratory had running water, from a small tank and a hand pump. In the summer of 1893 water from a large well was pumped by steam into iron tanks in the attic of the South Building for use across the campus, though the supply proved too small.
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University tennis players beat Virginia and join the Intercollegiate Tennis Association
The university's tennis champions beat the University of Virginia and Richmond College on their own courts, and the university joined the ten-member Intercollegiate Tennis Association as its only Southern member. D. R. Bryson and H. C. Bridgers placed fifth in doubles at New Haven.
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Venable and student William R. Kenan Jr. demonstrate calcium carbide in Person Hall
Chemistry professor Francis P. Venable and student William R. Kenan Jr. demonstrated the industrial uses of calcium carbide, the source of acetylene gas, in Person Hall.
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The Tar Heel publishes its first issue
The first issue of The Tar Heel, volume 1, number 1, appeared on Thursday, February 23, 1893, as a weekly published under the auspices of the University Athletic Association, with Charles Baskerville as editor in chief. The student paper took the name The Daily Tar Heel in 1929.
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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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The Masons leave their farm and a scholarship fund to the university
Mary Elizabeth Morgan Mason, who died in July 1894 a year after her husband James Pleasant Mason, left the university about 800 acres of Morgan family land near Chapel Hill. His $1,000 gift funded the education of poor students in the names of their daughters Martha and Varina, and their portraits were hung in the university library.
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The University Magazine issues its Golden Jubilee number
In 1894 the University Magazine marked fifty years since its first issue with a Golden Jubilee number, prepared largely by faculty editor Collier Cobb and filled with articles on the university's history.
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The university builds an infirmary
A small wooden infirmary of five rooms went up on the campus in 1894, where the college physician treated sick students. The 1893-94 catalogue had promised it before the next session, and it was replaced by the larger infirmary of 1907.
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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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Paul Green, playwright of The Lost Colony and an outspoken opponent of segregation, was born
Paul Green was born in Harnett County and entered UNC in 1916.
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President Winston ends support and the University Magazine stops
In 1895 President George T. Winston decided the university was not getting enough for its subscription, and the University Magazine stopped publishing until it was revived a few years later.
-
The Alpha Theta Phi honor society enrolls the best scholars
Dr. Tolman, who taught at the University in 1893-94, introduced Alpha Theta Phi, a society open only to the best scholars; by spring 1895 nine members of the class of 1896 belonged. In 1898 Archibald Henderson was its president and E. K. Graham its secretary, and a few years later it merged into Phi Beta Kappa.
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UNC gives Cornelia Phillips Spencer an honorary LL.D., its first honorary degree to a woman
The University of North Carolina awarded Spencer the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws in 1895, the first honorary degree it gave to a woman. She had moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, the year before to live with her daughter.
-
President Winston turns back a legislative effort to cut the university's funding
Two years after the move to confine the university to graduate study failed, church-college allies in the 1895 General Assembly tried to shrink its state appropriation; Winston rallied alumni legislators and prevailed after Populist leader Marion Butler came out for the university. Students met him at the west gate on his return and escorted his hired coach and four to a bonfire and celebration at Gerrard Hall.
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Alumni pledge money for an Alumni Hall at the centennial banquet
At the banquet marking a hundred years since the university opened, alumni and classes pledged gifts toward an Alumni Hall, led by Julian S. Carr with $3,000 and Thomas M. Holt with $1,000. The building, modeled on the Boston Public Library, had its cornerstone laid in 1898.
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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.
-
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.
-
Hillsborough has its town pump water analyzed and the well cleaned
Chemist H. B. Battle tested the water of Hillsborough's town pump on Churton Street and found too much mineral matter. The well was then cleaned out and the trough, the likely cause of excess chlorine, taken away.
-
Joshua Gore's steam plant brings electricity to the campus and village
A steam engine near South Building drove a small dynamo and the pumps that filled the campus water tanks, and lines ran from it to university buildings and to shops, cafes and hotels in the village. Physics professor Joshua W. Gore planned the work; the library in Smith Hall got power late in 1896, and arc lights later went up along campus walks.
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Six students found the Order of the Gorgon's Head
Edward Kidder Graham, then a junior, was one of six founders of the Gorgon's Head, a secret society of upperclassmen and professional students meant to promote fellowship across the fraternity divide.
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A $3,000 gift turns the old gymnasium into Commons Hall
The trustees thanked Mrs. Francis Baker of New York for $3,000 to enlarge the 1885 gymnasium so the university could serve students table board at low cost. Her son Harry Lake was a student, and the building became Commons Hall.
-
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.
-
Joseph Hyde Pratt comes to North Carolina and settles in Chapel Hill
Pratt came to North Carolina in 1897 as state mineralogist and made his home in Chapel Hill for the rest of his life. He also lectured in mineralogy at the university.
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President Edwin Alderman gives South Building a stone doorway copied from Westover
During his presidency Edwin Alderman added a carved stone pedimented doorway to South Building, modeled on the one at Westover, the colonial James River mansion in Virginia. With the new well temple, it was an early step toward the Colonial Revival that later ruled campus building.
-
Ralph H. Graves serves as University Librarian
After graduating from the university in 1897, Ralph H. Graves served as University Librarian at Chapel Hill until he left for New York in 1899. He took his master's degree there in 1898.
-
The Old Well rotunda is built
University president Edwin Alderman had the well's wooden cover replaced in 1897 with a rotunda of eight fluted Doric columns under a dome, modeled on the Temple of Love at Versailles and designed by registrar Eugene Lewis Harris.
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The University Magazine is revived
The student literary magazine, suspended under President Winston, resumed in 1897 with S. S. Lamb as editor in chief, supported by the university and the two literary societies.
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The university Dramatic Club takes its plays on tour
Directed by Professor Samuel May, the club staged London Assurance in Chapel Hill, Tarboro, Wilson and Wilmington and Modern Ananias in Chapel Hill, Winston-Salem, Greensboro and Reidsville.
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The university begins intercollegiate debates with the University of Georgia
Debates with Georgia began about 1897 and were later joined by Vanderbilt and Johns Hopkins. On March 17, 1899, at Athens, E. D. Broadhurst and T. C. Bowie won the third annual Georgia debate, and through 1902 the university won seven of ten contests.
-
Work begins on the foundation of the Alumni Building
With about $7,000 of the alumni's $20,000 in pledges in hand, the trustees started the foundation and basement of a building for the president's, registrar's and bursar's offices and the physics and electrical engineering departments. Charlotte architect Frank Pierce Milburn drew the design, the first on campus planned for steam heat and electric lights.
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Edwin Alderman is inaugurated as president in Gerrard Hall
About a hundred legislators and Governor Daniel L. Russell rode a special train from Raleigh through sleet for the ceremony, where Kemp P. Battle presented Alderman and the new president spoke for an hour and a half on the university as the people's school. The lawmakers were made honorary members of the Di and Phi societies and met with school superintendents who had come to honor one of their own.
-
UNC sets up a chair of pharmacy under Edward V. Howell
In March 1897 the trustees set up a chair of pharmacy and elected Edward Vernon Howell, beginning the department that became the School of Pharmacy. An earlier College of Pharmacy under Dr. T. W. Harris, begun in 1880, had been short-lived. In 1953 the school's dean was E. A. Brecht.
-
The Glee Club first sings the song that became Hark the Sound
William Starr Myers's verses, set to the campus tune "Amici" and first called "Hail to the Brightest Star," were sung by the Glee Club at a commencement concert. Printed in the 1907 Yackety Yack, the song became the university's anthem.
-
The class of 1897 gives the university a bust of Robert E. Lee
On Class Day the seniors presented a bust of Lee, which President Alderman accepted with a speech of praise, and the band afterward played Dixie.
-
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.
-
Acting president Joshua Gore demonstrates an X-ray machine at the university
While Alderman was abroad from February to May 1898, physics professor Joshua W. Gore ran the university and set up an X-ray apparatus in his laboratory. A Raleigh doctor brought over a patient to look for a shawl pin thought to be in her throat, which Gore could not find.
-
Ernest Graves plays fullback on the undefeated 1898 Carolina football team
Graves, a Chapel Hill native, played fullback for the university and was a member of its undefeated, untied team of 1898. He scored 131 points in his Carolina football career.
-
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.
-
Masons lay the cornerstone of the Alumni Building
Chapel Hill's University Lodge No. 408 took part in the Masonic laying of the cornerstone for the university's Alumni Building.
-
The Order of Gimghouls builds its first lodge on Rosemary Lane
The Gimghouls, a junior-class order at the university, were building their own lodge in the spring of 1898 on a lot at Rosemary Lane and Boundary Street. By late 1899 the order was holding dances in the new lodge.
-
University students in the National Guard await orders as war with Spain begins
When the United States went to war with Spain, about thirty university men who belonged to the National Guard waited for active duty orders, and freshman Joseph Monroe Morris left for Durham to enlist in the Durham Light Infantry.
-
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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Edward Kidder Graham wins the Mangum Medal
Added to the commencement orators after Horace Williams showed Alderman one of his papers, Graham won the top senior speaking prize with an address on "the economic man" that foresaw business coming to rule Southern life. He reworked the theme over the next decade into his argument for the university's service to the state.
-
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.
-
James Sprunt endows a fund for historical monographs at UNC
By the fall of 1899 James Sprunt had set up a fund at the university for publishing yearly historical monographs, known after 1910 as the James Sprunt Historical Publications. The first monograph appeared in June 1900.
-
Julian S. Carr gives money to finish the Carr Building dormitory
Carr, born in Chapel Hill, gave $3,000 in 1899 to finish the dormitory named for him. In 1900 Winston praised it as a gift from a son of the village whose family name had once hung over a small store there.
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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.
-
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.
-
The legislature funds university waterworks on Bowlin's Creek
The General Assembly of 1899 gave $7,500 for university waterworks, with steam pumps on Bowlin's Creek about a mile and a half from the campus filling a tall tank that fed the buildings by gravity. The supply still fell short.
-
The university lays off a new athletic field with a grandstand
President Venable's report of February 1902 lists a new athletic field with a stand among the improvements of the previous three years.
-
The university starts a course in dyeing and bleaching
A course in dyeing and bleaching was added to chemistry, with Thomas Clarke, who had studied the subject for two years in Germany, running the laboratory and Francis P. Venable giving the lectures.
-
The class of 1899 gives a bronze bust of Zebulon Vance and plants ivy from Lee's tomb
On Class Day the seniors, led by Julian S. Carr Jr., presented a bronze bust of Vance, and that afternoon planted on the South Building a sprig of ivy from Robert E. Lee's mausoleum.
Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1900s
-
Charles Baskerville heads UNC's chemistry department
When Francis P. Venable became university president in 1900, Baskerville succeeded him as chairman of the chemistry department, Smith Professor and director of the chemical laboratory, posts he held until 1904.
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