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Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
- 1880s
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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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Robert Strange MacRae buys Dr. Harris's drugstore and its building
MacRae bought the drug business from Dr. Thomas W. Harris and the building it occupied, at Franklin and Henderson streets, from David McCauley. He sold the drugstore to Dr. R. H. Whitehead in 1893.
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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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A stock law ends open range in four Orange County townships
An 1885 act barred cattle from running at large in Cedar Grove, Little River, Hillsboro and Bingham townships and had the commissioners fence those townships from a special tax. A second act let Chapel Hill Township adopt the stock law on a petition of three-fourths of its freeholders.
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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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Chapel Hill's Black residents begin burying their dead in Section A
Section A, beside the old slave section on the west side of the cemetery, came into general use by Chapel Hill's African American community in the mid-1880s. Its later markers include cast concrete headstones common in Black cemeteries of the period.
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Dr. William P. Mallett begins handing out Chapel Hill's mail from his lot
Dr. Mallett and his daughter started distributing the village mail. The post office building he put up on the southwest corner of his East Franklin Street lot also held his doctor's office at the back, and after his death Thomas Kirkland ran the post office there.
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Professor Adolphus Mangum buys the Collier house on East Rosemary Street
Professor Adolphus W. Mangum bought the house at 315 East Rosemary Street in 1885 and owned it for five years.
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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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Thomas F. Lloyd buys the brick house on West Cameron Avenue later called the Lloyd-Wiley House
With his West End gin and grist mill doing well, Thomas F. Lloyd bought a two-story brick house on West Cameron Avenue in Chapel Hill in 1885. It has been known since as the Lloyd-Wiley House.
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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 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 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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Robert L. Strowd marries and likely builds a two-story L-plan house on land from his father
Strowd, a farmer who also kept a store on Franklin Street, received the tract from his father in 1886 and married Frances Hedon that year; the house at 51 Davie Circle probably went up then. It stood alone at the edge of town until the area filled in during the 1910s and 1920s.
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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 annual YMCA convention meets at Chapel Hill
The Young Men's Christian Association's annual convention met at Chapel Hill, with sessions in Gerrard Hall, reports from associations around the state and a Sunday talk to townspeople in the Baptist church. Professor J. W. Gore was chosen its president.
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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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Students hold the first of a series of gymnastic contests
On Thanksgiving Day students competed on the horizontal and parallel bars, ladders, Indian clubs and swings and in a half-mile race, a tug of war and a high jump, with Francis P. Venable calling the events. It was the first of a series of such contests.
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Fire destroys the old president's house on Christmas morning
The house Helen Hooper built, later home to Presidents Caldwell and Swain, burned the day after Professor Thomas Hume's family moved in. Fire spread from boxes and straw in an outbuilding, and Chapel Hill had no fire engine or ladder company to stop it.
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James Lee Love builds a house on East Franklin Street for his wife, June Spencer
Professor James Lee Love built the one-story house at 410 East Franklin Street in 1887, on the lot of the old president's house that burned the Christmas before, for his wife June, the only daughter of Cornelia Phillips Spencer. It is known as the Spencer House after his mother-in-law.
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Professor Thomas Hume buys the house across from the Baptist church
Burned out of the president's house, Professor Thomas Hume bought the West Franklin Street house opposite the Baptist church. It had been home to the Baptist minister Needham Byron Cobb until the congregation turned its school building into a parsonage.
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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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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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Battle Lane is cut along the edge of the president's house lot
After the president's house burned, the eastern edge of its lot on East Franklin Street was opened as Battle Lane, and the rest of the eastern part was leased to Professor James Lee Love for fifty years at $15 a year.
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A carved eagle lectern at the Chapel of the Cross memorializes Mary Ruffin Smith
A lectern topped by a carved wooden eagle was placed in the Chapel of the Cross nave in memory of Mary Ruffin Smith, with an inscription on its base dated 1888.
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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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Barbee Drive is cut beside Algernon Barbee's house lot
A road was opened along the eastern edge of Algernon S. Barbee's residential lot on Franklin Street and named Barbee Drive.
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Chapel Hill physician William Peter Mallett dies
Mallett, the village's leading doctor, who had lived in Chapel Hill for more than thirty years, died in the fall of 1889.
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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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Fred Smith begins about fifty years as conductor on the Chapel Hill branch train
Captain Fred Smith became conductor on the University Station branch in 1889 and kept the job for about half a century, until passenger service ended.
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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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The Presbyterian church buys the Phillips house on East Franklin Street for a manse
After Charles Phillips left Chapel Hill and died in 1889, the Chapel Hill Presbyterian church bought his former home at 513 East Franklin Street and made it the minister's residence. Bryant dates the purchase to 1891.
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The YMCA takes charge of regular gymnasium training
The trustees accepted a YMCA plan to put gymnasium exercises on a system, with each student paying a small fee, and Lacy L. Little, a recent honor graduate and former football captain trained at Springfield, was hired as trainer.
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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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Chapel Hill's new Methodist church is dedicated
During the centennial commencement Bishop W. W. Duncan preached at night in the new Methodist church, a collection cleared its $800 debt, and the church was dedicated.
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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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Louis H. Hackney is pastor of Rock Hill Baptist Church on West Franklin Street
Louis H. Hackney, listed as a minister and living in Chapel Hill with his wife Lara Edwards Hackney by 1880, was pastor of Rock Hill Baptist Church on West Franklin Street by 1890. The church, organized in 1865, later moved to Roberson Street as First Baptist Church.
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Merchant Henry "Hoot" Patterson turns a West Cameron Avenue I-house into a Queen Anne villa
In the 1890s Henry "Hoot" Patterson, whose general store was on East Franklin Street, bought the frame I-house at 403 West Cameron Avenue and turned it into a Queen Anne house with a rose window in a front gable, bracketed eaves, a bay window and an elaborate porch that wraps the corner.
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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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Students start the Chapel Hillian newspaper
A student paper called the Chapel Hillian appeared, edited by F. H. Argo and S. A. Ashe Jr. It gave way to two rival papers, the White and Blue of the non-fraternity men and the Tar Heel of the fraternity men, and the Tar Heel outlasted its rival.
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The Chapel of the Cross adds a chancel and vestry
A chancel and a vestry room were built onto the rear of the 1848 Chapel of the Cross, replacing its original back wall. The vestry kept its corner fireplace, paneled wainscot and built-in cupboards into the 1970s.
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The Pritchard-Poythress Farm is built
The Pritchard-Poythress Farm dates from the 1890s and was placed on the state Study List in July 1992 after the Chapel Hill Township survey.
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The trustees ban intercollegiate athletic contests
After disputes with other colleges, the faculty in 1889 limited games to college grounds, and in 1890 the trustees forbade intercollegiate contests altogether. A student petition won repeal, with athletics put under an advisory committee of a professor, a graduate student and an undergraduate.
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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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James E. Fogartie is installed as pastor of New Hope and Chapel Hill
Fogartie was called to New Hope jointly with the Chapel Hill church. About the same time the synod's evangelists W. D. Morton and a Mr. Maxwell held a meeting at New Hope that added a number of members.
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Dr. Abner B. Roberson buys the Central Hotel and moves his drugstore into it
After the hotel's owner, Jones Watson, died, Dr. Roberson bought the Central Hotel, moved his drugstore into it with Clyde Eubanks as druggist, and leased the hotel's management to 'Bunn' Patterson. Adam A. Kluttz opened a store called the Glass Front in the many-windowed west end of the building.
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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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Laura Phillips sells the old Fetter house to Sarah Wellington
After Charles Phillips died, his widow Laura sold off much of the family's property, including the old Fetter house on East Franklin Street. Professors John Manning, Edwin A. Alderman and Edward Vernon Howell lived there in turn over the next years.
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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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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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Professor Walter Dallam Toy buys the Graves house and makes it a bachelors' hall
The widow of mathematics professor Ralph Henry Graves sold their West Franklin Street house to Walter Dallam Toy, who shared it with several other unmarried professors.
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St. Paul AME congregation builds its present church on Merritt Mill Road
St. Paul AME, the first all-Black congregation in Chapel Hill, put up the church that still stands in 1892, across Merritt Mill Road from the site of its first building near the old Quaker school.
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The Vance Daniel Farm is built
The Vance Daniel Farm was built about 1892 and was placed on the state Study List in July 1992 after the Chapel Hill Township survey.
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The W. S. Guthrie family plot is enclosed with a cast-iron fence
The Guthrie plot in Section I has one of the most ornate iron fences in the cemetery, its gate cast with the family name, the date 1892 and a willow shading two lambs.
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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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The new Glee Club gives its first concert
The Glee Club, formed in 1891 under Professor Karl P. Harrington, gave its first concert in Gerrard Hall and then toured Raleigh, Salem, Greensboro, Durham, Wilmington and other towns, giving its profits to the athletic association.
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Carolina's football team beats Virginia 26 to 0 at Atlanta
Under captain Michael Hoke the 1892 team lost only to Virginia in October and then beat Richmond College, Trinity, Alabama A. and M., Vanderbilt and, in a rematch at Atlanta, Virginia. Students met the team at University Station and pulled their carriages to the campus.
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Adam A. Kluttz builds a brick store on East Franklin Street
Kluttz bought half an acre from the heirs of John Wesley Carr and began a brick building just west of David McCauley's store. In 1894 he moved his general merchandise business across the street into it; the building later carried the number 149 East Franklin.
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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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Black families' homes on Lot 16 are razed and an Alpha Tau Omega cottage goes up
The houses of Jordan Weaver, a Black preacher, and of two other Black families who had built on the old Lot 16 were torn down, and a cottage for the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity was built on the lot facing the Episcopal church.
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Dr. Richard H. Whitehead buys Robert Strange MacRae's drugstore
Dr. R. H. Whitehead, head of the revived medical school, bought MacRae's drugstore at Franklin and Henderson streets. By 1904 Pickard and Strowd's confection and grocery store was in the building.
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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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Geology professor Collier Cobb builds a Queen Anne cottage on East Franklin Street
Collier Cobb built his house at 517 East Franklin Street in 1893 and enlarged it later that decade. With its pedimented front wing, Palladian window and curving porch, it is one of the first Queen Anne houses in Chapel Hill.
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Robert L. Strowd runs a general store on Franklin Street
Robert L. Strowd had a general store in the building where Charles L. Lindsay had sold furniture, dry goods and groceries. In 1901 he bought the building and its lot from Adele Tankersley.
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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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Adam A. Kluttz buys the old Sam Phillips house and law office
After the owner, Margaret Miller, died, her only heir, Mary Jane Cooper, sold the old Sam Phillips house on East Franklin Street, with the old law office, to the merchant Adam A. Kluttz.
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Alphonso and Anne McDade buy the house later called the McDade House
The heirs of Isaac Hudson sold the western half of the original Lot 5 on West Franklin Street to Alphonso J. McDade and his wife Anne. The McDades never lived there and rented the house to their daughter Minnie and her husband, J. E. Merritt.
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Dilsey Craig, enslaved in the household of professor James Phillips, dies
Dilsey Craig (1802-1894) and Ben Craig were enslaved by the family of mathematics professor James Phillips and lived in the brick kitchen behind 501 East Franklin Street. Dilsey remained with the family long after freedom, and a memorial marks her in the old Chapel Hill Cemetery.
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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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Dr. Roberson adds a ten-room annex to the Central Hotel
Roberson enlarged the Central Hotel with a ten-room wing facing the campus. After his death in 1897 Kluttz ran the hotel for a short time before 'Bunn' Patterson took back its management.
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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 old Nunn tavern building reopens as the Patterson Hotel
Dr. Abner Benton Roberson bought from McDade the old building on the eastern half of Lot 5, once Nunn's tavern and inn and for some years the McDades' home. 'Bunn' Patterson remodeled it and added four or five rooms, and it opened as the Patterson Hotel, which did not last long as a hotel.
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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.
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Princeton's Thomas Trenchard coaches Carolina to its best football season yet
The Athletic Association hired Thomas G. "Doggie" Trenchard, an 1893 Princeton all-American, and his team won seven games and tied one before losing again to Virginia. In February 1896 President Winston called off a planned tribute to the coach, saying he had been drinking and betting on games while in Chapel Hill.
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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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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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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.
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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.
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Chemistry professor Charles Baskerville builds a Queen Anne house at 524 East Franklin Street
Charles Baskerville's house on East Franklin Street, going up in March 1896, hides two full stories behind a large polygonal entrance bay with a pyramid roof, trimmed with a turret, a balconied dormer and a gabled vent. Little calls it the most playful Queen Anne house in town. Baskerville bought the lot outright in 1905 and sold the house that year to chemist Charles Herty.
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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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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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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 $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.
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The faculty sets study and conduct rules for athletes
After a disorderly fall term the faculty barred students neglecting their studies or on probation from the football and baseball teams, required parents' written consent, limited team absences to five days a year and made players pledge not to drink or gamble on trips.
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Clyde Eubanks buys Dr. Roberson's drugstore
When Dr. Roberson died, his druggist Clyde Eubanks bought the drugstore and kept it in the Central Hotel until 1901.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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W. W. Pickard opens a livery stable at Franklin and Pine streets
Hotel man W. W. Pickard opened a livery stable on the northwest corner of Franklin and Pine streets. William J. 'Tank' Hunter bought it in 1910.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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Chapel Hill's Congregational church sells its building and leaves the village
The Congregational church, which Wilson Caldwell had joined and where Battle gave Caldwell's eulogy in July 1898 at the pastor's request, sold its church building and schoolhouse and left Chapel Hill soon after Caldwell's death.
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Chemist Charles H. Herty buys Charles Baskerville's new house
Charles Baskerville, who had built a house on the southwest corner of Boundary and Franklin streets in 1897, sold it the next year to Dr. Charles H. Herty, later known for a process that made newsprint from southern pine.
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Cotton Chapel CME Church, the forerunner of St. Joseph CME, was organized
Chapel Hill members of the Colored Methodist Episcopal church, who had worshipped at Hamlet Chapel in Pittsboro, formed their own congregation named for founder Henry Cotton. Its first building later burned and was rebuilt as a frame church.
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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.
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J. T. 'Bull' Durham opens a general store at Franklin and Columbia streets
Durham opened a general store in the building on the southeast corner of Franklin and Columbia streets where S. W. Andrews had kept a Farmers' Alliance meat market. By 1912 he also ran a jitney service.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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Manly McCauley and Maggie Brewer leave the Brewer farm west of Chapel Hill
On a Wednesday afternoon Maggie Brewer, wife of the farmer Milton Brewer, left the family farm four miles west of Chapel Hill with Manly McCauley, an eighteen-year-old Black farmhand who had worked there about a year. A posse of eighteen men led by her husband set out after them on Friday and overtook the pair beyond Jonesboro.
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Manly McCauley's body is found hanging from a tree three miles west of Chapel Hill
A farmer, Thomas Myrick, found McCauley's body hanging from a bent dogwood beside the public road some three miles west of Chapel Hill, a week after masked men had taken him from the officer bringing him back. Coroner Jordan was telegraphed to hold an inquest.
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W. A. Guthrie urges Chapel Hill voters to the polls for the white supremacy ticket the day after McCauley's body is found
With McCauley's body found the previous afternoon, Major W. A. Guthrie spoke at Chapel Hill on election eve, appealing to white voters to cast their ballots for the party of white supremacy; A. L. Brooks, the Democratic candidate for solicitor, followed him. The state election was held the next day.
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Edward Kidder Graham returns to Chapel Hill to manage the library
After a year teaching at a Charlotte private school, Graham came back at Alderman's request to run the university library, and before the year was out Alderman made him an instructor in English at $700 a year.
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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.
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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.
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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 Bank of Chapel Hill is established
Founded in 1899 with $10,000 authorized and $2,500 paid in, it was the county's first bank after the Civil War. Julian S. Carr was its first president, and by 1953 it held $8,500,000 in assets.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1900s
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A Black congregation builds Neville's Chapel outside Chapel Hill
An African American congregation outside Chapel Hill built the small frame sanctuary now called Neville's Chapel (United Church of Christ) in the early twentieth century. A cornerstone on the site names an earlier Strowd Grace Church and its pastor, H. B. Baldwin.
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Adam A. Kluttz buys the lot west of his store and moves its houses back to Rosemary Street
Kluttz bought the property just west of his East Franklin Street store and had its two old houses moved to the rear of the lot, turned to face Rosemary Street, where they stood until 1963. He is said to have built a second store beside the first, run as a haberdashery.
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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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Damascus Christian Church builds a Gothic Revival frame church
Damascus Congregational Christian Church southwest of Chapel Hill builds a frame church with Gothic Revival details around 1900; its cemetery lies beside it.
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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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Ernest Graves captains the Carolina baseball team
Graves, the team's catcher, captained the university baseball team in 1900, the year he graduated.
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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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Fraternity members make up about 18 percent of UNC students
In 1900 the university counted 93 fraternity men against 419 non-members, yet the fraternities ran much of student life, including the athletic association that published the Tar Heel.
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Julian S. Carr gives the university the Carr Building
At the 1900 commencement the trustees accepted the Carr Building, a three-story dormitory that Julian S. Carr paid for at a cost of $18,000. It was designed by Pearson and Ashe and housed seventy-four students.
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Mill owner Isaac W. Pritchard builds a large frame house on Ransom Street
Isaac Pritchard, who ran one of the first textile mills near the Carrboro depot, built a spacious house at 400 Ransom Street combining a hipped roof and Palladian dormer with a Queen Anne entrance and wraparound porch. Most of his land later became part of the Westwood subdivision.
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The Blackwood family settles the farm that becomes the Blackwood Brothers Dairy
From the early twentieth century the Blackwoods held a farm on Mount Carmel Church Road with a story-and-a-half house and a complete set of log and frame farm and dairy buildings.
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The Lloyd-Webb Building goes up on the south side of East Franklin Street
This row of two-story brick shops at 138-142 East Franklin Street, with stepped brick cornices and two-over-two windows upstairs, dates from about 1900. The store at 144 next door was built to the same pattern.
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The Morrow-Neville House is built on Mallette Street
The two-story hip-roofed house at 118 Mallette Street, with a small rear ell and a square-columned porch that are probably original, dates from about 1900.
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The Warriole-Tilley House is built on Mallette Street
The one-story frame house at 113 Mallette Street, with a center front gable, a tall hip-roofed rear ell and a bracketed porch that looks original, dates from about 1900.
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William Cole builds a house near Chapel Hill as a wedding present for his daughter
In 1900 William Cole gave his daughter a new one-story house near Chapel Hill, covered in patterned shingles and trimmed with turned porch work. Mattson calls it the showiest house of its kind in the county.
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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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President Alderman resigns to head Tulane University
Offered the Tulane presidency in April 1900 at more than twice his Chapel Hill pay, Alderman resigned in May despite the trustees' pleas. The book suggests thin state funding after the 1898 campaign, when Democrats promised the church colleges not to seek more for the university, weighed on his decision.
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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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Commencement marks twenty-five years since the university reopened
The 1900 commencement was given over to the reopening of 1875, with nineteen members of the 1875-76 student body present and addresses by Kemp Battle, George T. Winston, W. J. Peele and President Alderman.
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Thomas Wolfe, who came to Chapel Hill as a student in 1916, was born
Thomas Wolfe was born in Asheville and entered UNC in 1916.
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Chapel Hill gets its first long-distance telephone
Through the efforts of Professor Joshua W. Gore, the first long-distance telephone line was set up at the university during the 1900-01 session, connecting by way of Durham.
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Clyde Eubanks moves his drugstore into a building of his own
Eubanks left the Central Hotel and set up his drugstore in a new building he had put up on the west corner of the Tankersley property on Franklin Street.
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Eben Alexander has the first telephone in Chapel Hill
Bryant lists Professor Eben Alexander, who lived in the old Tom Taylor house on East Franklin Street, as the first in town to have a telephone; in 1901 his number was 1.
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Gerrard Hall is renovated and its south portico torn down
Gerrard Hall got a new roof and interior: chairs replaced the pews, the old doors were walled up and two new doors opened on the east. The decaying south porch and its columns were pulled down.
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Harriet Berry works for the state Geological and Economic Survey in Chapel Hill
Berry began work in Chapel Hill with the North Carolina Geological and Economic Survey in 1901 and rose from stenographer to secretary and, in 1917, acting head. She left in 1921, the year her Good Roads lobbying produced the state highway commission law.
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Isaac Hall Manning joins the UNC medical faculty
Manning came to the School of Medicine in 1901 as professor of physiology and began teaching bacteriology in 1902.
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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.
