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Chronology

Key events from Orange County history: 100 highlights to start, then the full chronology of 9,006 dated events and 77 storylines, each connected to the index. A storyline gathers many dated events into one history, such as the Regulator crisis. Browse all 77 storylines. Every entry names its source. See all 667 sources.

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Source: Kemp P. Battle, History of the University of North Carolina, vol. I (1907)
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Kemp P. Battle, History of the University of North Carolina, vol. I (1907): Written by the university's president from 1876 to 1891. It offers extensive detail from an institutional perspective, although some dates require correction.Open the sourceAll sources

Searched the full chronology of 9,006 dated events and 77 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–198.Back to highlights

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  1. Revolution and early republic · 1775–1799

  2. 1790s
  3. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill William Lenoir is chosen the first president of the university's trustees

    At the board's second meeting, held at Fayetteville, the trustees made William Lenoir of Wilkes County their president on the nomination of House Speaker Stephen Cabarrus, and elected State Comptroller John Craven treasurer. Lenoir soon gave up the chair and Governor Alexander Martin succeeded him.

  4. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill The university's treasury receives its first money

    John Harvey, clerk of the Perquimans court, paid over $2,706.41 recovered from a delinquent state collecting officer under the arrearages the Assembly had granted the university. As the charter required, the trustees invested it in United States stock.

  5. Naming or commemoration · Chapel Hill Trustees adopt a university seal showing Apollo and the rising sun

    A committee of James Hogg, Alfred Moore and John Haywood, given sole power to choose a device for the corporation's seal, picked the face of Apollo with the rising sun, meant to stand for the dawn of higher education in the state.

  6. Hillsborough University trustees ask Benjamin Hawkins to gather information on American colleges

    At their July 1791 meeting the university trustees named Senator Benjamin Hawkins, Samuel McCorkle and Hugh Williamson to gather information on the laws, rules and buildings of American colleges, with their income and spending, and to estimate what the university's own buildings would cost.

  7. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill A trustee committee under Samuel McCorkle reports the university's first plan of studies

    Named at New Bern on December 4, 1792, the committee proposed teaching languages with English first, history, mathematics, natural philosophy, botany, agriculture and architecture, and buying scientific apparatus. A newspaper notice of December 12 inviting teachers for this course drew no applicants.

  8. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill The building committee buys Hardy Morgan's 80-acre tract beside the university site

    Finding that Morgan's land ran too close to the planned buildings, the committee bought the 80 acres for $200. Battle took it to be the oldest cleared land on the university grounds, lying east of the buildings along the Raleigh road.

  9. Chapel Hill James Patterson buys two lots at the first Chapel Hill lot sale

    At the sale held the day Old East's cornerstone was laid, Patterson, the building's contractor, bought village lots 4 and 5 for 108 pounds 10 shillings. The cornerstone procession that day set out from his inn.

  10. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Trustees adopt the plan of instruction and set the university's opening for January 15

    The board ordered the McCorkle committee's scheme into effect, fixed tuition by subject and created a presiding professor at $300 a year plus fees. It also resolved to build a steward's house before the opening and set a bill of fare for Commons with no drink but water.

  11. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill The General Assembly grants the university unsold confiscated lands

    The act gave the trustees confiscated Loyalist lands still unsold, chiefly the forfeited claims of Henry Eustace McCulloch, but sent anything above $20,000 to the state. The university's suits to collect under it angered landholders in Mecklenburg and nearby counties.

  12. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Trustees adopt the university's first by-laws

    Drafted by Samuel McCorkle and amended in committee, the by-laws set four classes, prayers at sunrise and evening, a monitor in each class to report absences and misconduct, and punishments from admonition to expulsion. Students could not keep liquor in their rooms or gamble.

  13. Publication, speech or performance · Chapel Hill UNC holds its first public examination, announced by Governor Spaight

    The University's first public examination took place at Chapel Hill on July 13, 1795, after notice appeared in the newspapers over the signature of Governor Richard Dobbs Spaight. The governor's wife, Mary Spaight, was the only woman present, and about a dozen men attended, including William R. Davie, James Hogg, Alfred Moore and James Glasgow.

  14. Founding or opening · Chapel Hill Trustees vote to build a house for the university's grammar school

    With Old East crowded and many students too young or unprepared for college classes, the board ordered a separate preparatory school building with lodging rooms, in the woods south of Rosemary Street. Richard Sims, an advanced student, seems to have been its first master.

  15. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Joseph Green becomes the first student dismissed from the university

    Green and Frank Burton went to a cotton-picking frolic after being forbidden. Burton accepted public admonition, but Green refused and was dismissed by the faculty under David Ker.

  16. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Trustees adopt William R. Davie's plan dividing the university into a preparatory school and professorships

    Davie's plan put English at the center, let French stand beside the classics and set up chairs of moral and political philosophy, natural philosophy, mathematics, chemistry with agriculture and the mechanic arts, and languages. The board elected Samuel McCorkle a professor, but he declined when refused extra pay in place of the president's house.

  17. Publication, speech or performance · Chapel Hill The two student societies stage a play in place of their regular exercises

    Both societies voted to give up their usual exercises for a dramatic performance, probably urged on by tutor William Richards, a former strolling actor, and bought scenery at Williamsboro. One member who failed without excuse to take his two parts was expelled from his society.

  18. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Trustees forbid students to visit village taverns without leave and allow dancing lessons

    Meeting at the July examinations, the board barred tavern visits without a professor's permission and gave the preparatory teachers authority over all students. The same meeting let students attend dancing schools with faculty consent.

  19. Award or honor · Chapel Hill David Gillespie receives the earliest document resembling a university diploma

    Leaving to help Andrew Ellicott fix the southern boundary of the United States, Gillespie was given a certificate of his studies signed by professors Charles W. Harris and Samuel Holmes and teacher William Richards. Governor Samuel Ashe attached a certificate under the state seal.

  20. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill James Smiley Gillaspie is made principal of the university

    To keep Joseph Caldwell, who meant to leave rather than carry the executive duties, the trustees elected Gillaspie professor of natural philosophy with the title of principal. Caldwell stayed as professor of mathematics and taught French in the preparatory school.

  21. Publication, speech or performance · Old East Student John Pettigrew draws Old East

    Pettigrew sent his father a colored drawing of the building, then two stories high and two-thirds its later length, with a white band between the stories and a platform at each door. Battle reproduced it as the frontispiece view of Old East.

  22. Disaster or outbreak · Chapel Hill Mumps spreads among the students

    John Pettigrew wrote home that thirty or forty students had the mumps, none badly. Smallpox brought by a man from Norfolk was seven or eight miles away, but Battle says it never reached Chapel Hill.

  23. Chapel Hill Trustees attend the university's July examination and praise its teachers

    Governor Benjamin Williams, Judge John Williams, James Hogg, Adlai Osborne, Willie Jones and Walter Alves attended the examination. Their report thanked the professors and tutors and said complaints against the steward had ended.

  24. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill Charles Gerrard leaves the university his Tennessee lands

    Gerrard, a Revolutionary lieutenant living in Edgecombe County, bequeathed his 2,560-acre service tract on the Cumberland River below Nashville, asking that it stay university property forever, along with warrants for 11,364 more acres. The gift emboldened the trustees to begin the Main Building.

  25. Construction or physical change · South Building The cornerstone of the Main, later South, Building is laid

    A special Grand Lodge of Masons met at the university to lay the cornerstone of the principal building. Its walls rose a story and a half and then stood roofless for years for want of money.

  26. Protest or organizing · Chapel Hill Students rise against the faculty and beat principal Gillaspie

    In the term before the 1799 commencement students beat Gillaspie, waylaid and stoned tutor William E. Webb and threatened Caldwell and Archibald Murphey, and for a week exercises stopped. Three leaders were dismissed and the faculty offered to resign, and by that November Caldwell was chosen again to head the university.

  27. Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865

  28. 1800s
  29. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill The General Assembly takes back the university's confiscated lands and escheats

    Amid hostility to the university as a Federalist school, and anger at its suits over old McCulloch claims, the legislature repealed the 1794 grant of confiscated property and the 1789 grant of escheats. The courts later held the escheat repeal unconstitutional in University v. Foy.

  30. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill The university raises money for the Main Building by lottery

    The legislature of 1801 let the trustees raise up to $4,000 by lotteries. Two drawings, the first of 1,500 five-dollar tickets and the second in 1802, cleared $5,080.81, though agents were slow to account for tickets.

  31. Chapel Hill A trustee committee reports on the examination at the 1802 commencement

    Adlai Osborne, Henry Potter and Charles W. Harris made the trustees' report on the commencement examination, listing the preparatory school's classes from spelling and grammar through Latin authors and French.

  32. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill Women of Raleigh give the university a new pair of globes

    Hearing that the university's globes were too worn to use, sixteen Raleigh women, among them Sarah Polk, Anna White and Eliza Haywood, sent a new pair twelve inches across with a compass to Joseph Caldwell. The letter was written by Winifred Gales.

  33. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill A student duel brings expulsions and a trustee order against dueling

    Quarrels in the spring of 1803 led to challenges and at least one meeting. Samuel G. Hopkins was expelled for fighting and John H. Hawkins for acting as second, and the trustees ordered that anyone in a duel be expelled and handed to the civil authorities.

  34. Chapel Hill Board president William Polk appeals for money to finish the Main Building and stock the library

    With the lottery money not enough to finish the Main Building, Polk, as president of the trustees, issued an appeal over its roofless walls and nearly empty library shelves. The drive raised $1,664 in cash; Polk gathered gifts from about fifty donors and gave $100 himself.

  35. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill Women of New Bern give the university a quadrant

    Sixteen New Bern women, among them Susan Gaston and Mary Nash, sent a quadrant for the philosophical class to Joseph Caldwell. In his reply Caldwell blamed the university's unpopularity partly on disappointment over costs and on student misconduct.

  36. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Court rulings force the university to give up its McCulloch collections

    In Ray's Executors v. McCulloch and Trustees v. Rice, the Court of Conference held that the 1783 peace treaty protected Henry Eustace McCulloch's claims. The General Assembly then ordered the money collected under the 1794 act refunded to the state treasury in trust for the debtors who had paid.

  37. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Trustees make Greek a requirement for a degree

    After electing Caldwell president, the board ruled that no degree be granted without Greek, set Greek tests for entering the junior and freshman classes and repealed the degree for English and the sciences. It also ordered the president to wear a black gown at commencement.

  38. Disaster or outbreak · Chapel Hill Nervous fever kills a student

    A fever the doctors called nervous fever struck the university early in 1804. A student named Philips, of Edgecombe County, died and Lemuel Sessoms was not expected to live, and the dance planned for Washington's Birthday was dropped.

  39. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill The General Assembly restores the university's escheats

    The bill passed the House 82 to 35 and the Senate 32 to 23, returning escheated property whose Tennessee land warrants later became the university's endowment. Maurice Moore, one of the first students, was among its strongest advocates.

  40. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill The governor becomes ex officio president of the university's trustees

    The act restoring the escheats made the governor president of the board and gave the General Assembly, on joint ballot, the power to fill vacancies. A trustee absent from meetings for two years could lose his seat.

  41. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Trustees repeal the monitor ordinance that set off the student secession

    The 1805 law made student monitors swear to report every breach of the rules, and forty-five students signed a remonstrance and left when it was only softened. The board repealed it unanimously in December, but few of the seceders came back.

  42. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Trustees bar students expelled from other colleges

    An ordinance sent to every college president in the country refused admission to anyone expelled from another college or who had left it to avoid trial, and required applicants to declare they had not. Colleges were asked to exchange lists of expelled students.

  43. Protest or organizing · Chapel Hill Thirty-eight students petition the faculty over food at Steward's Hall

    Signers including John Branch complained of too little butter and of beef often unsound and full of vermin. The faculty found the wording defiant and had it rewritten, and suspended John R. Stokes and Elias Foord for refusing to sign the milder version.

  44. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill The university divides the state into ten escheat districts with its own attorneys

    To collect the restored escheats, the trustees named attorneys in ten districts, among them Archibald D. Murphey for the district beginning with Chatham, paid by commission on sales and collections. The same year the legislature gave the university estate balances unclaimed for seven years.

  45. 1810s
  46. Award or honor · Person Hall The university makes David Caldwell of Guilford a Doctor of Divinity

    At the 1810 commencement the university gave honorary doctorates of divinity to David Caldwell, James Hall and James McRee. Caldwell's Latin diploma, dated in Person Hall, calls Chapel Hill Sacrarii Mons, the hill of the chapel.

  47. Protest or organizing · Chapel Hill A student outbreak leaves the university with no graduates

    After an insubordination whose details are lost, every senior except John A. Ramsey forfeited his diploma, and the 1811 commencement conferred only an honorary A.B. on Ramsey. Three of the six who later passed examinations received diplomas in 1813.

  48. Founding or opening · Person Hall A sacred music society forms and an organ is ordered for the university chapel

    The Raleigh Register reported a new society for the study of sacred music at the university and an organ, paid for by private gifts, already built in New York. The trustees later paid $50 to bring it to Chapel Hill.

  49. Chapel Hill Robert H. Chapman leads the organizing of a Presbyterian church at Chapel Hill

    Kemp Battle credited Robert H. Chapman, president of the university from 1812 to 1816, as the chief factor in organizing a Presbyterian church at Chapel Hill; Chapman required students to study the Bible as a textbook, and the tutor James E. Morrison credited him with a moral change in the university. Cornelia Phillips Spencer wrote that the village's first church organization was Presbyterian, under either Chapman or Caldwell, and that Orange Presbytery's records for 1812-1827 had burned, so the church's first record is from 1827.

  50. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill Robert H. Chapman is elected president as Caldwell returns to teaching mathematics

    Caldwell asked to give up the presidency to finish his geometry and study astronomy. The board accepted his resignation, elected the Presbyterian minister Chapman president at $1,200 a year and kept Caldwell as professor of mathematics at $1,000.

  51. Construction or physical change · South Building Students move into the finished South Building

    Subscriptions Caldwell gathered on tours of the state in 1809 and 1811, about $8,220, let contractor John Close finish the Main Building begun in 1798. Students moved in during 1814.

  52. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Caldwell takes students before a justice of the peace over attacks on President Chapman's property

    After night raids on Chapman's stable, cart and gate, and tar and feathers on his gatepost, Caldwell asked justice Pleasant Henderson for a general warrant. Refused, he named five students, and a hearing questioned the student body under oath.

  53. Protest or organizing · Chapel Hill Senior William B. Shepard speaks forbidden political passages and sets off a student revolt

    Chapman had struck Republican passages from Shepard's oration and ordered him to sit when he spoke them anyway, but students cheered him on and the next day met in the chapel to back him. The trustees expelled Shepard and George C. Dromgoole, others were suspended, and most of the rest signed apologies.

  54. Violence or armed conflict · Chapel Hill A gunpowder bomb explodes outside tutor John Patterson's door

    Apparently in revenge for the Shepard suspensions, someone filled a brass door knob with powder, lit a match fuse and left it at Patterson's door. A student picked it up and dropped it moments before it went off, and no one was hurt.

  55. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill Robert H. Chapman resigns the university presidency

    At the first board meeting after the Shepard affair Chapman resigned, saying he wished to give himself to the ministry. The trustees made it effective at once, paid him half a year's salary and let him keep the president's house to the end of the session.

  56. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill Joseph Caldwell is elected president a second time

    After William Neill and Lewis von Schweinitz declined the office, the trustees returned the presidency to Caldwell by a commission taking effect January 1, 1817.

  57. Founding or opening · Chapel Hill Trustees add a professorship of rhetoric and logic

    Counting on money from Tennessee land warrants, the board created a chair of rhetoric and logic and an adjunct chair of moral philosophy over one dissenting vote. Shepard K. Kollock took the rhetoric chair in the fall of 1819, and critics complained that the faculty was filling with Presbyterian ministers.

  58. Violence or armed conflict · Chapel Hill Drunken students break into a Chapel Hill kitchen and beat an enslaved man

    On a Sunday three students full of corn whiskey shouted through the village, broke into a kitchen, beat a Black man there and insulted his owner and family. They were suspended for four months.

  59. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Amendments drawn by Bartlett Yancey reshape the university's board of trustees

    The act raised the board to 65, the number of counties, left vacancies to the General Assembly, fixed a quorum of seven and let an annual meeting of fifteen remove a trustee for improper conduct. Special meetings could not undo votes of an annual meeting.

  60. Closing or ending · Orange County The university closes its grammar school and makes Hillsborough Academy its preparatory school

    When Abner W. Clopton gave up the grammar school the university dropped it. Caldwell arranged for Hillsborough Academy, under John Witherspoon with John Rogers teaching, to prepare boys for the university, whose faculty could attend its examinations and admit its top pupils on certificate.

  61. Closing or ending · Chapel Hill The university stops running Steward's Hall and lets students board where they choose

    Ending the old commons, the trustees rented Steward's Hall to Mrs. Burton, who had to feed students for no more than $9 a month the first year and allow the commencement ball in the dining room free. Board there had risen from $30 a year in 1795 to $95 in 1818.

  62. Violence or armed conflict · Chapel Hill Students give up pistols and dirks after a Washington's Birthday brawl

    After Walker Anderson's oration a dinner ended in drunken fighting, a dirk was drawn and a peacemaker was stabbed in the arm. The students were made to hand in their weapons, six pistols and two dirks, to be held while they remained at the university.

  63. 1820s
  64. Chapel Hill Francis L. Hawks is elected a university trustee

    When the board was enlarged in 1821, Hawks was one of nine additional trustees elected. Battle's list of trustees gives his residence as Orange County and his service as 1821 to 1828.

  65. Construction or physical change · Old West Trustees vote to raise Old East a story and build Old West

    At Caldwell's urging, and against the faculty's plea to spend on books and apparatus, the board voted to enlarge Old East, build Old West to match and start a new chapel, borrowing from banks against Tennessee land sales. Architect William Nichols ran the work, and the South Building's Prayer Hall became a chemistry laboratory.

  66. Health or relief action · Chapel Hill Faculty send ten new students out of Chapel Hill in a smallpox scare

    Word that ten arriving students had spent a night in Tarboro, where smallpox was spreading, set off a panic. The faculty ordered them to stay five miles from Chapel Hill until the danger passed.

  67. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill Professor Denison Olmsted is hired to make the state's geological survey

    The Board of Agriculture, created in 1822, was allowed in 1823 to employ someone to survey the state's geology and minerals at $250 a year. It chose Olmsted, whose published report Battle thought probably the first of any state, and Elisha Mitchell later carried on the work.

  68. Life event · Chapel Hill Seniors hold a drinking party at the Foxhall spring

    After final examinations nineteen of the twenty-eight seniors took whiskey and brandy to a spring north of the village called Foxhall, and one poured the liquor into the spring to make toddy. The faculty granted their diplomas only after they made formal acknowledgments.

  69. Violence or armed conflict · Chapel Hill Faculty and Orange County trustees expel two students who attacked professors

    Two students, drunk from the village grog shop and armed with a club and a pistol, went out after members of the faculty and assaulted two of them. The trustees living in Orange County were called to sit with the faculty, and the two were expelled.

  70. Chapel Hill The trustees settle William Nichols's accounts for Old West and the campus repairs

    The university settled with William Nichols, its supervisor and builder, for Old West, the new chapel, the bricks made on university land and repairs to South Building, the President's House and Steward's Hall. Battle gives the cost as about $26,587 and says the accounts showed a want of careful superintendence.

  71. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill Trustees send Caldwell to Europe to buy books and scientific instruments

    Acting on Caldwell's February 1824 plea that the university could not go forward without books and apparatus, the trustees set aside $6,000, half for each, and accepted his offer to buy them abroad at his own expense. He wrote from London on August 31, 1824, after visiting booksellers and instrument makers and touring Scotland.

  72. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill General Assembly gives the faculty power to bar traveling shows at Chapel Hill

    After a band of strolling players performed nightly for a week in a room over a village store and took an estimated $383, most of it from students, the faculty asked for power to stop such shows. The General Assembly passed a law giving it to them.

  73. Publication, speech or performance · South Building Students illuminate the college to welcome Caldwell home from Europe

    When President Caldwell came back from nearly a year in Europe buying books and apparatus, the students lit up the college buildings and escorted him to a stand by the well in front of South Building, where he spoke to them and the villagers. In December 1825 the trustees formally thanked him for his work.

  74. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill Trustees take over Denison Olmsted's house for the professors of chemistry

    When Olmsted resigned in December 1825 to teach at Yale, the trustees bought at cost the house he had purchased from Mrs. Puckett for $1,300 and repaired. The lot was set apart for the professors of chemistry, and the house was later the home of James Phillips and then of President Venable.

  75. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Trustees adopt by-laws creating a resident superintendent and a student uniform

    On Bartlett Yancey's motion the trustees created a superintendent of university property living at Chapel Hill, who was to receive and pay out all student money, and they prescribed a plain uniform dress and forbade boots. Chapel Hill merchant Thomas H. Taylor was appointed; in January 1829 the office passed to the faculty, who chose Elisha Mitchell.

  76. Disaster or outbreak · Chapel Hill Fever outbreak kills three university students

    A serious sickness, which Battle identifies as typhoid fever, struck the university in August and September 1825 and three students died, among them William H. Beard and Zenas Johnston. The acting president urged the trustees to engage a resident physician.

  77. Migration or settlement · James Craig's house ("Fur Craig's"), west edge of Chapel Hill Young Andrew Johnson, walking from Raleigh to Tennessee, is fed and lodged at James Craig's

    On his way west on foot, the future president Andrew Johnson stopped at James Craig's farmhouse about a mile west of the village and was given supper, a night's lodging and food for the road. He told the story from the steps of the president's house when he returned for the 1867 commencement.

  78. Publication, speech or performance · Person Hall Chapel Hill celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of independence

    The village marked the semicentennial of the Declaration of Independence with a procession to Person Hall, where Revolutionary veteran Major Henderson read the Declaration and William McCauley gave the oration. A dinner at S. B. Alsobrook's hotel and a ball to Ilai Nunn's violin followed.

  79. Chapel Hill Trustees name Badger, Yancey and Moore to draft a law against liquor and student credit at Chapel Hill

    On President Caldwell's motion the trustees named Bartlett Yancey, George E. Badger and Alfred Moore to prepare a bill forbidding the distilling or selling of spirituous liquors at or near Chapel Hill and barring village merchants from trading with students. It became law; Battle says the liquor ban still stood in 1907 while the trading ban was ignored and later repealed.

  80. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Trustees prescribe a student uniform and forbid boots

    The board ordered students to wear dark gray in summer and blue in winter, changing winter to gray six months later, and banned boots, probably because of hard times after the panic of 1825. Seniors were excused from the boot rule at their commencement, and the other classes soon won the same privilege.

  81. Chapel Hill At William Polk's instance the trustees order professors to keep office hours and visit student rooms at night

    Each professor was given a room in the college buildings and required to be in it during set morning and afternoon hours, and to visit every student's room at night at least three times a week. Battle says the code was Polk's, that it was obeyed unevenly until near the Civil War, and that it caused endless friction.

  82. Protest or organizing · Chapel Hill Thirty students walk out of Sunday worship in the chapel

    One Sunday morning thirty students left divine service in the chapel one by one. The faculty examined each; thirteen gave acceptable excuses and the other seventeen denied any plan, so the case was dropped.

  83. Founding or opening · Chapel Hill Students organize a temperance society

    Some students formed a Temperance Society in the summer of 1829, and Battle credits it with reducing drinking of spirits at the college. At its request Elisha Mitchell gave an address on intemperance in 1831 that was printed.

  84. 1830s
  85. Publication, speech or performance · Chapel Hill Anne Royall publishes a hostile account of Chapel Hill

    The traveling writer Anne Royall visited Chapel Hill in 1829 and in her Southern Tour, published in 1830, charged that the president's wife, Helen Caldwell, ruled the university. Battle answers with the faculty's account of the student she defended, who had been dismissed for disorder at a Sunday service.

  86. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Trustees meet in emergency session over the university's debts

    With debts of about $37,500 and only some 82 paying students, a special meeting of trustees at Chapel Hill on June 21, 1830 called the whole board to Raleigh on July 19. There a committee under James Iredell reported on the finances, and the board adopted a memorial drawn by Thomas Ruffin asking the General Assembly for relief.

  87. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Trustees refuse a state loan tied to legislative control of the university

    The General Assembly answered the trustees' memorial with an act having the Literary Board lend $25,000 for five years, but only if the loan became a lien on all university property and the trustees agreed that the legislature could take over the charter. The trustees unanimously rejected it and borrowed $4,000 from the Bank of the United States branch at Fayetteville.

  88. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill Trustees offer the university's Chapel Hill lands for sale

    Pressed by debt, the trustees named William Polk, James Mebane and James Webb to offer the unimproved university lands around Chapel Hill for sale. Only a small sum came in, from the sale of the Preparatory School acre; that school had been closed for more than ten years.

  89. Founding or opening · Chapel Hill Friends of education organize the North Carolina Institute of Education at Chapel Hill

    During commencement week a meeting adopted a constitution on Benjamin M. Smith's motion, elected Simmons J. Baker president and made professors Elisha Mitchell, William Hooper and James Phillips its executive committee. The Institute met at the next few commencements and enrolled about 130 members before it lapsed.

  90. Chapel Hill The Institute of Education names Gaston to a committee to petition the legislature on popular education

    At its second meeting, held during the 1832 commencement, the North Carolina Institute of Education voted to memorialize the General Assembly on popular education and named William Gaston, Frederick Nash and David L. Swain to the committee.

  91. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill English Record Commission sends its publications to the university library

    Between 1833 and 1841 the British government's Record Commission gave the university 83 folio and 24 octavo volumes, among them a printing of the Domesday Book, with twelve books and many pamphlets by its secretary, Charles Parton Cooper.

  92. Chapel Hill George E. Badger gives the commencement address to the literary societies

    At the 1833 commencement, held without the ailing President Caldwell, George E. Badger, chosen by the Dialectic Society, delivered the annual address before the two literary societies at Chapel Hill.

  93. Naming or commemoration · Gerrard Hall Trustees name the new chapel Gerrard Hall

    The trustees sold Major Charles Gerrard's 2,560-acre service tract in Tennessee for $6,400, voted $2,000 of it toward finishing the new chapel that had stood unfinished since about 1824, and resolved that the building be known forever as Gerrard Hall in his memory.

  94. Chapel Hill William McPheeters presses the trustees to raise the standard for admission

    McPheeters, principal of the Raleigh Academy, urged the university trustees to raise the requirements for entering the university. The board agreed and set new terms: all of arithmetic and algebra to simple equations, the prose of Jacob's Greek Reader, all of Virgil, and Cicero's select orations.

  95. Law, policy or court · Steward's Hall Students win the use of Steward's Hall for the commencement ball

    A committee chosen by a mass meeting of students, with Christopher C. Battle as its writer, petitioned the trustees on November 6, 1833 for a room in Steward's Hall for the commencement ball, and the trustees agreed. The ball managers then invited leading men of the state, among them Governor Swain.

  96. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Trustee committee advises against moving the university to Raleigh

    On James Iredell's motion, Governor Swain named fifteen trustees, none from Orange County, to consider moving the university to the capital. In December 1833 they reported removal inexpedient, and the question never came before the board again.

  97. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill Trustees make the senior professor Caldwell's deputy and add an adjunct professor

    When Caldwell's illness first forced him to ask for help, the trustees gave the professor of longest standing, Elisha Mitchell, power to act in the president's place and created an adjunct professorship of natural philosophy and astronomy, filled by Walker Anderson. Mitchell served as acting president until Swain arrived.

  98. Publication, speech or performance · Chapel Hill Dialectic Society prints a catalogue of its library

    The Dialectic Society's printed catalogue of 1835 listed 2,954 bound volumes and ten maps, the largest groups being novels and romances, periodicals and history. With the Philanthropic library about the same size, the two societies held some 6,000 books.

  99. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Trustees create an executive committee to run the university

    At Duncan Cameron's instance the board placed management in a seven-member executive committee including the governor, with the powers of the land, appointments and building committees and the right to change studies and dismiss faculty. The first members were Cameron, George E. Badger, William McPheeters, Charles Manly, Frederick Nash, William A. Graham and Governor Swain.

  100. Life event · Chapel Hill President Joseph Caldwell dies

    The university's first president died after years of a painful illness and was buried in the Chapel Hill village cemetery. The trustees' executive committee adopted a tribute on February 6, 1835, and the students resolved to wear badges of mourning.

  101. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill Trustees sell off the university's Tennessee lands

    On resolutions drafted by Duncan Cameron, the executive committee sent Charles Manly to Tennessee to close out the lands with agent Samuel Dickens, and 42,345 acres plus the 20,000 Smith acres went to Orme and Gifford of Boston for $56,345.83. Manly's report of November 21, 1835 counted assets of $171,658, which he reckoned would carry the university's yearly costs with a surplus.

  102. Naming or commemoration · Gerrard Hall Philanthropic Society has a cast made of Caldwell's features

    In November 1835, at the Philanthropic Society's request, Caldwell's body was taken up so that the artist Alfred S. Waugh could make a plaster cast of his face. The bust made from it stands in Gerrard Hall.

  103. Chapel Hill Trustees ask Elisha Mitchell and William McPheeters to compare the university with leading colleges

    The board named Professor Elisha Mitchell and the Rev. Dr. William McPheeters to study the courses of the leading American colleges and report what the university should change to match them. They found little difference in the terms of admission, and no change was made.

  104. Chapel Hill A trustee committee under William Gaston makes the faculty's liquor rule a university by-law

    In 1837 the faculty made it a dismissable offence to bring liquor into the college buildings or to be publicly drunk. A trustee committee chaired by William Gaston recommended that the rule become a by-law of the university.

  105. Construction or physical change · Gerrard Hall Gerrard Hall is finished and holds its first commencement

    Gerrard Hall, the new chapel begun more than a decade earlier, was completed in 1837 under carpenter Thomas Waitt, and that year's commencement was held in it. The Raleigh Register described a roomy building with large galleries, and the old chapel, Person Hall, was soon given over to classrooms.

  106. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill Trustees put the endowment into Bank of the State stock

    After paying pressing debts the trustees bought 100 state certificates of $1,000 each and in 1837 exchanged them for 1,000 shares of the Bank of the State of North Carolina. The dividends, about eight percent, with tuition made up the university's income until the Civil War.

  107. Naming or commemoration · Chapel Hill Trustees raise a sandstone monument to Caldwell on the campus

    The trustees adopted a design by Thomas Waitt, the master mechanic in charge of university repairs, for a shaft of local sandstone cut by J. B. Turney. It soon crumbled, and the marble slab meant for its Latin inscription arrived so badly cut that it was smashed, so the monument never bore a name.

  108. Disaster or outbreak · Chapel Hill Caldwell's abandoned observatory is burned

    The observatory, stripped of its instruments and judged not worth repairing, was set on fire, by a student according to tradition. President Swain reported it to the executive committee in December 1838 and asked whether to bring a criminal prosecution; the sound bricks went into a kitchen for Swain.

  109. Chapel Hill Charles Manly gives the address before the alumni at commencement

    At the 1838 commencement in Chapel Hill, Charles Manly, secretary and treasurer of the university's trustees, gave the address before the alumni, an earnest plea for pride in the university. Congressman William B. Shepard gave the annual address.

  110. Construction or physical change · Chapel Hill Elisha Mitchell builds stone walls around the campus

    To keep out the cattle that ran at large, Mitchell, who had charge of the grounds, began in 1838 to quarry stone on university land and build rock walls around the campus buildings. By about the end of 1843 he had put up 212 rods of wall, and the trustees settled his account in 1844. Professors and villagers copied the walls around their own lots.

  111. Appointment, election or service · South Building Senior tutor becomes the university's librarian

    Until 1838 the faculty chose a librarian every half year; after that the senior tutor held the office, and in 1838 Tutor William H. Owen, librarian since 1836, was voted a salary of $100 a year. Owen had counted about 1,900 books in the library in December 1836.

  112. Protest or organizing · Chapel Hill Students' Ugly Club raids the campus at night

    On the first Saturday night of the 1838 session a group calling itself the Ugly Club rang the college bell and made a din with horns and tin pans; nineteen were caught and made to sign pledges. That summer members blacked with lampblack insulted villagers, threatened faculty and damaged private property, and their leader was dismissed.

  113. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina William Mercer Green leaves St. Matthew's to become university chaplain and professor

    William Mercer Green accepted a post at the University of North Carolina as chaplain and professor and gave up St. Matthew's in Hillsborough the same year. The Hillsborough congregation had grown from seventeen communicants in his first year to sixty-seven when he left.

  114. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill Navy captain Jesse D. Elliott gives Greek and Egyptian antiquities to the university

    Writing from the USS Constitution at Norfolk, Elliott presented a piece of a column from Marathon and the top of a sarcophagus from Memphis, collected on his Mediterranean cruise, sent by the hand of Sailing Master William P. Muse.

  115. Founding or opening · Chapel Hill Trustees split ancient languages into separate chairs of Greek and Latin

    In August 1838 the professorship of ancient languages was abolished and separate chairs of Greek and Latin created, with Manuel Fetter in Greek and John DeBerniere Hooper in Latin, while modern languages became a chair of French taught by Charles Marey. The faculty were also told to introduce civil engineering, which was not done.

  116. Protest or organizing · Chapel Hill Seceders try to form a third literary society, the Delphian

    Members who had left the Dialectic Society, joined by one from the Philanthropic, asked the trustees on November 29, 1838 to recognize a Delphian Society and give it a third of the society rooms. In January 1839 the trustees found a third society inexpedient, and after a hearing at Chapel Hill and an appeal by Charles Manly the Delphians disbanded.

  117. Appointment, election or service · Gerrard Hall Faculty appoints the first chief marshal of commencement

    For the commencement of June 27, 1839, attended by every living former governor but one, the faculty named the first chief marshal, Thomas Davis Meares, who had led the Delphian seceders. The choice of marshal soon passed to the students.

  118. Publication, speech or performance · Gerrard Hall Elisha Mitchell preaches the university's first baccalaureate sermon

    At the 1839 commencement Mitchell, chosen by the faculty, preached the first of the baccalaureate sermons to the graduating class. The choice of preacher was later given to the senior class.

  119. 1840s
  120. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Faculty keeps students out of the Log Cabin campaign

    During the 1840 presidential campaign the faculty asked the county candidates not to speak at Chapel Hill and forbade three students chosen to manage a Whig dinner in the village to serve.

  121. Violence or armed conflict · Chapel Hill Fresh Treat riot and a textbook rebellion bring dismissals

    In the fall of 1840 a drinking feast paid for by new students turned into a riot in which tutors' windows were broken, faculty were stoned, classrooms were wrecked and professors' horses were ridden, and soon after all the blackboards were burned. Several students were dismissed, three more for defying James Phillips's rule against books in recitation, and the trustees approved a faculty resolution to prosecute serious outrages in the courts.

  122. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill University buys the Vienna cabinet of minerals

    Through John Randolph Clay, the American secretary of legation at Vienna, the university bought for about $1,500 a mineral collection that the curator of the emperor's cabinet valued at over 3,000 florins; Mitchell reported the invoice and insurance in November 1841. The trustees gave Clay an honorary master's degree in 1845.

  123. Publication, speech or performance · Chapel Hill Charles F. Deems preaches to Chapel Hill Methodists in the hall he names Bethesda

    While a professor, Deems preached to the village Methodists, at their invitation, in the upper story of Jesse Hargrave's store, a former Masonic lodge room he named Bethesda. After he left the university in 1848, ministers were regularly appointed to the Chapel Hill charge.

  124. Founding or opening · Gerrard Hall Graduates receive Bibles at commencement for the first time

    The 1842 commencement was the first at which each member of the graduating class was given a Bible bearing the president's autograph, a custom still kept in 1907.

  125. Publication, speech or performance · Gerrard Hall Mitchell demonstrates electromagnetic motion at commencement

    When the 1842 society orator could not come, Elisha Mitchell showed the audience electromagnetic apparatus the university had just bought in Boston and produced rapid motion by magnetism alone. He judged that the cost of copper and zinc would keep it from competing with steam.

  126. Construction or physical change · Person Hall Person Hall is partitioned into four classrooms

    With Gerrard Hall now the chapel, the old chapel, Person Hall, was divided by thick walls and chimneys into four recitation rooms for the professors of Latin, Greek and rhetoric and the tutor of ancient languages.

  127. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Trustees outlaw secret societies at the university

    On Charles L. Hinton's motion the board declared secret societies and clubs harmful to the literary societies and to good morals, ordered the faculty to suppress them and barred admission to any student who would not pledge not to join one. The Dialectic and Philanthropic societies agreed to fine members who broke the rule.

  128. Slavery and freedom · Rock shelter about a mile northeast of Piney Prospect, east of Chapel Hill An armed posse captures Tom, a freedom seeker who had hidden for months in the woods east of Chapel Hill

    Tom, enslaved by Samuel Morgan, ran away after being sold to a trader bound for the Southwest and hid in a rock shelter in the woods and in a cave on Morgan's Creek. Men with shotguns beat the woods, shot him in the legs and sent him south for sale; the shelter became known as the Robber's Den or Tom's Lair.

  129. Protest or organizing · Chapel Hill Juniors hold a mock funeral for Euripides's Medea

    After Professor Manuel Fetter failed all but three of the junior class on the Medea, the class dressed the book in black crape, marched past his house and buried it near the Davie Poplar under a sandstone slab carved Hic Jacet Medea.

  130. Closing or ending · Steward's Hall University ends student commons at Steward's Hall

    1844 was the last year the university ran Steward's Hall, the frame dining house in the middle of what is now Cameron Avenue where students had taken their meals. It was rented as a private house the next year and later sold, and part of it went into the village school building.

  131. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Faculty turns away a fencing and boxing instructor

    A Major Roberts, backed by letters from leading trustees, asked to teach the students athletics including fencing and boxing. The faculty refused to let him form a class after learning he advertised teaching the bowie knife at the University of Virginia and boasted of having been a London prize fighter.

  132. Chapel Hill Bartholomew F. Moore gives the annual address before the two literary societies

    At the 1846 commencement, Moore, an 1820 graduate, was the annual orator before the two student societies. His subject was the claims of the university on her sons for cultivating truth and universal justice.

  133. Property or economic transaction · Old East Dialectic and Philanthropic societies draw lots for the east and west buildings

    The trustees had the society presidents, William M. Howerton and Matt W. Ransom, cast lots before Governor Graham, President Swain and Charles Manly; the Philanthropic won the east side and the Dialectic the west, and South Building rooms facing north went to the Phis and those facing south to the Dis. The arrangement lasted until 1868.

  134. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill James Phillips buys the Village Chapel lot for the Presbyterian church

    Professor James Phillips, as trustee, bought for $200 the lot where the Union or Village Chapel stood, as a site for the Presbyterian church, on condition that no burials be made there. The old chapel was moved a few hundred yards north, enlarged, and long served as the village public school.

  135. Publication, speech or performance · Chapel Hill Students circulate the Literary Trumpet, a handwritten paper

    William M. Howerton edited the Literary Trumpet, a pen-and-ink paper for private circulation, with a lady as nominal co-editor. Battle calls it the first of the university's informal student sheets.

  136. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill University sells the Franklin and Columbia street oak grove to John W. Carr

    The trustees conveyed to the merchant John W. Carr, for $300, the oak grove at the northwest corner of Franklin and Columbia streets where villagers gathered to hear candidates speak. It was one of several sales of university land to villagers in the middle 1840s.

  137. Disaster or outbreak · Gerrard Hall False alarm sets off a panic in the chapel at commencement

    During the 1846 commencement someone shouted that the gallery was falling, and the packed crowd rushed for the doors while some jumped from windows, until President Swain, Governor Graham and other trustees calmed it. No one was hurt, and more pillars were placed under the galleries before the next commencement.

  138. Life event · Chapel Hill Helen Caldwell dies and is buried with her husband at his monument

    Helen Hogg Caldwell, widow of President Caldwell and a leader of village society, died at Chapel Hill on October 30, 1846 while visiting John DeBerniere Hooper. Caldwell's remains were taken up on October 31 and laid beside hers at the base of his monument, with the president and faculty as pallbearers.

  139. Naming or commemoration · Chapel Hill Alumni start a fund for a marble monument to Caldwell

    Troubled by the crumbling sandstone monument, the alumni at the 1847 commencement voted on John Y. Mason's motion, supported by President Polk, to raise a marble memorial by gifts of three dollars each, and $210 was subscribed at once. By 1849 only $600 of an estimated $1,000 was in hand and the limit on gifts was dropped.

  140. Property or economic transaction · Steward's Hall Trustees dispose of Steward's Hall

    In 1847 the wings of Steward's Hall, the old college dining hall, were given to President Swain to build a servants' house and the main building was sold. For some years before, it had been rented to keepers who boarded any students who chose to eat there.

  141. Chapel Hill Fordyce M. Hubbard is elected professor of Latin

    After John DeBerniere Hooper resigned the Latin chair, the trustees elected the Rev. Fordyce M. Hubbard, an Episcopal clergyman then heading Trinity School near Raleigh, professor of Latin. He took up the work the following year and held the chair until 1868.

  142. Construction or physical change · Old East Literary societies move into new halls in the enlarged Old East and Old West

    The northward extensions of Old East and Old West, designed by A. J. Davis and built by Isaac J. Collier and Kendall B. Waitt for $9,360, were finished in 1848 with debating halls and library alcoves for the two societies. At the Dialectic opening James Mebane, the society's first president in 1795, sat beside the student president, Kemp P. Battle.

  143. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill Albert M. Shipp elected to the new chair of history and English literature

    When William Mercer Green's retirement opened the faculty, the trustees created a professorship of history and English literature and elected the Methodist minister Albert M. Shipp to it. He held the chair until 1859.

  144. Construction or physical change · Chapel Hill English gardeners lay out the campus grounds

    The trustees began spending $1,000 a year on the still wild campus under gardeners trained in England, first Loader and then Paxton, with Black laborers. They cleared useless trees, macadamized much of Cameron Avenue and the main walks, lined walks with roses and screened the hotel stables with hedges.

  145. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Trustees let student church members worship at their own churches

    Petitions from several denominations reached the board in December 1849 asking to ease compulsory Sunday worship in the college chapel. On January 4, 1850 the trustees voted down a broader plan and adopted Samuel F. Patterson's rule letting communicants attend the church of their choice while all others still attended chapel, a rule that stood about ten years.

  146. 1850s
  147. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Trustees ban spirituous liquor from commencement balls

    After students broke into the ball managers' stores of liquor and held a carousal, the trustees, on William A. Graham's motion, ordered that no spirituous liquor be brought to university balls and entertainments, on pain of dismissal for any manager who broke the rule. The faculty were asked to drop their dismissal of the offending managers.

  148. Violence or armed conflict · Chapel Hill Drinking students stone two professors in a night riot

    Eight or ten students drinking on the campus turned on two professors who tried to stop them, stoning them until they took refuge in a student's room, and one tried to reach them at the window with a large stone. The ringleader was expelled, and the trustees, meeting at Hillsborough, sent the evidence to the solicitor for prosecution.

  149. Construction or physical change · Chapel Hill Cameron Avenue extended west through the university forest

    The street now called Cameron Avenue was cut westward through the university's forest and named College Avenue by the village commissioners, and lots along it were put up for sale. Professor Fordyce M. Hubbard persuaded the trustees to build him a house at its corner with Pittsboro Street.

  150. Construction or physical change · Chapel Hill Campus grove is thinned and paved walks laid

    Until 1851 the campus was forest with only the underbrush cleared, fenced off from the Raleigh road by rails and a hedgerow and used to pasture the president's cattle. In that year the trees were thinned and the first paved walks were built.

  151. Founding or opening · Chapel Hill Delta Kappa Epsilon chapter opens as fraternities reach the university

    Greek-letter fraternities began entering the university in 1851 without any trustee or faculty vote admitting them. Delta Kappa Epsilon organized that year, Beta Theta Pi in 1852, Sigma Alpha Epsilon in 1857 and Zeta Psi in January 1858, and all had disbanded before the end of the Civil War.

  152. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Trustees set up a system of county escheators

    Rather than surrender the university's right to escheated property, the trustees made the treasurer principal escheator and had him appoint a lawyer in each county to find escheated land and unclaimed estates, paid ten percent of what they recovered. Treasurer Charles Manly's salary was raised to $1,000 for the added work.

  153. Violence or armed conflict · Chapel Hill Night disorder ends with ten students dismissed

    Students covered the belfry walls with caricatures of the faculty, exploded gunpowder at the laboratory door, and marched with horns and bells around the professors' houses, stoning one of them. The faculty questioned twenty-one absentees and dismissed ten.

  154. Life event · Chapel Hill Elizabeth Nunn, who boarded students for fifty years, dies

    Mrs. Elizabeth Nunn, widow of the Revolutionary captain William Nunn, died in her ninety-second year after about fifty years of feeding students and unmarried professors at Chapel Hill. As a girl she had lived through the Regulator troubles.

  155. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Legislature transfers the university's escheats to the common schools

    The General Assembly took the right to escheats from the university and gave it to the public schools. Friends of the university soon won repeal, and the Supreme Court later held that the university, as a part of the state, was subject to such legislation.

  156. Founding or opening · Chapel Hill Students revive the University Magazine

    At a student meeting Jeremiah J. Slade moved to re-establish the magazine, and the first number appeared in February 1852 with editors from both literary societies and William D. Cooke of Raleigh as publisher. It ran until June 1861, the societies agreeing in 1859 to cover its deficits.

  157. Protest or organizing · Chapel Hill Students protest faculty veto of a sub-marshal

    When the faculty barred the chief marshal's nominee under a new rule against irregular students representing the university, 183 students voted resolutions that the marshals should refuse to serve. They withdrew the resolutions on May 21, the chief marshal resigned, and the 1852 commencement went on without marshals.

  158. Chapel Hill Francis L. Hawks takes the leading part in the "Hawks' Commencement" at the university

    Hawks, then a New York clergyman and an 1815 graduate, preached the sermon to the graduating class and spoke to the Historical Society in defense of Sir Walter Raleigh. At the alumni meeting he moved that the executive committee plan prizes for undergraduates in literary and scientific subjects.

  159. Violence or armed conflict · Chapel Hill Shooting during a hazing raid leads the societies to stop hazing

    In 1853 a new student named Evans, a brother of the South Carolina general, met a hazing party with a cocked pistol and wounded its leader, McRae, in the arm. The two literary societies offered to end hazing if the faculty would not dismiss the offenders, and Battle says the bargain held for years.

  160. Construction or physical change · Smith Hall University library moved from South Building to Smith Hall

    The university's books were taken from the president's lecture room in South Building to the new Smith Hall, and Hubbard, Charles Phillips and the librarian were told to prepare a catalogue. At the start of the Civil War the books were stored in a room of the East Building.

  161. Founding or opening · Chapel Hill A Delta Psi fraternity chapter is active at the university

    Battle learned after his first volume was printed that the Delta Psi Fraternity, with a large membership, was at the university from 1854 until some time during the Civil War. No record at Chapel Hill mentions it.

  162. Founding or opening · Smith Hall School for the Application of Science to the Arts opens

    Under a trustee resolution of 1852 the university opened a scientific school with departments of civil engineering, under Charles Phillips, and of chemistry applied to agriculture and the arts, under Benjamin S. Hedrick, with a laboratory in the basement of Smith Hall. Its students could earn a Bachelor of Science in about two and a half years.

  163. Construction or physical change · Orange County North Carolina Railroad finished to Durham's Station

    On December 20, 1854 the Recorder reported trains running daily from Raleigh to within a mile and a half of Durham's Station, whose warehouse was finished. The railroad was completed to Durham's Station, then a single house on Dr. Bartlett Durham's plantation in Orange County, and the company gave legislators a free ride there. From then until 1882 a two-horse hack line between Chapel Hill and Durham replaced the four-horse stage to Raleigh.

  164. Chapel Hill Chapel Hill merchants, John W. Carr among them, agree not to sell to minor students on credit

    After the state's new laws on student contracts were sent to them, most of the village merchants pledged not to sell on credit to students under age without written leave from a parent or guardian, for eighteen months and subject to the faculty's approval. John W. Carr was one of nine signers.

  165. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Revised Code tightens the laws around the university

    The state's Revised Code barred the sale of liquor within two miles of Chapel Hill, public gaming tables within five, and shows, concerts and performances within five miles without seven days' written leave from the president or faculty. It also voided students' contracts with merchants made without faculty permission and restored escheated real estate to the university.

  166. Life event · Chapel Hill Richard H. Battle hosts the first class reunion dinner on record

    At the 1855 commencement Richard H. Battle of the class of 1854 gave a dinner for all his returning classmates. Battle calls it the first class dinner recorded in the public prints.

  167. Disaster or outbreak · Chapel Hill Old belfry burns and the college bell is destroyed

    During a student game of throwing alcohol-soaked fireballs, the old belfry caught fire and burned and its bell was destroyed. The executive committee sent the facts to the Orange solicitor, but no bill went to the grand jury, and the two literary societies agreed to fine any member $25 for wanton damage to university property.

  168. Protest or organizing · Chapel Hill Senior class invites Archbishop John Hughes to preach

    A majority of the seniors present voted to invite the Roman Catholic Archbishop John Hughes to preach the commencement sermon, and the invitation was sent before the faculty could object. President Swain told the class it was unwise, the executive committee backed him, and the archbishop declined.

  169. Chapel Hill Francis L. Hawks argues for the Mecklenburg Declaration at commencement

    At the 1857 commencement Hawks gave a long, later published oration defending the authenticity of the Mecklenburg Declaration of May 20, 1775. In the audience was Professor Charles Phillips, an equally firm disbeliever in the document.

  170. Founding or opening · University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Sigma Alpha Epsilon establishes a chapter at the university

    Sigma Alpha Epsilon set up a chapter at the university in 1857, one of several fraternities to arrive in the 1850s. It withdrew before the end of the Civil War.

  171. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill Trustees buy Elisha Mitchell's books and minerals after his death

    Elisha Mitchell, senior professor, died on June 27, 1857, in a fall while surveying the Black Mountains. The trustees paid his salary to the year's end, let his family keep their house rent-free for six months, and bought his books for $3,500 and his apparatus and mineral cabinet for $1,000.

  172. Award or honor · Chapel Hill University awards its first Bachelor of Science degree

    At the 1857 commencement James E. Lindsay received the first Bachelor of Science degree in the university's history, from the new scientific school. Six more B.S. degrees followed in 1859 and five in 1860.

  173. Disaster or outbreak · Chapel Hill Snowstorm closes the university for the first time

    A night of wind and snow left about eighteen inches of icy snow, and the cold kept wood wagons off the roads for a week. For the first time in the university's history all duties were suspended, from Sunday until Tuesday.

  174. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill Trustees create a professorship of modern languages

    After a dispute between the French instructor Henri Harrisse and President Swain, the trustees created a professorship of modern languages and elected Hildreth H. Smith, president of Catawba College, to fill it. Smith held the chair until the university closed in 1868.

  175. Violence or armed conflict · Chapel Hill Students of a lawless club riot and are sued for damages

    A club of students sworn to back each other in breaking rules rang and stole the bell, stoned the faculty and piled the classroom benches and blackboards for a bonfire. The leaders were expelled and, sued in Orange Superior Court, made to repay the university about $200.

  176. Founding or opening · University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Zeta Psi organizes a chapter at the university

    The Zeta Psi chapter at the university was organized in January 1858. Battle counts four colonels among its members who served the Confederacy, and nine members killed.

  177. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill Trustees buy a second thousand shares of bank stock on credit

    When the old state bank's charter ran out, the trustees put the university's $100,000 into the new Bank of North Carolina and, by a bare majority, subscribed for another thousand shares on credit. Only $10,000 of that debt was ever paid, and after the war the university owed $90,000 on shares that were worthless.

  178. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill President James Buchanan attends commencement

    President Buchanan and Interior Secretary Jacob Thompson, an alumnus, came to the 1859 commencement as guests of President Swain, received callers under the Davie Poplar and saw Buchanan given an honorary doctor of laws. The Wilmington Light Infantry, the first military company to attend a commencement, camped on the campus for the occasion.

  179. 1860s
  180. Publication, speech or performance · Gerrard Hall Archbishop John Hughes preaches the commencement sermon

    Invited again by the senior class, the Roman Catholic Archbishop Hughes preached the baccalaureate sermon, speaking without notes for an hour and three quarters on love of God and of neighbor. Some Protestant critics attacked the choice, and a Hillsborough Recorder correspondent charged that he was treated discourteously, which the university denied.

  181. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Executive committee orders the faculty to stop hazing

    The trustees' executive committee resolved that the ridicule and petty harassment of new students by older ones was cruel and contemptible and should be put down peremptorily by the faculty.

  182. Construction or physical change · South Building New belfry built on South Building

    A belfry was raised on South Building to plans by the builder Thomas H. Coates, replacing the one burned in 1856. It was strengthened after the 1875 reopening and still carried the bell in Battle's day.

  183. Law, policy or court · Gerrard Hall Trustees allow students to be excused from chapel worship

    Answering a memorial from the Episcopal convention that compulsory chapel on Sunday violated conscience, the trustees adopted Judge Matthias E. Manly's scheme letting the president excuse students whose parents lived in the village, who belonged to another church in town, or who or whose parents objected in writing. Morning and evening prayers stayed compulsory.

  184. Law, policy or court · Gerrard Hall Seniors in the army granted diplomas without examinations

    With the consent of the trustees, the faculty granted degrees to all members of the senior class, though many had joined the army and did not stand their examinations. Only thirty of the eighty-seven graduates were present in person, and the Latin salutatory was dropped because its speaker was with his regiment at Yorktown.

  185. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill State gives Ebenezer Emmons's geological collection to the university

    Needing the space in the Capitol for war business, the state gave the university the rocks and minerals gathered by State Geologist Ebenezer Emmons. Professor William J. Martin spent two weeks sorting them and shipping them to Chapel Hill.

  186. Protest or organizing · Chapel Hill Students petition trustees to close the university for the war

    After Fort Sumter the juniors, sophomores and freshmen asked the trustees to suspend exercises until fall, since eight or ten students were leaving each day. The petition was refused, and President Swain issued a circular that the university would go on as before.

  187. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Faculty deny rumors of closing and add military drill

    Alarmed by reports that the university had suspended, the faculty issued a circular that there had been no suspension since 1795 and would be none, and that students were being taught military tactics. Drill was led first by a Mr. Lilly and Professor William J. Martin, and on March 18, 1862 tutor Frederick A. Fetter was made drill master.

  188. Closing or ending · Gerrard Hall Commencement held without its ball or marshals

    The ball managers told the trustees the seniors' ball could not be held unless the board gave $200 or $300, and the trustees did not answer, so it was omitted for the first time. A quarrel between seniors and juniors over the marshal left the commencement without marshals or music.

  189. Health or relief action · Chapel Hill Thirty Chapel Hill families pool money to buy corn

    Amid wartime scarcity, thirty heads of families sent Andrew Mickle to buy corn in a better-supplied district; he brought back about 1,921 bushels by rail to Durham and wagon from there, at $6.75 a barrel delivered. The livery keeper John H. Watson took ninety barrels, President Swain 33 and Judge Battle 24.

  190. Construction or physical change · Chapel Hill Wartime woodcutting strips the university forests

    To ease the faculty's hardship the trustees let professors, and the widow of tutor George B. Johnston, cut firewood from university land, extending the privilege in December 1864 with Bursar Fetter to mark trees. Neighbors cut freely as well, and many acres near the village were stripped of oaks and hickories.

  191. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Confederate War Department refuses to exempt underclassmen

    When the exemption Jefferson Davis had granted proved to cover only juniors and seniors, the trustees on March 5, 1864 had the petition sent to Secretary of War Seddon, showing that drafting the lower classes would add almost no soldiers. Seddon refused on March 10, and the students liable to conscription volunteered.

  192. Slavery and freedom · Chapel Hill George Moses Horton leaves Chapel Hill with the Union cavalry

    The enslaved poet George Moses Horton, who for decades had written verses for students, lived near Chapel Hill until Federal cavalry arrived in 1865. He left with them and went to Philadelphia with a Union officer after the war.

  193. Violence or armed conflict · Chapel Hill Wheeler's cavalry reaches Chapel Hill and posts a guard on the university

    Confederate cavalry under General Joseph Wheeler reached Chapel Hill, and at the request of alumnus James P. Coffin, Wheeler detailed Lieutenant McBurney Broyles and fifteen men to report to President Swain and protect the university's books and apparatus. Wheeler's headquarters were opposite the Episcopal church.

  194. Chapel Hill Sherman's orders protect the university and village of Chapel Hill

    When a Federal officer rode into Chapel Hill at sunset on April 16, President Swain told him of General Sherman's promise to protect the university and village, and the officer said he had received the orders. When Smith D. Atkins's cavalry took the town the next morning, Sherman's orders were obeyed and dwellings and university property were guarded.

  195. Health or relief action · Chapel Hill Swain asks Sherman to stop the stripping of farms around Chapel Hill

    President Swain wrote General Sherman that Wheeler's men and then the Federals had stripped the country of forage and horses, leaving families such as the Rev. George W. Purefoy's fifty people with no food and no work animals. Sherman replied on April 22 that seizures would stop when the war ended.

  196. Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899

  197. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill Trustees mortgage all university property to settle its debts

    Facing $103,000 of debt against worthless bank stock and Confederate securities, the trustees compromised with the Bank of North Carolina and other creditors at a quarter of the debt in gold, pledging all the university's property at Chapel Hill and its Buncombe County lands. The General Assembly also voted $7,000 for one year to pay the officers.

  198. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Trustees strike Confederate leaders from the commencement ball

    The student ball managers named Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, John C. Breckinridge, Zebulon Vance and other Confederate figures as honorary managers without asking them. Fearing hostile action by Congress, the trustees ruled the choice improper.

  199. Naming or commemoration · Chapel Hill Bodies of Junius and Wesley Lewis Battle brought home for burial

    The bodies of Corporal Junius C. Battle, mortally wounded at South Mountain, and Lieutenant Wesley Lewis Battle, killed at Gettysburg, sons of Judge William H. Battle and former students, were brought home to Chapel Hill. The village turned out to meet them, and they lay side by side in the Episcopal church before burial.

  200. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Legislature gives the university North Carolina's land-grant scrip

    At President Swain's urging, the General Assembly transferred to the university the state's scrip under the federal Morrill Act, on condition that it set up at least two professorships in agriculture and the mechanic arts. Each county court could send one needy student free of tuition, and students could enter those branches without the usual classical preparation.

  201. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill President Andrew Johnson attends commencement

    Andrew Johnson came to the 1867 commencement with Secretary of State William H. Seward, Postmaster General Alexander Randall and General Daniel E. Sickles, the military governor under the Reconstruction Acts, and recalled passing through Chapel Hill on foot in 1826. Johnson joined the Dialectic Society and Seward the Philanthropic, but a minority of Dialectics blocked Sickles.

  202. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill Swain and the faculty resign as trustees plan a new university

    At a meeting Governor Jonathan Worth called to face the university's collapse, Charles Phillips presented the resignations of President Swain, Professors Hubbard, Fetter and Smith, law professor William H. Battle and himself, and the trustees adopted Kemp P. Battle's resolution for a committee to plan an elective university system with higher standards.

  203. Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill Trustees sell the land-grant scrip at fifty cents an acre

    The trustees accepted an offer from G. F. Lewis and Fisher, Booth and Company of Detroit to buy the scrip for 270,000 acres at fifty cents an acre, with most of the money due only after Congress let Southern scrip be located. On William A. Graham's motion $13,500 of the first payments went to general expenses, relieving unpaid officers.

  204. Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Trustees adopt an elective system of ten schools

    Over William A. Graham's dissent, the trustees voted 18 to 3 for Kemp P. Battle's committee plan to replace the fixed four-year course with ten independent schools, from political science to modern languages, beginning in fall 1868. After the new state constitution put the university under a new board, the old trustees on June 4, 1868 reappointed Swain and the faculty and rescinded the plan.

  205. Closing or ending · Chapel Hill Dialectic and Philanthropic societies hide their books and papers

    Believing the societies would not be run under their constitutions after the university changed hands, their last officers gave the Dialectic records to Alexander McIver and the Philanthropic records to William L. Saunders. The property lay safe until the societies revived in 1875.

  206. Chapel Hill The university gives Bartholomew F. Moore an honorary LL.D.

    At the 1868 commencement, which Battle calls the last of the old regime, the university granted the degree of Doctor of Laws to ex-Governor Seymour and to Moore, a Raleigh lawyer and active trustee.

  207. Protest or organizing · Chapel Hill Swain protests his removal to Governor Holden

    Learning that the new Reconstruction trustees had declared his 1867 resignation final, David L. Swain wrote Governor William W. Holden, as chairman of the board, that no charge had been made against him and that a resignation accepted by a board that no longer existed could not be revived. He asked for reconsideration, but died later that month.

  208. 1870s
  209. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina 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.

  210. Early twentieth century · 1900–1944

  211. 1900s
  212. Naming or commemoration · Old Chapel Hill Cemetery The old Joseph Caldwell obelisk is taken down, later to stand for four college servants

    In July 1904 the remains of President Joseph Caldwell and his wife were moved to the base of the 1858 marble monument, and the original sandstone obelisk was taken down, to be set up again in the Black section of the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery. It was later raised over Wilson Caldwell's grave, and a marble tablet placed in its base by the Class of 1891 names Wilson Swain Caldwell, November Caldwell, David Barham and Henry Smith, who served the university.

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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 4, 2026.

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