Chronology

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1. Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865

2. winter of 1804
   Life event · University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Twelve-year-old William Hooper enters the university's preparatory school

   William Hooper came to Chapel Hill in the winter of 1804 and entered the preparatory school taught by Matthew Troy and Chesley Daniel, boarding with Joseph Caldwell. The faculty then numbered three: Caldwell, Professor Bingham and tutor Henderson, and the only finished buildings were Old East and the chapel.

3. July 4, 1804 (as Hooper recalled it)
   Publication, speech or performance · Davie Poplar, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill William Hooper recalls student 'General' Thomas Brown's Fourth of July parade in

   Hooper, then a preparatory pupil, recalled that the students elected Thomas Brown of Bladen their general and orator for the Fourth of July, with Hyder Ally Davie as his aide, and that Brown in uniform marched them to the Big Poplar to speak from a rostrum. The faculty's printed program for that summer named other students as the Fourth of July speakers and set commencement about a week later, so Brown's parade, as Battle noted, was a student addition if Hooper's memory was right.

4. July 1804
   Violence or armed conflict · Steward's Hall, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill A quarrel at the 1804 commencement ball ends in a stabbing and a trial before the trustees

   At the commencement ball in Steward's Hall, Hyder Ally Davie twice trod on the toes of Henry Chambers of Salisbury while dancing. Outside, Chambers struck him and Davie stabbed Chambers in the neck with a penknife. The trustees, among them William R. Davie and William Polk, tried the case in the chapel the next day.

5. June 7, 1859
   Publication, speech or performance · University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill William Hooper gives the alumni address Fifty Years Since

   On the day before commencement, with President Buchanan in the audience, Professor William Hooper addressed the university's alumni with recollections of student life fifty years earlier and a plea for action against drinking at colleges. The address was printed in Raleigh the same month.

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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.