Chronology

Search and filters

Entries

1. Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865

2. 1865
   Violence or armed conflict · Dilsey's cabin, Chapel Hill James Phillips hides the family silver in Dilsey's cabin as Union troops arrive

   When a detachment of Sherman's army reached Chapel Hill, Professor James Phillips boxed the family silver, jewelry and watches and left the box at the cabin of Dilsey, a woman enslaved in his household, expecting the soldiers to leave her cabin alone. She buried the box for safety; it came back intact except that rainwater seeping in ruined the watches and harmed some jewelry.

3. Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899

4. June 1882
   Award or honor · UNC campus, Chapel Hill James Lee Love wins the Phillips Mathematical Prize

   The sons of Charles Phillips had offered a prize for the best sophomore in mathematics. Love's marks in trigonometry and analytic geometry so far outran the class that Professor Ralph H. Graves dropped the planned examination and gave him the prize on his year's record; it came at commencement as thirty dollars with a letter from William B. Phillips.

5. 1883
   Statistic or record · former James Phillips house, Chapel Hill Francis P. Venable keeps Chapel Hill's weather record for the federal government

   In 1883 Venable was taking barometer, thermometer and humidity readings three times a day at Chapel Hill, with daily high and low temperatures, rainfall, wind and cloud, and reporting them to Washington. For about six weeks of June and July he had the student James Lee Love live in his house and keep the record for him.

6. 1884
   Publication, speech or performance · Chapel Hill Cornelia Phillips Spencer turns her daughter's letters from Europe into a newspaper series

   While June Spencer toured Europe on a family legacy in 1884, her mother used June's daily letters home as the basis for a series, "Letters from a Young Lady," printed under June's name in the North Carolina Presbyterian. The editor had sent fifty dollars before June sailed, the only pay the series brought.

7. June 1884
   Publication, speech or performance · UNC campus, Chapel Hill The class of 1884 holds its Class Day with a song written by Cornelia Phillips Spencer

   In commencement week the class of 1884, with Love as president and Samuel M. Gattis as secretary, put on one of the university's early Class Day programs. W. G. Randall read a comic prophecy and Gattis a class history, and the class sang a song Spencer had written for it.

8. June 1884
   Award or honor · Gerrard Hall, UNC, Chapel Hill The faculty revives the valedictory honor and gives it to James Lee Love

   At the 1884 commencement the faculty brought back the old custom of naming a valedictorian for the best standing over the whole course and gave the honor to Love, who also won the Mangum Medal for his graduating speech, "The New North State." Memorial Hall was not finished, so his class was the last to graduate in Gerrard Hall.

9. December 23, 1885
   Life event · Presbyterian Church, Chapel Hill James Lee Love marries June Spencer at the Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church

   Mathematics professor James Lee Love married June Spencer, Cornelia Phillips Spencer's daughter, in an afternoon service led by the Rev. Mr. Wilhelm, who then served both the Chapel Hill and Hillsborough Presbyterian churches. The couple went from the church to the train for a wedding trip to her birthplace in Alabama and on their return took rooms at Mrs. Thompson's house in Chapel Hill.

10. by November 1886
    Founding or opening · Senlac, Chapel Hill June Spencer Love teaches a small class of children at Senlac

    Before the Loves' own house was ready, June taught a few young children in one of the small study buildings in the yard of Senlac, President Kemp Battle's home. Her best pupil was the boy Henry Winston, whom she taught to read, and her earnings paid for most of a sewing machine.

11. 1887
    Publication, speech or performance · Love house, Chapel Hill Cornelia Phillips Spencer writes a short school history of North Carolina

    Spencer took a Raleigh publisher's commission for a short history of North Carolina for elementary schools and wrote it out by hand in the Loves' new house on East Franklin Street. Before it was printed the publisher had William L. Saunders read it, and Saunders cut or toned down some of her statements about the Civil War without asking her.

12. winter of 1888-89
    Appointment, election or service · UNC, Chapel Hill James Lee Love takes over the mathematics courses during Ralph Graves's last illness

    When Professor Ralph H. Graves fell gravely ill, President Battle put Love in charge of mathematics. At George Winston's insistence a man was called from Johns Hopkins, and Love brought in his friend Mansfield T. Peed to take the freshmen while he taught the sophomores and juniors; after Graves died the trustees chose William Cain over Love for the chair.

13. probably January and February 1888
    Construction or physical change · Presbyterian Church, Chapel Hill Sarah Welling's gift pays to repair the Chapel Hill Presbyterian belfry

    A letter from Spencer in a New York church paper, offering to pass used reading on to poor families around Chapel Hill, brought a barrel of magazines and books from Mrs. Sarah Welling of Warwick, New York. Welling then stayed with the Loves for several weeks in January and February and left $100 for the Presbyterian church, which Love, a deacon, spent on repairing and painting the belfry.

14. summer 1888
    Closing or ending · UNC, Chapel Hill The university lets go its new professors of mining, teaching and biology

    With the land-grant income moved to the new A. and M. College, the trustees could not pay the chairs added in 1885. William B. Phillips (mining and metallurgy), Nelson B. Henry (pedagogy) and George F. Atkinson (biology) left in the summer of 1888, and Love, assistant professor of mathematics, was kept one more year.

15. June 1894
    Migration or settlement · Love house, Chapel Hill Cornelia Phillips Spencer leaves Chapel Hill to join her daughter in Cambridge

    After finding a lump in her breast, Spencer packed and left Chapel Hill at the Loves' urging for surgery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which succeeded. Since 1890 she had kept house alone in the Loves' Chapel Hill home with Rebecca Mason, a Black cook, and she had put off leaving until Dilsey Craig died; she did not live in Chapel Hill again.

16. Early twentieth century · 1900–1944

17. March 14, 1908
    Life event · Old Chapel Hill Cemetery, Chapel Hill Cornelia Phillips Spencer is buried in Chapel Hill beside her parents

    The Loves brought Spencer's body back from Cambridge and buried her in Chapel Hill beside her parents and her brothers. Love writes that it was her first return to the town since she left in 1894.

18. 1909
    Naming or commemoration · Old Chapel Hill Cemetery, Chapel Hill June Spencer Love sets a stone on Dilsey Craig's grave in the Chapel Hill cemetery

    When June Spencer Love placed grave markers in the Chapel Hill cemetery for her mother, her grandparents, and her uncle Samuel Phillips and his wife, she also put one on the grave of Dilsey, who had been enslaved in the James Phillips household and stayed on as its cook after freedom. Love writes that both June and her mother had looked after Dilsey in her old age.

Suggest a correction to an entry →

A dated event is a fact, filed on the page of the subject it belongs to: a person, a place, a theme, or a named event or history. Pages are subjects, with their own works and sources; the Place, community, or institution filter also gathers the institutions that recur in the entries without a page of their own. The page opens on the highlights; a search or any filter looks through every dated event and storyline, and each filter’s counts say how many entries choosing it would show alongside the others. A storyline is a longer history that gathers related dated events, and each storyline’s page lists its own. Counts give dated events and storylines separately. Dates come from the sources named on the cards and from the index’s event pages; where sources disagree, the card follows the county records. Entries marked approximate or needing research say so on the card; the rest were checked against the source named on it. The correction link under the entries opens the contact form; name the entry and its date and the Friends will check the source. Suggest an event →

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.