Chronology

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1. Civil rights era · 1945–1975

2. February 1949
   Washington, D.C. A federal appeals court awards the Ackland Trust to the university at Chapel Hill

   After Duke refused Ackland's bequest, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled for UNC-Chapel Hill over Rollins College, citing the university's finances, its graduate arts program and its nearness to Duke.

3. September 20, 1958
   Founding or opening · Chapel Hill The Ackland Art Museum opens

   UNC dedicated the William Hayes Ackland Memorial Art Center on September 20, 1958, the morning after a preview for faculty. Ackland had left his bequest to Duke, which refused it, and nine years of litigation sent it to Chapel Hill; the Georgian building held galleries, an art library, classrooms, studios and offices.

4. February 1959
   Closing or ending · 117 South Columbia Street, Chapel Hill The University tears down the Abernethy house on South Columbia Street for Ackland grounds and parking

   UNC bought the house from the widow of Dr. Eric A. Abernethy, long the director of the University Infirmary, and tore it down to extend the Ackland Art Center grounds and make a gravel lot of about 60 faculty parking spaces. The house dated from 1905 and had housed many students.

5. Recent decades · 1976–2026

6. July 22–26, 2009
   Naming or commemoration · Cat's Cradle, Carrboro; Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill Merge Records marks its 20th anniversary with the XX Merge festival

   The label held four nights at Cat's Cradle and a finale at UNC's Memorial Hall, with film screenings at the Ackland Art Museum and a free show at the Orange County Social Club in Carrboro.

7. October 2017 to September 2019
   Publication, speech or performance · Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill Patrick Dougherty builds Step Right Up at the Ackland Art Museum

   The Ackland commissioned five stickwork vessels for its front lawn, built by Dougherty with 188 volunteers from maple and gum saplings harvested in Duke Forest and on Triangle Land Conservancy land.

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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 1, 2026.