Chronology

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1. Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865

2. 1842
   Property or economic transaction · Chapel of the Cross, East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill Chapel Hill Episcopalians buy a church lot from the university

   William Mercer Green told the 1842 diocesan convention that the new Chapel Hill congregation, then fifteen communicants, had bought a lot from the university for its church and had let a contract for part of the building materials.

3. May 1842
   Founding or opening · Chapel Hill William Mercer Green organizes an Episcopal parish in Chapel Hill

   In May 1842 William Mercer Green presided over the organization of the Church of the Atonement, an Episcopal parish in Chapel Hill with fifteen communicants, which met in members' homes for five years while its church was built. A record of subscribers for building the church, dated 1843, survives in Green's papers.

4. 1843 to 1848
   Construction or physical change · Chapel of the Cross, 302 East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill The Episcopal parish begins building the Chapel of the Cross on East Franklin Street

   A year after organizing, Chapel Hill's Episcopal parish started work in 1843 on its Gothic Revival chapel at 302 East Franklin Street, designed by the architect Thomas U. Walter. The building took until 1848 to finish.

5. November 28, 1843
   Construction or physical change · Chapel of the Cross, East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill Swain reports the Chapel of the Cross walls up to a plan by Thomas U. Walter

   Writing to Charles Manly, university president David L. Swain noted that the Episcopalians had raised the brick walls of their church and that it was planned by Walter of Philadelphia. The nomination treats this letter as the main evidence that architect Thomas U. Walter designed the chapel, which had long been credited to Richard Upjohn.

6. October 19, 1848
   Construction or physical change · Chapel Hill The Chapel of the Cross is consecrated

   Bishop Levi Silliman Ives consecrated the Episcopal church at Chapel Hill as the Chapel of the Holy Cross. Designed by Thomas U. Walter for the parish William Mercer Green organized in 1842, it was built of bricks fired by enslaved people at kilns on Green's farm and included a wooden gallery for enslaved worshippers.

7. Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899

8. April 16, 1866
   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.

9. 1878
   Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill Joseph Blount Cheshire is assigned to the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill

   Ordered deacon at Tarboro on 21 April 1878, Cheshire was assigned by Bishop Thomas Atkinson to the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill at the request of university president Kemp P. Battle. He served his diaconate there under Robert Sutton, rector of the Pittsboro parish.

10. 30 May 1880
    Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill Joseph Blount Cheshire is ordained priest two years after coming to Chapel Hill

    Cheshire was ordained priest on 30 May 1880 by Bishop Theodore B. Lyman in St. Paul's Church, Winston, two years after going to Chapel Hill. While based at the Chapel of the Cross he also organized a mission at Durham and built a church there named for St. Philip the Deacon.

11. Spring 1881
    Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill Joseph Blount Cheshire leaves Chapel Hill to become rector at Charlotte

    In the spring of 1881 Cheshire accepted a call to St. Peter's Church in Charlotte, ending about three years at the Chapel of the Cross. He was elected bishop of North Carolina in 1893.

12. 1888
    Naming or commemoration · Chapel of the Cross, East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill A carved eagle lectern at the Chapel of the Cross memorializes Mary Ruffin Smith

    A lectern topped by a carved wooden eagle was placed in the Chapel of the Cross nave in memory of Mary Ruffin Smith, with an inscription on its base dated 1888.

13. 1890
    Construction or physical change · Chapel of the Cross, East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill The Chapel of the Cross adds a chancel and vestry

    A chancel and a vestry room were built onto the rear of the 1848 Chapel of the Cross, replacing its original back wall. The vestry kept its corner fireplace, paneled wainscot and built-in cupboards into the 1970s.

14. Early twentieth century · 1900–1944

15. June 25, 1908
    Life event · Chapel of the Cross, Chapel Hill Edward Kidder Graham marries Susan Williams Moses at the Chapel of the Cross

    Moses, a daughter of school reformer Edward Pearson Moses, had studied at the university from 1898 to 1901 and headed Latin and Greek at Sweet Briar College; the reception was on the porch of Eben Alexander's house next door. The couple lived at Bulrushes, a shingled house at the east edge of the campus that Graham and Louis Graves had built on a lot they bought.

16. 1911
    Construction or physical change · Chapel of the Cross, East Franklin Street, Chapel Hill The Chapel of the Cross builds a new rectory and parish house

    Under its rector, the Rev. Homer Worthington Starr, the Chapel of the Cross parish added a new rectory and a parish house to its East Franklin Street property.

17. about 1915
    Construction or physical change · 408-412 North Street, Chapel Hill The old Episcopal rectory is said to be cut into sections and moved to North Street

    Local tradition holds that around 1915 the Episcopal rectory, a two-room house of about 1850 later enlarged into an H shape, was sawn into pieces and moved to North Street, where the parts became the small houses at 408, 410 and 412.

18. December 22, 1916
    Life event · President's House, UNC; Chapel of the Cross, Chapel Hill Susan Moses Graham, the president's wife, dies at Chapel Hill

    Susan Moses Graham, 34, died on the last day of the fall session after six weeks of infection. Remaining classes were called off, and she was buried in the Chapel Hill cemetery on December 23 after a service at the Chapel of the Cross. She had helped found the Chapel Hill Community Club.

19. 1921
    Construction or physical change · Chapel of the Cross, Chapel Hill Under rector Alfred Lawrence, the Chapel of the Cross asks Hobart Upjohn to design a new church

    The vestry, led by its new rector Alfred Lawrence, asked church architect Hobart B. Upjohn to design a larger building linked to the old chapel by a cloister, after a 1920 diocesan resolution called for enlarging the church to serve the university.

20. May 12, 1925
    Construction or physical change · Chapel of the Cross, Chapel Hill The new Chapel of the Cross church is consecrated

    The Upjohn building, from then on called the Church, was consecrated during Alfred Lawrence's rectorship. The parish timeline notes that male students in the campus ministry resisted including women students.

21. 1926
    Protest or organizing · Chapel Hill Alfred Lawrence publicly opposes fundamentalist attacks on teaching evolution

    The Chapel of the Cross rector took a public stand against fundamentalist efforts to bar the teaching of evolution in public schools, introducing a diocesan resolution against limits on freedom of thought, teaching and research.

22. Civil rights era · 1945–1975

23. February 1, 1972
    Naming or commemoration · Chapel of the Cross, Chapel Hill The Chapel of the Cross is listed in the National Register

    On February 1, 1972 the National Park Service listed the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill in the National Register of Historic Places.

24. Recent decades · 1976–2026

25. February 13, 1977
    Publication, speech or performance · Chapel of the Cross, Chapel Hill Pauli Murray celebrates her first Eucharist at the Chapel of the Cross

    Murray, newly ordained an Episcopal priest, celebrated her first Eucharist at the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill at the invitation of the rector Peter James Lee, who cited her family's connection to the parish. Her grandmother Cornelia Smith Fitzgerald had been baptized in the same chapel on December 20, 1854.

26. September 25, 2002
    Life event · Chapel of the Cross and Old Chapel Hill Cemetery, Chapel Hill Gladys Coates dies at one hundred

    Gladys Coates, partner in the founding of the Institute of Government and a student of the University's history, died at a hundred. After a service at the Chapel of the Cross she was buried beside Albert Coates in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery, across the road from the School of Government.

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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 1, 2026.