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Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–15.Back to highlights
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Revolution and early republic · 1775–1799
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Thomas Person gives $1,050 to complete the university chapel, later named Person Hall
Trustee Thomas Person gave $1,050 to finish the chapel then under construction at Chapel Hill. The trustees thanked him for his liberality and the building, completed in 1798, was named Person Hall.
Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Archibald D. Murphey gives the first commencement-eve oration in Person Hall
On June 27, 1827, the day before commencement, Murphey delivered an oration in Person Hall at Chapel Hill under the appointment of the Dialectic Society. Addressing the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies, he argued that a college course only prepared the mind for later learning; the speech was printed and reissued in 1843.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
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Fire guts Person Hall
Person Hall, the old chapel finished in 1798 and recently given to the chemistry department, burned on February 6, 1877, apparently from a stovepipe set too close to a roof rafter. The thick walls stood, the loss came to about $1,000, and gifts from A. F. Redd, J. S. Carr and others paid to restore it.
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Two rear wings are added to Person Hall as chemistry laboratories
The university's only other building work of the late 1800s besides Memorial Hall was a pair of wings on the back of Person Hall, added in 1886 and 1892 to hold its first chemistry laboratories.
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Venable and student William R. Kenan Jr. demonstrate calcium carbide in Person Hall
Chemistry professor Francis P. Venable and student William R. Kenan Jr. demonstrated the industrial uses of calcium carbide, the source of acetylene gas, in Person Hall.
Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
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The new chemistry building is completed and Person Hall goes to medicine
The university spent $45,000 of the state grant on a chemistry building that held three times as many students as the old one. The rest refitted Person Hall, the old chemistry building, for the Medical Department and New East for biology.
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
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Bayard Wootten shows her Mobile photographs at Person Hall
Bayard Wootten gave a talk, A Photographer Discusses Mobile in the Spring, in the small gallery at Person Hall, where a collection of the pictures she had made in Mobile that spring was on exhibit.
Recent decades · 1976–2026
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John Dee Holeman and Joe and Odell Thompson open UNC's bicentennial folk heritage series
Bluesman and buckdancer John Dee Holeman and the Mebane string band duo Joe and Odell Thompson opened From the Outer Banks to the Blue Ridge: A Celebration of North Carolina's Folk Heritage at 2 p.m. on March 23, 1994, in Person Hall. The free series was part of UNC's Bicentennial Observance.
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A tie vote keeps Person Hall off the Study List
UNC's campus preservation specialist Paul Kapp asked that Person Hall, already a contributing building in the Chapel Hill Historic District, be recognized on its own. Staff doubted how much of what was visible predated a 1977 renovation and urged the university to treat its old buildings as a district. On February 13, 2003 a motion to place the hall on the Study List split three to three, the chair voted no, and the committee deferred it; the Beta Theta Pi house was also deferred to await a possible Fraternity Court district.
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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.
