Chronology

Search and filters

Entries

1. Revolution and early republic · 1775–1799

2. July 1795
   Founding or opening · Chapel Hill Trustees vote to build a house for the university's grammar school

   With Old East crowded and many students too young or unprepared for college classes, the board ordered a separate preparatory school building with lodging rooms, in the woods south of Rosemary Street. Richard Sims, an advanced student, seems to have been its first master.

3. December 1795
   Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill Trustees adopt William R. Davie's plan dividing the university into a preparatory school and professorships

   Davie's plan put English at the center, let French stand beside the classics and set up chairs of moral and political philosophy, natural philosophy, mathematics, chemistry with agriculture and the mechanic arts, and languages. The board elected Samuel McCorkle a professor, but he declined when refused extra pay in place of the president's house.

4. Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865

5. 1801
   Construction or physical change · Grand Avenue between Franklin and Rosemary streets, Chapel Hill The university builds a house for its Grammar School

   Six years after the trustees ordered it, a one-story frame schoolhouse for the university's preparatory Grammar School was built in 1801. John M. Goodloe was paid about $320 for the work; until then the boys had been taught in a rented building.

6. 1819
   Closing or ending · Orange County The university closes its grammar school and makes Hillsborough Academy its preparatory school

   When Abner W. Clopton gave up the grammar school the university dropped it. Caldwell arranged for Hillsborough Academy, under John Witherspoon with John Rogers teaching, to prepare boys for the university, whose faculty could attend its examinations and admit its top pupils on certificate.

7. 1821
   Property or economic transaction · Old Grammar School house, Grand Avenue ground, Franklin Street, Chapel Hill The university rents the empty Grammar School house to hunter Peyton Clements

   Two years after closing its preparatory school, the university let the building on the Grand Avenue ground to Peyton Clements, a hunter who supplied game to the college and the village boarding houses.

8. 1831
   Property or economic transaction · Chapel Hill Trustees offer the university's Chapel Hill lands for sale

   Pressed by debt, the trustees named William Polk, James Mebane and James Webb to offer the unimproved university lands around Chapel Hill for sale. Only a small sum came in, from the sale of the Preparatory School acre; that school had been closed for more than ten years.

9. about 1832
   Construction or physical change · Union Church (Village Chapel), Grand Avenue ground, Franklin Street, Chapel Hill A small nondenominational Union Church goes up on the Grand Avenue ground

   After the university sold the old Grammar School property, a small church open to all denominations, called the Union Church or the Village Chapel, was built on the Grand Avenue plot facing Franklin Street.

10. 1832
    Property or economic transaction · Grand Avenue between Franklin and Rosemary streets, Chapel Hill The university sells the old Grammar School house and grounds

    Thirteen years after the Grammar School closed, the university sold its empty schoolhouse and lot. In the meantime the house had been left vacant and then lived in by a hunter's family.

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 1, 2026.