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Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–8.Back to highlights
- Revolution and early republic · 1775–1799
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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.
Subject: Old East · University grammar school (Preparatory School)
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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.
People: David Ker · William Richardson Davie · Samuel Eusebius McCorkle
- Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
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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.
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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.
People: Abner Wentworth Clopton · John Knox Witherspoon · Joseph Caldwell
Subject: Hillsborough Academy · University grammar school (Preparatory School)
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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.
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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.
People: William Polk · James Webb
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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.
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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.
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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.
