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Orange County Indexed

Chronology

Key events from Orange County history: 100 highlights to start, then the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, each connected to the index. A storyline gathers many dated events into one history, such as the Regulator crisis.

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Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–19.Back to highlights

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19 dated events
1877Reconstruction and the New South
  1. Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
  2. McIver heads mathematics at the university's summer normal schools

    Chapel Hill

    Then principal of the Greensboro graded schools, McIver was chief of the mathematics department at the 1877 Summer Normal School in Chapel Hill and taught mathematics, English grammar and physiology at the 1878 session.

    People: Kemp Plummer Battle

    Subject: University Summer School

  3. The university holds its first summer session, a state normal school for teachers

    Founding or opening · Chapel Hill

    In the summer of 1877 the university hosted a statewide Summer Normal School, set up by the General Assembly in March 1877 to train white teachers for the common schools. President Kemp Battle and the Board of Education admitted white women to its classes, though state money could not be spent on them.

    Subject: University Summer School

  4. Teachers at the Normal School form a State Teachers' Association

    Founding or opening · Chapel Hill

    Teachers attending the 1878 University Normal School organized a State Teachers' Association with Kemp P. Battle as president and began forming county associations. They also petitioned the legislature to continue the school.

    People: Kemp Plummer Battle

    Subject: University Summer School

  5. Summer Normal School offers the state's first kindergarten training

    Founding or opening · Chapel Hill

    Emily M. Coe of New York taught a class of teachers the kindergarten method at the university's 1878 Summer Normal School, with 53 children drilled daily. Battle believed it the first normal kindergarten class in North Carolina; the session enrolled 402 teachers, 190 of them women.

    People: Kemp Plummer Battle

    Subject: University Summer School

  6. Legislature extends Normal School benefits to women

    Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill

    The 1877 act limited state money for the Summer Normal School to men, though women attended by invitation. When the two-year act ran out it was renewed with the restriction as to sex removed.

    Subject: University Summer School

  7. The University Summer Normal School holds its last session

    Closing or ending · Chapel Hill

    The eighth and last session enrolled 305 teachers, after which the legislature divided the $2,000 yearly appropriation among four normal schools chosen by the Board of Education. Battle counted 2,480 enrollments at Chapel Hill from 1877 through 1884.

    People: Kemp Plummer Battle

    Subject: University Summer School

  8. Dixie Lee Bryant teaches at the summer school in Chapel Hill

    Chapel Hill

    Bryant, head of science at the State Normal and Industrial School in Greensboro, was on the faculty of the 1894 Summer School for Teachers and Students in Chapel Hill, teaching physical geography and botany.

    Subject: University Summer School

  9. The university opens a Summer School for Teachers and Students to women and men

    Founding or opening · Chapel Hill

    The four-week school under Edwin A. Alderman admitted both sexes for a $5 fee and enrolled seventy-five, with academic and teaching departments staffed by university professors and teachers from the State Normal and city schools. It was one of four summer schools the university ran that year.

    People: Dixie Lee Bryant · Edwin Anderson Alderman

    Subject: University Summer School

  10. M. C. S. Noble joins the university as professor of pedagogy

    Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill

    Marcus Cicero Stephens Noble, superintendent of the Wilmington schools, was invited to return to the University of North Carolina in 1898 as professor of pedagogy. He also directed the university's summer school.

    Subject: University Summer School

  11. Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
  12. The university opens its first summer term of regular courses

    Founding or opening · Chapel Hill

    For the first time the university offered a twelve-week summer term of regular courses that counted toward a degree, opening on June 12, 1900, alongside the four-week Summer School for Teachers. Tuition was twenty dollars.

    People: M. C. S. Noble · Francis Preston Venable

    Subject: University Summer School

  13. The university opens a summer course in library work

    Founding or opening · Chapel Hill

    By 1904 the university had begun a summer course of instruction in library work, meant to train librarians as workers with books rather than custodians. Louis Round Wilson taught library methods in the 1905 Summer School.

    People: Louis Round Wilson

    Subject: University Summer School

  14. Orange County teachers are offered the university summer school and pay tied to exam scores

    Law, policy or court · Orange County

    The board accepted Dr. Venable's offer to admit county teachers to the University Summer School and set pay by the July examination: $35 a month for an average of 95 and $40 for 98.

    People: Francis Preston Venable

    Subject: University Summer School

  15. N. W. Walker revives the UNC summer school

    Chapel Hill

    Walker, professor of secondary education since 1905, revived the university's summer school in 1907 and directed it for twenty-seven years. In 1921 he became acting dean of the School of Education.

    Subject: University Summer School

  16. Summer School students perform the colonial play Esther Wake

    Publication, speech or performance · Chapel Hill

    In the summer of 1912 the Summer School for Teachers presented Esther Wake, a play by instructor Adolf Vermont about colonial North Carolina, on the steps of Smith Hall.

    Subject: University Summer School · Smith Hall (Playmakers Theatre)

  17. Dr. C. S. Mangum teaches a daily first aid class at the 1917 UNC Summer School

    Health or relief action · University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

    Dr. C. S. Mangum taught first aid every day through the six weeks of the 1917 Summer School to a large class of Chapel Hill people and summer visitors, with two local Red Cross members helping with bandaging. The course closed with practical and written examinations sent from Washington.

    Subject: University Summer School

  18. Orange County holds a Fourth of July war rally on the UNC campus

    Publication, speech or performance · Chapel Hill

    At the Governor's request the UNC Summer School invited the county to its July 4, 1918 celebration, and at least 3,000 people came for a parade, a flag raising and S. M. Gattis's address in Memorial Hall. The county Council of Defense met in Gerrard Hall, and Adolph Vermont's pageant on French-American friendship played in Battle's Park.

    People: M. C. S. Noble · Adolph Vermont · J. Cheshire Webb · Samuel Mallett Gattis

    Subject: Gerrard Hall · Memorial Hall · University Summer School · Battle Park

  19. A thunderstorm halts Esther Wake at Cameron Park during the homecoming

    Publication, speech or performance · Hillsborough

    University Summer School students staged Adolph Vermont's play Esther Wake, on the early history of Hillsborough and Orange County, at Cameron Park for more than 5,000 people. A heavy thunderstorm stopped it in the second act.

    People: Adolph Vermont · Albert Coates · N. W. Walker

    Subject: University Summer School

  20. Former summer school and education dean N. W. Walker dies

    Life event · 517 East Rosemary Street, Chapel Hill

    Walker had headed the university's summer school and its school of education until he retired with a heart ailment in the summer of 1934. After his death his house at 517 East Rosemary Street was sold to education professor Guy B. Phillips, and Albert and Gladys Coates stayed on in the cottage behind it.

    Subject: University Summer School

  21. The university hosts 108 South American students in its Winter-Summer School

    Chapel Hill

    In 1941 the university received 108 students from seven South American countries for English courses and regular classes in a program Leavitt directed. The General Assembly met in special joint session in Chapel Hill in their honor.

    People: Frank Porter Graham

    Subject: University Summer School

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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.

Two mice reading back to back against a leaf, with the hand-lettered words Friends of the Orange County Public Library
Illustration by Caldecott Medalist Matthew Cordell, gifted to the Friends 2026