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Revolution and early republic · 1775–1799
- 1780s
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Continental officers organize the North Carolina Society of the Cincinnati at James Hogg's cabin
Former officers of the North Carolina Continental line gathered near Hillsborough in a cabin owned by the merchant James Hogg and founded the state's Society of the Cincinnati. They elected Jethro Sumner president, Thomas Clark vice president and Adam Boyd secretary. Sixty-six of the roughly six hundred commissioned officers the state sent to the war joined by contributing a month's pay.
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The Grand Lodge of North Carolina holds its first regular meeting at Hillsborough
Seven months after Masonic delegates organized the Grand Lodge of North Carolina at Tarboro, it held its first regular meeting in Hillsborough, while the ratification convention was in session there.
Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
- 1810s
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Eagle Lodge is revived at Hillsborough after twenty dormant years
Eagle Lodge, silent since 1799, was revived under a new number, 71. The Grand Lodge restored its original number, 19, in 1932.
- 1820s
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Eagle Lodge runs a lottery to pay for its Masonic Hall
Eagle Lodge held a lottery over eleven years and used the proceeds to build the Masonic Hall in Hillsborough, still in use in 1953.
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The cornerstone of Eagle Lodge's Masonic hall is laid on West King Street
The cornerstone of the brick Masonic hall at 142 West King Street, designed by state architect William Nichols and believed built by brickmasons John Berry and Samuel Hancock, was laid on November 23, 1823. The lot was deeded to the lodge in 1824 after the building went up.
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University Lodge No. 80 is chartered at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill's first Masonic lodge, University Lodge No. 80, was chartered. It stopped meeting in 1849 as older members died or moved away.
- 1830s
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Cadwallader Jones graduates from the University of North Carolina
Jones, the son of Cadwallader and Rebecca Edwards Long Jones of West Hill near Hillsborough, took his degree at Chapel Hill in 1832.
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Jones begins practicing law at Hillsborough
Jones began his legal career in Hillsborough in 1836 and practiced there until he moved his family to a cotton plantation near Rock Hill, South Carolina, in 1857. He sat in the House of Commons for the 1840, 1842, 1848 and 1850 sessions and became solicitor of the Fourth Judicial District in April 1843.
- 1840s
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Jones serves as a trustee of the University of North Carolina
Jones was a trustee of his own university from 1840 until 1857, the years he was practicing law at Hillsborough.
- 1850s
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Caldwell Lodge No. 180 is chartered at Chapel Hill
Members of the defunct University Lodge took out a new charter as Caldwell Lodge No. 180, honoring the late university president Joseph Caldwell.
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Thomas Webb serves as Orange County's clerk and master in equity
Thomas Webb signed notices as clerk and master of the Court of Equity for Orange County, at his office in Hillsborough, from at least 1855 into 1862.
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Orange County Agricultural Society holds its third fair near Hillsborough
At the society's third annual fair, on its grounds near Hillsborough, members elected Paul C. Cameron president and Thomas Webb secretary. Cameron, away in Alabama, had given the society a flag that flew from a pole more than eighty feet high.
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John W. Graham joins the university faculty as a Latin tutor
A year after taking his A.B. in 1857, John W. Graham became a tutor in Latin at the University of North Carolina. He finished a law degree there in 1860.
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Corporators organize the Hillsborough Savings Institution
The corporators of the Hillsborough Savings Institution, among them Thomas Webb, William A. Graham, James F. Cain and Pride Jones, met in the county court clerk's office on April 1, 1859, adopted the charter and appointed Webb and others to open subscription books. By December 1860 Webb was its cashier.
- 1860s
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Eagle Lodge's rooftop observatory is taken down and a hipped roof built
In 1862 the glassed-in observatory on the roof of the Masonic hall, said to have predated President Caldwell's 1831 observatory at the university, was removed and the present hipped roof built.
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Hillsborough meeting resolves to erect a monument to Col. Charles C. Tew
A Hillsborough meeting chaired by M. E. Manly resolved to raise a monument to Col. Tew, killed at Sharpsburg, at or near the front of his Military Academy, and named Dr. Edmund Strudwick, Dr. Pride Jones and Thomas Webb to collect funds and build it.
Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
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John W. Graham serves as Orange County solicitor
After the Civil War, John W. Graham of Hillsborough was solicitor for Orange County from 1866 to 1868, before going as a delegate to the 1868 constitutional convention and into the state senate.
- 1870s
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John W. Graham serves on the university board of trustees
John W. Graham sat on the University of North Carolina board of trustees from 1876 until his death in 1928, and from 1891 he was an elected member of its executive committee.
- 1880s
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Fire destroys Caldwell Lodge's records and the lodge gives up its charter
A fire destroyed all of Caldwell Lodge's old records, and the Chapel Hill lodge surrendered its charter the same year.
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University Lodge No. 408 is chartered at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill Masons revived their lodge under a new charter as University Lodge No. 408, with W. N. Pritchard as first Master. It met for years above a store on Franklin Street.
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Hillsborough church men organize a Young Men's Christian Association at the Presbyterian manse
Men from the town's churches met at the Presbyterian manse on a Monday night, adopted a constitution and bylaws, and elected Charles M. Parks president and Joseph A. Harris secretary. The next meeting was called for the manse on December 10.
- 1890s
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The Junior Order of United American Mechanics sets up a lodge in Hillsborough
A lodge of the Junior Order of United American Mechanics was set up in Hillsborough. It later moved to Carrboro and then to Chapel Hill, where it operated as Davie Council No. 52.
Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1900s
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George Howe is elected professor of Latin at the university
The trustees elected George Howe, who held a Ph.D., professor of Latin for 1903-04 in place of Dr. H. F. Linscott, who had died in December. Howe kept the chair until 1936.
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Occoneechee Lodge No. 299 of the Odd Fellows is chartered
The Independent Order of Odd Fellows chartered Occoneechee Lodge No. 299, which lasted until 1921.
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Andrew Henry Patterson becomes the university's professor of physics
Andrew Henry Patterson, an 1891 graduate of the university, came from the University of Georgia in 1908 to be professor of physics and held the chair for the rest of his life.
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Faculty members organize the Chapel Hill Country Club
About forty-five people, mostly university faculty, organized a country club and rented a house and several acres at the edge of Chapel Hill, laying out golf links and tennis courts. Joseph Hyde Pratt chaired its board of governors.
- 1910s
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Andrew Henry Patterson becomes dean of the School of Applied Science
From 1911 Patterson was also dean of the university's School of Applied Science, a post he held until his death in 1928.
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Graham joins the student county clubs into a civic association
Dean Graham revived the clubs of students from the same county, which nearly half the student body joined after Rand's death, and federated more than a dozen of them as the North Carolina Civic Association of the University, urging members to study conditions at home.
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About 250 county citizens meet at the Hillsboro courthouse for Community Service Week
As part of the university's Community Service Week, some 250 citizens gathered at the Orange County courthouse in Hillsboro to take up the county's needs and hear President Graham speak on community service.
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Andrew Henry Patterson builds a house on East Franklin Street
Patterson was one of several faculty members and townspeople who built new homes in the East Franklin Street residential district in these years.
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Students improve Franklin Street and Battle Park during Community Service Week
During Graham's first statewide Community Service Week, about a hundred students worked on Chapel Hill: one crew graded Franklin Street under Joseph Hyde Pratt with teams paid for by merchants and bankers, others cleared the grounds around Swain Hall, cleaned the Battle Park trails under the Rev. W. D. Moss and gathered trash from the alleys.
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Eno Cotton Mill reports 150 women among its 500 workers
Reports from the years before the wartime changes count about 500 workers at Hillsborough's Eno Cotton Mill, 150 of them women and 50 children under 16, on a 60-hour week. The top average daily wage for women was $1.75 against $4.00 for men; at the smaller Bellevue mill nearby women's top average was $2.50.
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J. Cheshire Webb is appointed chairman of the Orange County Council of Defense
J. Cheshire Webb of Hillsborough was appointed chairman of the Orange County Council of Defense, with M. C. S. Noble, C. H. Robertson, Shepperd Strudwick, S. W. Andrews, John P. Hughes and P. C. Collins as members. He led the council through the war and the 1919 homecoming.
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The Orange County Red Cross chapter organizes permanently under John W. Graham
At a court house meeting on July 5, 1917, the chapter read its national authority to organize with jurisdiction over all of Orange County except Chapel Hill and elected Maj. John W. Graham chairman, with Henrietta P. Collins as secretary and Margaret Forrest as treasurer. The Red Cross Central Committee's recognition letter followed on July 17.
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Orange County raises about $2,000 in a Y.M.C.A. war fund drive
A Y.M.C.A. drive ran November 11-19, 1917, led by N. W. Brown, G. K. Collins and T. M. Grant. At a packed court house rally on November 18, with Maj. John W. Graham presiding, pledges reached $1,400, and the rest of the $2,000 was raised afterward.
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The Chapel Hill Red Cross moves its workrooms into the Zeta Psi fraternity hall
After its first home, a Main Street store lent by Mayor W. S. Roberson, was sold to the People's Bank, the chapter moved on January 1, 1918, into the lower floor of the Zeta Psi fraternity hall, offered by the university's Upsilon chapter.
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Chapel Hill school children organize a Junior Red Cross auxiliary
The Chapel Hill School Auxiliary to the Red Cross was organized in January 1918 with 132 members. The girls sewed refugee garments and hospital supplies, 130 children planted home gardens, and the boys built shipping boxes for the Red Cross in the school basement.
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W. S. Roberson joins the county's legal advisory board for draft questionnaires
A legal advisory board was formed to help Orange County men fill out the government's draft questionnaires, with Major John W. Graham, Frank Nash and W. S. Roberson as members.
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The Orange County Red Cross accepts a branch at Oaks
On May 11, 1918, the chapter's executive committee read and accepted the Oaks community's petition to join as a branch. Oaks joined Cedar Grove and New Hope as branches of the Hillsborough chapter.
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The Orange County Red Cross raises $4,294 in its second War Fund drive
A drive led by F. A. McNeer ran May 20-27, 1918, after ministers across the county preached on Red Cross Sunday, May 19. It raised $4,294.38, and the chapter sent $3,300 to national headquarters and kept about a quarter for local work.
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Chapel Hill more than doubles its Red Cross War Fund quota
Assessed $500 in the Red Cross War Fund drive of May 1918, the Chapel Hill chapter raised it within a few days and turned in $1,156.60 by the drive's close, under Dr. J. M. Bell with J. S. Holmes.
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The Council of Defense extends into township community councils
At a court house meeting on June 15, 1918, J. Cheshire Webb organized community councils of defense for each of the seven townships, choosing the township over the school district as the unit. Their charge was to support every war activity without forming new organizations.
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A four-church committee raises $504 for Jewish war relief
About the middle of August 1918 a campaign for the Jewish Relief Fund, run by men from the Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian and Episcopal churches, raised $504.
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The Chapel Hill Red Cross starts a conservation committee that ships nut shells for gas masks
The chapter appointed a Committee on Conservation under Mrs. M. H. Stacy on September 1, 1918. On November 20 it shipped four barrels of nut shells for gas masks and seventeen pounds of tin foil.
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Orange County organizes for the United War Work drive
A court house meeting on September 19, 1918, elected N. W. Brown county chairman for the United War Work drive. The county raised $7,485; Carrboro gave $1,240 on a $500 quota, and Hillsborough Township, under Elizabeth Cornelius, gave $2,300.
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Acting dean of students A. H. Patterson reports on drinking at the spring dances
When complaints about drinking at the revived spring dances reached President Chase, Patterson, whom Chase had made acting dean of students, blamed most of it on visiting alumni and said there was little he could do about the newer dances.
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Alice Noble writes the history of the Chapel Hill Red Cross chapter
As chapter historian, Alice Noble signed the Chapel Hill chapter's account of its war work, from the 1917 first aid class through the 1919 welcome home for soldiers and sailors in Memorial Hall.
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Dudley D. Carroll leads UNC's School of Commerce
Carroll came to UNC as professor of economics in 1918 and became dean of the School of Commerce, which he helped plan, holding the post for thirty-one years.
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Orange County raises $2,075.84 for Armenian relief
An Armenian Relief campaign led by Dr. E. C. Branson ran from February 21 to March 6, 1919, and raised $2,075.84. Much of it came through the county's white and Black schools; Nellie Russell led Hillsborough Township.
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Orange County raises $800 for the Salvation Army
In a Salvation Army campaign May 16-26, 1919, South Orange under W. S. Roberson raised $300 and North Orange under R. H. Claytor raised $500.01 on a $500 quota.
- 1920s
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Fire destroys the Chapel Hill Country Club clubhouse
The club's one-story clubhouse, partly of log, burned to the ground on a Saturday afternoon after a leaking oil stove soaked the floor. The faculty used the Gimghoul lodge as a clubhouse for a time, and that fall the club moved into the Gorgon's Head lodge.
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Alice Noble joins the UNC School of Pharmacy staff
Alice Noble was hired as assistant secretary of the School of Pharmacy in 1921, the start of a decades-long tenure in which she was later librarian and secretary to Dean Edward Brecht.
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J. Cheshire Webb becomes president of the Eno Cotton Mills
Webb, a director of the Eno Cotton Mills since early manhood, was made president of the Hillsborough mill in 1921. He ran it until his death in 1932 and was also a director of the Rocky Mount Mills and the Bank of Orange.
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The Chapel Hill Country Club opens its new clubhouse
Members gathered with basket suppers for the opening of the club's new house, three years after fire destroyed the first one. By late 1924 the club was clearing the fairways of its golf course.
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Rameses, the live ram mascot, makes his debut for Carolina
Head cheerleader Vic Huggins won athletic department approval and $25 to buy a ram as a mascot. Rameses first appeared at the football game against the Virginia Military Institute, which Carolina won 3-0.
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An Order of the Eastern Star chapter is established in Hillsborough
A chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star, the Masonic order open to women, was established in Hillsborough. Chapel Hill's chapter followed in 1947.
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Black clubwomen open the North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls at Efland
After years of fundraising, the North Carolina federation of Black women's clubs led by Charlotte Hawkins Brown opened a home and school for Black girls on a 143-acre farm on US 70 at Efland. The state gave only occasional small grants; the federation's board voted in October 1938 to close within five months, and the home closed on March 15, 1939. The state later opened a training school for Black girls, first at Rocky Mount and then at Dobbs Farm near Kinston.
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Hillsborough women organize the Hillsborough Garden Club
Twelve Hillsborough women met in an old school building in 1925 to form a garden club, and began by cleaning lots in the business district and planting crepe myrtles along the downtown streets. The club later sponsored the founding of the Orange County Historical Museum.
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J. Cheshire Webb takes options on the Hillsborough quarry farm that supplied stone for Duke
Webb showed geologist Jasper L. Stuckey the old quarry near Hillsborough that had supplied flagstones, and at the request of Duke's business manager Frank Brown he took purchase options on the quarry farm, signed January 31, 1925. The land was bought under the option for Duke University on March 31.
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Chapel Hill Community Club women question local legislators on the women's bills
The Community Club's legislative committee asked the state women's lobby how Orange County's legislators had voted on measures backed by women's organizations, including the Australian ballot, child labor and the Efland school for Black girls, and then voted to write each legislator for a statement of his position.
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The trustees name a Lower Quad dormitory Graham Residence Hall for John W. Graham
Meeting shortly after his death, the university trustees named the dormitory finished in 1924 on the Lower Quad for John Washington Graham, class of 1857 and a trustee since 1876. They praised his service at the 1864 Battle of Plymouth, where Confederate troops massacred Black soldiers and people who had fled slavery.
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Will W. Alexander delivers the Weil Lectures at the University
Will W. Alexander, then with the Commission on Cooperation between the Races, gave the three Weil Lectures at the University. His announced topics were "Truth and Fiction about the Old South," "The New Rulers" and "The Older Values and the New Life."
- 1930s
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The Daily Tar Heel raises a relief fund for Orange County's poor
As hard times reached the county, the student paper asked students and townspeople for gifts. From January 31 through May 12, 1930, it collected $202.73, enough to give food to more than forty families.
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Addie Williams Totten organizes the Chapel Hill Garden Club
Addie Williams Totten, who had lived in Chapel Hill since her 1923 marriage to botanist H. R. Totten, organized the Chapel Hill Garden Club in 1931. It joined the state federation in 1932, and she was again its president in 1958.
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Townspeople and faculty form the Battle Park Association at Joseph Hyde Pratt's home
A meeting at Colonel Pratt's home launched a volunteer group to restore Kemp Battle's paths and bridges in Battle Park. By the end of 1931 it had cleared old walks, opened about three miles of trail and rebuilt the bridges.
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Eagle Lodge gets back its original number, 19
In 1932 the Hillsborough Masonic lodge, chartered as No. 19 in 1791 and revived in 1819 as No. 71, had its original number 19 reinstated. The lodge still owns and meets in its 1823 hall.
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A Chapel Hill branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom is founded
Charlotte Adams founded a Chapel Hill branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. The branch is now called WILPF Triangle.
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Dudley D. Carroll chairs the Orange County Building and Loan Association
Carroll was a director of the Orange County Building and Loan Association from 1920 to 1950 and chaired its board from 1937. He also chaired the county draft board and the county ABC board.
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Guion Griffis Johnson serves as president of the Chapel Hill PTA
Guion Griffis Johnson was president of the Chapel Hill PTA in 1937–1938 and a district PTA officer the following year.
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Farm women open the Orange County curb market in Carrboro
A curb market run by Orange County farm women opened in the former McCauley store in Carrboro, selling vegetables, fruit, chickens, eggs, sausage, preserves and canned goods. It was organized with the county home demonstration agent, with thirteen women signed on as sellers before opening.
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The first air mail leaves Chapel Hill by plane
Mayor Foushee, Postmaster Robert A. Eubanks, Assistant Postmaster William S. Hogan and other residents went to the airport to see off the first mail to leave Chapel Hill by plane.
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William S. Hogan is appointed Chapel Hill postmaster
President Roosevelt appointed Hogan, assistant postmaster, to succeed Robert A. Eubanks on the nomination of Congressman Carl Durham, and the Senate confirmed him. Durham waived an examination because Hogan had served in the office about twenty years.
- 1940s
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Alice Noble becomes first adviser to the pharmacy school's Kappa Epsilon chapter
When the Lambda chapter of the Kappa Epsilon fraternity was set up at the School of Pharmacy in 1940, the school's librarian Alice Noble became its first adviser.
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Guion Griffis Johnson leads home-front work in Chapel Hill and Orange County
During World War II Johnson chaired the Community Service Committee of the Chapel Hill War Price and Rationing Board, was public relations officer for the Orange County Office of Civil Defense, and collected war records for Orange County.
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German, Italian and Japanese aliens re-register at the Chapel Hill post office
All German, Italian and Japanese aliens over 14 living in Chapel Hill had to re-register, with three photographs, at the post office. Postmaster William S. Hogan and Assistant Postmaster Strowd ran the registration, following the procedure of one held there in 1940.
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Vic and Rebecca Huggins run Huggins Hardware on East Franklin Street
The Hugginses bought the University Hardware Company and opened Huggins Hardware on March 22, 1944, adding kitchenware and general merchandise to the keys, paint and tools. They sold the store in 1968.
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Wartime day nursery opens for the children of Black working mothers in Chapel Hill and Carrboro
A federally funded day nursery for Black children opened at the Orange County Training School, caring for thirty children aged two to six from 7:15 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. while their mothers worked. Parents paid for food, and by October 1944 two nursery schools were running, one in the Masonic building on the edge of Carrboro and one on Brooks Street.
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Orange County's Black home demonstration clubs hold their first dress contest in Hillsboro
Women from every Black home demonstration club in the county modeled thirty-six dresses, suits and accessories they had made at the Hillsboro high school auditorium. By 1946 the clubs met monthly in rural communities including White Oak Grove, Jordan Grove, Cool Springs, Cedar Grove, Harmony, Ridge Road, St. Mary's, Sartin and Carr.
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Home demonstration clubs report the year's work at Achievement Day in Hillsboro
At the county home demonstration clubs' Achievement Day at the courthouse, the home agent reported that women had canned an average of 350 quarts and that 94 percent made their own clothes, and that the women's curb market in Chapel Hill had taken in $30,280.68 over the past year. Clubs from Caldwell, Carr, Cedar Grove, Efland, New Hope, Orange Grove, St. Mary's, Schley and Murphy had made 699 garments and 744 other articles for the Red Cross.
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
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An Order of the Eastern Star chapter is established in Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill gained a chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star, twenty-two years after Hillsborough's.
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The League of Women Voters of Chapel Hill applies for recognition
Thirty-three women applied for provisional status as the League of Women Voters of Chapel Hill, raising the required finance money that fall. The league later became the League of Women Voters of the Chapel Hill Area in 1997 and of Orange, Durham and Chatham Counties in 2001.
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Joel Carter directs the Chapel Hill Choral Club
Joel Carter of the university's Music Department was musical director of the Chapel Hill Choral Club, a town choir founded in 1921, for fourteen years. The club's records he kept are now at Wilson Library.
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Hillsborough holds a combined flower show and garden pilgrimage
The Hillsborough Garden Club held its flower show together with the state garden pilgrimage, opening historic homes and gardens on a "Colonial Hillsboro" theme. Addie Williams Totten of Chapel Hill, state flower show chairman, planned it with the club; it was the first time the two events had been combined.
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The Chapel Hill Jaycees open the Williams Lustron house for public inspection
For a week the Junior Chamber of Commerce showed Lonas Williams's new all-steel Lustron house, furnished by local stores, at 25 cents a visitor, expecting guests from Raleigh, Durham, Pittsboro and Hillsborough. The showing cleared $240 for the club's community projects.
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Will W. Alexander speaks to the Chapel Hill AAUW on the Julius Rosenwald Fund
Alexander, retired and living in the country near Chapel Hill, was scheduled to address the Chapel Hill branch of the American Association of University Women in the Morehead building on his years as director of the Julius Rosenwald Fund.
- 1950s
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Guion Griffis Johnson is president of the Chapel Hill Council of Churches
After returning to Chapel Hill from Atlanta in 1947, Johnson served on the boards of the Chapel Hill Community Council and Community Club, and in 1950 she was president of the Chapel Hill Council of Churches.
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The Grand Lodge of North Carolina meets in Chapel Hill
The state's Grand Lodge of Masons came to Chapel Hill for its annual session, with W. E. Caldwell, a member of University Lodge, as Grand Master.
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Orange County's seventeen home demonstration clubs count 443 members
During National Home Demonstration Week the county reported 443 women in 17 home demonstration clubs, served by two white agents and one Black agent, with 80 volunteer leaders who had held 62 meetings attended by 1,459 people the year before. Clubs made 38 United Nations flags for schools, churches and Grange halls as part of a citizenship study.
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About forty groups report on the Rural Progress Program at a county meeting in Hillsborough
In 1952 farm, civic and church groups competed to raise family farm income by $1,000, improve every home and finish a community project. Results and awards were given at a county-wide meeting in Hillsborough on October 30, and the program was repeated in 1953.
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Carroll Hall is built and named for Dudley D. Carroll
The university completed the main building of its business school in 1953 and named it Carroll Hall for the School of Commerce's first dean. It became home to the journalism school in 1999.
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Sophie Livas is installed as Worthy Matron of the Eastern Star chapter in Chapel Hill
Sophie Livas was installed as Worthy Matron of University Chapter 264, Order of the Eastern Star, succeeding Elizabeth Montgomery.
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Chapel Hill-Carrboro churches name a committee to help schools desegregate peacefully
Two weeks after the Brown decision, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Ministerial Association set up a steering committee to study how the churches could help bring a peaceful transition to non-segregated schools. Its members were the Rev. Charles Jones, Mrs. Harold Walters, George Esser Jr., the Rev. T. P. Duhart and Mrs. J. Snipes.
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Hillsboro leases the Exchange Club twelve acres for a community park
The town board gave the Hillsboro Exchange Club a fifteen-year lease at $1 a year on a twelve-acre tract bought for cemetery use, north of the town cemetery on Highway 70, so the club could develop a community park.
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Hilliard Caldwell leads the Chapel Hill chapter of the New Farmers of America
The Lincoln High School paper reported a prosperous 1954 to 1955 year for the chapter under Caldwell, its president, and printed his own account of the chapter's work.
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Hilliard Caldwell writes the Negro Community news column for the Chapel Hill News Leader
Caldwell was named as correspondent at the head of the column, which carried news of Black Chapel Hill and asked Lincoln High School graduates to send in their college addresses for the next week's issue.
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Les Petites Musicales stages The Magic Flute in Hill Hall
An abridged English Magic Flute in Hill Hall used the University Glee Club under Joel Carter, who also sang Papageno, with the former Metropolitan Opera bass Norman Cordon as Sarastro.
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Sophie Livas sells the Carolina Coffee Shop to Donald Belton
Sophie Livas, who had run the Carolina Coffee Shop since her husband George's death in 1956, sold it to Donald Belton, who took over on February 1, 1957.
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Hubert Robinson is named Man of the Year
After Robinson was re-elected alderman with the highest vote on the ticket, a group of Black citizens representing churches, fraternal organizations and civic clubs named him Man of the Year and gave a reception in his honor at the Lincoln High School gymtorium on June 11.
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The Chapel Hill Choral Club sings Bach's Christmas Oratorio
The Chapel Hill Choral Club, directed by Joel Carter, performed the first three parts of Bach's Christmas Oratorio in Hill Hall as part of the Tuesday Evening Series.
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Robert Seymour becomes the first pastor of Binkley Memorial Baptist Church
Robert Seymour came to Chapel Hill in 1959 as the first minister of the Olin T. Binkley Memorial Baptist Church, organized the year before. He led it until 1988.
- 1960s
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The Chapel Hill Friends Meeting opens its meetinghouse
Mildred Ringwalt, who joined the Chapel Hill Friends in 1959, was influential in building the Quaker meetinghouse that opened in 1960 and later raised money to enlarge it. A Carolina Friends School tribute says she sold most of her Oriental art to finance the building and anonymously gave the money to finish it.
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William Lanier Hunt gives 103 acres of the Morgan Creek gorge to UNC
Hunt gave UNC and the state about 103 acres of creek gorge and Catawba rhododendron bluffs along Morgan Creek, which became the William Lanier Hunt Arboretum, part of the North Carolina Botanical Garden lands.
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Chapel Hill church women ask the county for a welfare office in Chapel Hill
A group from the Chapel Hill Council of United Church Women, including Mildred Ringwalt, asked the Orange County commissioners for a branch welfare office in the Chapel Hill area with a caseworker at least two days a week, and offered volunteers. The acting welfare superintendent replied that lay volunteers could not do casework.
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Binkley Baptist Church takes James Forbes as a student intern
Under Robert Seymour, Binkley Memorial Baptist Church accepted James A. Forbes Jr., a Black divinity student, as its intern in 1962.
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Nate Davis moves from Northside Elementary to Chapel Hill Junior High
In 1962, after sixth grade at Northside Elementary, Davis went to Chapel Hill Junior High School on Franklin Street as one of the first Black students in the town's formerly white schools. Harassment kept him out of school for two or three months, and he later attended the new Chapel Hill High School when it opened.
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Quakers from the Chapel Hill and Durham meetings found Carolina Friends School
Members of the Chapel Hill and Durham Friends meetings founded Carolina Friends School as a purposely integrated school, beginning with early education programs in the two meeting houses. Mildred Ringwalt was one of the seven founders and the first clerk of its board of trustees.
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James Brittian is expelled from Lincoln High School after a civil rights march
Brittian, a student at the segregated Lincoln High School, was expelled for taking part in a civil rights protest march. He then became chairman of the Student Commission, a branch of the Chapel Hill Freedom Commission.
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George Esser proposes an ordinance barring discrimination by new Chapel Hill businesses
After the aldermen declined a public accommodations law in June, Esser suggested as a private citizen an ordinance that would bar racial discrimination by businesses opening in the future, applied like zoning rules. The Board of Aldermen began considering it in August while the Committee for Open Business kept up its marches.
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Joe Straley chairs the Committee of Concerned Citizens
The UNC physics professor Joe Straley chaired the Committee of Concerned Citizens, a group of Chapel Hill residents dedicated to civil rights, in 1964 and 1965.
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Institute of Government delivers its report on Chapel Hill's power to pass a public accommodations law
A report prepared by George Esser at the aldermen's request, gathering cases from all fifty states on a town's power to pass a public accommodations law, was completed and handed to Town Manager Robert Peck for the aldermen days before their vote. Esser said it showed the probable attitude of North Carolina courts toward a town using its general welfare power for that purpose.
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Gloria Williams asks the school board to readmit boycotting Lincoln High students
At the Chapel Hill school board meeting, Mrs. Gloria Williams, speaking for parents of students who had joined the Chapel Hill Freedom Committee's boycott of Lincoln High School, asked that all of them be readmitted. The board upheld the expulsion of two senior leaders, Henry Sanford and James Brittain, after Superintendent Howard Thompson said he would resign if they returned.
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Jim Medford is elected president of the campus YMCA
A Daily Tar Heel photograph taken on the steps of South Building shows Jim Medford as the newly elected YMCA president with the other officers chosen in the campus Y election.
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Medford is named to the student government State Affairs committee
Student Body President Paul Dickson's committee appointments, printed in the Daily Tar Heel, put Jim Medford on the State Affairs committee along with Henry Patterson and Taylor Branch.
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The Botanical Garden Foundation is incorporated, with William Lanier Hunt as its founder
Hunt, a member of the garden's advisory board, led the effort to form a private foundation to raise money, hold land and speak for the North Carolina Botanical Garden. At its first annual meeting in 1967 he was elected its first president, and 291 people and 18 organizations joined as charter members.
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Wednesday vigils against the Vietnam War at the Chapel Hill post office
Every Wednesday from 1967 through 1973, Charlotte Adams and fellow protesters of the Chapel Hill branch of WILPF stood in silent vigil in front of the Chapel Hill post office against U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.
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Gloria Williams directs the Chapel Hill Housing Authority
Gloria Williams was director of the Chapel Hill Housing Authority from 1968 until it merged with the town's Redevelopment Commission in September 1973, when she became assistant director. In 1969 she was the contact for placing families in the town's first public housing.
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Cone Mills honors Eno plant workers, most of them women, for fifty years at the mill
At the Eno Plant's seventieth anniversary celebration in Hillsborough, Cone Mills recognized at least six of its 385 employees for fifty or more years of work at the mill, five of them women.
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Hank Anderson directs the Chapel Hill Parks and Recreation Department
Henry "Hank" Anderson III, who took a master's degree in recreation administration at UNC in 1969, directed the Chapel Hill Parks and Recreation Department from 1969 to 1977.
- 1970s
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Azalea Hill, designed by William Lanier Hunt, is planted at the Botanical Garden
The garden's first specific planting project, sponsored by the Men's Garden Club of Chapel Hill and designed by Hunt, neared completion as work-study students under Ken Moore set native azaleas along a new trail.
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Fred Battle directs the Hargraves Center
Fred Battle, a Lincoln High graduate of 1962, directed Chapel Hill's Hargraves Center, the former Negro Community Center on Roberson Street, from 1970 to 1987.
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Robert Campbell moves to Rogers Road as the county landfill is built beside it
Campbell, who grew up in the Northside community of Chapel Hill, moved to Rogers Road in the early 1970s, as the Orange County landfill was going in next to the neighborhood. He later became president of the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association and of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP.
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H. G. Jones becomes curator of the North Carolina Collection
Jones succeeded William S. Powell as curator of UNC's North Carolina Collection and adjunct professor of history. He held the curatorship until he retired in 1994.
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The North Caroliniana Society is chartered
H. G. Jones, William S. Powell and Louis M. Connor Jr. chartered the North Caroliniana Society to promote North Carolina's historical, cultural and literary heritage. Its office is at UNC, and its main beneficiary is the North Carolina Collection.
Recent decades · 1976–2026
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Hank Anderson starts a Saturday breakfast meeting of Black and social justice leaders
Anderson began hosting a Saturday morning breakfast at Dip's Restaurant where African American and social justice leaders discussed problems and political strategy. The group later made endorsements in Chapel Hill and Carrboro elections and carried his name.
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Bill Thorpe leads the voting for the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen
In his second run for office, Bill Thorpe led the field from the early returns and won one of four seats on the Chapel Hill Board of Aldermen, with Bev Kawalec, Marilyn Boulton and Gerry Cohen.
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Yonni Chapman leads the North Carolina Memorial Hospital Employees Forum
Chapman, a hematology laboratory technician at North Carolina Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill from 1975 to 1985, served as president of the hospital's Employees Forum from 1978 to 1980 and helped unite coworkers against racial discrimination and unsafe working conditions.
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The Orange County Women's Center is established
An anonymous $30,000 gift in March 1979 created a fund for an Orange County Women's Center, meant to give office space to the rape crisis center, the Women's Health Counseling Service and the Orange-Durham Coalition for Battered Women, along with classes and counseling. By April 1980 it was open at 307 North Columbia Street, and it later merged with the Family Violence Prevention Center of Orange County to form Compass Center.
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Joe Straley is elected to the Chapel Hill Town Council
In the municipal election, newcomer Joe Straley won one of four council seats with 2,796 votes, joining James C. Wallace, R. D. Smith and Jonathan Howes and edging out Joe Herzenberg. He was sworn in for a four-year term in December.
- 1980s
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Robert Campbell helps start Faith Tabernacle Oasis of Love International Church
Campbell and his wife helped start Faith Tabernacle Oasis of Love International Church, where he was ordained in the 1980s. He has said his bishop's charge to the congregation to go beyond its own comfort turned him toward the landfill and the neighborhood's water.
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Neighbors form Friends of Old Carrboro to press for traffic controls
In 1981 a small group of residents banded together to seek traffic regulation in one of Carrboro's early mill neighborhoods. By 1983 Friends of Old Carrboro, Inc., had become a tax-exempt nonprofit of about 80 members working to preserve central Carrboro, and it had helped research the inventory.
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Gloria Williams leads Joint Orange Chatham Community Action
As director of Joint Orange Chatham Community Action (JOCCA), the county anti-poverty agency, Gloria Williams gave poor families emergency food, spoke for tenants at the 1984 Orange County hearings on a minimum housing code and ran a summer youth work program.
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Yonni Chapman and Fred Battle found the Orange County Rainbow Coalition of Conscience
Chapman and Fred Battle co-founded the Orange County Rainbow Coalition of Conscience, which worked on local school politics and on Jesse Jackson's 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns.
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Chapel Hill-Carrboro coalition organizes for the 20th anniversary March on Washington
Fred Battle chaired the Chapel Hill-Carrboro 20th Anniversary Coalition, which first met on May 29, 1983, and raised money to send buses from Chapel Hill to the August 27 march for jobs, peace and freedom in Washington. A UNC campus group worked as part of the local coalition.
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Chapel Hill makes Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a town holiday
On Council member Bill Thorpe's initiative, Chapel Hill made the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. an official town holiday, the first town in North Carolina and one of the first municipalities in the nation to do so.
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Habitat for Humanity of Orange County is incorporated
An ecumenical housing effort that began at Binkley Baptist Church in late 1982 became Habitat for Humanity of Orange County, incorporated in April 1984. Its first house was a donated building moved to what became the Chestnut Oaks neighborhood in Chapel Hill.
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Fred Battle serves on the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board
Fred Battle served on the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools board of education from 1985 to 1989.
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Hilliard Caldwell tells a Chapel Hill forum that local schools still fail Black students
Speaking as home school coordinator for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools at a Human Rights Week forum, Caldwell said the community spent millions on education without adequate results and that few Black students reached the honor rolls. His cousin Ed Caldwell, a school board member, spoke as well.
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The North Carolina Collection Gallery opens in Wilson Library
A gallery conceived by North Carolina Collection curator H. G. Jones opened in the east wing of Wilson Library, with R. Neil Fulghum as its first keeper, to exhibit items the library had collected.
- 1990s
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James Brittian leads the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP
Brittian was president of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro branch of the NAACP from December 1990 until his death at his Carrboro home in November 1993. Fred Battle served as interim president until Gene Hatley took over in February 1994.
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Orange County jury finds three former UNC officials discriminated against police officer Keith Edwards
A jury ruled that former UNC officials John DeVitto, Charles Mauer and Robert Sherman had discriminated by race and gender against Keith Edwards, an 18-year veteran of the UNC police, and ordered them to pay $116,000 in damages. Alan McSurely, her lawyer, won his first jury trial with the case.
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Hank Anderson serves on the Carrboro Board of Aldermen
Anderson was elected to the Carrboro Board of Aldermen in 1993 and re-elected in 1997, and the board chose him as mayor pro tem in 1994 and again in 1997. He served until his death in October 1998.
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NAACP task force begins a study of UNC's employee grievance procedure
A task force chaired by Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP president James Brittian held its first meeting to evaluate UNC's grievance and appeals procedure and employee relations counseling, aiming to change state law for workers across the UNC system. Former UNC personnel director Jack Gunnells was its operations director.
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Chapel Hill Town Council funds the Midway Development Commission
The council unanimously approved a $6,000 grant to promote Black-owned businesses and housing in the Midway district between Chapel Hill and Carrboro. James Brittian, NAACP president and the commission's project development coordinator, said the money would bring in millions.
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Joe and Lucy Straley receive the first Charles M. Jones award of the local ACLU
The Chapel Hill-Carrboro chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union gave Joe and Lucy Straley, both 79, its Charles M. Jones award for their work for peace, social justice and racial integration. The award, begun that year, recognizes contributions to civil liberties and civil rights in Orange and Chatham counties.
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Yonni Chapman founds the Freedom Legacy Project at UNC
While a UNC history graduate student, Chapman founded and directed the Freedom Legacy Project, a student group that documented the history of racial justice struggles at the university and publicly questioned the Silent Sam statue and the naming of Saunders Hall.
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Black public works employees bring a discrimination charge against the Town of Chapel Hill
The Black Public Works Association, with the NAACP's help, filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging racial discrimination in promotions, pay and training in Chapel Hill's Public Works Department, where about 75 of some 110 employees were Black and none were managers. The EEOC assigned an investigator in the summer of 1996.
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The Botanical Garden gives William Lanier Hunt its Flora Caroliniana Award
The North Carolina Botanical Garden presented Hunt with its Flora Caroliniana Award as founder of the Botanical Garden Foundation, land donor and supporter of the garden, the day before he died.
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Former UNC police officer C. E. Swain sues the university
Alan McSurely filed suit for C. E. Swain, a fired UNC police officer, alleging discrimination and violation of his constitutional rights; Swain said he came under pressure after ticketing the daughter of trustee Billy Armfield. The two asked the Black Student Movement for support the next day.
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Carrboro renames its community park for Hank Anderson
The Carrboro Board of Aldermen voted unanimously to rename Carrboro Community Park on N.C. 54 for Alderman Henry "Hank" Anderson III, on a motion by Alderman Jacquelyn Gist. The 55-acre park is one of the town's largest.
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Hilliard Caldwell announces he will not seek another term as a Carrboro alderman
Caldwell said he would not run again and named controlled growth as the board's major achievement. The Daily Tar Heel counted 16 years of service under four Carrboro mayors.
- 2000s
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UNC retires the Cornelia Phillips Spencer Bell Award after Yonni Chapman's campaign
Chancellor James Moeser retired the Bell Award, given yearly since 1994 to a woman for outstanding contributions to the university, after graduate student Yonni Chapman led a campaign against it over Spencer's white supremacist and sexist views.
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Chapel Hill renames Airport Road as Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard
At a ceremony beginning outside Town Hall, Airport Road became Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and the small Martin Luther King Street became Jackie Robinson Street. Fred Battle, president of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP, had led the push for the change after noticing that the only public facilities named for Black people were in Black neighborhoods.
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Bill Thorpe petitions the council to name the post office plaza for local activists
Council member Bill Thorpe presented a petition to rename the Franklin Street post office plaza for Charlotte Adams and Joe and Lucy Straley, an idea born at Joe Straley's memorial service. The council chose to hold a public hearing, and its naming committee proposed naming the plaza for an ideal with plaques for local peace and justice activists.
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Chapel Hill names the post office plaza Peace and Justice Plaza
The Town Council named the space in front of the Franklin Street post office Peace and Justice Plaza, after a petition to honor Charlotte Adams and Joe and Lucy Straley. Lucy Straley, then 92, told the Daily Tar Heel the plaza had long been the couple's main backdrop for protest.
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The Robert and Pearl Seymour Center opens on Homestead Road
The Chapel Hill senior center that Robert Seymour founded opened in a new building on Homestead Road in 2007 and was named for him and his wife, Pearl.
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David Caldwell retires as a sheriff's lieutenant to organize in Rogers Road full time
Caldwell joined the sheriff's department in 1985 after returning to the area and retired as a lieutenant in 2008 to work full time on community and social justice work. He became project director and community organizer for the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association.
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Fred Battle steps down as president of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP
Fred Battle announced his resignation as president of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro branch of the NAACP after almost fifteen years in the post, during which he helped revive the branch. First vice president Eugene Farrar was to succeed him on June 1.
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Chapel Hill dedicates the Peace and Justice Plaza marker
The town unveiled a granite marker at Peace and Justice Plaza, in front of the old post office on Franklin Street, naming nine local activists: Charlotte Adams, Hank Anderson, James Brittian, Joe Herzenberg, Mildred Ringwalt, Hubert Robinson, Joe Straley, Lucy Straley and Gloria Williams. The Town Council had named the plaza in 2006 and set criteria for later honorees.
- 2010s
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Neighbors form the Rogers Road Community Unity Board
The Community Unity Board brought together leaders from every sub-neighborhood of Rogers-Eubanks, among them Historic Rogers Road, Billabong, TallyHo, Meadow Run, Phoenix Place and Sandberg, for continuing talks about the area's future. RENA and the Jackson Center reconvened it in 2015 for the planning work the three governments had asked for.
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Bill Thorpe and Dean Smith are added to the Peace and Justice Plaza marker
At a town Peace and Justice Celebration, the names of former Council member Bill Thorpe and UNC basketball coach Dean Smith were added to the granite marker, which already honored 13 local leaders. Thorpe's son William spoke about him.
- 2020s
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Chapel Hill names the Hargraves Center gym for Nate Davis
The Town Council unanimously approved naming the Northside Gym at the Hargraves Community Center for Davis, the center's director for more than three decades, and its indoor court for Fred Battle, director from 1970 to 1987.
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Hilliard Caldwell dies at 88
Caldwell, who advised the Lincoln High School students who held Chapel Hill's first sit-in in 1960 and later served on the Carrboro Board of Aldermen, died on September 6, 2025. The town issued a statement remembering his service and courage.
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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 2, 2026.
