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Local figure

William Barbee

William Barbee (1777–1857) was the son of Christopher Barbee, the largest donor of land for the university. He built a house on Columbia Street after his marriage in 1800, went into the lumber business with William Watson in 1813, and served the university for years as steward and superintendent of buildings and grounds. He was Chapel Hill's postmaster from 1816 to 1820 and sat in the House of Commons in 1819.

Source: Documenting the American South: Kemp P. Battle (Kemp Plummer), 1831-1919. History of the University of North Carolina. Volume…

Orange County Indexed has not yet linked an indexed work directly to William Barbee. The biography and the dated events on this page provide sources about William Barbee’s life and work. If you know a useful source, tell us.

Research sources

Life and Orange County connections

Dated events connected with this person, earliest first. See these 3 dated events in the chronology →

  1. William Watson and William Barbee open a lumber yard William Watson came to Chapel Hill in 1813 to work on South Building and went into the lumber business with William Barbee. Their yard supplied much of the lumber used in village building; its site is not known. People: William BarbeeSearch the index · Bernard Lee Bryant Jr., Occupants and Structures of Franklin Street, Chapel Hill (1998; Chapel Hill Historical Society, 1999), scan p. 39
  2. Christopher Barbee turns over his home tract and blacksmith shop to his son William In 1831 Christopher Barbee sold his son William the village blacksmith property and the tract where he lived, with all adjacent land. He died the next year, and his will left William more land on Morgan Creek and Bolin Creek. People: William BarbeeSearch the index · UNC Research Laboratories of Anthropology: I. Randolph Daniel Jr., A Preliminary Archaeological Survey and Assessment of the Meadowmont Property, Technical Report No. 23 (1996), p. 3
  3. A notice offers Christopher Barbee's livestock and household goods for sale at his late home Two years after Christopher Barbee died, a public notice offered his horses, cattle, corn, farm tools and household and kitchen furniture for sale at his late residence on The Mountain. His son William was the executor. People: Christopher Barbee, William BarbeeSearch the index · UNC Research Laboratories of Anthropology: I. Randolph Daniel Jr., A Preliminary Archaeological Survey and Assessment of the Meadowmont Property, Technical Report No. 23 (1996), p. 14

Places in this person’s story

Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows them all.

Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange and OpenStreetMap; town and community pins mark the middle of their mapped buildings.

All places and the county map →

Named with them in the chronology

People named in the same dated entries as William Barbee, those sharing the most entries first. Each line links one of the shared entries in the chronology, where its source is cited. A shared entry shows these people in the same event, not how well they knew each other.

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Collections and databases

  • NC LIVE: prepared search for William Barbee Library card An advanced search of the state’s shared databases already scoped to Orange County’s places and this subject; edit it freely, and sign in through your North Carolina library to read
  • Ancestry Library Edition In the libraryOrange County Public Library Census, birth, death and marriage records, and more, free on the public computers at OCPL libraries

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