Local figure
William Horn Battle moved his family to Chapel Hill in 1843 and in 1845 became the university's professor of law, teaching until 1868 and again from 1876 until his death in 1879. Enslaved men, among them Ben, Harry and Billy, built and worked at his house beside the campus.
Source: UNC Libraries: Slaves of Faculty and Townspeople (Slavery and the Making of the University)
1802–1879 as the Library of Congress records it · Library of Congress authority record ↗
2 indexed works are connected with this person.
Works in the index that concern this person directly, or were written by them. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it; background reading with wider context sits further down.
David L. Swain, 1801 to 1868, served as governor of North Carolina and then as president of the university at Chapel Hill. His papers span 1807 to 1877 with the bulk from 1833 to 1868. Subjects include Cornelia Phillips Spencer, Elisha Mitchell, W. W. Holden and Thomas Ruffin, and cover state politics, railroads, and records of enslaved people. Microfilm reels were made in 1949 and 1974.
Why this is here: Their name appears in the record.
Papers of David L. Swain, 1763 to 1895. A Buncombe County lawyer and legislator, Swain was governor from 1832 to 1835, president of the university at Chapel Hill from 1835 to 1867 and a founder of the North Carolina Historical Society. Letters come from business partners D. L. Barringer and Nicholas W. Woodfin and from relatives in Georgia, Texas and the navy. State Archives of North Carolina, PC.84.
Why this is here: Their name appears in the record.
Dated events connected with this person: sixteen of 26, the highlights and a sample of the rest spread across the years, in date order. See all 26 dated events in the chronology →
The one-story frame house at 381 Tenney Circle, a dwelling on John B. Tenney's farm northeast of the campus, was probably standing by 1818 and keeps much of its early interior. James K. Polk of the class of 1818 and William Horn Battle of the class of 1820 took room and board there and walked two miles to classes.
People: William Horn Battle
Judge William H. Battle moved his family from Raleigh to Chapel Hill in 1843 so his sons could attend the university. He bought a house near the campus and enlarged it, adding quarters for the people the family enslaved.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle
Subject: Senlac (Battle house)
After teaching law from his office in Chapel Hill, Battle was professor of law at the university by 1845, and the university began offering the bachelor of law degree.
Subject: UNC School of Law
To secure 2,500 dollars borrowed from John H. Bryan, with David L. Swain and Duncan Cameron as his sureties, William Mercer Green conveyed to William H. Battle in trust his land on Bolin Creek near Chapel Hill and fifteen enslaved people: Jenny, Nancy, Lucy, Frances, Ellen, Celia, Anne, Julia, Rachel, Margaret, Peter, Sam, Aaron, Cain and Robert. If the debt went unpaid, they were to be advertised in the Hillsborough Recorder and sold at Chapel Hill to the highest bidder.
People: William Mercer Green · William Horn Battle · David L. Swain · Duncan Cameron
Samuel Phillips's small stuccoed law office on East Franklin Street reportedly housed a preparatory school for boys in 1847. Later in the century William Horn Battle taught law classes in the same building.
People: William Horn Battle
After graduating with first honors in 1854, Richard H. Battle stayed in Chapel Hill as a tutor of mathematics and Greek until 1858, reading law with his father, the law professor William H. Battle, and serving on the vestry of the Chapel of the Cross.
People: William Horn Battle
Phillips, who had taught law in his Franklin Street office since 1854, closed the school, went back to practice, and shared the building with Judge William Horn Battle.
People: William Horn Battle
Subject: UNC School of Law
Answering a memorial from the Episcopal convention that compulsory chapel on Sunday violated conscience, the trustees adopted Judge Matthias E. Manly's scheme letting the president excuse students whose parents lived in the village, who belonged to another church in town, or who or whose parents objected in writing. Morning and evening prayers stayed compulsory.
People: William Horn Battle
Subject: Gerrard Hall
When his regiment came back to North Carolina in February 1863, Walter Clark resigned his commission as a Confederate officer and went to the university, where he studied under David L. Swain and William H. Battle. He graduated first in his class in June 1864.
People: David L. Swain · William Horn Battle
When Union troops approached Chapel Hill in 1865, Wilson Caldwell walked out under a white flag with President David L. Swain, Judge W. H. Battle and others to meet the incoming cavalry and seek protection for the town and the university.
Part of The end of the Civil War in Orange County, 1865 · 30 events
People: William Horn Battle · David L. Swain
The bodies of Corporal Junius C. Battle, mortally wounded at South Mountain, and Lieutenant Wesley Lewis Battle, killed at Gettysburg, sons of Judge William H. Battle and former students, were brought home to Chapel Hill. The village turned out to meet them, and they lay side by side in the Episcopal church before burial.
People: Cornelia Phillips Spencer · William Horn Battle
Subject: Chapel of the Cross
Largely through Battle's efforts the parish had bought property for a rectory sometime between 1851 and 1868. In 1868 he paid the $500 still owed on it with interest, and in October 1878 the vestry agreed to repay him $600 at six percent from the start of 1879.
Subject: Chapel of the Cross
After Kirk's men arrested him at Hillsborough, Josiah Turner Jr. filed an affidavit and applied to Justices Dick and Settle of the state supreme court for a bench warrant against Governor Holden and Colonels Kirk and Bergen. The justices had counsel argue whether a warrant could issue against the governor and whether the colonels could be taken outside the insurrection counties, with Mr. Bailey on one side and William H. Battle on the other, according to Battle's testimony before the Senate committee on February 13, 1871; he read his argument from the Daily Sentinel of October 7, 1870.
People: Josiah Turner Jr. · W. W. Holden · William Horn Battle
At the invitation of trustees led by Superintendent Alexander McIver, fifty-five alumni met in the state Senate chamber with B. F. Moore in the chair. Their committee proposed that the alumni association nominate a new board for the Board of Education to appoint, but most of the 1868 trustees did not resign and the plan lapsed.
People: Alexander McIver · William A. Graham · William Horn Battle · Richmond Mumford Pearson · Bartholomew F. Moore
On the evening of the reopening celebration the two literary societies were revived, the Dialectic called together by its last secretary, Thomas M. Argo, with Judge William H. Battle as temporary president. William L. Saunders, who had kept the Philanthropic Society's books since its last meeting in 1868, called that society together.
People: William Horn Battle · William L. Saunders
Battle had left for Raleigh in 1868 when Reconstruction politics disrupted the university. When his law school reopened at Chapel Hill in January 1877, while his son Kemp was president, he returned as professor of law, and he taught until he resigned in January 1879, shortly before his death that March.
People: Kemp Plummer Battle
Subject: UNC School of Law
Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows the 3 with a known location.
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.
People named in the same dated entries as William Horn Battle, 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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Picture: William Horn Battle, 1854. Public domain. Photograph by Cornish, Lamport & Co.; books.google.com; via Wikimedia Commons
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