Key local figure
Wilson Swain Caldwell (1841–1898), enslaved by UNC president David L. Swain, was the university's head janitor and helped persuade the Union Army not to burn the campus. After emancipation he founded a school for African Americans in Chapel Hill, served as a justice of the peace and town commissioner, and later headed the campus workforce.
Source: UNC-Chapel Hill: Honoring an unsung legacy
Also found in catalogs as Wilson Caldwell.
3 indexed records are connected with this person.
Related works found in catalogs and archives across North Carolina. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it.
1 photograph in the Society's People A-O binder: Posed on stoop of building.
Dated events connected with this person, earliest first. See the whole chronology →
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.
In 1868 Governor William W. Holden appointed Wilson Swain Caldwell a justice of the peace. Caldwell had been enslaved by university president David L. Swain and had worked at the university since boyhood; he taught school for a time before returning to the university in 1875.
Part of Freedom, schools, and Black community-building after emancipation · 9 events
People: Wilson Swain Caldwell
In 1869 Wilson Caldwell, who had worked at the university as an enslaved servant and janitor, resigned and started a school for children of color in Chapel Hill.
People: Wilson Swain Caldwell
When the university reopened in 1875 Wilson Caldwell went back to work there. He became curator of South Building and head of the campus labor corps, and held the post until his death in 1898.
People: Wilson Swain Caldwell
Placed on the Republican ticket without seeking it, Wilson Caldwell, head of the university's labor force, was elected a Chapel Hill commissioner in 1886, defeating Professor Ralph Graves.
People: Wilson Swain Caldwell
Wilson Caldwell, head of the university's campus workforce, died in 1898 and was buried in the Chapel Hill town cemetery, now the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery.
When a new monument to President Joseph Caldwell went up on campus, the Class of 1891 moved his original 1837 obelisk to the Black section of the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery and rededicated it to Wilson Caldwell, November Caldwell, David Barham and Henry Smith, who had served the university.
People: Wilson Swain Caldwell
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