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Lee S. Overman

Lee S. Overman, a Trinity College graduate who later became a United States senator, introduced the bill in the General Assembly of 1885 that added $15,000 a year to the University of North Carolina's income. Kemp P. Battle, the university president who had sought the increase, watched its first reading from the lobby.

Source: Documenting the American South: Kemp P. Battle, History of the University of North Carolina, vol. II (1912), p. 304

1854–1930 · Dates from the Library of Congress · Library of Congress authority record ↗

1 work about Lee S. Overman is indexed here.

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Life and Orange County connections

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StorylineThe University's state money, 1881–18891881–1889 · 9 events · In 1881, according to Lefler and Wager, the General Assembly voted the university its first regular appropriation for maintenance, and within a few years the university both gained and lost state money. An 1885 act added $15,000 a year, and the trustees enlarged the faculty from nine to fifteen. In 1887, after a campaign led by Leonidas L. Polk, the General Assembly took the university's $7,500 yearly land-scrip interest for a separate Agricultural and Mechanical College at Raleigh. The university dropped pedagogics, mining engineering and other courses, and unable to pay the chairs added in 1885, the trustees let three professors go in 1888. In 1889 William Cain's election let the faculty begin teaching civil engineering.

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

  1. The General Assembly adds $15,000 a year to the university's support An Act for the Maintenance of the University, introduced by Lee S. Overman and passed by the House 58 to 32, added $15,000 a year, payable quarterly. Because the $2,000 normal school grant was moved to other schools, the net gain was $13,000, and the act also ended the rule that county scholarship students must teach. People: Kemp Plummer Battle, Lee S. Overman Place: Chapel HillSearch the index · Documenting the American South: Kemp P. Battle, History of the University of North Carolina, vol. II (1912), p. 307
  2. A subdued wartime commencement honors the governor, Senator Overman and the Rev. W. D. Moss With about a third of the class of 1918 already in camps, the university gave honorary degrees to Governor Bickett, Senator Lee S. Overman, Edwin Mims and the Presbyterian pastor W. D. Moss. Frederic C. Howe, immigration commissioner at New York, gave the address. People: William Dygnum Moss, Thomas W. Bickett, Lee S. Overman Place: Memorial Hall, UNC, Chapel Hill · Also named: Edwin Mims, Frederic Clemson HoweSearch the index · Howard E. Covington Jr., Fire and Stone: The Making of the University of North Carolina under Presidents Edward Kidder Graham and Harry Woodburn Chase (2018), p. 166
  3. The university's Black janitors back John J. Parker's Supreme Court nomination The association of the university's forty-six Black dormitory janitors, with Kennon Cheek as president, wired Senator Lee S. Overman on the night of Monday, April 28, 1930, a resolution backing the confirmation of John J. Parker, President Hoover's nominee for the Supreme Court, a UNC alumnus and federal appeals judge whom many of them had served as a student. The Senate rejected the nomination amid opposition over his segregationist statements as a 1920 candidate for governor. People: Kennon Cheek, Lee S. Overman Place: UNC, Chapel Hill · Also named: John J. ParkerHoward E. Covington Jr., Fire and Stone: The Making of the University of North Carolina under Presidents Edward Kidder Graham and Harry Woodburn Chase (2018), p. 414 · Also: Chapel Hill Weekly, May 2, 1930, p. 3

People named in the same events

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Indexed works

Works about or by Lee S. Overman. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it. Background reading appears below.

Worth family papers,

Worth (Family) · 1844

Worth family papers, about 694 items beginning in 1844: letters, business papers and other material on family affairs, opposition to secession, North Carolina politics, fertilizer and textile businesses, Zebulon B. Vance, and federal patronage early in Woodrow Wilson's administration. Correspondents and subjects include Cornelia Phillips Spencer, Edwin A. Alderman, George T. Winston, Josephus Daniels and Robert Bingham of the Bingham School, with UNC students among them.

Included because: Catalog heading in the Duke record: Overman, Lee S. -- 1854-1930.

Duke

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Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange, Orange County GIS, OpenStreetMap and a few other published sources named on each site’s page; town and community pins show approximate locations.

  • Memorial Hall University buildings and grounds · Chapel Hill · 1 event here

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