Key local figure
Solomon Pool entered the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1849, graduated in 1853 and became tutor of mathematics there that December, rising to adjunct professor in 1861. He accepted the presidency in 1869 and held it until the trustees closed the university on 1 February 1871.
Source: NCpedia: Pool, Solomon
2 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.
Papers of Mrs. Cornelia Spencer, historian and writer from Chapel Hill, daughter of Prof. James Phillips. Most of the letters relate to UNC and life in Chapel Hill, 1859-1895, including correspondence with university pr…
1 photograph in the Society's UNC Faculty and Administration binder: Portrait of UNC President Solomon Pool.
Dated events connected with this person, earliest first. See the whole chronology →
Solomon Pool entered the University of North Carolina in 1849 at the age of seventeen and graduated in 1853 as the second honor student in a class of fifty-nine. He was a member of the Philanthropic Society while in Chapel Hill.
Pool was appointed tutor of mathematics at the University of North Carolina in December 1853, months after his own graduation. He received an honorary alumni master of arts degree in 1856.
Pool was promoted to adjunct professor of mathematics in 1861 and held the position for six years. In 1866 he took leave to become a United States deputy appraiser in North Carolina on the understanding that the university need not reemploy him until it had need of him.
The 1868 constitution gave the choice of university trustees to the state Board of Education, controlled by Governor William W. Holden. In July 1868 the new trustees removed President David L. Swain and his faculty, and a Republican faculty under Solomon Pool reopened classes in March 1869 amid strong partisan opposition.
People: William W. Holden · Solomon Pool
Pool accepted the presidency of the University of North Carolina in 1869 at a salary of fifteen hundred dollars and was permitted to keep his federal appraiser post at the same time. Governor William W. Holden had taken charge of the board of trustees to secure a president with Republican affiliations.
On March 30, 1870, the Chapel Hill commissioners recorded that a group of residents claimed to be the village's officers, had taken some of the town's books and papers and had named A. Mickle magistrate of police. On April 1, Solomon Pool reported that their election had been held without any law authorizing it, on informal notice from T. M. Argo, and the board adopted his advice to take no action if they gave up the books.
People: Solomon Pool
In January 1871 Pool addressed alumni and friends of the university and pleaded for money to pay off its debts. The appeal came too late, and the trustees decided that the institution should close on 1 February 1871.
Under President Solomon Pool and the Reconstruction board of trustees, the university shut down on February 1, 1871, after years of few students, little money and public opposition. It reopened on Monday, September 6, 1875.
People: Solomon Pool
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Held in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection. Selected because their titles or catalog subjects provide wider historical context for this person; they may not discuss the Orange County person directly.
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