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Local figure

Thomas Waitt

Thomas Waitt was a New England builder whom President David L. Swain hired soon after 1835 as the university's superintendent of buildings. He finished Gerrard Hall in time for the 1837 commencement, and that year his crews, many of them enslaved plasterers, masons and laborers, put a tin roof on South Building. The trustees adopted his design for the monument to Joseph Caldwell but found his management too costly.

Source: UNC Libraries exhibit: Gerrard Hall (New Chapel)

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

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Life and Orange County connections

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

  1. Enslaved plasterers, masons and laborers work on South Building's new roof Thomas Waitt's bill for 1837 work on South Building, including its tin roof, lists wages for enslaved plasterers and masons Stewart, Chester, Peter, Calvin and Evans and laborers including Lewis, Tom, Redin, Abraham and Jordan. People: Thomas WaittUNC University Archives (For the Record): Slave Labor and South Building
  2. Gerrard Hall is finished and holds its first commencement Gerrard Hall, the new chapel begun more than a decade earlier, was completed in 1837 under carpenter Thomas Waitt, and that year's commencement was held in it. The Raleigh Register described a roomy building with large galleries, and the old chapel, Person Hall, was soon given over to classrooms. People: Thomas WaittSearch the index · Documenting the American South: Kemp P. Battle, History of the University of North Carolina, vol. I (1907), p. 431
  3. Trustees raise a sandstone monument to Caldwell on the campus The trustees adopted a design by Thomas Waitt, the master mechanic in charge of university repairs, for a shaft of local sandstone cut by J. B. Turney. It soon crumbled, and the marble slab meant for its Latin inscription arrived so badly cut that it was smashed, so the monument never bore a name. People: Frederick Nash, William McPheeters, Thomas WaittSearch the index · Documenting the American South: Kemp P. Battle, History of the University of North Carolina, vol. I (1907), p. 414

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.

  • Gerrard Hall University buildings and grounds · Chapel Hill · 1 event here
  • Person Hall University buildings and grounds · Chapel Hill · 1 event here
  • South Building University buildings and grounds · Chapel Hill · 1 event here

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Research sources

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Collections and databases

  • NC LIVE: prepared search for Thomas Waitt 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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