Skip to content
Orange County Public Library (opens the library’s website in a new tab)

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. Suggest a source.

Research sources

Life and Orange County connections

Storylines this person is part of, in date order. Each has its own page.

StorylineRaising Old East and building Old West and Gerrard Hall, 1821–18371821–1837 · 8 events · About 1821, at Joseph Caldwell's urging and against the faculty's plea to spend on books and apparatus, the trustees voted to raise Old East a story, build Old West to match it and start a new chapel, borrowing from banks against Tennessee land sales. William Nichols ran the work. Bills from it list enslaved carpenters, bricklayers and laborers, with their pay due to their owners, and the University paid trustee William Polk $600 for the labor of men he enslaved. Battle gives the cost of Nichols's work as about $26,587. The chapel stood unfinished until 1833, when the sale of Major Charles Gerrard's Tennessee tract paid toward it and it was named Gerrard Hall; Thomas Waitt completed it in 1837. StorylineJoseph Caldwell’s last years and the choice of David L. Swain, 1833–18371833–1837 · 9 events · When illness forced President Joseph Caldwell to ask for help in December 1833, the trustees gave the senior professor, Elisha Mitchell, power to act in his place. Caldwell died on January 27, 1835, and a Hillsborough town meeting agreed to wear crape for thirty days. Mitchell was named president pro tem, and the trustees put off electing a president until December while raising the president's salary. That November Caldwell's body was taken up so that the artist Alfred S. Waugh could make a plaster cast of his face. In January 1836 former governor David L. Swain moved to Chapel Hill as president. A sandstone shaft the trustees raised to Caldwell in 1837 soon crumbled and never bore a name.

Dated events connected with this person, in date order. 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 Waitt Place: South Building, UNCUNC 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 Waitt Place: Gerrard Hall · Also mentions: Person HallSearch 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: Joseph Caldwell, Frederick Nash, William McPheeters, Thomas Waitt Place: Chapel Hill · Also named: J. B. TurneySearch 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, Orange County GIS, OpenStreetMap and a few other published sources named on each site’s page; town and community pins show approximate locations.

  • Gerrard Hall University buildings and grounds · Chapel Hill · 2 events here
  • Old East University buildings and grounds · Chapel Hill · 1 event here
  • Old West 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

All places and the county map →

Research sources

Sources and research tools for this person. For ready-made searches of other catalogs, see Search further. Research guide: Trace a family through historical records.

Records of the time

Collections and databases

  • NC LIVE: prepared search for Thomas Waitt Library card Search NC LIVE for this subject and Orange County. You can change the search terms. Sign in through your North Carolina library to access the materials.
  • 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

Local help

Search further

Search other catalogs and collections for this name. Results may include other people with the same name and have not been reviewed by the Friends.

Books about Thomas Waitt

Find copies at other libraries

Photographs, papers, and newspapers

Historical records and collections

These searches use Thomas Waitt’s name without birth or death dates, so results may include namesakes. Links open in a new tab.

Found a book OCPL doesn’t own? You can often borrow it through interlibrary loan at OCPL.

More to discover

Keep Reading Local

The Friends connect people with new library materials, local writers and publishers, and resources documenting Orange County.

Browse New Arrivals → Meet Local Authors → Explore Local Publishers →
Two mice reading back to back against a leaf, with the hand-lettered words Friends of the Orange County Public Library
Illustration by Caldecott Medalist Matthew Cordell, gifted to the Friends 2026