Nunn's Tavern and Inn

In the chronology

1. about the time of the Revolution James Patterson keeps an inn on the road where Chapel Hill will be laid out Before the university existed, James Patterson's inn stood near the sharp bend in the road west of the later campus, serving travellers on the two roads that met at New Hope Chapel. It was the only inn on the site when the first village lots were sold in 1793. People: James Patterson Bernard Lee Bryant Jr., Occupants and Structures of Franklin Street, Chapel Hill (1998; Chapel Hill Historical Society, 1999), scan p. 15
2. 1795 William Nunn buys James Patterson's inn and adds a tavern Captain William Nunn, a Revolutionary War officer and former Orange County sheriff, bought Patterson's inn. He and his wife Betsy enlarged the rooms for lodgers and added a tavern, and the business stayed in the Nunn family for more than half a century. People: James Patterson, William Nunn Bernard Lee Bryant Jr., Occupants and Structures of Franklin Street, Chapel Hill (1998; Chapel Hill Historical Society, 1999), scan p. 21
3. about 1805 Betsy Nunn carries on the tavern and inn after her husband's death When William Nunn died, his widow Betsy kept the tavern lot and went on running the inn. She held it until her death in her nineties, and the frontage maps label it Nunn's Tavern and Inn through 1848. People: William Nunn Bernard Lee Bryant Jr., Occupants and Structures of Franklin Street, Chapel Hill (1998; Chapel Hill Historical Society, 1999), scan p. 33
4. 1854 Walter A. Thompson sells the old Nunn tavern property to Isaac Hudson Betsy Nunn's grandson, a butcher who had inherited the run-down tavern and inn in 1852, sold it to Isaac Hudson, ending sixty years of Nunn family ownership. Hudson later built a brick house on the land. Bernard Lee Bryant Jr., Occupants and Structures of Franklin Street, Chapel Hill (1998; Chapel Hill Historical Society, 1999), scan p. 99
5. late 1894 The old Nunn tavern building reopens as the Patterson Hotel Dr. Abner Benton Roberson bought from McDade the old building on the eastern half of Lot 5, once Nunn's tavern and inn and for some years the McDades' home. 'Bunn' Patterson remodeled it and added four or five rooms, and it opened as the Patterson Hotel, which did not last long as a hotel. People: Abner Benton Roberson, Alphonso J. McDade Bernard Lee Bryant Jr., Occupants and Structures of Franklin Street, Chapel Hill (1998; Chapel Hill Historical Society, 1999), scan p. 169
6. between 1969 and 1973 The McCauley house, said to be part of the old Patterson inn and Nunn tavern, is razed for a Dunkin Donuts A two-story house on West Franklin, once William W. McCauley's home, was torn down to clear the lot for a Dunkin Donuts. Bryant identifies it as an original section of James Patterson's inn, later Nunn's tavern and the John Canada School, moved here in stages from Franklin and Columbia. Bernard Lee Bryant Jr., Occupants and Structures of Franklin Street, Chapel Hill (1998; Chapel Hill Historical Society, 1999), scan p. 335

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