Storyline · 1793–1805
The county court licensed Chapel Hill's first taverns as taverns at the University, beginning in 1793 with James Patterson, Old East's contractor, whose inn was the starting point of the cornerstone procession. William and Betsy Nunn bought it in 1795 and added a tavern, the trustees barred students from taverns without leave in 1796, and John Taylor Sr. opened a second tavern by 1799. Betsy Nunn ran the inn from about 1805 until her death, and it stayed in the Nunn family for more than half a century.
A tavern keeper needed a license from the county court and gave bond for it. In August 1793 the court licensed James Patterson to keep a tavern at the University, on a bond of 500 pounds with William Courtney as surety. Patterson, Old East's contractor, bought village lots 4 and 5 for 108 pounds 10 shillings at the first Chapel Hill lot sale on October 12, 1793, the day Old East's cornerstone was laid, and the cornerstone procession that day set out from his inn. In 1795 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. On February 23, 1796 the court licensed Nunn to keep a tavern at his dwelling house at the University, on a bond of 100 pounds with Samuel Benton. That July the trustees barred students from visiting taverns without a professor's permission, though they let them attend dancing schools with faculty consent.
By 1799 John Taylor Sr., the former steward, had put up a tavern on Lot #13, which he had bought in 1796; Alsobrook's hotel, the Watts Hotel, the Eagle Hotel and the Union Hotel all later stood on that lot. About 1805, after William Nunn's death, Betsy Nunn kept the tavern lot and went on running the inn until her own death in her nineties. The frontage maps label it Nunn's Tavern and Inn through 1848, and the business stayed in the Nunn family for more than half a century.
Every statement above comes from these dated entries in the chronology. Each links to its source.
Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows the 2 with a known location.
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.
People with a page of their own whom the dated events above name, those named most often first.
No indexed work is about this storyline itself yet. These are about the sites and people its dated events name, those named most often first, so they may discuss the storyline only in part. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.
A portfolio of programs from the opening ceremonies of the University of North Carolina bicentennial, staged in Chapel Hill on October 11 and 12, 1993. It includes the program for the rededication of Old East, the university's first building, and the citations for the 1993 distinguished alumna and alumnus. Illustrated, and published by the university itself.
Edward K. Graham, president of the University of North Carolina, wrote to Grand Master Alexander Boyd Andrews asking him to appear in Masonic regalia at University Day in 1916. At that ceremony the Grand Lodge of North Carolina gave back to the university the brass plaque taken from the East Building cornerstone.
Wootten-Moulton Studio postcard of Old East, the oldest building and a men's dormitory on the University of North Carolina campus in Chapel Hill, made between about 1915 and 1940. A single photomechanical print in postcard format, 9 by 14 cm.
Hugh Morton's color view of Old East, the dormitory on the UNC campus in Chapel Hill, made about 1973. Old East is the oldest building of a state university in the United States. One 4 x 5 inch color sheet film transparency.
Black-and-white photograph of the University Inn in Chapel Hill on fire in 1921, with a crowd of onlookers gathered to watch the hotel burn. From the Images of North Carolina collection.
R. P. Stephen Davis Jr. of UNC's Research Laboratories of Archaeology spoke to the Chapel Hill Historical Society in 1999 on excavations on the campus at the sites of the Eagle Hotel and the poor house. Cassette.
Chapel Hill Hotel and its annex, with their porches, on a PCK Series postcard from Piedmont Supply Co., printed in Germany about 1905 to 1915. The writer's message on the back concerns travel plans: staying over in Shoskie and asking to be fetched with the horse on the afternoon of the 27th.
Portraits of W. W. Pickard and Betty Pickard, owners of the University Inn in Chapel Hill, dated 1900. One photograph in the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Prints and Photographs Collection.
Edward G. Danziger's memoir of love and cooking, published by J. F. Blair in 1967. Danziger (1893 to 1972) ran Danziger's Old World Restaurant in Chapel Hill, and the book tells his life as a restaurateur in the town.
William M. Rohe's history of Research Triangle Park and the region around it, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2011. Topics include regional planning and the economic and social conditions of the Research Triangle Park region, one corner of which is Chapel Hill and the university. 298 pages with illustrations and maps.
Herbert G. Gutman's 1976 history of African American families from 1750 to 1925, published by Pantheon Books in New York, 664 pages with 38 leaves of plates. Its Orange County connection is the Bennehan and Cameron family plantations, Stagville and Fairntosh: the book discusses the people enslaved by Richard Bennehan (1743-1825) and the Camerons, and follows family ties among them under slavery and after emancipation. Subjects include African American families and enslaved persons in Orange County.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (1977), The William and Mary Quarterly (1977), The American Historical Review (1977), Journal of American History (1977), The History Teacher (1977), Political Science Quarterly (1977), Journal of Black Psychology (1978), Journal of Social History (1978), Civil War history (1978), Signs (1978).
Orvin Lee Shiflett's biography of William Terry Couch, 1901 to 1988, the editor who built up UNC Press at Chapel Hill over four decades in publishing, with a subtitle that calls his career a lightning rod for controversy. Chapters treat culture in the South, a case history in book publishing, objectivity and social science and 'The Sainted Book Burners'. It bears on scholarly publishing and university presses in the twentieth century. McFarland, 2015, 268 pages with illustrations.
Albert N. Link's early history of Research Triangle Park, published in 1995 by the Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina. Topics include research parks, research institutes and industrial research in the state, with the park's own history at the center. 149 pages with illustrations and maps.
Annette Marie Council's book about her family and Mama Dip's Country Kitchen, the Chapel Hill restaurant, published by NP Press in 2005. Subjects include African Americans in Chapel Hill, the restaurant's history and family biography. Fourteen introductory pages and 223 pages of text with illustrations, part local history and part family account.
Albert N. Link's history of the Research Triangle Park, the research park founded to draw on the universities at Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh, published in 2002 by the Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina in 278 pages with illustrations. Topics include research parks, research institutes and industrial research in North Carolina and the history of the park itself.
Charles X. Larrabee's history of the Research Triangle Institute over its first thirty one years, published in 1991. Topics include research institutes and research parks in North Carolina and the history of Research Triangle Park, the research district that lies between Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh.
Alex Sayf Cummings's 2020 book on the knowledge economy of the Research Triangle, technology research and the history of Research Triangle Park. Chapel Hill and its university form one corner of the Triangle.
A tour guidebook prepared for the 2016 Vernacular Architecture Forum conference in Durham, leading visitors through buildings in Orange and Caswell counties. It takes in the architecture of the bright leaf tobacco economy and the work of Thomas Day, the free Black cabinetmaker of Caswell County who worked in the middle of the nineteenth century.
Account of student protest in 1960s Chapel Hill, published by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2007 with illustrations. It draws together the civil rights movement and segregation in the town, discrimination in restaurants, academic freedom and university autonomy, protest against the Vietnam War, Students for a Democratic Society and the Black Student Movement on campus.
Maxine Freeland's biography of James John Freeland (1918-1999), a Hillsborough man of the twentieth century, compiled in 1999.
Each dated event above names its source, the place to start. For finding more on an event across newspapers, records and histories, see the research guide Follow an event across several accounts. Ask at the North Carolina Room of the Orange County Public Library for help with local sources.
Friends of the Orange County Public Library. “Chapel Hill's first inns and taverns, 1793–1805.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/chapel-hill-inns-storyline-1793/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
