Storyline
How Benjamin Hedrick went from first honors to the University’s chair of agricultural chemistry in its new scientific school, and how his 1856 support for Fremont led to effigy burnings, the faculty’s disavowal, his dismissal by the trustees and, in 1862, his removal from the Presbyterian roll.
In briefBenjamin S. Hedrick lost his University chair in 1856 for saying he would support Fremont. He took the chair of chemistry when the new School for the Application of Science to the Arts opened in January 1854. In August 1856 he told students at the polls he would support a Fremont ticket, and when the Raleigh Standard attacked him he replied that he opposed carrying slavery into the territories. The Standard called for his removal, students burned him in effigy and the faculty voted to disown his views. Swain argued that only the full board could remove a professor, but the trustees' executive committee dismissed Hedrick on October 18, and the full board confirmed it in January 1857.
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Benjamin S. Hedrick graduated from the University in 1851 at the head of his class. By February 1853 the trustees had decided to set up a School for the Application of Science to the Arts, with chairs of civil engineering and agricultural chemistry. It opened on January 1, 1854, with Charles Phillips in civil engineering and Hedrick in chemistry, and its students could earn a Bachelor of Science. In August 1856 Hedrick told students at the Chapel Hill polls that he would support a Fremont ticket if one existed. Attacked in the Raleigh Standard, he replied in a letter dated October 1 that he favored Fremont and opposed carrying slavery into the territories. The Standard printed it on October 4 and called for his removal, and students burned him in effigy that night and again on October 6. That day the faculty voted 12 to 1 to disown his views. Swain argued that only the full board could remove a professor, but on October 18 the trustees' executive committee dismissed Hedrick, and the full board confirmed it on January 5, 1857. John Kimberly took his chair. In 1857 James E. Lindsay received what Battle called the University's first Bachelor of Science. In March 1862 the Presbyterian session dropped Hedrick and his wife Ellen from its roll for nonattendance.
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A 2026 novel set in Carrboro. Frances, thirty and grieving her mother, and her husband Ben open their marriage, and the book follows what that decision does to them and to the people closest to them. The characters include college teachers and a ghostwriter. 296 pages.
An illustrated online timeline of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Nursing, issued by the school in 2025. One page with portraits.
A 2025 history of University of North Carolina baseball from its nineteenth-century beginnings to the program's rise as an ACC power. Chapters cover the early years on campus, the building of Boshamer Stadium, and the Mike Fox era. Self-published by the author, 288 pages.
Joanna Pearson's novel of a cold case at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Karlie Richards was a nineteen-year-old student when she was murdered; decades later her onetime roommate, divorced and in middle age, finds herself drawn back to the crime as online conspiracy theories about it multiply. A psychological thriller with a Chapel Hill setting, published by Bloomsbury in 2024, 275 pages.
The 2023 issue of Carrboro High School's literary magazine, featuring fiction and poetry written by its students.
William R. Burk's history of botany at the University of North Carolina, from its early natural scientists such as Denison Olmsted and Elisha Mitchell through later figures including George Francis Atkinson, Joseph Austin Holmes and Henry Van Peters Wilson, closing with a chapter on the Department of Botany itself. Published in Fort Worth in 2023.
Willis P. Whichard's biography of David Lowry Swain, governor of North Carolina from 1832 to 1835 and president of the University of North Carolina from 1835 until his death in 1868. The subtitle ties Swain, nineteenth-century North Carolina and the university together, and the book belongs with the lives of college presidents and governors. Published in 2022.
Jim Grimsley's coming-of-age novel about Ronny, who grew up in a trailer alongside his mother and a string of stepfathers, kept his head down, earned good grades and won a scholarship to UNC in Chapel Hill. On campus he finds his first love and begins to sort out who he is. Subjects include gay college students, first loves and mothers and sons. Published by Levine Querido in 2022, 322 pages.
Scott Madry's recollections of the student tech crew at Memorial Hall, the University of North Carolina's auditorium in Chapel Hill, presented under the banner of the Carolina Union, the campus student union. Published in Chapel Hill in 2021.
Geeta Kapur's history of race at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, from the enslaved labor that built the campus through desegregation and the Black student protests that followed. Twelve chapters, with a foreword by William Barber II, move from the founding era and the Great Depression controversies to the state's response to integration and the turmoil of later decades; North Carolina Central University also figures. Published 2021 by Blair in Durham.
Tracy Deonn's young adult fantasy about an African American teenager who arrives as a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill after her mother's death and finds a secret society bound to Arthurian legend, with demons, magic and her own family's past. Published by Margaret K. McElderry Books in 2020, 501 pages, for ages 14 and up. Winner of the 2021 Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent.
Reviewed in Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books./Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (2020).
Sylvia D. Hoffert's article on Margaret Anna Burwell, 1810 to 1871, and the work of being a Presbyterian minister's wife in North Carolina from 1835 to 1857, the years of the female school she and her husband kept in Hillsborough. Pages 245 to 275 with illustrations, facsimiles and portraits, issued by the Office of Archives and History in Raleigh in 2019.
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