Building Memorial Hall, 1883–1885

In the chronology

Events in this storyline, in date order. See these 16 dated events in the chronology →

1. 1883 The state supplies prison-made brick for Memorial Hall Governor Jarvis offered the building committee convict labor to make brick at Chapel Hill, or brick from the State Prison delivered at its gate with the university paying the freight. After inspecting the penitentiary brick the committee chose it, and Jarvis had it shipped by rail shortly before the cornerstone was laid on September 25, 1883. In June 1885 the state's bill for the brick was the one building debt still unpaid. People: Thomas Jordan Jarvis, Paul C. CameronSearch the index · University of North Carolina, Memorial Hall Inaugural Proceedings, Wednesday, June 3, 1885 (1885), scan p. 9 · Also: Orange County Observer (Hillsborough), August 25, 1883, p. 3
2. June 1883 Governor Jarvis promises a commencement crowd a hall large enough for all With Gerrard Hall overflowing at the 1883 commencement, President Kemp Battle asked Governor Thomas J. Jarvis to promise a bigger building, and Jarvis made the promise to applause. He backed the plan at the next trustees meeting and offered bricks from the state penitentiary on easy terms, and the project became Memorial Hall. People: Kemp Plummer BattleSearch the index · Documenting the American South: Kemp P. Battle, History of the University of North Carolina, vol. II (1912), p. 315
3. June 1883 Trustees vote to raise a monument to David L. Swain beside Caldwell's At the June 1883 commencement a well-attended board of trustees adopted a resolution asking for an alumni committee to collect money for a monument to the late president David L. Swain, to stand near the Caldwell monument on the campus. Governor Thomas J. Jarvis, then board president, named the committee, and within weeks the plan turned into Memorial Hall. People: Thomas Jordan JarvisSearch the index · University of North Carolina, Memorial Hall Inaugural Proceedings, Wednesday, June 3, 1885 (1885), scan p. 8
4. July 1883 Governor Jarvis has the trustees build a hall in place of a Swain obelisk At a trustees' meeting in Raleigh in July 1883, Governor Thomas J. Jarvis proposed that the board and the alumni pool their efforts on a large hall at Chapel Hill instead of an obelisk to Swain. The board agreed, on condition that the alumni not be bound to any fixed sum, and Jarvis wrote the ordinance ordering what was first called Swain Memorial Hall. People: David L. SwainSearch the index · University of North Carolina, Memorial Hall Inaugural Proceedings, Wednesday, June 3, 1885 (1885), scan p. 9
5. 1883 to 1885 Memorial Hall rises at UNC under Paul C. Cameron's building committee The cornerstone of Swain Memorial Hall was laid on September 25, 1883, and the hall was dedicated on June 3, 1885, honoring President David L. Swain, faculty and the university's Confederate dead. Paul C. Cameron, president of the Alumni Association and chairman of the building committee, raised money for it and gave money himself. People: Kemp Plummer Battle, David L. Swain, Thomas Jordan JarvisSearch the index · UNC Libraries: Names in Brick and Stone, Memorial Hall
6. autumn 1883 Work on Memorial Hall stops for the winter after a cost miscalculation Battle told the students that construction of Memorial Hall would pause over the winter because the architect had underestimated the cost and the treasury needed refilling. Builders also advised letting the green roof timbers dry under cover before work resumed in the spring. People: Kemp Plummer BattleSearch the index · Kemp P. Battle, An Address on the History of the Buildings of the University of North Carolina (1883), scan p. 18
7. early 1884 Battle and Winston canvass the state for Memorial Hall tablets With work on Memorial Hall stopped over the winter of 1883-84 because money from the trustees and alumni had dried up, the building committee decided to ask families of distinguished men tied to the university to pay for white marble memorial tablets on the hall's walls. President Kemp P. Battle and Professor George T. Winston canvassed the state in person and by letter and signed up ninety-eight tablets. By late January 1884 families such as the Moreheads had subscribed, and work was to resume in March. People: George Tayloe WinstonSearch the index · University of North Carolina, Memorial Hall Inaugural Proceedings, Wednesday, June 3, 1885 (1885), scan p. 10 · Also: Orange County Observer (Hillsborough), February 2, 1884, p. 2
8. 1884 Carpenter John Daugherty finishes Memorial Hall after architect Samuel Sloan dies Samuel Sloan, the hall's architect, fell ill from exposure in the great heat of summer 1884 and died at a critical stage of the work. His chief carpenter, John Daugherty of Philadelphia, carried the building to completion, and Captain Henry Richards, the brick mason named in August 1883 to superintend the building, set every memorial tablet himself without metal fastenings.Search the index · University of North Carolina, Memorial Hall Inaugural Proceedings, Wednesday, June 3, 1885 (1885), scan p. 20 · Also: Orange County Observer (Hillsborough), August 25, 1883, p. 3
9. by June 1885 A Memorial Hall tablet names the eleven donors of the university's land The trustees placed a tablet in Memorial Hall naming the eleven Orange County landowners whose gifts of land settled the university and the village at Chapel Hill. Cameron called them the sturdy Orange farmers who fixed the seat of the institution. People: Christopher Barbee, Edmund Jones, Matthew McCauley, William McCauley, Mark MorganUniversity of North Carolina, Memorial Hall Inaugural Proceedings, Wednesday, June 3, 1885 (1885), scan p. 15
10. by June 1885 A woman with no family tie to Davie pays for his Memorial Hall tablet William R. Davie's tablet in Memorial Hall was given by a woman unrelated to him, out of admiration for his work as the university's leading founding trustee. Cameron added that Davie's portrait then hung in the Dialectic Society's hall.Search the index · University of North Carolina, Memorial Hall Inaugural Proceedings, Wednesday, June 3, 1885 (1885), scan p. 16
11. by June 1885 Memorial Hall tablets list the university's Confederate dead The trustees set aside a place in Memorial Hall, at their own expense, for four tablets ten feet long listing about 260 alumni who died in Confederate service. The roll was headed by Leonidas Polk, Episcopal bishop of Louisiana and Confederate lieutenant general, the oldest alumnus killed in the war. A March 1884 newspaper report of the plans expected two tablets of about nine feet behind the rostrum; Cameron's 1885 address describes four. People: Leonidas PolkSearch the index · University of North Carolina, Memorial Hall Inaugural Proceedings, Wednesday, June 3, 1885 (1885), scan p. 10 · Also: Orange County Observer (Hillsborough), March 15, 1884, p. 2
12. by June 1885 Trustees pay for Memorial Hall tablets to Caldwell, Swain, Mitchell and Phillips Besides the subscribed tablets, the trustees put up tablets at their own cost to presidents Joseph Caldwell and David L. Swain and professors Elisha Mitchell and James Phillips, in tribute to the long-serving officers. Governor Scales told the dedication crowd that the hall, first meant as Swain's memorial alone, had been redesigned so these names stood beside his. People: David L. Swain, Elisha Mitchell, James PhillipsSearch the index · University of North Carolina, Memorial Hall Inaugural Proceedings, Wednesday, June 3, 1885 (1885), scan p. 10