Storyline
How the University finished its first chapel and its Main Building, later South Building: Thomas Person’s gift and Person Hall, Charles Gerrard’s Tennessee lands, the Masonic cornerstone of 1798, the roofless walls, the lotteries, William Polk’s appeal, Joseph Caldwell’s subscription tours and the students’ move in 1814.
In briefFinishing the University's first chapel and its Main Building took private gifts, lotteries and years of waiting. Thomas Person's $1,050 completed the chapel, named Person Hall, in 1798. That year Charles Gerrard's bequest of Tennessee land emboldened the trustees to lay the cornerstone of the Main Building, but its walls stood roofless for years for want of money. Lotteries in 1801 and 1802, William Polk's appeal of 1803 and Joseph Caldwell's subscription tours of 1809 and 1811 paid for the work, and students moved into the building, later South Building, in 1814.
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About 1796 trustee Thomas Person gave $1,050 to finish the chapel then under construction at Chapel Hill; the trustees thanked him for his liberality, and the building, completed in 1798, was named Person Hall. In 1798 Charles Gerrard, a Revolutionary lieutenant living in Edgecombe County, bequeathed the University his 2,560-acre service tract on the Cumberland River below Nashville, asking that it stay University property forever, along with warrants for 11,364 more acres. The gift emboldened the trustees to begin the Main Building, and on April 14, 1798 a special Grand Lodge of Masons met at the University to lay its cornerstone. The walls rose a story and a half and then stood roofless for years for want of money.
The legislature of 1801 let the trustees raise up to $4,000 by lotteries. Two drawings, the first of 1,500 five-dollar tickets and the second in 1802, cleared $5,080.81, though agents were slow to account for tickets. With that not enough, board president William Polk issued an appeal in February 1803 over the roofless walls and nearly empty library shelves; the drive raised $1,664 in cash, and Polk gathered gifts from about fifty donors and gave $100 himself. William Norwood of Hillsborough gave $100 toward finishing the building that year. Subscriptions of about $8,220 that Joseph Caldwell gathered on tours of the state in 1809 and 1811 let contractor John Close finish it. William Watson came to Chapel Hill in 1813 to work on the building and went into the lumber business with William Barbee; their yard supplied much of the lumber used in village building. Students moved into the Main Building, later South Building, in 1814.
Events in this storyline, in date order. See these 8 dated events in the chronology →
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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.
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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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