The original engrossed act to establish the University is in the manuscript laws for 1789
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Carolina in the Early Days
The original engrossed act to establish the University is in the manuscript
laws for 1789
 This silhouette, cut from white paper by Mrs. William Hooper (nee Frances Jones) soon after her arrival in Chapel Hill in 1814 as a bride of sixteen, shows Steward's hall on the left, a small bell tower, and Main, now South Building. |
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 Alexander Martin (1740-1807), first president of the Board of Trustees and a member of that body from 1790 until his death, was governor in 1784 and strongly urged the passage of the bill of that year to establish the University. he was also governor from 1789 until 1792 when he urged the policy of public support for the University. |
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At a meeting on 24 November 1790 the trustees appointed a seven-man committee "to form a device for the common seal of the University." The committee apparently was not diligent in carrying out its duties, so on July 20 of the next year it was abolished and James Hogg, Alfred Moore, and John Haywood were ordered to "cause a Seal to be made, with a such device thereon as to them may appear proper." By early September it was ready. "They chose the face of Apollo, a the God of Eloquence, and his emblem, the rising sun," Dr. Kemp Pl. Battle wrote, "as expressive of the dawn of higher education in our State." |
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 William Lenoir (1751-1839) was chosen to act as president pro-tem of the Board of Trustees at its first meeting in 1790. When he died at the age of eighty-eight he was the last surviving member of the original board. |
 Shortly after the death of President Joseph Caldwell in January 1835 a monument was erected to him on campus near the site of present New West. It was cut from sand-stone on a farm near the campus but the quality of the stone was soon discovered to be inadequate for the purpose. When President Polk was on campus in 1847 he and other former students of Caldwell, including Secretary of the Navy Josh Y. Mason who accompanied the president, proposed that the University alumni subscribe to a fund to provide a new monument. Funds came in slowly, but at commencement in 1858 an impressive ceremony was held to dedicate the new marble obelisk. For many years it was customary for the commencement procession to [pass the Caldwell Monument and men uncovered their heads as they passed. President Caldwell, Mrs. Caldwell, and Professor William Hooper, Mrs. Caldwell's son by her first marriage, are buried on that side of the monument. |
 President James K. Polk, a graduate of the class of 1818, returned to Chapel Hill in 1847 to attend commencement. For this occasion the trustees directed among other improvements that all of the buildings on campus "be rewashed with a coat of Hydraulic cement and the doors, windows, posts and sills be repainted." Miss Nancy Segur Hilliard, proprietor of the Eagle Hotel, had this annex constructed especially to receive President and Mrs. Polk and their party. The metal plate installed afterwards above the doorway, reads: "Erected to receive Pres. Polk when he revisited his Alma mater." The Eagle Hotel, which stood on the present site of Graham Memorial, was burned in November, 1921. |
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The first commencement got underway on 4 July 1798 with an examination of
the students at the University. The degree of Bachelor of Arts was awarded
on July 10 to seven graduates; three from Iredell County, and one each from
Rowan , Mecklenburg, New Hanover, and Wake Adam Springs, to whom this diploma
was awarded, was from Mecklenburg where he became a planter.
Benjamin Smith (1756-1826) was a member of the first Board of Trustees. His
generous gift of twenty thousand acres of land in Tennessee for the benefit
of the University was made on 18 December 1789, the same day that the General
Assembly passed an act to raise a building fund for the University. Smith
served as a member of the Board of Trustees from 1789 until 1824 and was president
in 1810.
This view of the campus made in our soon after 1861 shows the newly completed
New East and New West and the belfry atop South Building which was completed
in September 1861.
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