University of North Carolina Chapel Hill - Yackety Yack Yearbook (Chapel Hill, NC)

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The Unwersity Site to the choice was the legislative mandate that the site of the University shall not be located within five miles of the seat of government or any of the places of holding the courts of law or equity. This last provision was probably due to the drunkenness and rowdyism always attendant upon sessions of court. Two possible places were considered: Haywood, on the fork of Haw River; and New Hope Chapel Hill. The farmers around the latter location made the most favorable offers and the commissioners so reported to the trustees. The trustees, after having accepted this report, appointed a committee with Davie as its head to tlefinitely locate the grounds and mark out the build- ing sites of the expected towni of Chapel Hill. This name was taken from the chapel or church on the hill, rumored to have been located under the great oaks just west of the Peabody Building. This chapel was a monument to the unsuccessful attempt of the Church of England to establish a church in this country. The story of how Davie and his associates chose the exact spot is too famihar to repeat. Davie, however, had excellent reasons for his choice. The location was ideal. Just where the land slopes rapidly to the bottom of the prehistoric sea, the drainage is perfect. Two streams, one on ' ' ' •— ' ' : ' --• each side of the village, guarantee this. The eleva- THE DAVIE POPLAR (jqj jg 503 feet above the sea. The country is rolling and well wooded. Davie himself in his report describes the water. There is nothing more remarkable in this extraordinary place than the abundance of springs of the purest and finest water, which l)urst from the sides of the ridge, and which have been the subjects of admiration both for hunters and for trav- elers ever since the discovery and settlement of this part of the country. Science has reduced this rhetoric and tradition to the followdng wet, cool, highly grat- ifying facts. The college well analyzes 132 parts of solid matter to each million parts ; loss on ig-nition 32, hardness 40, chlorine 17.5, oxygen consuming capac- ity 1.36, nitrogen as nitrites 0, as nitrates 2.05, ammonia as free .028, albuminoid .093. Aside from the advantageous health conditions, the surrounding country affords many points of mterest from which are gathered mjTiad stories, a large T ' . -:,■

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The University Site CHAPEL HILL and vicinity has been an interesting place since the world began. Several ages ago, when dodoes were mere casualties, Piney Pros- pect (a corruption of Point Prospect) was a headland jutting out into the bay that stretched from Georgia to Maine. Three miles to the west is an innocent looking hillside cow pasture that once bellowed forth lava and ashes. There is a black streak of very brittle rock that crosses the Durham road at the top of the hill the other side of the first bridge going toward Durham, that marks the pres- ence of a once dangerous fissure in the volcanic days of geologic youth. The first inhabitants were, naturally, Lidians, and a very sorry lot they were too. From the numerous relics, it is plain that they were a rougher and less advanced tribe than their neighbors. The almost total absence of tools of culti- vation seems to indicate that they depended almost entirely on hunting and fishing as a means of livelihood. Arrow heads are a common find on the athletic field; so it is plain that the Indians also recognized the value of this location as a place to teach the young how to fight. These Indians disappeared long before the arrival of the whites, because they were probablj ' too weak to resist the competition of their more advanced neighbors. A majority of the first white settlers of Orange County were of plain, honest, unambitious stock, who had here sought peace from the Indian wars and worries of Pennsylvania. A large percentage of the present inhabitants of this vicinity are the descendants of these people. Practically every name on a certain petition sent to the Oeneral Assembly from this neighborhood some years before the Revo- lutionary War is a familiar Chapel Hill name today. Most of them have represent- atives present in large numbers. Samples are Pendergraph, Lloyd, Blackwood, Pope, Clark, and Neville. These people are largely farmers of the conventional easy-going type. The soil is very poor, being in the main decayed lava and old sea bottom, but it is well drained, there being no swamps or low, wet places of any kind. On November 1, 1792, six men, commissioners from the trustees of the as yet unborn University of North Carolina, set out to choose a site for the institution. Their instructions were to take Cyprett ' s Bridge as a center and to select any location they saw fit within a fifteen-mile radius of this spot. The only restriction

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The University Site IX BATTLE PARK number of which are grouped around Piney Prospect. On the left of the path leading from the east gate to the cemetery through Battle ' s Park, a careful searcher can find a few scattered brick bats, all that remains of the first college astronomical observatory in America. It was erected in 1831 by President Caldwell at his own expense. It had a short exist- ence of seven years, poor material followed by decay being responsible for its aban- donment in 1838. Passing on, one approaches Piney Prospect itself, which is marked by a cairn of rocks. Dr. Kemp P. Battle, the be- loved Old Pres., started the pile by heaping up a small l e- ginning, and then he placed a placard requesting that each pilgrim make his contriljution. The collection has now grown to be about ten feet square and five feet high. It furnishes an excellent opportunity to view miles and miles of the old sea bottom, now farm land and wooded hill. Beside the path, about a hundred feet west of the promonotory, lies a smooth rounded stone protruding about eighteen inches out of the soil. This rock is streaked with iron rust; which fact has given color to the famous Dromgoole myth. Dromgoole was a Virginian who came to enter the Uni- T-i versify in 1831, but after quar- gyy.- •■•■■ XtuMtiiw • ir i ' ' i HI rcling with a member of the faculty, he refused to proceed with his examinations and dis- appeared from Chapel Hill. He was never heard of again after that. The myth runs that he and a rival quarreled over Dromgoole ' s sweetheart. Miss Fannie. A challenge and a duel followed. Dramatically the duel took place in the neighborhood of the favorite retreat of the lovers. Miss Fannie, hearing of the quarrel, rushed to the scene of the DROMGOOL