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• 1 media/30538.jpg 2020-04-24T07:02:58-07:00 1795, January 15 - University Opens 15 On January 15, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill opens its doors. However, no students would arrive until mid-February. David Ker (1758-1805), a Presbyterian minister from Northern Ireland, was the only professor teaching at the University and held the title of presiding professor, an equivalent to the president of the University. In April the faculty doubled with the addition of Charles Wilson Harris (1771-1804), a tutor of mathematics. plain 2022-07-21T12:17:37-07:00 01/15/1795 On January 15, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill opens its doors to students. However, no students would arrive until mid-February. David Ker (1758-1805) a Presbyterian minister from Northern Ireland, was the only professor teaching at the University and held the title of presiding professor, an equivalent to the president of the University. His duties were to “superintend all the studies & particularly those of the senior class... perform morning & evening prayer & examine the Students each Sunday evening on the questions previously given them on the general principles of Morality & religion... [and] deliver a lecture once in the week on the principles of Agriculture; Botany, Zoology, Mineralogy or Commerce” (Board of Trustees 1-2). In April the faculty doubled with the addition of Charles Wilson Harris (1771-1804), a tutor of mathematics.
  
  While students began arriving in 1795, William Richardson Davie (1756-1820) wrote the act that established the University in 1789. In 1793, construction for the first building, Old East, began. Old East, together with most of the first buildings on campus including the Old Chapel (Person Hall), Old West, the New Chapel (Gerrard Hall) and additions to Old East and Old West were constructed by enslaved Africans and their descendants (“Slavery and the Making of the University”). Moreover, enslaved peoples were responsible for much of the maintenance of the arduous early life of the University before electricity and running water, including serving many students who lived on campus. In addition to this forced labor, early funds used to build the university came from the sale of enslaved peoples who were defined by the law as escheats. According to Slavery and the Making of the University, when the General Assembly charted the university in 1789, they did so without allotting any direct appropriations instead granting “the Board of Trustees wo sources of income: monies owed the state for certain kinds of arrearages up to 1 January 1783 and ‘all the property that has heretofore or shall hereafter escheat to the state.’” This led to the University to acquire significant wealth as it inherited property over time. Because enslaved peoples were often included in such escheated property, the university gained wealth by selling the enslaved peoples they acquired through this process. 
  
  
  
  SOURCES
  Ballinger, Susan, et al. Slavery and the Making of the University, UNC Libraries, https://exhibits.lib.unc.edu/exhibits/show/slavery.
  Lindemann, Erika.  “The Early Faculty.”  True and Candid Compositions: The Lives and Writings of Antebellum Students at the University of North Carolina. 2005. Documenting the American South.  University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, https://docsouth.unc.edu/true/chapter/chp01-02/chp01-02.html.   
  
  Blackburn, George T., II. “Charles Wilson Harris.”  Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, edited by William S. Powell. U of North Carolina P, 1988. Rpt. in NCPedia, https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/harris-charles-wilson.
  
  University of North Carolina (1793-1962). Board of Trustees. “"Laws and Regulations for the University of North Carolina," August 2, 1795.” Pettigrew Family Papers (#592), transcribed by John Pettigrew, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. https://docsouth.unc.edu/true/mss01-02/mss01-02.html.