Chapel Hill

Sister cities

• Saratov
• Puerto Baquerizo Moreno

History

The area was the home place of early settler William Barbee of Middlesex County, Virginia, whose 1753 grant of 585 acres on the north and south side of "Lick Branch" from John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville was the first of two land grants in what is now the Chapel Hill-Durham area. Though William Barbee died shortly after settling there in 1758, one of his eight children, Christopher Barbee, became an important contributor to his father's adopted community and to the fledgling University of North Carolina. In 1792, he offered the trustees of UNC 221 acres on which the university is now built, making him the university's largest donor. to serve the University of North Carolina and developed around it. The town was chartered in 1851, and its main street, Franklin Street, was named in memory of Benjamin Franklin. Of Chapel Hill during slavery, Kemp Plummer Battle wrote, The government of the village of Chapel Hill was primitive. All white males between 21 and 50 years of age were distributed into classes and in turn patrolled the streets at night. Slaves were liable to a whipping of ten lashes, or a fine of one dollar, for being absent from home without a written permit from the owner. Nor could a slave hire his own time. Four in ten Chapel Hillians were enslaved at the start of the Civil War, and about half of the town was Black. In April 1865, as the war ended, the 9th Michigan Cavalry rode into Chapel Hill and occupied the university and the town for more than two weeks. In 1869, in the lead-up to the Kirk-Holden War, Governor William Holden sent a detective into Chapel Hill to investigate the presence of the Ku Klux Klan, whose members had been riding through Chapel Hill and nearby towns committing crimes and terrorizing the populace. Once in Chapel Hill, the…

Geography

Chapel Hill is located in the southeast corner of Orange County, with a small part extending east into Durham County. It is bounded on the west by the town of Carrboro and on the northeast by the city of Durham. However, most of Chapel Hill's borders are adjacent to unincorporated portions of Orange and Durham Counties rather than shared with another municipality. According to the United States Census Bureau, it has a total area of , of which is land and (0.69%) is water. |date=July 2014 }}

Race & ethnicity

Most-observed species

• Northern Cardinal

  Cardinalis cardinalis (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  73,758
• Carolina Wren

  Thryothorus ludovicianus (Latham, 1790) · Aves
  67,650
• Carolina Chickadee

  Poecile carolinensis (Audubon, 1834) · Aves
  61,037
• Tufted Titmouse

  Baeolophus bicolor (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  61,036
• Downy Woodpecker

  Dryobates pubescens (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  48,611
• Eastern Bluebird

  Sialia sialis (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  48,407
• Red-bellied Woodpecker

  Melanerpes carolinus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  48,195
• American Crow

  Corvus brachyrhynchos C.L.Brehm, 1822 · Aves
  47,581

Largest nearby schools

• Chapel Hill High
  High · Chapel Hill · 1,597 students · 16.1:1 ratio
• East Chapel Hill High
  High · Chapel Hill · 1,447 students · 16.1:1 ratio
• Cedar Ridge High
  High · Hillsborough · 1,104 students · 17.8:1 ratio
• Carrboro High
  High · Carrboro · 870 students · 15.5:1 ratio
• Smith Middle
  Middle · Chapel Hill · 768 students · 13:1 ratio
• McDougle Middle
  Middle · Chapel Hill · 752 students · 11.9:1 ratio
• Culbreth Middle
  Middle · Chapel Hill · 656 students · 13.1:1 ratio
• A L Stanback Middle
  Middle · Hillsborough · 646 students · 14.4:1 ratio

Most recent

• M 2.5 — 2019-03-26
  8 km E of Archdale, North Carolina