what new england custom did DR mitchell bring to chapel hill
From its earliest days the university depended on the labor of individuals it termed "college servants." It is difficult to document the lives of these servants, only the items in this section provide some glimpses of them.
The use of the term servant does not mean that the higher servants were non slaves, because antebellum southerners oftentimes referred to their household slaves as servants and to the slaves who worked in their yards, gardens, and fields as hands. Many, if not all, of the college servants who worked for the academy prior to 1863 were slaves.
Nosotros have found nothing to signal that the university ever bought slaves. Nonetheless, it was a common practice for slaveholders to "hire out" their slaves to perform services for others. In this department is an item documenting two instances in which the university paid local citizens for the rent of slaves to piece of work equally higher servants.
Arthur Stanley Link in hisHistory of the Buildings at the University of North Carolina states that "it had been the custom for some of the wealthier students . . . to bring with them to college their personal slaves." This exercise was plainly prevalent enough that the trustees in 1845 adopted an ordinance declaring that "no servant except the regular higher servants shall exist employed by the students to perform any of the ordinary duties of college servants."
Among the ordinary duties of the college servants were getting upwardly before daylight and kindling fires in the students' rooms as well every bit keeping the dormitories and recitation halls clean. Students were charged a fee for retainer hire, merely it seems to have been permissible to pay extra for services across the servants' ordinary duties. According to Kemp P. Battle in his History of the University of N Carolina, "Few students blackened their own boots or carried their ain parcels. The profits of such jobs went to the servants."
three December 1844. Elisha Mitchell to David L. Swain.
Professor Mitchell writes to President Young man proposing a blind ditch to convey h2o away from the foundation of Southward Building. He says "the college hands" could dig it in a week.
1848. "Account of Expenditures for the comeback of the Higher grounds."
This account, in Elisha Mitchell'due south handwriting, includes "Wages lath clothing Etc of Sim Fred" and "Wages of Servant Edmund."
22 October 1851. David Fifty. Swain to Charles Manly.
President Fellow suggests to Manly, secretary-treasurer of the Lath of Trustees, that the college servants exist given the task of cutting "old, decayed and decaying trees from our ain lands" in society to supply the students with firewood.
"rent Wilson Swain every bit College servant"
4 September 1875. Volume one:6.
"Mr. Mickle was authorized to rent Wilson Swain [subsequently Caldwell] as College
servant at $15 per month" [first meeting after the reopening of the university].
"Wilson Caldwell ... employed to work in the campus"
one June 1885. Volume one:6.
"On motility of Prof. Holmes Wilson Caldwell is to exist employed to work in the
campus until the 1st of Sept."
Wilson Caldwell's Grave
Inscription on the Commencement Caldwell Monument, 1936.
After the Class of 1891 bundled to have the old Caldwell Monument placed over the grave of Wilson Caldwell, they placed a marble rock at its base with the inscription seen hither. The inscription pays tribute not but to Wilson Caldwell but to longtime higher servants November Caldwell (Wilson'south father), David Barham, and Henry Smith. Image from the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives.
30 October 1885. Book 1:7.
"Committee on arranging duties of servants reported that the dormitories are now divided equally and allotted to Charles, Eli & Bill. John assigned Profs. Venable & Holmes' lecture rooms and Laboratories and the Gymnasium. Charles, in add-on to dormitories, assigned Pres[iden]t's lecture room and reading room & Library and the other recitation rooms divided between Eli & Bill. Committee on Servants requested to brand arrangements for the emptying of the slops & c."
"caput higher servant"
8 December 1885. Book 1:7.
"Pres[iden]t reported that Wilson Caldwell had been employed every bit head college servant at $20.00 per calendar month."
Battle, Kemp P.Sketch of the Life and Character of Wilson Caldwell. Chapel Hill, NC: Academy Printing Co. Impress., 1895.
Wilson Caldwell was built-in into slavery just lived to feel the Civil War, emancipation, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow. He was the son of November Caldwell, who had been President Joseph Caldwell's coachman, and Rosa Burgess, a slave of President Young man. In 1853, when he was twelve years old, he began working for Thomas Paxton, the English gardener who had been hired to beautify the campus. After about 8 years, according to Battle, "he was promoted to exist a waiter" in the laboratories, dormitories, and lecture halls. He held this position until 1869, when the new Board of Trustees cut his wages. Resigning in "disgust," he obtained a position as head of "a costless school for colored children in Chapel Hill." When the academy reopened in 1875 he "was offered and accustomed his former position, with the duties and responsibilities, although non with the name, of janitor." In 1884 he left the university briefly and moved to Durham, hoping to improve his wages. But he came dorsum to Chapel Hill, informing Battle that "Durham is not a identify for a literary homo." (North Carolina Collection, CpB C145b).
Source: https://exhibits.lib.unc.edu/exhibits/show/slavery/college_servants
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