gifted
The Carolina First Campaign was,
in the words used to describe the largest single donation,
‘a transformative event’ in the University’s life.
by David E. Brown ’ 75
the people who conceived this
University were way into their
grand plans before they had
any idea how they’d pay for
them. The idea of a college was in the
constitution of 1776, the bill approved in
’ 89. In the two long years that followed,
the trustees threw lines in every direction
and pulled them in empty.
In 1791, William Richardson Davie
stood before the N.C. House of Commons and pleaded passionately for a loan
to put up the first buildings. The $10,000
he wrung from the legislature ended up
being a gift.
Although that was public money, the
word “gift” is more appropriate to UNC’s
infant survival and to its maturation. Davie
and his posse may have lounged in
McCorkle Place, satisfied they’d found just
the spot for a campus — but it wasn’t
theirs. Every square foot from Pittsboro
Street to Ridge Road, from Mason Farm
Road to Rosemary Street was donated by
private owners. Imagine South Building
standing a floor and a half tall with no
roof for 15 years for lack of money. It did,
and lottery participants and private donors
rescued it.
Many if not most of the original
believers in the idea of a university gave
some of their own money. For most of the
first century, the state’s share came not
from state appropriations but from individuals who were in arrears to the state,
and from escheats, or land that reverted to
the state when it went unclaimed. In
1879, with the University broke and not
making it on tuition alone, President
Kemp Plummer Battle (class of 1849)
decided to go after state money —
“Strange to say no annual appropriation
had ever been asked for,” he later wrote in
his history of UNC — but in that case,
