"This town [Chapel Hill] being the only seat of learning immediately under the patronage of the public, possessing the advantages of a central situation, on some of the most public roads in the state, in a plentiful country and excelled by few places in the world, either for beauty of situation or salubrity of air, promises, with all moral certainty, to be a place of growing and permanent importance."

-- William Richardson Davie, "Father of the University," 1793

 

Source: William D. Snider, Light on the Hill: A History of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992, p. 16.

Image source: Kemp P. Battle, History of the University of North Carolina, Volume I. Raleigh: Edwards & Broughton, 1907. Frontispiece. Scanned by Documenting the American South.