“But I hope better things, and, judging from the past of the future, I flatter myself that the rays of knowledge, with virtue attendant, diverging from Chapel Hill, shall illumine not only the state of North-Carolina, but the utmost limits of the United States.”

-- Willie Jones, speaker at the first graduation exercises at the University of North Carolina, 1798

 

Source: “An Account of the Commencement of 1798, July 23 1798, North Carolina Journal; in R.D.W. Connor, A Documentary History of the University of North Carolina: 1776-1799. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1953.