Great Large Pony Hunter Prospect

The area was the home place of early settler William Barbee of Middlesex County, Virginia, whose 1753 grant of 585 acres 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, 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. Chapel Hill has developed along a hill; the crest was the original site of a small Anglican " chapel of ease", built in 1752, known as New Hope Chapel. The Carolina Inn now occupies this site. In 1819, the town was founded to serve the University of North Carolina and developed around it.