It’s in her DNA

New Year, New Faces: As UNC-Chapel Hill prepares to begin a new fall semester, we introduce you to some of the new Tar Heels who will be looking to innovate, educate, serve – and change the world.

Like many Tar Heel offspring, first-year student Ann Berry Schrimsher of Charlotte had a pretty good idea of where she’d be going to college. But her Carolina legacy stretches back much further than most, all the way back to the first graduating class in 1798.

Her multiple-greats-grandfather was Edwin Jay Osborne, Carolina’s first valedictorian. And his father, Adlai Osborne, a lawyer and clerk of court in Salisbury and a 1768 graduate of what’s now called Princeton University, was on Carolina’s founding Board of Trustees.

“My grandmother is very into our ancestry, and she always knew that we were descended from someone in the first graduating class at Chapel Hill,” said Schrimsher, a Myers Park graduate. “But we didn’t know that he was the valedictorian until after I was admitted.”

Edwin Jay Osborne and his brother Alexander both graduated in 1798 and both were active members of the University’s first debating society. Edwin was also a founding member of the Philanthropic Society and was listed on the honor roll for several of his compositions, including “The Uses of Geometry,” “Self Government,” “The Uses of the Passions” and “The Distinction Between Resentment and Revenge.”

Carolina has always prided itself on being affordable, never more so than at its beginnings. The prices for tuition were as follows, according to History of the University of North Carolina by Kemp Plummer Battle:

• For Reading, Writing, Arithmetic and Bookkeeping, $8 per annum.
• For Latin, Greek, French, English Grammar, Geography, History and Belles Lettres, $12.50 per annum.
• Geometry with practical branches, Astronomy, Natural Philosophy, Moral Philosophy, Chemistry and the principles of Agriculture, $15.00 per annum

Alexander Osborne became a physician, but Edwin followed in his father’s footsteps as a lawyer, first in Wilmington and then in Salisbury. “He was a man of many gifts and varied acquirements. He was distinguished as a fine conversationalist,” according to History of North Carolina: North Carolina Biography,

Edwin and his wife, Harriet Walker Osborne, had four children, the best known being their son, James Walker Osborne, a Carolina graduate in 1830. A lawyer, politician and businessman, James was appointed superintendent of the U.S. Mint in Charlotte by President Millard Fillmore and also served as a superior court judge and state delegate.

Law and medicine have been important careers on both sides of Schrimsher’s family tree. Though she traces her roots to Edwin Jay Osborne through the side of her mother (Margaret Schrimsher), her father (Scott Schrimsher) went to Carolina and became a lawyer, like his father before him. Schrimsher’s maternal grandfather also graduated from Carolina and became an obstetrician. “He went to Duke Medical School, but he always cheers for the Tar Heels,” she said.

The first year student is not being pressured to go into either law or medicine, she said. An active swimmer, Schrimsher is thinking about majoring in exercise and sport science. “My dad wants me to kind of explore everything,” Schrimsher said. “He says I should have fun but also don’t skip classes.”

Schrimsher has spent the summer swimming on her club team, the Badfish Aquatics, and completing her first triathlon at Oak Island, where she won the novice division. Now she is packing up to move into her room in Horton Residence Hall.

When she gets to campus, she’ll see Old East, where her ancestor Edwin Jay Osborne and his classmates lived and studied. She may even check out the obelisk outside Person Hall, a memorial to the founding trustees, including her ancestor Adlai Osborne.

And of course she’ll be taking that good luck sip from the Old Well on the first day of classes, just like her dad and scores of aunts and uncles.

“I’m ready to continue the legacy,” she said.