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Everyday Life & Traditions, Colonial and Regulator years: 13 dated entries from the full dataset. Back to the highlights →
- Colonial and Regulator years · 1000–1774
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Indigenous communities occupy the Eno River Valley
Excavations at the Hogue and Wall sites on the Eno near Hillsborough show farming communities growing corn, beans and squash, first in small scattered settlements (Haw River phase, about 1000–1400) and then in compact palisaded villages (Hillsboro phase, about 1400–1600). The Wall site village held perhaps 100 to 150 people in the mid-1400s.
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John Lawson reached Occaneechi Town on the Eno and wrote about its people and the trading path
John Lawson visited Occaneechi Town on the Eno.
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Virginia pays an interpreter to the Saponi and Occaneechi Indians
Charles Kimball petitioned the Virginia House of Burgesses for his allowance as interpreter to the Saponi and Occaneechi Indians. The petition shows the Occaneechi still named separately seventeen years after they left the Eno, and enough people speaking only their own language for an interpreter to be worth paying.
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The Saponi scatter between Virginia and the Catawba and a group settles in Granville County
After living briefly with the Catawba the Saponi returned to Virginia in 1733 and had to petition Lieutenant Governor Gooch for leave to resettle. Over the next twenty years they broke into small groups and moved south to the Catawba and back again, and by 1754 about twelve or fourteen Sapona men with as many women and children were living on Colonel William Eaton's land in Granville County, North Carolina.
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Creation of Orange County and Hillsborough
The General Assembly created Orange County in 1752 from parts of Granville, Johnston and Bladen counties. William Churton laid out its county seat in 1754 where trading paths crossed the Eno. The town was called Orange, then Corbin Town, then Childsburgh from 1759, and took the name Hillsborough in 1766.
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St. Matthew’s Parish is established
The act of the spring 1752 General Assembly session that created Orange County also made it the Anglican Parish of St. Matthew, with its own vestry. The parish's first church stood in Hillsborough by about 1768, but today's St. Matthew's Episcopal Church descends from a congregation reorganized in 1824.
Part of Creation of Orange County and Hillsborough, 1752–1766 · 3 events
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Moravians record a visit from Indians living at a fort near the Haw River
The Moravian settlers near present Winston-Salem recorded a visit in 1756 from Indians described as Cherokees from the fort near Haw River. The Haw was then in Orange County and a long way from any known Cherokee town, and the entry places an Indian settlement in the county decades after the Piedmont was supposed to be empty of them.
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New Hope Presbyterian Church is organized
New Hope Presbyterian Church, south of Hillsborough on the road to Chapel Hill, dates its establishment to 1756, when Scots-Irish settlers from the Hawfields area formed the congregation. Its early records burned in 1827, and D. I. Craig's 1891 history judged it was formally organized later, probably by Henry Patillo about 1765.
Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church
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St. Mary's congregation is established
Anglicans established St. Mary's Chapel about 1759 on land given by Thomas Holden, about seven miles northeast of Hillsborough, to serve northern Orange County. The congregation joined the Episcopal convention in 1819 and built the present brick chapel, consecrated in 1859; regular services ended in the early 1930s.
Subject: St. Mary’s Chapel
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New Hope congregation builds its first log church
Settlers still attached to the Hawfields congregation built a rough meetinghouse, which the church describes as log, about five miles south of Hillsborough and a quarter mile east of the road to Chapel Hill. An octagonal log church on higher ground replaced it, which the church dates to 1775.
Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church
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The Regulator crisis
Orange County farmers organized in 1766 against high fees, taxes and dishonest county officers, calling a meeting at Maddock's Mill that October. Protest turned violent at the Hillsborough court in September 1770 and ended with the Regulators' defeat at Alamance on May 16, 1771 and the hanging of six at Hillsborough on June 19.
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Farmers met at Maddock’s Mill to press the county’s officers to account for fees and taxes
Delegates from Orange County neighborhoods met at Maddock's Mill to ask their assemblymen and vestrymen how public money was spent. The officers refused to attend, and the meeting resolved that such conferences between voters and their representatives should be held every year.
Part of The Regulator crisis, 1766–1771 · 7 events
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How Orange County’s boundaries changed
Between 1771 and 1777 the legislature carved Guilford, Wake, Chatham and Caswell counties wholly or partly out of Orange, then took Alamance from its west in 1849 and Durham from its east in 1881. Records filed under Orange County before those dates can therefore concern places that now lie in other counties.
The other dated entries wait behind a subject, a place, an era, a month, or the All dated entries switch, and each storyline’s page carries its own component entries. Dates come from the sources named on the cards and from the index’s event pages; where sources disagree, the card follows the county records. Entries marked approximate or needing research say so on the card; the rest were checked against the source named on it. Each card’s “Correct this” link opens the contact form with the entry already named. Suggest an event →
Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated September 14, 2026.
