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Colonial and Regulator years, every dated entry: 49 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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Occaneechi Town occupation on the Eno
The Fredricks archaeological site near Hillsborough is associated with Occaneechi Town and the Fredricks phase.
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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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Occaneechi Town on the Eno is largely abandoned
By 1713, when the Occaneechi signed a peace treaty with Virginia at Williamsburg, their town on the Eno near present-day Hillsborough was almost empty. They moved north to Fort Christanna in Virginia, and some Saponi families later resettled in North Carolina.
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Herman Husband, the Regulators’ pamphleteer, was born
Herman Husband was born in Cecil County, Maryland, to an Anglican family and later became a Quaker. He settled at Sandy Creek, then in Orange County and now in Randolph County, where he reprinted and circulated political pamphlets and became a leading voice of the protest against county officers.
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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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Settlers from Pennsylvania and Virginia come down the Great Wagon Road into the Haw and Eno country
From the 1740s families moving south from Pennsylvania, Maryland and western Virginia along the Great Wagon Road took up land in the Piedmont backcountry that became Orange County in 1752. Quaker families reached the Cane Creek country by this route, and German and Scotch-Irish families entered the colony the same way.
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William Hooper, signer of the Declaration and a Hillsborough resident, was born
William Hooper was born in Boston; he later lived in Hillsborough.
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The Granville District land office grants the land that became Orange County
The country on the Eno, Haw and Little River lay inside Earl Granville's one eighth share of Carolina, set off in 1742 and run from Edenton through agents including Francis Corbin and Thomas Child. Grants of unclaimed land were made from 1748 until Granville's death in 1763, and William Churton was the surveyor who mapped much of the district.
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The Great Trading Path across the Eno becomes the settlers' wagon road
The Indian route that Virginia traders had used since the 1670s crossed the Flat and Little rivers, forded the Eno at the place where the county town was laid out, and crossed the Haw near Swepsonville. After colonists reached the Piedmont in the mid eighteenth century the path was widened into a wagon road, and it is drawn on the colonial maps of Moseley, Collet and Mouzon.
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Quakers set up Cane Creek Monthly Meeting in the country that became Orange County
About thirty Quaker families from Pennsylvania had settled near Cane Creek by 1751. Abigail Pike and Rachel Wright traveled 200 miles to the Perquimans County quarterly meeting for authority to organize, and the first monthly meeting was held on October 7, 1751. It is the oldest Quaker meeting in the North Carolina Piedmont.
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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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Orange County is created
The colonial assembly formed Orange County from portions of Bladen, Granville, and Johnston counties. Its original boundaries were far larger than those of present-day Orange County.
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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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Richard Caswell serves as the first clerk of the Orange County court
Caswell, a deputy clerk in Johnston County, became the first clerk of the court of the newly formed Orange County. He held the post only briefly and resigned on being appointed high sheriff of Johnston.
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Hillsborough is laid out
William Churton laid out a town and common on a 400-acre tract on the north side of the Eno that was granted to him in 1754, where the trading path crossed the river. Known as Corbinton by 1755, it was incorporated as Childsburg by an act of the 1759–60 session and renamed Hillsborough in 1766.
Part of Creation of Orange County and Hillsborough, 1752–1766 · 3 events
People: William Churton
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Eno Presbyterian congregation organizes
The congregation first worshiped near the river, southeast of Cedar Grove.
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Hugh McAden preaches to the Eno and Hawfields settlements
The traveling Presbyterian licentiate Hugh McAden preached to the Eno settlement on the second Sabbath of August 1755, lodging at John Anderson's house, and rode on to preach at the Hawfields on the fourth Sabbath. His journal is the earliest surviving description of either settlement.
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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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The Few family settles on the Eno with four enslaved people and builds a saw and grist mill
William Few brought his family from Maryland in the fall of 1758 to 640 acres bought from James Taylor, lying on both sides of the Eno about seven miles east of the county town. Four enslaved people came with them, and Few and his brother James built a saw and grist mill on the river.
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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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The town on the Eno is incorporated as Childsburg
The town William Churton had laid out in 1754 as Corbin Town or Corbinton was incorporated by act of assembly in 1759 as Childsburg, named for Thomas Child, the colony's attorney general. It was renamed Hillsborough in 1766.
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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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Abner Nash settles briefly in Hillsborough and builds the town's first mill on the Eno
The Virginia lawyer Abner Nash moved to Hillsborough, then called Childsburgh, in 1762 or early 1763 with his younger brother Francis. He bought town lots, dammed the Eno River and built the town's first mill before moving to Halifax by 1764.
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The county town becomes a courthouse village of stores, ordinaries and public buildings
William Few recalled that in 1764 the town was the metropolis of the county, where the courts were held and all public business done, a village of thirty or forty inhabitants with two or three small stores and two or three ordinary taverns, and that Scottish merchants then opened stores of European goods and a church, courthouse and jail were built. Claude Joseph Sauthier's 1768 plan of the town marks Canby's Ordinary, Nunn's Ordinary, McNair's Store, the market house, the first courthouse and the second jail.
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Childsburgh is renamed Hillsborough
Childsburgh was renamed Hillsborough in honor of Wills Hill, Earl of Hillsborough.
Part of Creation of Orange County and Hillsborough, 1752–1766 · 3 events
People: Wills Hill, Earl of Hillsborough
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The Regulator movement organizes in Orange County
Orange County farmers first organized in 1766 to question county officers about taxes and fees, a Sandy Creek effort that Herman Husband led and that lapsed in 1767. In early 1768 a new association, soon called the Regulation, pledged to pay no taxes or fees beyond what the law allowed.
Part of The Regulator crisis, 1766–1771 · 7 events
People: Herman Husband · Edmund Fanning · William Tryon
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Town lot owners are required to build, and taxable men to work the streets
Building requirements enacted in 1766 gave the purchaser of a town lot two years to put up a brick, stone or frame house at least twenty feet long, sixteen feet wide and nine feet pitch in the clear, with a brick or stone chimney. A separate ordinance made all taxable males liable for street service under a penalty of two shillings eight pence for each day neglected.
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Orange County's first Regulator paper invokes the Stamp Act resistance
An Orange County notice of August 1766, later called Regulators' Advertisement No. 1, praised the Sons of Liberty for resisting the Stamp Act and asked each neighborhood to send men to a meeting at Maddock's Mill to question local officers.
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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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Hillsborough is made the seat of a superior court district
An act dividing the province into six districts and establishing a superior court of justice in each set the court for the District of Hillsborough at Hillsborough, for the counties of Orange and Granville, on the twenty second day of March and September, each term to run ten days. Nash records that no superior court sat at Hillsboro until March 1768, the town having belonged first to the Halifax and then to the Salisbury district.
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Orange is the most populous county in the province
In 1767 Orange County still ran over land later taken into Wake, Chatham, Guilford, Caswell, Person, Randolph, Rockingham, Alamance and Durham, and had the largest population of any county in North Carolina. Successive divisions cut it to about 7,560 people by 1779.
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Thomas Hart buys Joseph Maddock's mill on the Eno
Joseph Maddock, a Quaker who had run the grist mill on the Eno west of Hillsborough since 1755, sold it to Thomas Hart, a friend of Governor William Tryon, who built it up with a sawmill, oil mill, fulling mill, distillery, tannery and other works. This is the mill, known as Hart's Mill, that a British guard held in February 1781.
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Nathaniel Rochester goes to work for a Hillsborough merchant
At sixteen Rochester took employment with James Monroe, a Scottish merchant in Hillsborough, the seat of Orange County. Within two years he was made clerk of the vestry of St. Matthew's Parish.
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Regulators rescue a seized horse at Hillsborough
After the sheriff seized a Regulator's horse for an unpaid levy, about 100 Regulators rode into Hillsborough, took the horse back and fired shots into the roof of Edmund Fanning's house. Officials sought the arrest of William Butler, Peter Craven and Ninian Bell Hamilton as ringleaders.
Part of The Regulator crisis, 1766–1771 · 7 events
People: Herman Husband · Edmund Fanning
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Regulators confront officials at Hillsborough
Edmund Fanning and 27 armed men arrested Herman Husband and William Butler at Sandy Creek on May 2, 1768. The next day hundreds of Regulators and neighbors marched on Hillsborough; officials released the prisoners, and the governor's secretary read a proclamation promising to hear their grievances, after which the crowd dispersed.
Part of The Regulator crisis, 1766–1771 · 7 events
People: Herman Husband
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Orange County inhabitants petition for a public inspection at Hillsborough
Francis Nash and twenty five other inhabitants petitioned Governor Tryon and the legislature for a public inspection station at Hillsborough. They argued that having to haul tobacco and hemp at least a hundred miles overland to be inspected discouraged farmers from growing crops their soil suited.
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Quaker settlers farm the future Blackwood property
A Quaker settler identified as Mr. Marlett had purchased the property and begun farming there.
Subject: Blackwood Farm
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Regulators disrupt the Hillsborough Superior Court
About 150 Regulators crowded the Hillsborough Superior Court, beat the lawyer John Williams, Edmund Fanning and others, and forced Judge Richard Henderson to adjourn; he fled that night. The next day the crowd tore down Fanning's house and wrote mocking judgments on the court docket.
Part of The Regulator crisis, 1766–1771 · 7 events
People: Herman Husband · Edmund Fanning · Richard Henderson · Alexander Martin
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Regulators name the Orange County sheriff one of two officials charging fair fees
John Butler of the Hawfields was sheriff of Orange County in 1770, at the height of the Regulator crisis, and testified to the General Assembly that the Regulators had obstructed him in carrying out his duties. A Regulator petition of October 1770 nonetheless named him as one of only two public officials charging fair fees for their services.
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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.
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Wake and Chatham counties are formed from Orange
Acts of the General Assembly session that ended January 26, 1771 created Wake County from parts of Johnston, Cumberland and Orange, effective March 12, 1771, and Chatham County from southern Orange, effective April 1. The same session also formed Guilford from Orange and Rowan, shrinking the original county on three sides.
Part of How Orange County’s boundaries changed, 1771–1881 · 2 events
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Willie Jones is made Tryon's aide-de-camp on the march into Orange County
Jones marched into Orange County with Governor William Tryon's colonial militia and was appointed Tryon's aide-de-camp on May 15, 1771, the day before Tryon defeated the Regulators at Alamance. Several days later he was sent to raid the plantation of the Regulator leader Herman Husband.
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Battle of Alamance
Governor William Tryon's militia defeated the Regulators at Alamance. James Few, captured on the field, was hanged at Tryon's camp the next day.
Part of The Regulator crisis, 1766–1771 · 7 events
People: William Tryon · Herman Husband
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Regulators are tried and executed at Hillsborough
After the Battle of Alamance, Regulator prisoners were tried at Hillsborough and twelve were condemned for treason. Six were pardoned; on June 19 Governor Tryon's army marched the others to a gallows east of town and hanged them, among them Benjamin Merrill, Robert Messer, Robert Matear and James Pugh. James Few had been hanged at camp on May 17.
Part of The Regulator crisis, 1766–1771 · 7 events
People: William Tryon
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Rochester becomes a partner in a Hillsborough store
Rochester joined James Monroe and John Hamilton as a partner in a Hillsborough store in 1773. The business prospered but was liquidated in 1775 as the Revolution approached.
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.
