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Colonial and Regulator years · 1680–1774
- 1750s
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Land later farmed by the Allison family near Caldwell is granted
The tract under the Joseph Allison house near Caldwell comes from a 1759 land grant, one of the few colonial grants the survey tied to a surviving farm.
Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
- 1800s
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President Joseph Caldwell marries Helen Hooper and moves to her Franklin Street house
Caldwell married Helen Hogg Hooper and left the President's House on campus for her home on Lot #19, which he appears to have owned already. The house stayed in the family until 1849, when the university bought it as President Swain's residence.
- 1840s
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The Joseph Allison house is built near Caldwell
A frame side-gable house is built in 1845 on the Joseph Allison place near Caldwell, on land that goes back to a 1759 grant. It had been remodeled by 1993.
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The university buys the old Caldwell house as President Swain's residence
William Hooper sold his stepfather's former house to the university, which renovated it heavily for President David L. Swain. Professor John Thomas Wheat moved into Swain's old quarters in the Tom Taylor house.
- 1850s
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The Lambert Hall House goes up near Caldwell
A two-story frame hall-and-parlor house with a chimney at each end was built near Caldwell in the 1850s, its inside walls lined with wide plain boards. Local informants told the surveyors that dwellings for the people enslaved on the farm once stood in a cluster close to the house.
Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
- 1860s
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Nelson Hall runs a flour and grist mill near Caldwell
In 1869 Nelson Hall, a large landowner in the Caldwell area, was operating a flour and grist mill alongside his farm, one of several planters who took up a side business after the war.
- 1870s
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Archibald Jordan completes an Italianate house at Caldwell
Archibald C. Jordan, later Caldwell's physician, finished a two-story Italianate house there in 1875, with a projecting center pavilion, a bracketed cornice and arched windows. Inside is a curved staircase in a diagonally sheathed hall.
- 1880s
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Henry Cole runs a general store near Caldwell
Henry Cole keeps a country general store near Caldwell in the late nineteenth century; the building still stood in 1993.
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Julius I. Foust heads the Caldwell Institute at Caldwell
The Caldwell Institute, a school for boys and girls in northern Orange County, advertised with Julius I. Foust as principal, offering primary through higher studies and music.
- 1890s
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Breeze School is built near Caldwell
A plain two-room frame schoolhouse with shuttered windows was probably built at Breeze, near Caldwell, in the 1890s. It is one of the few nineteenth-century schools left in the county.
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Caldwell Institute post office grows into a small trading place
Around 1890 the Caldwell Institute post office, with about 119 people, had Jordan's and Terry's stores, Allison's carriage shop, a blacksmith, a doctor, Turner's Mill, the Caldwell Institute school and Little River Presbyterian Church.
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T. M. Jordan & Co. moves its drugstore at Caldwell to a new stand
Thomas M. Jordan and his brother Dr. Archibald C. Jordan ran a store and pharmacy at Caldwell. In 1896 the firm moved its stock of drugs from the old stand, and Jordan told customers he had moved the drugstore to West Caldwell.
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The Kirkland-Miller farmstead is built near Caldwell
The Kirkland-Miller farm on NC 57 near Caldwell dates to about 1898 and keeps a group of outbuildings the survey thought worth noting. It is on the Study List.
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The General Assembly incorporates the Caldwell Institute in Orange County
Among the private schools chartered by the 1899 legislature was the Caldwell Institute at Caldwell. A bill to incorporate it had been introduced in 1891.
Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1900s
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A log house near Caldwell is enlarged into the Annie Parrish House
Around 1900 a one-room log house near Caldwell, built some fifty years earlier, was wrapped into a new story-and-a-half frame house with a center gable. The form uses the Annie Parrish House to show how early log houses survive inside later ones.
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The Walter Hawkins farmstead with its tobacco barns takes shape near Caldwell
The Walter Hawkins farm near Caldwell is laid out around 1900 and keeps several tobacco barns the survey singled out. It is on the Study List.
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Caldwell Institute gets a large new school district
A committee from Caldwell Institute asked for one district made from parts of the Wilson, Little River and Poplar Grove districts. The board approved and had the boundary surveyed.
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Caldwell asks for an election on a rural graded school
The Caldwell community asked for a vote on establishing a rural graded school, and the board asked the county commissioners to call the election.
- 1910s
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The Laws Store is built at Laws Crossroads
A small store is built at Laws Crossroads near Caldwell around 1910. By 1993 it was abandoned and was all that remained of the crossroads.
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The Villines log house is built north of Hillsborough
A one-room V-notched log house with a center door and a small loft window was built in 1912 on what is now SR 1546, north of Hillsborough in the Caldwell section of the county; the year is carved into its rock chimney. It shows log building for tenants and laborers lasting into the twentieth century.
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The medical building, Caldwell Hall, is dedicated
On May 8, 1912, the university opened its new medical building and named it Caldwell Hall for its first president. Dr. Richard H. Lewis presented it for the trustees, and Venable and Dean Isaac H. Manning accepted it.
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The county board pays for a school for Black children at Jordan's Grove
On July 9, 1917 the county board agreed to pay J. L. Wilson $119 to build a school for Black children "at Jordan's Grove and Grover," near Caldwell. The frame field school ran until 1951; the 1993 survey found it the only Black field school left in the county, badly deteriorated.
- 1920s
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The old Caldwell schoolhouse is sold as a new consolidated school is built
When the county built a new consolidated Caldwell School in 1925, the board sold the old one-teacher schoolhouse and its site to R. E. Clements for $160 on May 4, 1925.
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The county board merges Little River Township's schools into a new Caldwell School
Little River patrons voted in March 1925 for a new school at Caldwell, the board let the building contract to B. F. Blanchard for $12,956.20, and C. S. Miller gave seven acres just beyond Caldwell for the site. In June the board consolidated every school in the township except Schley into Caldwell, which opened with 124 pupils.
- 1930s
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Breeze School is merged into Aycock and later becomes a tobacco pack house
On June 15, 1931 the county Board of Education merged Harmony and Breeze schools near Caldwell into Aycock School. By 1938 the Breeze building was being used to store tobacco.
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
- 1940s
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Lattisville Grove Baptist Church builds a Gothic Revival frame church
Lattisville Grove Baptist Church near Caldwell builds a frame church in the Gothic Revival manner in 1948, late for the style.
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Superintendent Proffit's $1 million school bond pays for a new Efland school for Black children and county lunchrooms
The $1,000,000 school bond passed under Superintendent Glenn T. Proffit paid for grounds and a building for the Efland school for Black children, an addition to Hillsboro High School, and lunchrooms at Aycock, Efland, West Hillsborough and White Cross. It also bought a cannery and gymnasium at Aycock and a remodeling and auditorium at Caldwell.
- 1960s
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Orange County Board of Education closes Caldwell School
In 1961 the county board weighed a proposal to close White Cross School at once and Caldwell School later. In March 1963, in the consolidation that came with the new Orange High School, it voted to close the white-only Caldwell School, built in 1925, and from that fall its pupils went to Aycock and Cameron Park. The county could not sell the building until 1973.
- 1970s
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The county school board sells the closed Caldwell School property
After the school board asked its attorney in November 1971 to move toward a sale, it accepted $5,143.52 from the sale of the Caldwell School property. Pender later wrote that the building was demolished and the land went back to its owner.
Recent decades · 1976–2026
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Caldwell and Cedar Grove volunteer fire departments are incorporated
The Caldwell Volunteer Fire Department was incorporated on December 6, 1977 and the Cedar Grove Volunteer Fire Department a week later, on December 13, extending local fire protection across the northern townships.
- 1990s
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Dr. Arch Jordan House is listed in the National Register
The National Park Service listed the Dr. Arch Jordan House at 7015 NC 57 in Caldwell in the National Register of Historic Places on August 6, 1998, for architecture and social history. The Italianate house, built between 1875 and 1885 and home to physician Arch Jordan until 1905, served as a manse for three churches from 1905 to 1929.
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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 October 2, 2026.
