Search and filters
Search and filters · 1 active
96 dated events match your filters.
Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–96.Back to highlights
Entries
Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
- 1850s
-
Charles Tew chooses a site west of Hillsborough for a military academy
In late July 1858 Charles C. Tew, with Moses A. Curtis and A. S. Galliard, searched Hillsborough for a school site and settled on a 40-acre tract about a mile and a half west of town near the new North Carolina Railroad. They engaged the Columbia architect John A. Kay, and local builders John Berry and Henry Richards built the barracks and commandant's house.
-
Masons lay a cornerstone at the Hillsborough Military Academy
A delegation from Eagle Lodge took part in a Masonic cornerstone ceremony at the Hillsborough Military Academy in 1859.
-
Hillsborough Military Academy opens
Charles C. Tew, then superintendent of the South Carolina military academy at Columbia, opened the Hillsborough Military Academy on January 12, 1859, holding its first classes in the Hillsborough Academy building. Its neo-Gothic barracks west of town, built to house 125 cadets, was finished in September 1860.
-
The Hillsborough Military Academy commandant's house is ready to live in
The academy's neo-Gothic commandant's house, with turrets and crenellations along the roofline, was far enough along to be occupied by March 1859, though interior work may have continued for years.
- 1860s
-
George Attmore Sparrow is a cadet at the Hillsborough Military Academy
Sparrow, the teenage son of the Washington lawyer Thomas Sparrow, was enrolled as a cadet at the Hillsborough Military Academy in 1861 and 1862. He wrote home to his father from the academy through that period.
-
William H. S. Burgwyn enrolls as a cadet at the Hillsborough Military Academy
Later in 1861 Burgwyn entered the Hillsborough Military Academy as a cadet. By the autumn he had been appointed drill master of the camp of instruction near Raleigh, and he was then elected a lieutenant in the Thirty-fifth North Carolina Regiment.
-
George Attmore Sparrow leaves the Hillsborough academy to join the Confederate army
Writing from the academy on 21 July 1862, Sparrow told his father he had approval for his discharge and would leave with other cadets when the session ended on 31 July. He was in camp with the Army of the Pamlico by 1863.
-
Hillsborough meeting resolves to erect a monument to Col. Charles C. Tew
A Hillsborough meeting chaired by M. E. Manly resolved to raise a monument to Col. Tew, killed at Sharpsburg, at or near the front of his Military Academy, and named Dr. Edmund Strudwick, Dr. Pride Jones and Thomas Webb to collect funds and build it.
-
Hillsborough Military Academy sends its cadets home at the end of the Civil War
The academy, reopened in 1862 under Maj. William Gordon after Tew left for the war, dismissed its students in May 1865 after the surrender at Bennett Place. Raleigh Edward Colston reopened the campus in 1866 as the North Carolina Polytechnic and Military Institute.
Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
-
General Colston takes charge of the reopened Hillsborough Military Academy
After closing at the end of the war, the academy reopened with General R. C. Colston as superintendent. In 1868 he signed a lease with Col. Tew's widow to live in the superintendent's house, but his family later moved to Wilmington.
- 1870s
-
Paul C. Cameron buys the Hillsborough Military Academy at public sale
Two years after Elizabeth Tew's death in 1870, the academy property was sold at public auction to Paul C. Cameron. His heirs sold it to the Farmers' State Alliance in 1891.
- 1890s
-
The Farmers' State Alliance buys the old Hillsborough Military Academy grounds
The former academy property west of Hillsborough passed in 1891 to the Farmers' State Alliance, the statewide farmers' organization, which bought the land. A 1913 plat of the neighborhood labels the old barracks as the Farm Life School building.
-
Eno Cotton Mill begins production
Yarn production started late in the year.
Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1900s
-
A Pilgrim Holiness congregation is organized in West Hillsborough
A Holiness congregation, later the Pilgrim Holiness Church of West Hillsborough, was organized in 1902. It had a 250-seat building and 27 members in 1953.
-
Eno Mill adds cloth weaving
New looms extended operations beyond spinning yarn.
-
Shepperd Strudwick heads the new Bellevue Manufacturing Company in west Hillsborough
The Bellevue Manufacturing Company, Hillsborough's cotton mill in the west of the town, was incorporated in 1904 with Shepperd Strudwick as its first president, and he remained president until 1929. By 1911 the mill ran 5,000 spindles and 200 looms making ginghams.
-
P. C. Collins buys the southern part of the future Bellevue mill site from J. W. Hooker
Before the Bellevue company was incorporated, P. C. Collins bought the south half of the mill site near the West Hillsborough depot from J. W. Hooker; a later hand added that he acted as the mill's agent. Collins, a shareholder, passed the land to the company in 1905.
-
Mill engineer Richard C. Biberstein lays out the machinery for the Bellevue mill
The new company hired Richard C. Biberstein, a Charlotte mill designer trained in Massachusetts, to plan the arrangement of its machinery; his drawings run from 1905 to 1907. Fifteen years later he designed the mill's weaving room.
-
Shepperd Strudwick buys Allen Ruffin's land north of the future Bellevue mill
Four years before the Bellevue mill was built, Strudwick acquired the tract north of the site from Ruffin, one of the Eno Cotton Mill's founders, probably to build company housing there.
-
The school board divides the Hillsboro district and orders a two-teacher school at West Hill
The board split the Hillsboro district and ordered a school with two teachers built at West Hill, the mill section west of town.
-
The Durham Recorder hails "Progressive Hillsboro" and the mill town at its depot
A Recorder article pointed to Hillsborough's new buildings, macadam roads and growing textile trade, and to a large mill that had raised a settlement around the depot called West Hillsboro. The authors think the mill meant was the Eno Cotton Mill, since Bellevue was not yet running.
-
C. M. and W. H. Andrews take over the West End Drug Company in West Hillsboro
Two Chapel Hill natives, C. M. and W. H. Andrews, bought the West End Drug Company, a drug store with a soda fountain serving the mill families of West Hillsboro. C. M. Andrews ran it until he left town in 1926.
-
Eno Methodist Church is founded in West Hillsborough
Eno Methodist Church began with services upstairs in the Eno Cotton Mill's company store; in 1908 Allen Ruffin gave land in West Hillsborough and the frame church went up. It had 147 members in 1953.
-
The Eno Methodist congregation builds its church on land given by Allen Ruffin
The congregation formed for Eno Cotton Mill workers first met in an upper room of a mill building. In 1908 it moved into a simple front-gabled frame church with pointed-arch windows and a small belfry, on land Ruffin donated facing the mill across the railroad tracks.
-
Eno Cotton Mill is enlarged and adds gingham
In 1909 the Hillsborough mill was expanded again and began weaving gingham alongside chambray and plaids. Some yarn was still sold unwoven until the First World War.
-
Shepperd Strudwick builds the Bellevue cotton mill on South Nash Street
The Bellevue Manufacturing Company's mill went up in 1909 west of South Nash Street, a short way beyond the town line of the day, backed by local investors and staffed by people leaving farm work. By 1912 it ran 5,000 spindles and 200 narrow looms.
- 1910s
-
The Bellevue Commercial Block is built as West Hillsborough's shopping street
Five one-story brick buildings with seven storefronts on South Nash Street near the old depot became the West End business district for the mill village and West Hillsborough. Over the years they held a drug store, the Cates brothers' general store with a branch post office, a barber, a dry cleaner, a cafe and a movie theater.
-
The Bellevue mill superintendent's house is built on South Nash Street
The two-story house built for the mill superintendent, with corbelled brick chimneys, a canted bay and a wraparound porch, is the most decorative early house in the surveyed area and stands out beside the plain mill houses next to it.
-
The First Pentecostal Holiness Church of West Hillsborough is organized
A. G. Cannady, Charles Martin, R. S. Andrews and others organized a Pentecostal Holiness church in West Hillsborough, with Cannady as first pastor. Its 1953 building dated from 1948.
-
The Bellevue mill runs 5,000 spindles and 200 looms making dress ginghams
Three years after it opened, the Bellevue mill had 5,000 spindles and 200 narrow looms weaving dress ginghams 27 and 32 inches wide, sold through agents in New York and New Jersey.
-
Abe and Annie B. Mebane sell a lot in west Hillsborough to the trustees of Mebane Chapel
For $25 the Mebanes sold a 30-by-40-foot lot at the corner of Union Street, opposite the later Central High School, to trustees Elisha Williams and Arthur Hood. The chapel was named in their memory.
-
R. B. Mason's land west of the Bellevue mill is platted as the West Hill Property
To meet the need for workers' housing near the two mills, Mason's holdings were laid out in 1913 as a grid of roughly equal lots, bounded by the Bellevue mill village, Eno Street and the railroad, West Hill Street, and Mount Willing Road (later King Street). Most houses there went up from the 1920s to the 1940s, and the section beyond West Hill Avenue was platted in the 1930s.
-
The Hillsboro Building and Loan Association is organized in the back of the West End Drug Store
Six incorporators put up $5,500 to start the Hillsboro Building and Loan Association, with Charles H. Robertson as president and druggist C. M. Andrews as secretary-treasurer. Andrews took members' payments at his drug counter until 1926.
-
Eno Cotton Mill rents its village houses to workers for 25 cents a week
The Eno Cotton Mill, founded in 1896 by Allen J. Ruffin and James H. Webb Jr., built a company village for its fast-growing workforce, and by 1915 the company was renting the houses to employees for a quarter a week. The 1924 Sanborn map shows about 100 mill houses west and south of the mill.
-
Eno Cotton Mill reports 150 women among its 500 workers
Reports from the years before the wartime changes count about 500 workers at Hillsborough's Eno Cotton Mill, 150 of them women and 50 children under 16, on a 60-hour week. The top average daily wage for women was $1.75 against $4.00 for men; at the smaller Bellevue mill nearby women's top average was $2.50.
-
The Bellevue mill is also turning out cheviot cloth
By 1916 the Bellevue mill was weaving cheviot, a rough-finished cloth, alongside its ginghams.
-
West Hill Baptist Church is organized in West Hillsborough
J. F. McDuffie and S. W. Oldham led the organization of West Hill Baptist Church, and Oldham became its first pastor. The book dates its building to May 1, 1920.
-
The Ernest P. Cox House is built on Bellevue Street
The one-story hip-roofed house with projecting gabled wings and a wraparound porch at 112 Bellevue Street is the best preserved of West Hillsborough's one-story houses of the period.
-
Eno Mill opens an influenza diet kitchen at West Hill school
When influenza reached the Eno Mill district, the mill opened and paid for a diet kitchen at the West Hill school for about seven weeks, run by home demonstration agent Elizabeth Cornelius. It fed as many as 150 people a day, and the mill hired nurses for the sick.
-
The Bellevue mill changes over from steam to electric power
The mill was built to run belt-driven machinery from a steam engine. By 1919 it ran partly on electricity, and by the mid-1920s it had changed over completely, with individual motors on the machines and the belt-way removed.
- 1920s
-
Eno Methodist Church adds rear classrooms used for West Hillsborough school classes
A side-gabled addition built about 1920 gave the church its T plan and held classrooms where early West Hillsborough school classes met, before the West End School was built on Bellevue Avenue.
-
The Bellevue company builds its mill village north of the mill
In the early 1920s, as it doubled the mill, the company set closely spaced houses along a narrow loop road reached from West King and South Nash streets, in three plain types; the one-and-a-half-story houses had two front doors so workers on different shifts could come and go separately. All the houses appear on the 1924 Sanborn map.
-
The Bellevue mill is enlarged in 1920 and again in
Expansions in 1920 and 1923 were part of a decade of growth in which the mill more than doubled its spindles and looms, and they coincided with the building of much of its company housing.
-
The Farmers' State Alliance auctions off its old academy headquarters
The Farmers' State Alliance had found the old Barracks property a burden since about 1901. On June 21, 1920 it was cut into lots and sold at auction, and John W. Hill got the parcel with the commandant's house.
-
The Paul Riley House is built on Riley Avenue in West Hillsborough
The Paul Riley House, a one-story frame bungalow with a shed dormer and tapered porch posts, was built at Riley Avenue and Eno Street. The Rileys were among the leading West Hillsborough families, and the Paul Riley Store went up nearby on Eno Street about 1942.
-
Parts of the old academy land are subdivided as Oak Ridge and the Murray property
Portions of the Alliance tract were laid out as the Oak Ridge Development in 1923 and as the Murray property in 1924. Together they make up the west end of West Hillsborough.
-
After its 1920s additions the Bellevue mill runs 10,740 spindles and 592 looms
The additions of the early 1920s more than doubled the mill's spindles and looms, and by 1926 the company's capital stock stood at $500,000. In 1919 it had still declared only its original $125,000.
-
Eno Cotton Mill installs new machinery and switches to combed yarn
New machinery went in at the Eno mill in 1929, and combed yarn replaced coarse carded yarn. Broadcloth shirting and corduroy became its main products.
-
Shepperd Strudwick resigns as president of Bellevue, and L. E. Beard takes over
After twenty-five years as president, Shepperd Strudwick stepped down in 1929, the year its stock value fell from $500,000 to $419,600. L. E. Beard succeeded him and his partner Norfleet Webb as president and treasurer.
- 1930s
-
C. B. and Myrtle Ray Stanley's house is built on Allen Ruffin Avenue in West Hillsborough
The house at 406 Allen Ruffin Avenue was built for Charles B. and Myrtle Ray Stanley in the Eno mill neighborhood of West Hillsborough. Charles Stanley died at home there in 1958, and his funeral was held at the nearby Eno Methodist Church.
-
The Weldon Riley House is built on Eno Street
The one-and-a-half-story bungalow at 811 Eno Street, with a gabled dormer, knee brackets and a wide engaged porch, is judged the best Craftsman house in West Hillsborough.
-
A Church of God congregation is organized in West Hillsborough
Garland Crabtree and T. E. Boman organized the Church of God of West Hillsborough, with Edd Mize as first pastor. It built a 250-seat church in 1945.
-
West End Graded School is built on the old Cadwallader Jones homesite
A larger one-story brick Colonial Revival school for grades one through six, six classrooms and an auditorium, was built in 1936 to replace the two-story frame West End School on Bellevue Avenue, which became a community club building. It stood on the highest ground in West Hillsborough, inside a low stone wall, where the Cadwallader Jones house had stood.
-
The Historic American Buildings Survey records the academy barracks
By the Depression the empty Barracks of the old military academy sheltered homeless families. In 1937 the Historic American Buildings Survey measured and photographed it, a year before it was torn down.
-
Eno Methodist Church is moved back from the road and remodeled
In 1938 the congregation shifted its frame church back from Eno Street and remodeled it.
-
The Hillsborough Military Academy's brick barracks are torn down
The academy's three-story brick barracks, later used by the Farm Life School, were dismantled in 1938. Only the Commandant's House and a frame dining hall survive, with parts of the barracks foundation in the woods south of the hall.
- 1940s
-
Wartime orders push the Eno Cotton Mill to about 600 workers
Military demand for cloth during World War II enlarged the Eno Cotton Mill, which by the 1940s employed as many as 600 workers on three shifts.
-
The Paul Riley Store is built on Eno Street
A one-story brick store with a stepped parapet and inset entrance went up at 907 Eno Street, carrying the West End commercial style farther west. A longtime resident recalled it, with the nearby Methodist church, as a center of childhood life in West Hillsborough.
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
-
Hesslein and Company buys the Belle-Vue mill, ending local ownership
Belle-Vue Manufacturing Company had been run from Hillsborough since 1904, lately under L. E. Beard. In 1945 Hesslein and Company bought it and spent over half a million dollars on new machinery and on baths for the mill village houses.
-
Town electricity and water are extended to West Hillsborough
Before the town took over in the late 1940s, the mills supplied power and water to their workers, cutting electricity to the houses during the day so the machinery could run, which left families without refrigeration.
-
C. S. Cates opens a new movie theater in the old Hollywood Theatre building in West Hillsborough
Cates, a World War II veteran, remodeled the building the Hollywood Theatre had used, with new sound and projection equipment and seats, and advertised the opening for Wednesday, May 1, with a contest to name the house.
-
The William Edward McPherson House is built on Nash Street in West Hillsborough
The 2017 Hillsborough architectural survey records the William Edward McPherson House at 303 Nash Street and dates it to 1947. The McPherson family, whose Edward (Pete) McPherson managed Hillsboro's Black All-Stars baseball team in these years, owned several lots along the west side of Nash Street.
-
Hillsboro's Black baseball team opens its season at McPherson's Baseball Park before a record crowd
The News of Orange County's column for the Black community reported that the baseball season opened at McPherson's Baseball Park on Sunday, April 6, before a record crowd; the home team lost to the Roxboro Stars and on Easter Monday to the Graham Stars.
-
A bus route begins running through West Hillsborough
Until 1948, when a bus line started running through its streets, mill families without cars had no easy way to reach downtown Hillsborough, nearly a mile away, or the rest of the county.
-
Fire guts Pete McPherson's cafe and pool hall in West Hillsborough
A fire that started in a defective flue gutted the frame and brick building near the Black school in West Hillsboro where Pete McPherson ran a cafe with a pool and beer hall. Most of the stock was saved, but all the pool tables were lost.
-
Hillsboro's Black All-Stars beat the town's white All-Stars at McPherson's Park
In a Sunday game at McPherson's Park billed as the Stars against the Stars, Hillsboro's Black All-Stars defeated the town's white All-Stars 13 to 10.
-
The Pilgrim Holiness Church in West Hillsborough holds its first service in a new building
The Pilgrim Holiness congregation met for the first time in its new church, under construction since August 1948 near the site of its old building. District superintendent William S. Deal preached, and the Rev. J. F. Kernodle was pastor.
- 1950s
-
The Payne rental houses are built on South Nash Street
A group of compact rental houses and duplexes at 205-209 South Nash Street used the Minimal Traditional form with deep eaves, concrete block and metal windows, a pattern also seen in the Freeland houses on Daye Street.
-
West Hillsborough outnumbers Hillsborough
In 1950 the mill villages of West Hillsborough held 1,456 people, more than the 1,329 in the town itself, whose population barely moved from 1,311 in 1940 to 1,349 in 1960.
-
The Hillsboro Building and Loan Association opens its first office building on Calvin Street
After 37 years of meeting in stores and a depot office, the association held an open house for its own one-story Colonial-style brick office on Calvin Street in West Hillsboro, built with a fireproof vault.
-
Cole's Store opens beside its owner's house on West Hill Avenue
The small concrete-block store and gas station on North West Hill Avenue, built on the same lot as the owner's home, follows the pattern of rural crossroads stores of the 1940s and 1950s.
-
Eno Mill becomes part of Cone Mills
The subsidiary joined the Greensboro textile corporation.
-
The Bellevue mill employs 355 workers on two shifts
In 1953 the mill had 355 workers on two shifts, and the company still owned its mill village, whose houses now had indoor plumbing.
-
The Bellevue company's stock is worth $219,600, well under half its 1926 value
Still listed under the Bellevue name in 1955, the company had stock valued at $219,600, with 14,712 spindles and 499 looms.
-
Eno Mill houses are relocated
Most company houses moved into nearby neighborhoods.
-
The Hillsboro Building and Loan Association becomes Hillsboro Savings and Loan Association
On a vote of its stockholders, the association changed its name to Hillsboro Savings and Loan Association, announced alongside the largest dividend in its history.
-
Fire destroys the old West Hillsboro School, then a mill-owned apartment house
About 11:30 on a Monday night the three-story frame building that had been the West Hillsboro School, later made into 13 apartments, burned to the ground. A taxi driver saw the flames and woke the five people inside, who escaped.
-
The Bellevue mill village is platted and its houses sold to private owners
After the mill company had been sold by 1956, its village was surveyed into lots in 1958 so the houses could be sold. Unlike the Eno mill houses, which were carried off to new sites, the Bellevue houses stayed where they were, which is why the village keeps its original streets but has irregular lot lines.
- 1960s
-
The Bellevue mill changes hands and runs as Hillsboro Mills
In the 1960s the mill was sold to investors from the Northeast, and trade directories list it as Hillsboro Mills.
-
The open court in the middle of the Bellevue mill is roofed over for storage
For more storage, the owners roofed the space inside the U-shaped mill with open-web steel trusses running from the main mill to the weaving room and closed its east side with a new wall, removing the 1923 stair tower.
-
The last Southern Railway passenger trains run through Hillsborough
Trains 13 and 16, the daily Greensboro-Goldsboro round trip, made their final runs, ending more than a century of passenger service in Orange County. Hillsborough had been a flag stop without ticket sales for two years.
-
Lucius and Nellie Cheshire buy and restore the Commandant's House
Eula Cole, who had bought the house from John W. Hill's estate in 1938, sold it in 1965 to Lucius and Nellie Cheshire. By 1972 they had restored it to excellent condition.
-
The former Military Academy dining hall is turned into a church
The one-story board-and-batten building beside Barracks Road, thought to be a surviving piece of the long frame service building that stood behind the barracks, became a church building in 1965.
-
Cone Mills honors Eno plant workers, most of them women, for fifty years at the mill
At the Eno Plant's seventieth anniversary celebration in Hillsborough, Cone Mills recognized at least six of its 385 employees for fifty or more years of work at the mill, five of them women.
-
West End Graded School closes
The West Hillsborough elementary school closed in 1969, perhaps because the new Central Elementary School took its pupils once schools were integrated. The main building later burned, leaving only the rear wings.
- 1970s
-
The former Bellevue mill is sold again and runs as Falk Fibers and Fabrics
In the 1970s northeastern investors bought the mill again; directories list it as Falk, Fibers, and Fabrics, with a dyeing and finishing subsidiary at the same site.
-
The Commandant's House is listed in the National Register
The castellated brick house built for the Hillsborough Military Academy's commandant, the academy's only major surviving building, was entered in the National Register of Historic Places.
Recent decades · 1976–2026
-
Hillsborough annexes West Hillsborough
West Hillsborough, which in 1950 had 1,456 residents and so outnumbered the town itself, came inside the town limits in 1976. Together with the next year's annexation it probably accounts for the town's population more than doubling between 1970 and 1980, from 1,444 to 3,019.
- 1980s
-
Eno Mill closes
Textile production ended at the Hillsborough plant.
-
Gold family acquires Eno Mill
The property became a business center with varied tenants.
- 2000s
-
Flynt Fabrics and Finishing closes the former Bellevue mill
The shutdown of the Flynt Fabrics and Finishing Company, successor to the Bellevue Manufacturing Company, in 2000 followed the Eno mill's 1984 closing and dealt Hillsborough a second economic blow. The mill buildings still stand between the town and West Hillsborough.
-
The Bellevue mill joins the Study List
The National Register Advisory Committee placed the Belle-Vue Manufacturing Company mill in West Hillsborough on North Carolina's Study List, its list of properties likely to qualify for the National Register.
-
The Bellevue Manufacturing Company is listed in the National Register
On August 28, 2003 the National Park Service listed the Bellevue Manufacturing Company in Hillsborough in the National Register of Historic Places.
- 2010s
-
The Eno Cotton Mill joins the Study List
The National Register Advisory Committee placed the Eno Cotton Mill in West Hillsborough on North Carolina's Study List, its list of properties likely to qualify for the National Register.
-
The Eno Cotton Mill is listed in the National Register
On September 1, 2011 the National Park Service listed the Eno Cotton Mill in Hillsborough in the National Register of Historic Places.
-
The survey proposes adding the Military Academy dining hall and grounds to the Commandant's House listing
The report recommended the academy's surviving frame dining hall on Barracks Road, left out of the Commandant's House nomination, for the Study List as an expansion of that listing, with about 21.5 acres over three parcels. The land keeps the barracks foundation, old tree lines and a daffodil-lined path, and the Office of State Archaeology judged it likely to hold remains of the school. The National Register Advisory Committee added the dining hall and site to the Study List on October 12, 2017.
Suggest a correction to an entry →
A dated event is a fact, filed on the page of the subject it belongs to: a person, a place, a theme, or a named event or history. Pages are subjects, with their own works and sources; the Place, community, or institution filter also gathers the institutions that recur in the entries without a page of their own. The page opens on the highlights; a search or any filter looks through every dated event and storyline, and each filter’s counts say how many entries choosing it would show alongside the others. A storyline is a longer history that gathers related dated events, and each storyline’s page lists its own. Counts give dated events and storylines separately. 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. The correction link under the entries opens the contact form; name the entry and its date and the Friends will check the source. 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 October 2, 2026.
