Chronology

German settler David Ephland comes to Orange County

David Ephland, later spelled Efland, arrived with other German settlers in the 1760s. His descendants still lived in the railroad town that carries the family name when the county was surveyed in 1993.

David Faucette buys the home tract and a grist mill from his father

David Faucette paid his father Richard 400 pounds for two adjoining tracts of 100 acres where he was already living, with a grist mill and other improvements. He later built the two-story frame house that still stands above the Eno.

Subject: David Faucette House (The Elms)

Cedar Grove Methodist Episcopal Church builds its first church

The congregation put up a small frame sanctuary facing east on what is now Efland-Cedar Grove Road, on land given by Joseph Allison and John Kelly. It was enlarged on the south side in 1876 and later torn down; its site lies just east of the 1939 stone church.

Subject: Cedar Grove Methodist Church

The Rev. Ira Ellis buys 300 acres on the Eno near Hall's Mill Road

Ira Ellis, a minister and farmer then in his fifties, bought 300 acres on the Eno River and added 184 more four years later. His three-part Federal brick house, later called Little Ayr Mount, is usually dated to this purchase, and local tradition holds that it took in stagecoach travelers.

Subject: Rev. Ira Ellis House (Little Ayr Mount)

The 1850 census lists four enslaved people on Joseph Faucette's farm

Joseph Faucette, David's son, grew wheat, corn, oats, potatoes and hay on the home farm and held four enslaved people in one household, a number the nomination calls typical of a yeoman farmer.

Subject: David Faucette House (The Elms)

The Gordan house is built near Efland

A story-and-a-half frame house, recorded as the Gordan House, is built near Efland in 1856.

Orange County reports on its poorhouse to the new Board of Public Charities

Orange County's report to the state Board of Public Charities described two one-story brick buildings of six rooms each on a 400-acre tract five miles from Hillsborough. The poorhouse held 41 people, ten able to do light work, with ten deaths since July 1868.

People: Edmund Strudwick

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

Nelson P. Hall buys the Ellis house and 267 acres on the Eno

Nelson Parrish Hall bought 267 acres of the Ellis land with the brick house, though his family may have lived there since about 1870, when his son Simeon was listed as a miller. The mill on the Eno across the road took the Hall name as Hall's Mill.

Subject: Rev. Ira Ellis House (Little Ayr Mount)

The school board names committees for every district school, township by township

The July 1899 appointments list about 55 district schools in five townships, among them schools marked as Black at Payne's Chapel, North Side and Hillsboro, and white schools at Breeze, Efland, Rail Road and Flat Rock.

A Mr. Graham grains the doors and wainscot of the Faucette House

The six-panel doors and pine wainscot of the house were given their combed graining in 1904-05, work that survives.

Subject: David Faucette House (The Elms)

Efland Baptist Church is organized

Baptists at Efland organized a church in 1904. It had 55 members in 1953.

Martha Hall sells the Ellis house to Sheriff R. D. Baine

After Nelson Hall died, his widow Martha bought the house and farm from his estate and sold them two years later to Orange County sheriff R. D. Baine.

Subject: Rev. Ira Ellis House (Little Ayr Mount)

Efland Methodist Church is organized

Methodists at Efland organized a church and built it the same year.

People: O. E. Bivins

Gains Chapel AME Church is organized at Efland

Robert Watson, Shurman Morrow and Brown Wright led the organization of Gains Chapel, an African Methodist Episcopal church at Efland, about 1906.

The Efland family opens an excelsior plant at Efland

The Efland family founded one of North Carolina's first excelsior, or wood wool, plants at Efland in 1906, with Mack P. Efland as manager. By 1911 the Orange Manufacturing Company was listed as an excelsior maker at Efland.

S. T. Forrest buys out his partners in S. T. Forrest & Co. at Efland

The Efland firm of S. T. Forrest & Co. was dissolved by mutual consent. Partners C. C. Taylor and Charles L. Boggs sold and assigned their whole interest to Stephen T. Forrest.

The Oliver family takes over the Cedar Grove crossroads store

The Oliver family acquired the frame store the Allison family had built at the Cedar Grove crossroads in the 1880s. They kept it until C. H. Pender and his wife Irene Oliver took it over in the 1960s.

Efland Presbyterian Church is organized

Presbyterians at Efland organized a church and built a 150-seat building in 1910.

Efland Presbyterian Church completes its first building

Two years after twenty charter members organized the church under M. C. Arrowood, the congregation finished its first church at Efland.

The county board builds a new school for white children at Efland

The board sought a state loan of $750 for a new Efland building, chose a three-acre lot of Jordan land south of the railroad, and had the superintendent hire carpenters while patrons supplied the framing and free hauling from West Hillsboro depot. It paid Mary W. Jordan $246 for the land in 1911 and sold the old Efland schoolhouse to J. R. Riley for $50 in February 1912.

Subject: Efland schools

The county board buys 2.46 acres from Mary E. Jordan for an Efland school

Early in Lockhart's term the board bought 2.46 acres at Efland from Mrs. Mary E. Jordan, paying $246, as the site for the Efland School.

People: Samuel Paul Lockhart

Subject: Efland schools

John L. Efland starts a hosiery mill at Efland

Efland's first hosiery plant, opened by John L. Efland in 1912, first made half hose and later full-fashioned stockings. Relatives' later mills grew from it.

Wade's Temple is organized at Efland

Wade's Temple, a United Holy Church congregation at Efland, was organized in 1912 with George Wade as first pastor and built its church in 1915.

Orange County public schools average a 122-day term, with longer terms in six local-tax districts

In 1913-14 the county's public schools ran an average of 122 days, while the six districts that taxed themselves for schools averaged 154. Those districts were Hillsboro, University (Eno), Chapel Hill, Efland, Carrboro and Mount Hope.

The Cedar Grove pharmacy where Dr. C. M. Hughes practiced is moved beside his house

The early 1900s pharmacy building at the Cedar Grove crossroads, where Dr. Claude M. Hughes kept his medical practice, was moved in 1913 to the lot east of his new house so a three-story flour mill could go up on its site. The mill burned about 1931.

The Efland Hosiery Mills is incorporated at Efland

The Efland Hosiery Mills received a state certificate of incorporation with its principal office at Efland and an authorized capital of $50,000. By July the mill was reported nearly finished.

Cotton, knitting and flour mills make up Orange County's manufacturing

Carrboro and Hillsboro had cotton and knitting mills, and Carrboro, Hillsboro and Efland had flour mills. Efland, still unincorporated, also had a factory making excelsior for packing furniture.

Eight post offices and rural free delivery routes serve Orange County

Post offices stood at Efland, Hillsboro, Cedar Grove, Teer, Blackwood, University Station, Carrboro and Chapel Hill, and rural free delivery carried daily mail to homes in nearly every part of the county.

The Efland excelsior mills burn

Fire destroyed the Efland Excelsior Mills, four miles from Hillsborough, with a loss estimated at $15,000 plus about $3,000 in wood. The fire was believed to have been set.

A second influenza wave strikes Cedar Grove, Efland and Hillsborough

After Christmas 1918 a second epidemic spread through the county and was very bad at Cedar Grove, Efland and Hillsborough. This time schools and churches stayed open, and the outbreak slowly died down.

Charlotte Hawkins Brown starts the clubwomen's drive for a home for delinquent Black girls

As president of the North Carolina Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, Charlotte Hawkins Brown of Palmer Memorial Institute began a public campaign in late 1919 for a reformatory for Black girls, the same year the legislature set up juvenile courts. The drive led to the Efland Home in western Orange County.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

Efland Methodist Church builds a brick Gothic Revival church

The Efland Methodist congregation builds a brick church in the Gothic Revival style on US 70 around 1920.

Mount Olive Baptist Church is organized at Efland

Black Baptists at Efland organized Mount Olive Baptist Church and built a church the same year.

The Bank of Efland receives its state charter

The Secretary of State chartered the Bank of Efland with $25,000 in authorized capital, $10,000 of it paid in by three Efland men. The charter gave Efland its own bank.

Subject: Bank of Efland

Black clubwomen buy the Forrest farm at Efland for their home for girls

The North Carolina federation of Black women's clubs, led by Charlotte Hawkins Brown, bought the 143-acre farm of S. C. and Carrie Forrest at Efland as the site of its industrial home for Black girls. Plans for the first building were drawn that September, and the federation deeded the land to the home's trustees on August 3, 1922.

People: Charlotte Hawkins Brown

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

Plans are drawn for the first cottage of the Efland Home

In a letter of September 5, 1921, to state welfare commissioner Kate Burr Johnson, Charlotte Hawkins Brown reported that plans were under way for a cottage at the Efland site estimated at $5,000. The architect is not known, but the finished building follows a professional drawing except for its weatherboard walls, which replaced brick to save money.

People: Charlotte Hawkins Brown

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

Black clubwomen sell two-cent stamps across the state to build the first cottage at Efland

The state federation of Black women's clubs, led by Charlotte Hawkins Brown, sold two-cent stamps across the state in November 1922 to raise $5,000 for the first cottage of the North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls at Efland, on land it had bought the year before.

People: Charlotte Hawkins Brown

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

Orange County begins merging its one- and two-teacher schools into larger ones

Claytor started the county's first round of consolidation in 1923, folding small schools into larger ones and seeking local tax elections, with a budget request of $92,100. Efland, Aycock and Hillsborough were to carry grades one through eleven and the rest grades one through seven.

People: R. H. Claytor

Efland gets a three-teacher Rosenwald school for Black children

Efland's three-teacher Rosenwald school for Black children went up in 1924-25 (Rosenwald budget year 1924-25) at a cost of $4,810: $900 from the Rosenwald Fund, $200 from Black residents and $3,710 in public money. The county board put the $501 from its August 4, 1924 sale of the old Efland school toward it and inspected the building while it was under way that October.

Subject: Efland schools

The county board moves $30,000 in building money to Efland and sets the order of its new schools

The board shifted $15,000 each from the White Cross and Caldwell building funds to Efland, reasoning that Efland had the greater need, a local tax with an eight-month term, and a paved road for school trucks. It then fixed the building order as Efland, White Cross, Orange County Training School, Orange Grove and Caldwell.

Subject: Orange County Training School / Lincoln High School · Efland schools

A new consolidated school for white children is built at Efland

The board let the Efland contract to A. R. Davis for $21,388, with steam heat by Dermott of Durham, placed the school east of the highway and made the contractor replace inferior brick. The board inspected and accepted the building in March 1925, and John Efland paid $1,135 for the old white schoolhouse.

Subject: Efland schools

Black clubwomen open the North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls at Efland

After years of fundraising, the North Carolina federation of Black women's clubs led by Charlotte Hawkins Brown opened a home and school for Black girls on a 143-acre farm on US 70 at Efland. The state gave only occasional small grants; the federation's board voted in October 1938 to close within five months, and the home closed on March 15, 1939. The state later opened a training school for Black girls, first at Rocky Mount and then at Dobbs Farm near Kinston.

People: Charlotte Hawkins Brown

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

The state farm census records the Efland Home's first crops

The 1925 North Carolina farm census found the Efland Home's farm manager, staff and girls working 33 acres of corn, tobacco, wheat, cotton and Irish potatoes. Within a year the home was also keeping pigs, chickens and dairy cows for its own table.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

Contractor James Henry Liner and others finish the Efland Home cottage

By May 1925, when the clubwomen marked its completion at their annual meeting in Wilson, a one-story weatherboarded cottage with a hip roof stood on the Efland farm, built for about $4,600 by contractors including James Henry Liner of Cedar Grove. It held a classroom-living room, dormitory rooms, matrons' quarters, dining room and kitchen; a Greensboro firm added a pump and Delco generator house, and Efland merchant S. C. Forrest drilled the well and held the mortgage.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

A Superior Court judge rules against the county school board in the Efland School site dispute

The county board of education had gone to court against Thomas Forrest and James O. Webb over the acre-and-a-fraction Efland School site. At a hearing in Graham the judge ruled against the board, which told its lawyers to appeal to the state Supreme Court.

Subject: Efland schools

Three armed men rob the Bank of Efland

Three men held up the Bank of Efland in mid-morning, locked cashier Roberts Riley in the vault and drove off with a few thousand dollars. Two men were tried for the robbery at Hillsborough in March 1926.

Subject: Bank of Efland

The Efland Home takes in thirty girls in two years under matron Mary E. Hill

Juvenile courts had sent twelve girls to Efland by 1926. Between July 1, 1926, and June 30, 1928, matron Mary E. Hill, who had worked at the Virginia home for Black girls, cared for thirty; seven ran away and seventeen remained, more than the cottage's fifteen places.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

The General Assembly votes $2,000 for the Efland home for Black girls

The 1927 legislature added $2,000 for the Efland school for delinquent Black girls to its appropriations bill on the House floor. The clubwomen had asked the state to take the home over entirely, which it did not do.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

George Lawrence describes the county home near Efland in the Chapel Hill Weekly

George Lawrence described the county home two and a half miles north of Efland: two narrow brick buildings, probably of 1824, heated by fireplaces and lit by kerosene, with no plumbing. It held 19 residents and two prisoners, and white and Black residents ate in separate rooms.

People: George H. Lawrence

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

Gaines AME Chapel builds its church at Efland

The Black congregation of Gaines AME Chapel at Efland builds its church in 1929. It was covered in brick veneer in 1964.

The Efland Home's farm cuts its yearly cost per girl

The home's 1928-1929 report showed the girls working ten acres, 24 fruit trees and a small stock of mule, cows, hogs and chickens, which helped bring the cost per resident down from about $598 in 1928 to $182.50 in 1929. That year fifteen girls were paroled and eleven placed in working homes; assistant matron Margaret Cromwell taught classes and Mebane physician Thomas David Tyson came when needed.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

Marie Clay Clinton of Charlotte becomes interim superintendent of the Efland Home

Marie Clay Clinton, a Charlotte widow active in the federation's work but not a trained teacher or social worker, was named interim superintendent in December 1929. Her assistant Bertha Vincent, a Scotia Seminary graduate, taught the classes, and both women served as house mothers.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

The Efland Home's eighteen girls come from ten counties across the state

In 1930 the home held eighteen girls, all committed by juvenile courts, from Buncombe, Carteret, Durham, Forsyth, Guilford, Mecklenburg, Pasquotank, Robeson, Vance and Wake counties; Durham sent the most, five. It was then one of ten such institutions for Black girls in the United States.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

University students plant donated fruit trees and grapevines at the Efland Home

In the spring of 1930 Lindley Nurseries gave the Efland Home 75 fruit trees and 25 grapevines, and University of North Carolina students set them out on the farm.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

An Efland merchant kills a robber outside the Bank of Efland

A holdup at the Bank of Efland failed when Mrs. George Shambley warned merchant Carl Forrest, a bank officer, who shot robber Bruce Carpenter of Durham as he came out. His partner escaped by car, and a coroner's jury found Forrest acted in self-defense.

Subject: Bank of Efland

The Bank of Efland fails and goes into receivership

Efland's small bank failed in November 1930. Days after a robbery in which a merchant shot the robber dead, the cashier, Roberts Riley, handed the state bank examiner the keys; the bank was found $15,000 to $40,000 short and put in receivers' hands, and Riley was jailed at Hillsboro.

Subject: Bank of Efland

John Henry Blue and his wife take charge of the Efland Home

John Henry Blue and his wife ran the Efland Home in 1931-1932 with a second matron. The farm then had forty acres in cultivation and supplied beef, pork, chicken, eggs, milk, butter, fruit and vegetables.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

The county board merges nine more rural schools into larger ones

At a special meeting on reorganizing the schools, the board sent Merritts to Chapel Hill, Damascus to Carrboro, Tom's Creek and Rock Hill to Orange Grove, Union and Rehobeth to Efland, and Harmony with others to Aycock, leaving few one-teacher schools for white children.

Subject: Aycock School

Girls from the Efland Home receive free care at Durham's Lincoln Hospital

In 1934 the Efland Home's residents were treated without charge at Lincoln Hospital, the Black hospital in Durham, where Dr. Stanford Lee Warren, husband of home trustee Julia Warren, had been a founding trustee.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

Certified teacher J. A. Lassiter becomes matron of the Efland Home

J. A. Lassiter, a certified teacher, replaced Sadie F. Powell as matron in May 1934, and her husband took over the farm. That year the girls canned, sewed clothes and bedding, and made cornhusk mattresses, baskets and rag rugs, and the cottage's porch was painted and its floors oiled.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

Hilda C. Allen becomes superintendent of the Efland Home after a poor state report

Following a critical June 1935 state inspection and complaints about the home's management, the board's executive committee met in Durham in July and soon hired Hilda C. Allen as superintendent, keeping Lula Henderson as matron.

People: Hilda C. Allen · Lula B. Henderson

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

Superintendent Hilda Allen sends the girls' Efland Quartette to sing in local churches

To raise money and show the home's progress, Hilda Allen taught the girls spirituals and arranged for the Efland Quartette to sing at churches around the area during her superintendency.

People: Hilda C. Allen

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

Parents turn back a plan to merge the Aycock, Efland and Hillsboro schools

A large crowd of parents appeared before the board to fight a plan that would have folded the Aycock, Efland and Hillsboro schools into one. The opposition was strong enough that the board dropped the plan, which returned in 1963 as Orange High School.

Subject: Orange High School · Aycock School · Efland schools · Hillsborough High School

Matron Lula B. Henderson and farm manager Lewis Walker are hired at the Efland Home

After J. A. Lassiter's husband was let go in March 1935, the home hired Lula B. Henderson as matron and Lewis Walker to run the farm in April. Henderson's husband, a retired minister living in Chapel Hill, taught the girls under the Emergency Relief Administration's adult education program.

People: Lula B. Henderson

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

A runaway tells a Greensboro official that the new Efland Home matron whipped her with a board

During a wave of runaways in May 1935, a month after Lula B. Henderson was hired as matron, Corinne Cannady of Greensboro returned a twelve-year-old girl who said the matron had whipped her with a board and that girls were locked in small rooms on bread and water for days. Cannady asked the state welfare commissioner, Mrs. W. T. Bost, for an investigation at once.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

A state mental health survey finds the Efland Home's building failing its girls

At Hilda Allen's request, the state welfare board's Division of Mental Health studied the home in November 1935. It urged more vocational training, and reported one bathroom for all, a furnace idle every winter because the basement flooded, a pump that often failed, and barbed wire over every window to stop runaways, which it advised removing.

People: Hilda C. Allen

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

Hilda Allen asks the state for help with medical care at the Efland Home

When superintendent Hilda Allen raised the need for medical care for the girls at the Efland Home, the state Division of Institutions and Corrections replied on January 13, 1936, only that she should get in touch with the county health officer.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

A state field agent tells Hilda Allen the WPA cannot help the Efland Home

Hilda Allen asked whether the Works Progress Administration could do manual work at the Efland Home. A field agent of the state Division of Institutions and Corrections answered that the WPA could not approve a project on land deeded to a private body, the North Carolina Federation of Negro Women's Clubs, and that he knew of no other source of aid.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

Hilda Allen resigns as superintendent, leaving Lula Henderson in charge of the Efland Home

Saying she could not handle all her duties, Hilda C. Allen resigned in early May 1937 after making real gains in the home's conditions, and matron Lula Henderson took charge.

People: Hilda C. Allen · Lula B. Henderson

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

A state welfare agent records the Efland Home matron's account of beating a girl

In a report of June 16, 1937, state welfare agent William R. Johnson wrote that matron Lula Henderson, by then the only adult in charge, told him and two other visitors that she had choked and beaten a girl who snatched her whip from her. He also found a girl locked in a room as punishment.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

State inspectors find the Efland Home failing and tell its board to fund it or close it

State welfare agents W. C. Ezell and T. L. Grier visited on July 2, 1937, and found the heat, plumbing and building in poor repair, about twenty acres in crops, the only cow dead and the mules unfit. Grier judged the home was not rehabilitating its girls and told the federation's board to raise enough money to fix it or shut it down.

People: Lula B. Henderson

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

The Dr. Efland Forrest House is built at West King and North Wake streets

A two-story Neoclassical Revival house with a full-height Corinthian portico, one of few in Hillsborough, was built around 1938 at 202 West King Street; a sign in the yard names it the Dr. Efland Forrest House.

Lula Henderson reports jobs found for former Efland Home girls

In January 1938 Lula Henderson reported that former residents of the Efland Home had been placed in work in Mebane, Greensboro, Washington, D.C., and Seneca, South Carolina. Churches and patrons gave clothing, food and supplies, but not enough to keep up the home.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

UNC field work director George H. Lawrence reports the Efland Home's conditions as appalling

After a visit in April 1938, George H. Lawrence, field work director at the University of North Carolina, wrote to the state welfare director that the home was doing more harm than good and that the girls would be better fed in a county jail. Gifts from churches and neighbors had not kept up with the girls' needs.

People: George H. Lawrence

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

Harvey's Chapel builds a frame church near Efland

The Harvey's Chapel congregation near Efland built its present front-gable frame church in the 1940s. Lefler and Wager put it about 1946 and the congregation's own history about 1940; the 1993 county survey had estimated about 1930 from the building's style.

The Efland Knitting Company is started

A second family hosiery firm, the Efland Knitting Company, began about 1940 as an offshoot of John L. Efland's mill.

Orange County sells the county home and its farm at auction

The county auctioned the old county home, its 241-acre farm, buildings, stock and tools, and a Forrest was the high bidder. Its last residents had been boarded with relatives and friends at county expense, which the welfare superintendent said cost less than half as much.

People: William T. Mattox

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

The Black women's clubs pay off the last of the Efland Home's debt

Four years after the home closed, the North Carolina Federation of Colored Women's Clubs cleared its remaining debt on the Efland reformatory in 1943, the year the legislature voted $25,000 for a state-run training school for Black girls.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

Charles Crisp Oliver builds an auto and tractor repair shop at the Cedar Grove crossroads

Oliver put up a one-story concrete block garage with a stepped parapet on the lot where his father, T. L. Oliver, had kept a blacksmith shop early in the century.

County commissioners refuse to relicense beer sales at the Log Cabin filling station

The Orange County commissioners voted unanimously to keep refusing J. A. Thompson a license to sell beer at his filling station, the Log Cabin, on the Mebane road. Thompson and his wife called it a "Dirty Deal" and their lawyer pleaded for another chance without success.

The county board ends high school classes at Efland

The board voted to discontinue Efland High School and send its students to Aycock and Hillsboro, leaving Efland an elementary school.

Subject: Aycock School · Efland schools

The Orange Hosiery Mill starts at Efland

Opened in 1947, the Orange Hosiery Mill was the only one of Efland's four family hosiery plants under corporate ownership. Together the four employed about 100.

Efland Elementary School sets up the county schools' first centralized library

Under supervisor Cora Paul Bomar, Efland Elementary turned two empty classrooms into one library: local men took out the partition, painted and built shelves, Bomar classified the books, and Mrs. Turner Forrest, one of the teachers, ran it as teacher-librarian. When Irene Pender took over in 1951 it was still the only centralized library in the county schools.

People: Cora Paul Bomar

Subject: Efland schools

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.

People: Glenn T. Proffit

Subject: Efland schools · Aycock School · Hillsborough High School

The old flour mill at Efland burns and is rebuilt

The Efland Milling Company's flour mill, owned by John L. Efland Sr. and in use for more than 150 years, burned on the night of May 13, 1949, with losses put above $50,000, and was rebuilt almost at once. It may stand near the old Hart's mill on the Thomas Hart place.

Orange County closes thirteen small schools for Black children and consolidates their pupils

At the start of the 1951-52 school year the county shut thirteen one- and two-teacher schools for Black children, put eleven new buses on the roads and consolidated every Black school except three near Efland. New buildings opened that year at the Cedar Grove school.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

The county board buys the Morrow land for Efland-Cheeks, a new school for Black children

The board decided to buy the Morrow land for a new school for Black children in the Efland district, named Efland-Cheeks.

Subject: Efland schools

Visiting Japanese educator-librarians tour the Efland school library

A group of Japanese educator-librarians hosted by the UNC School of Education visited the Orange County schools under the lead of helping teacher Cora Paul Bomar. They asked to see the Efland school library, built the year before by community volunteers, after reading her article on it in North Carolina Education.

Subject: Efland schools

Efland businessman Stephen Carl Forrest dies

S. C. Forrest, 68, a leading Efland businessman whose 1920s house on US 70 is on the state Study List, died at Duke Hospital after a heart attack and was buried at Fairfield cemetery. His sons T. J. and S. C. Forrest Jr. stayed in Efland.

Morris Telephone Company opens an exchange at Efland with lines to Cedar Grove

The Morris Telephone Company put a new 30-line switchboard into service in its new building next to the Baptist church in Efland, along with about 14 miles of rural lines running to the Cedar Grove community.

The Tar Heel Hosiery Mill starts at Efland

The newest of the Efland family hosiery plants, the Tar Heel Hosiery Mill, began in 1952 making full-fashioned hose.

The last three schools for Black children near Efland are consolidated at Efland-Cheeks

In the 1952-53 school year the three remaining small schools for Black children in the Efland area were merged into Efland-Cheeks School, completing the consolidation of the county's Black schools begun the year before.

Subject: Efland schools

The county board gives up the High Rock School land

The county board waived its rights to the two acres of the abandoned High Rock School near Efland in favor of the landowner, John A. Thompson. High Rock had been merged into the Efland-Cheeks school in 1952.

First Salk polio vaccinations given to Orange County first and second graders

Local physicians working under the county health department gave the first round of Salk polio vaccine to more than 1,150 Orange County first and second graders. The work began on Monday, April 18, 1955 with about 500 Chapel Hill area children and finished on April 21 with the Hillsboro, Efland and Aycock schools.

People: O. David Garvin

Efland Home trustees sell the old reformatory farm to W. G. Fields Jr. and Nannette Fields

After nearly two decades of unknown use, the home's trustees sold the Efland property on April 29, 1957, to W. G. Fields Jr. and his wife Nannette, Chapel Hill investors, who cut the land west of the cottage into eight tracts between Redman Crossing and what is now I-40. The federation later gave about $12,000 from the sale toward a chapel at Dobbs School near Kinston.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

Efland-Cheeks School gets its first addition

An addition went up in 1959 on the north side of the 1952 Efland-Cheeks School, which Archie Royal Davis had designed for Black children in western Orange County. A modern wing larger than the original school followed around 1980.

People: Archie Royal Davis

Subject: Efland schools

Efland Presbyterian Church dedicates a new sanctuary

A large bequest from a member's estate in 1952 let the congregation replace its worn 1910 church with a new building, dedicated on January 25, 1959.

James and Myrtle Graham, a Black Efland couple, buy the old Efland Home cottage

In December 1959 James Nills Graham, called Nello, and Myrtle McAdoo Graham, both raised on Efland farms, bought the former reformatory cottage and 2.4 acres, and the Graham family kept it for more than fifty years. They belonged to White Cross A.M.E. Church and are buried there.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

Teacher Maude Faucette retires after a long career in elementary schools

Maude Faucette, the last of the family at the house on the Eno, taught elementary school, seventh grade above all, in Orange and Caswell counties and in Arkansas before retiring in 1961.

Subject: David Faucette House (The Elms)

Two federally funded kindergartens operate at the Efland schools

A federal research grant was paying for two public kindergartens in the county, one at Efland Elementary and one at Efland-Cheeks, the Black school. The board limited them to five-year-olds living in the Efland district.

Subject: Efland schools

The Efland brothers form Efland Tractor and Equipment Company

John L. Efland Jr. and Wilson Efland took the International Harvester franchise for Orange County and formed Efland Tractor and Equipment Company, with parts and service in the front of the Efland Knitting Company building.

More than 25,000 Orange County residents take Sabin oral polio vaccine on one Sunday

The Durham-Orange County Medical Foundation ran a Sunday oral polio vaccine campaign at eight public school feeding stations in Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Hillsborough, Cedar Grove and Efland. A total of 25,679 people took the vaccine on a sugar cube, about 56 percent of the county, with Glenwood School alone serving 5,063; a second dose was set for May 17.

Fire destroys the home economics building at Aycock School

The home economics building at Aycock School in Cedar Grove burned, with the loss put at $15,000 to $20,000 and fully insured through the state. The county board had approved the building in 1948.

Subject: Aycock School

Efland and Orange Grove volunteer fire departments are incorporated

As the Orange Rural Fire Department's board worked from 1971 to set up fire districts covering the whole county, rural communities formed their own departments: the Efland Volunteer Fire Department incorporated in September 1972 and the Orange Grove Volunteer Fire Company on February 1, 1973. New Hope followed later in February 1973.

Subject: Rural fire protection

Seven Orange County Presbyterian churches form a cooperative in place of the Eno cluster

A four-church cluster of Eno, Efland, Fairfield and Bethlehem was dissolved in 1975 and replaced by a cooperative of seven: those four plus Hillsborough, Little River and New Hope. The churches worked together especially on youth programs.

Wiley and Erika Shearin buy the Faucette House and name it The Elms

Maude Faucette sold the house and about thirty acres to Dr. Wiley Shearin and his wife Erika, who shared the house with her, called it The Elms and added a one-story east wing in the 1970s.

Subject: David Faucette House (The Elms)

Maude Faucette dies at 97 and leaves part of her estate to Fairfield Presbyterian Church

The last descendant of builder David Faucette died in the family house in 1983. Her will gave a quarter of her property, with family portraits, to Fairfield Presbyterian Church near Efland, where she had been a lifelong member; silver spoons by Lemuel Lynch found in her papers went to the Hillsborough Historical Museum.

People: Lemuel Lynch

Subject: Fairfield Presbyterian Church · David Faucette House (The Elms)

Dannie G. Lunsford becomes superintendent of the Orange County schools

Dr. Dannie G. Lunsford, who had come to the county in 1971 as principal at Efland and risen through the instruction office to associate superintendent, succeeded Michael Simmons as superintendent in July 1983.

People: Michael Simmons

Reviewers turn down Tinnin Plantation near Efland for the Study List

Staff recommended rejecting the plantation because alterations had cost it much of its historic fabric, and on October 8, 1992 the committee accepted the recommendation. The applicant was to be told that the investigators of the countywide Orange County survey, then about to start, would look at the property again when their work was done.

Squirrel Nut Zippers form near Chapel Hill

Jim Mathus and Katharine Whalen, who had moved from Chapel Hill to a farmhouse in Efland, started the band in summer 1993, played their first show that November and signed with Mammoth Records in 1994.

Thomas S. Rankin buys the Ira Ellis House

Thomas S. Rankin bought the Ellis house and its mostly wooded 60-acre tract on the Eno, where he lives with his wife Jill McCorkle. The owners later paid for a history of the house (2012) that the state's 2016 survey drew on.

People: Jill McCorkle

Subject: Rev. Ira Ellis House (Little Ayr Mount)

Two large rear wings are added to the Ira Ellis House

Owner Thomas Rankin added two-story weatherboarded wings at the back of the brick house, one in 1999 and one in 2005, forming a U around a rear courtyard; a darkroom and a large pond came about 2000. The state later judged the additions too large for the house to qualify for the National Register.

Subject: Rev. Ira Ellis House (Little Ayr Mount)

The David Faucette House is listed in the National Register

On November 22, 1999 the National Park Service listed the David Faucette House near Efland in the National Register of Historic Places.

Subject: David Faucette House (The Elms)

The Captain John S. Pope Farm joins the Study List

The National Register Advisory Committee placed the Captain John S. Pope Farm near Cedar Grove on North Carolina's Study List, its list of properties likely to qualify for the National Register.

Subject: John S. Pope Farm

Mary E. Grant buys the Efland Home cottage at the Graham estate sale

After an auction held to settle James Barnard Graham's estate, Mary E. Grant bought the cottage and its 2.4 acres on November 13, 2013; the building was nominated to the National Register four years later.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

The North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls at Efland joins the Study List

Orange County submitted the Study List application for the former Efland home with the owner's knowledge, and the committee approved it with the other central region requests on February 9, 2017. A member asked whether the grounds had been assessed for archaeology; none had.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

The state finds the Ira Ellis House and Hall's Mill site not eligible for the National Register

Reviewing a survey for replacing the Hall's Mill Road bridge over the Eno, the State Historic Preservation Office agreed that the Ellis House, the Hall's Mill site and a proposed rural district around them did not qualify for the National Register, while the David Faucette House across the road remained eligible.

Subject: Rev. Ira Ellis House (Little Ayr Mount)

The North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls is listed in the National Register

On January 25, 2018 the National Park Service listed the North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls near Efland in the National Register of Historic Places.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

Buckhorn Flea Market closes on Buckhorn Road

The Buckhorn Flea Market on Buckhorn Road in western Orange County, known to many Spanish speakers as La Pulga de Mebane, closed after about four decades when a trucking company bought the land. Its 300 to 500 weekend vendors were largely Latino immigrants, and the Mebane City Council voted on July 1 to annex and rezone the property for a truck terminal.

A bilingual book walk is installed at Efland-Cheeks Community Park

The county parks department and the library installed a bilingual English–Spanish book walk at Efland-Cheeks Community Park during the 2024–25 fiscal year, paid for by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library. It brought a library reading program to a rural part of the county without a branch.

Subject: Orange County Public Library