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Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
- 1860s
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John Newman acquires the old Federal house on West Queen Street that his family keeps for generations
John Newman acquired the one-story Federal house at 230 West Queen Street in the mid-1860s. It passed to his son William Henry Newman in 1917 and then to his daughters Estelle, Josie and Gertrude, and late 1940s wings were added on each side.
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Two rooms are added to the Nash law office for music practice and Sarah Kollock's lodging
Two rooms were built onto the west side of the old Nash law office to give the Nash and Kollock School more practice rooms and to house Sarah Kollock.
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County commissioners call for builders of a new bridge over the Eno at Hillsborough
In a notice dated March 4, 1863, commissioners William H. Brown and J. W. Norwood announced they would let the building of a bridge over the Eno at Hillsborough to contract at the courthouse on Saturday, March 14. The plan was on view at the county court clerk's office.
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Fire destroys the block at the northwest corner of Churton and King streets
A fire that broke out about 1 a.m. destroyed seventeen buildings on the northwest corner of Churton and King streets in Hillsborough, among them the corner store owned by John U. Kirkland and occupied by W. F. and T. J. Strayhorn. The Recorder reported that few owners were insured.
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Pastor Henry B. Pratt tells the Presbyterian session he will serve the army as a chaplain
Pratt informed the Hillsborough church that he expected to go into Confederate service for the rest of the war once he obtained a chaplain's commission. He returned as pastor in 1867-68.
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Hillsborough Baptists begin worshipping in the basement of their unfinished church
With its building money lost in the war, the congregation appears to have moved into the basement of the new Wake Street church around 1864 and met there for some years. The builder John Berry finished the building later.
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Josiah Turner Jr. of Hillsborough is elected to the Confederate Congress
Turner won as an anti-administration candidate in the same year Orange gave Zebulon Vance an 885-vote majority over the peace candidate William W. Holden. In Congress his resolutions supported Graham's push for the Hampton Roads peace conference.
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Anderson's Confederate cavalry sign their paroles at Paul Cameron's house Highlands
At the end of the Civil War, Confederate troops used Highlands, Paul C. Cameron's house south of the Eno, and the paroles of Anderson's cavalry were signed in the old part of the house.
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Thomas Ruffin buys the Hillsborough house he called Little Hawfields
The house on East Orange Street, built about 1821 and enlarged in the 1830s, was sold to Thomas Ruffin in 1865. He named it Little Hawfields. The Town of Hillsborough acquired the property in 1972 and made it the Town Hall.
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The county court sets its 1865 levy for poor relief and soldiers' families
The February court matched the state tax on land and polls and split the money: $15,000 for poor relief, $10,000 for county purposes and the rest for soldiers' families. The previous August, presiding justice James C. Turrentine had called all the justices together on the families' support.
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Confederate leaders gather at Hillsborough
Wade Hampton and Joseph E. Johnston used the Dickson farm on the edge of Hillsborough as a temporary headquarters while Johnston negotiated with Sherman, and Confederate officials including Secretary of War John C. Breckinridge came there to work on terms. Johnston and his staff rode from the Dickson place along the old Hillsborough to Durham road to complete the surrender.
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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.
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Paul Cameron complains that Jesse Ruffin is raising freedpeople's hopes of land
In May 1865, weeks after the Confederate surrender near Durham, Paul Cameron wrote to his father-in-law Thomas Ruffin that the judge's longtime coachman Jesse had stirred the freedpeople on his place to hope for a freehold in the land they worked, and asked that his name not be linked with Jesse's.
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Job Berry calls a fair to buy a building for a Black school
The Hillsborough Recorder printed Job Berry's notice that the colored citizens of Hillsborough would hold a fair on September 23 to raise money for a school building. The school later met in the old courthouse at Queen and Churton streets.
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Freedom, schools, and Black community-building after emancipation
After emancipation, Black residents of Orange County built their own institutions. Chapel Hill's First Baptist Church formed in September 1865; Job Berry and Philadelphia Quakers opened Hillsborough's freedmen's school in the old courthouse on June 5, 1866; Black residents bought land for a Chapel Hill school in 1866; and St. Paul AME bought its church lot in 1878.
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Job Berry buys an acre on South Wake Street
Months after emancipation, Job Berry paid Henry N. Brown $300 for parts of lots 20 and 17 off South Wake Street, next to the Nash and Kollock School, where his wife Rebecca Nash had been enslaved.
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Bricks at the Coachman's Quarters carry the date Dec 5, '65
Two bricks in a small outbuilding near the Burnside stable in Hillsborough carry the hand-cut inscription 'Dec 5, '65', found during the building's restoration after 2003. The owners and descendants connect it to Jesse Ruffin, a coachman once enslaved by Thomas Ruffin. According to family tradition he cut the date to mark the day after the General Assembly ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which formally ended slavery.
Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
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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.
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John U. Kirkland serves as Orange County's clerk and master in equity
In 1866 John U. Kirkland, as clerk and master in equity at his office in Hillsborough, advertised court-ordered sales of Orange County land.
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John W. Graham serves as Orange County solicitor
After the Civil War, John W. Graham of Hillsborough was solicitor for Orange County from 1866 to 1868, before going as a delegate to the 1868 constitutional convention and into the state senate.
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John Wall Norwood buys the brick law office facing the courthouse
Attorney Richard Ashe sold the one-room brick law office on Court Street, facing the Orange County Courthouse, to John Wall Norwood for $400. The office, already shown on an 1839 map, is now called the Norwood Law Office.
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The AME congregation later called Dickerson Chapel begins worshipping in the old courthouse
The AME congregation later known as Dickerson Chapel moved into the 1790 courthouse building on Queen Street in 1866, sharing it with the freedmen's school the Philadelphia Friends ran there. Lefler and Wager date its formal organization to 1873, and the Friends conveyed the building to the church's trustees in 1886.
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The Collins women sell their shares of the Beehive to Dr. Thomas D. Warren
After the war the Collins relatives who had lived at the Beehive left Hillsborough, and the women sold their shares of the house to Dr. Thomas D. Warren, who had married Elizabeth Alethea Collins.
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The Methodist conference forms a Hillsborough District, with Hillsborough heading a station of five churches
In 1866 the Methodists created a Hillsborough District, under presiding elder W. H. Bobbitt, and made Hillsborough a station that also took in Cedar Grove, Walnut Grove, Lebanon and New Sharon. W. C. Wilson was pastor.
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Thomas and Anne Ruffin move from the Haw River plantation to Hillsborough
Thomas Ruffin and his wife Anne left their Haw River plantation early in 1866 and moved to Hillsborough, where he had bought the house he called Little Hawfields the year before.
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Twenty Black members leave First Baptist Church of Hillsborough and organize Mount Bright Baptist Church
Twenty Black members withdrew from First Baptist Church of Hillsborough in 1866 and organized a congregation of their own, named for its first pastor, Rev. Alfred E. Bright. The widow of Governor William A. Graham gave the group the West Union Street site where the congregation still worships.
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E. H. Pogue starts making tinware for the wholesale trade in Hillsborough
E. H. Pogue announced that he had begun manufacturing tinware in Hillsborough for merchants and retail dealers, and would also sell it to townspeople at wholesale rates. By early 1867 his store stood west of the courthouse, where he also sold groceries, stoves and tobacco and took country produce in barter.
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Jesse and Rebecca Ruffin register the marriage they made in
Jesse Ruffin, coachman to Judge Thomas Ruffin, and Rebecca, who had kept the keys of the Norwood household across the Eno, had married in 1828 while enslaved to different families. They recorded the marriage with the Freedmen's Bureau and later bought a farm.
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Rev. Job Berry and the Philadelphia Friends open Hillsborough's first school for Black children and adults
Job Berry, who had advertised a fair in September 1865 to raise money for a school, worked with the Friends of Philadelphia to buy the former Orange County courthouse on Queen Street for twelve hundred dollars and open a freedmen's school in it on June 5, 1866. More than three hundred children and adults learned to read and cipher there.
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Peter and Diannah Benton acquire land south of Hillsborough
A deed from Frances Thompson conveyed land half a mile south of town, where the Chatham and Chapel Hill roads divided (today Mayo Street and Orange Grove Road), to Peter Benton, his wife Diannah and Jimmy Thompson. Peter Benton, a free man, had gardened at the Burwell School in 1855.
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Thomas Ruffin buys six lots next to his Hillsborough house from Pride Jones
Thomas Ruffin bought lots 177, 178, 179, 204, 205 and 206, which adjoined the house he had acquired the year before, from Pride Jones.
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Andrew Green Ruffin Lloyd builds a log house on Old Hillsborough Road
Around 1867 Andrew Green Ruffin Lloyd raised the log core of a house that later generations of Lloyds enlarged several times. Frame outbuildings stand on the farm.
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Civil War veteran William Couch builds a frame farmhouse east of Hillsborough
William Couch, a Confederate veteran, builds a two-story frame house around 1867 beside an older log house, and adds outbuildings to the farm. The farm is on the Study List, next to the Sam Couch farm.
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Sarah J. Woodson teaches at the freedmen's school in Hillsborough
Sarah J. Woodson, an Oberlin graduate from Ohio, was principal of the school for Black children in Hillsborough, which she taught with V. S. Williams. The Freedmen's Bureau's report of January 1868 named it among the large, well-run schools in North Carolina.
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Hillsborough Methodist Church opens a lending library for its members
Around 1868 the church began a library of religious and general books, many donated by members and townspeople and some bought by Sunday school classes. Books went out on Sunday mornings, and the record book later counted 937 volumes.
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The White Brotherhood, a Ku Klux order, appears in Orange County
The first Klan-type order to reach North Carolina, the White Brotherhood, set up camps including one at Hillsborough. Its Orange County chief was Colonel Joseph C. Webb, followed by Frederick N. Strudwick.
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Robert G. Fitzgerald comes to Hillsborough to teach a freedmen's school
Fitzgerald, a Union Navy and cavalry veteran who had taught freedpeople in Amelia County, Virginia, came to Hillsborough through the Friends' Freedmen's Association of Philadelphia to teach at a new school for Black students.
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The Court of Wardens of the Poor holds its last meeting
The seven-member wardens' court, which had run poor relief and the county poorhouse, met for the last time before the new board of county commissioners took over its work.
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Orange County's first elected board of commissioners takes office
Elected in April 1868 at the election that ratified the new constitution, five commissioners qualified at the courthouse and chose Lemuel Lynch chairman, replacing the old county court of justices. Within days the newly elected sheriff, treasurer, register of deeds and clerk of superior court gave their bonds.
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Commissioners hire Silas M. Link to divide the county into townships
Link was paid $75 to lay the school districts out into townships, and the board approved his plan of eight: Hillsboro, Little River, Mangum, Durham, Patterson, Chapel Hill, Bingham and Cedar Grove. In 1877 the board split Mangum at Little River to form Lebanon Township.
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Former governor William A. Graham lives in the Nash-Hooper House
William A. Graham, former governor of North Carolina, made the Nash-Hooper House on West Tryon Street his home from 1869 until 1875.
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J. W. Norwood of Hillsborough warns county farmers that their methods are ruining the land
In an 1869 talk to Orange County farmers, Norwood said the county's fields were exhausted because growers added no organic matter, rotated nothing and let rain wash the soil away. He urged a new system before ruin set in.
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The sheriff auctions the former Burwell School to David C. Parks
Dr. Thomas D. Warren was deep in local debt, and the Orange County sheriff sold the house at auction to David C. Parks for $600. Parks and his brother Charles traded the property between them for the next quarter century.
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Dennis Heartt gives up the Hillsborough Recorder after nearly fifty years
In the Recorder of January 11, 1869, Dennis Heartt announced that his connection with the paper would end with that number, thirteen months short of fifty years after its first issue. An 1899 history of the paper says he sold it to Capt. C. N. B. Evans of the Milton Chronicle.
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Thomas Fitzgerald buys Woodside, where his son Robert builds a freedmen's school
Thomas Fitzgerald, whose son Robert had persuaded the family to move from Pennsylvania, bought Woodside, a 158-acre plantation six miles east of Hillsborough, from Robert J. Jeffreys for $1,200 in April 1869, with Robert writing the deed. Robert built a freedmen's school on the property, and the family also farmed and ran a tannery and brick making there.
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Washington Morrow, Thomas Jefferson Morrow and Daniel Morrow are lynched
Early on August 7, 1869, about 100 disguised white men took Washington Morrow and his brother Nelson from the Hillsborough jail, where they were held on barn-burning charges, and shot Washington as they fled; he died of the wound. On October 14 a mob hanged their father, Thomas Jefferson Morrow, and their uncle, Daniel Morrow.
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Klansmen take two Black prisoners from jail and shoot one of them
A few nights after three barns burned in late July 1869, two Black men accused of another barn burning were taken from jail. One was let go; the other was shot and died.
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Orange County in the Kirk–Holden War
Governor Holden named Orange County in his October 1869 warning about Klan violence, Hillsborough men were named in a Klan plot against Senator T. M. Shoffner, and Kirk's militia arrested Josiah Turner Jr. at Hillsborough in August 1870. Orange men Frederick N. Strudwick, William A. Graham and John W. Graham then helped bring, prosecute and decide Holden's impeachment.
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Klansmen from Hillsborough ride to kill Senator T. M. Shoffner and turn back
A Klan party coming from Orange County that included Hillsborough legislator Frederick N. Strudwick and A. Hedgepeth of Hillsborough gathered at a Bradshaw home in Alamance County to kill state senator T. M. Shoffner, author of the anti-Klan militia bill. Dr. John A. Moore, sent by James E. Boyd, told them Shoffner had gone to Greensboro, and they turned back.
- 1870s
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Anne Ruffin buys the last two lots and the Ruffin place fills a whole town block
Completing a purchase begun before her husband's death, Anne M. Ruffin bought lots 202 and 203. The Ruffin property then took in an entire block of about ten acres, which was still intact in 1971.
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Eliza Beaty keeps a boarding house in the William Whitted House
In the late nineteenth century Mrs. Eliza Beaty runs a well-known boarding house in the old William Whitted House at East Queen and North Churton streets. The Italianate wing facing Churton Street may have been added for her.
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The Camerons move a two-story building thought to be slave quarters to Burnside
In the late nineteenth century the Cameron family moves a two-story frame building, thought to have been built as quarters for enslaved people, to the southeast corner of the Burnside house at 201 South Cameron Street. It was joined to the main house at the second floor in the 1950s.
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Builder John Berry dies at Sunny Side while starting the Berry Building
John Berry, the self-taught builder of the Orange County Courthouse and a longtime state legislator, died of pneumonia at his home Sunny Side at 72. He had caught cold that winter while beginning his last project, a two-story brick store and ballroom downtown known as the Berry Building.
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Thomas Ruffin dies at his Hillsborough home
Ruffin died in the northeast room of the house on January 15, 1870, and his widow Anne inherited the estate. He was buried at St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough, on ground he had given for the church, where he had served on the vestry.
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Joseph E. Pogue clerks in his brother E. H. Pogue's Hillsborough store
At 18, Joseph Ezekiel Pogue left East Tennessee for Hillsborough, where he clerked in the general store of his brother, E. H. Pogue, until September 1871. He then became a traveling salesman for a tobacco factory, the start of a tobacco career that took him to Henderson in 1875 and Raleigh in 1885.
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Hillsborough men ask Governor Holden to commission Pride Jones against the Klan
On March 5, 1870 six Hillsborough men, among them J. W. Norwood, James Webb and Henry K. Nash, recommended to Governor Holden that Pride Jones be made a militia captain to put down night riding. Holden sent the commission on March 7 and Jones accepted on March 9. The raids soon stopped, and Jones resigned after four weeks.
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Henrietta Heartt is appointed Hillsborough's postmaster
Henrietta Heartt becomes the first woman on the list of Hillsborough postmasters, succeeding Dennis Heartt. Harriet H. Strayhorn in 1873 and Mary E. Berry in 1882 followed her.
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Dennis Heartt dies in Hillsborough
Dennis Heartt died at his home in Hillsborough on the morning of May 13, 1870, in his eighty-seventh year, and his funeral was held at the Presbyterian church the next day while the town's stores closed. The Recorder noted that Governor W. W. Holden, once his apprentice in the Recorder office, had him appointed Hillsborough postmaster after the war.
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Kirk's militia arrests Josiah Turner Jr. at Hillsborough
On August 5, 1870, a detachment of Kirk's state militia seized Raleigh Sentinel editor Josiah Turner Jr. at or near Hillsborough, took him by rail to Company Shops and then held him with Kirk's other prisoners in the Caswell County courthouse at Yanceyville. U.S. District Judge George W. Brooks ordered him discharged on August 19, 1870, on his habeas corpus petition.
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Joseph Blount Cheshire studies law under William K. Ruffin at Hillsborough
Cheshire read law for several months under William K. Ruffin of Hillsborough, a son of Chief Justice Thomas Ruffin. He then worked three months in a Tarboro law office and was licensed in January 1872.
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Land is bought for Hillsborough's (New) Town Cemetery on Corbin Street
The six-acre cemetery just north of the old town limits stands on land bought in 1871, though its earliest graves date from the 1860s. It now holds more than 3,000 graves in regular rows behind a brick wall on East Corbin Street, including military markers for both Confederate and Union soldiers.
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U.S. Senate committee hears Orange County testimony on Klan violence
A Senate select committee created on January 19, 1871 took testimony in Washington on Klan violence in North Carolina. Orange County witnesses, including Hillsborough constable W. G. Turrentine, court clerk George Laws and editor Josiah Turner Jr., described the 1869 jail raid, hangings and whippings in the county. The committee reported on March 10, 1871.
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Mary Pauline Fitzgerald is baptized at St. Matthew's
The seven-month-old daughter of the freedmen's teacher Robert G. Fitzgerald and his wife Cornelia was baptized at St. Matthew's, her mother standing as sponsor. As Pauline Fitzgerald Dame she later raised her niece, Pauli Murray.
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John U. Kirkland is appointed a magistrate of Hillsborough township
When James B. McDade resigned as one of the township's magistrates, the board of trustees appointed John U. Kirkland to fill the vacancy, a choice the Recorder called admirable.
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John D. Cameron becomes editor and publisher of the Recorder
John Donald Cameron took over the Recorder from the Evans family, who kept only their Milton Chronicle. His masthead in January 1879 read 'J. D. Cameron, Editor and Proprietor', New Series Vol. 7, Old Series Vol. 58.
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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.
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The Turner family goes bankrupt and its North Churton Street estate is sold at auction
In 1872 the Turner family goes bankrupt and its estate around the house at 404 North Churton Street is sold at auction. Edmund Strudwick of Norfolk bought the house in 1887.
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H. P. Jones ships two hundred cases of Tar Heel smoking tobacco from Hillsborough to Georgia
The Recorder reported that Jones had lately shipped two hundred cases of his Tar Heel brand smoking tobacco to Georgia and held orders for a hundred more.
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The Hillsborough Presbyterian session asks that members be allowed to withdraw without church trial
The session resolved to ask presbytery to propose to the General Assembly a change in discipline, so that a member living outside the church's standards could leave its communion without a formal trial. After this, discipline cases disappear from the minutes.
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Job Berry is named a delegate to the Republican state convention
The Orange County Republican convention chose Rev. Job Berry as a Hillsborough delegate to the 1872 state convention, which backed Ulysses S. Grant and Governor Tod R. Caldwell.
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The county school board settles the school fund account with Treasurer David C. Parks
The Board of Education settled the school fund account with county treasurer D. C. Parks up to March 7, 1872. It showed $9,245.36 received from the state apportionments for 1869 to 1872 and the 1871 school poll tax, and $3,869.54 paid out to the townships.
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St. Matthew's rector Moses Ashley Curtis dies
Moses Ashley Curtis, rector of St. Matthew's for twenty-one years and a botanist of international standing, died at 64. The font and a south window in the church are his memorials.
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Addison Holden builds the Holden–Roberts farmhouse
Addison Holden, a Confederate veteran and half-brother of Governor William W. Holden, built a tri-gable frame I-house in 1873 and 1874 on the farm about three miles east of Hillsborough that he bought from his uncle Isaac Holden in 1871. It is one of very few Orange County houses built during Reconstruction; George Cain Roberts bought the farm in 1908.
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Harriet H. Strayhorn serves as Hillsborough's postmistress
Harriet H. Strayhorn, who with William F. Strayhorn owned Twin Chimneys on West King Street, was Hillsborough's postmistress from 1873 to 1881.
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Charles Jones Curtis succeeds his father as rector of St. Matthew's
After his ordination to the priesthood, Charles Jones Curtis followed his father, Moses Ashley Curtis, as rector and served until he resigned in 1880.
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Webb, Roulhac & Cameron prepare to move their tobacco business from Hillsborough to Durham
The Hillsborough Recorder reported that the tobacco firm of Webb, Roulhac & Cameron was about to move to Durham, where it had been offered better terms. The paper said the town could ill spare them.
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A county school census finds 24 more schoolhouses are needed
An 1874 count of school-age children by township found 2,380 Black children and set the need at 24 additional schoolhouses, ten of them in Hillsboro Township.
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Hillsborough Methodist Church finishes paying for its building
The Civil War interrupted work on the brick church John Berry designed and built on West Tryon Street, and the congregation did not finish paying for it until 1874.
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Maj. John W. Graham builds a twelve-room house at Montrose on his father's old foundation
In 1874 William A. Graham gave the vacant Montrose land to his son Maj. John W. Graham, who built a twelve-room house on the foundation of the first house. It burned in 1893.
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Haywood Beverly and Lewis Jenkins run for Hillsborough town commissioner as Black Republicans
In the Hillsborough town election, Black Republicans Haywood Beverly, a tanner, and Lewis Jenkins ran for town commissioner. Both lost, and the board elected was Conservative except for H. N. Brown, who ran on both tickets.
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The new trustees sue Solomon Pool and Alexander McIver at Orange Superior Court and win possession of the university in the Supreme Court
At the May 1874 term of Orange Superior Court the new board brought one action against Superintendent Alexander McIver, who held the university's seal and books and had agreed to a friendly test suit, and another against Solomon Pool for the buildings. Judge Albion W. Tourgee ruled against the trustees; John W. Graham and James A. Graham of Hillsborough argued for them without fee, as did B. F. Moore and William H. Battle on appeal in June 1874. At its January term 1875 the state Supreme Court decided for the university on every point, and possession passed to Andrew Mickle, the board's agent, with the seal, books and papers going to Treasurer Kemp Battle.
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Joseph Blount Cheshire marries Annie Huske Webb at St. Matthew's
Joseph Blount Cheshire Jr., later Episcopal bishop of North Carolina, married Annie Huske Webb of Hillsborough at St. Matthew's Church.
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James A. Cheek builds an Italianate house on North Churton Street
James A. Cheek built a five-bay Italianate I-house with an ornate sawnwork porch on Lot 78, on a rise above North Churton Street. His family kept it until 1908; a brick kitchen and an 1880s barn survive behind it.
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Mount Bright Baptist Church builds its church in Hillsborough
Mount Bright Baptist Church, the Black Baptist congregation in Hillsborough led by Alfred Bright, erected its church building in 1875.
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St. Matthew's Episcopal Church reworks its entrance tower and adds the spire
In 1875 the west entrance tower of St. Matthew's was reworked and given its slate-covered spire.
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Commissioners order a new bell for the courthouse
The board authorized David C. Parks to buy and hang a new bell for the courthouse and to sell the old one on the best terms he could.
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A flood carries away the road bridge over the Eno at Hillsborough
Floodwater swept away the bridge over the Eno at Hillsborough, and the river rose to within a few feet of the railroad bridge. The same flood took bridges across Caswell County.
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William A. Graham dies and is buried at Hillsborough
Graham died unexpectedly at Saratoga Springs, New York, on 11 August 1875, where he had gone for a meeting of the Virginia and Maryland arbitration commission. He was buried in the cemetery adjacent to the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church. He had been elected a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1875 but died before it assembled.
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Anne Ruffin dies and Little Hawfields passes to her heirs
Anne Kirkland Ruffin, who had inherited the Hillsborough house on Thomas Ruffin's death in 1870, died on October 28, 1875. The estate passed to her children and a grandchild.
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A Presbyterian church for Hillsborough's Black members is founded
More than a decade after emancipation, a Presbyterian church for people of color was established on land from the Brodie family at the corner of Orange and Wake streets.
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Thomas Ruffin Jr. and his wife Mary build the Ruffin-Hill House
Thomas Ruffin Jr. and his wife Mary built an I-house with Italianate and Eastlake trim on a 47-acre tract near the burned Priestly Mangum House. Their daughter Mary Ruffin Hill and her husband Thomas Hill lived there for many years.
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Louisa Turner sells Maple Hill and 140 acres to her brother-in-law Israel Turner
Louisa Jackson Turner, widow of John Turner, sold her father Jacob Jackson's home tract and the house where she lived to Israel Turner Jr. for $10,500. Israel Turner later ran a government-licensed distillery on the farm.
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Hillsborough's Black Presbyterians build their church on Orange Street
The congregation built its church about 1878 with some help from white residents. Leading families were the Ellisons, Boldens, Morrows, Richmonds and Webbs; Bill Bolden played the organ and a Rev. White was pastor.
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The Orange County Observer begins publication at Hillsborough
Joseph A. Harris started the Orange County Observer at Hillsborough in 1878 as editor and owner. The paper ran until about 1917.
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The wife of pastor J. H. Wheeler is buried in front of the Hillsborough Methodist Church
During J. H. Wheeler's four-year pastorate his wife died and was buried in the church's front yard, a grave the church still showed in 1962.
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St. Matthew's rings its new bell, a memorial to Confederate dead
A steeple bell given by Mrs. Mary Curtis was rung for the first time for the Easter service. Its inscription remembers John Henry Curtis and the other men of the Orange Light Artillery who died in Confederate service.
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E. H. Pogue moves his tobacco manufacturing from Hillsborough to Durham
Pogue, a tobacco dealer since 1866 alongside his tinware and general merchandise trade, began making plug tobacco at a factory in Hillsborough in 1872 or 1873. In 1879 he moved the business to Durham, where E. H. Pogue & Son made granulated and long-cut smoking tobacco, while Pogue kept his home in Hillsborough.
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John D. Cameron moves the Recorder from Hillsborough to Durham, ending fifty-nine years of publication in the county seat
Cameron carried the paper fifteen miles east to the tobacco town, where it continued as the Durham Recorder, published every Wednesday. The last issue under the Hillsborough title in the digitized run is March 5, 1879; the first Durham issue there is July 2, 1879.
- 1880s
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Harmony Baptist Church builds its frame meeting house northwest of Hillsborough
The one-room weatherboarded church on stone piers, with a double door and shuttered windows, was built in the 1880s.
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The Caine Roberts farm is built near Hillsborough
A farm complex centered on a two-story frame Triple-A I-house is built around 1880 on the Caine Roberts place near Hillsborough. The survey put it on the Study List.
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The Phelps farmstead is built north of Hillsborough
The Phelps farm on NC 57 north of Hillsborough grows up in the late nineteenth century around a Triple-A I-house, with a log tenant house and one- and two-pen log barns. It is on the Study List.
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The upstairs courtroom of the Orange County Courthouse is renovated
In the 1880s the second-floor courtroom of John Berry's 1844-1845 courthouse on East King Street was renovated; the rest of the interior keeps most of its original finish.
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James Webb Jr. builds Mid-Lawn at East Queen and North Cameron streets
James Webb Jr. built a two-story Italianate house, later called Mid-Lawn, on the northwest corner of East Queen and North Cameron streets. David and Elizabeth Patterson bought it in 1919.
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Joseph W. Murphy serves as rector of St. Matthew's
Joseph W. Murphy was rector of the parish for eleven years. His family later gave the brass alms basin in his memory.
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St. Matthew's vestry asks Joseph Blount Cheshire to be its rector
The vestries of St. Matthew's and the Burlington church asked Joseph Blount Cheshire to take charge of their parishes. He would have come to his wife's home town, but Bishop Lyman wanted him to stay in Chapel Hill.
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Hillsborough Presbyterian Church shares a pastor with the Chapel Hill church
During J. L. Williamson's short pastorate of 1882-83 the Hillsborough church was grouped with the Presbyterian church at Chapel Hill.
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Lisbon Berry becomes Orange County's first Black lawyer
Lisbon Payne Berry, born enslaved in Hillsborough in 1850, studied law in Hillsborough and was admitted to the North Carolina bar in 1882, becoming the first Black attorney in Orange County.
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The Mount Zion congregation buys an acre for its first church
The Black congregation then known as Poplar Springs, which had met in a schoolhouse and on members' farms, bought a one-acre lot from S. W. Hughes and Margaret J. Hughes for $10. Its first church there was a small frame building with benches made by members.
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The commissioners call a fence-law election in Hillsborough Township
On a petition from the township, the board ordered a vote at each Hillsborough Township precinct for and against the fence law on June 10, 1882 and named the men to hold it. The result is not given; an 1885 act later put Hillsboro and three other townships under the stock law.
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Cross Roads Baptist Church is organized as Betheden
W. P. Roberts and S. S. Cates led the founding of a Baptist church first called Betheden and later Cross Roads, with R. A. Patterson as first pastor. It built a 300-seat church in 1910.
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Dr. Pride Jones serves as Orange County clerk of superior court
Dr. Pride Jones followed George Laws, clerk for thirty years, as clerk of the superior court of Orange County and held the office from 1883 to 1888, when Samuel M. Gattis succeeded him.
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The Berry family moves to Sunnyside south of Hillsborough
Dr. John and Mary Strayhorn Berry moved from their West King Street house, now known as Two Chimneys, to Sunnyside, the Berry family plantation two miles south of town. Mary Berry tutored her daughter Harriet at home until she was twelve.
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A brick saloon and barber shop stands at 106 North Churton Street
The two-story brick building at 106 North Churton Street appears as a saloon and barber shop on the Sanborn maps from 1884 through 1911. By 1924 it held bank offices, and its storefront was redone in the Colonial Revival style about the 1930s.
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Hillsborough Methodists report their Sunday school's hundredth anniversary
In 1884 H. N. Brown reported that the Hillsborough Methodist Sunday school had celebrated its centennial; it then had thirty-five pupils and seven teachers and a library of church literature.
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The Park Building, a brick general store, stands on North Churton Street
The two-story pressed-brick building at 128 North Churton Street, one of the oldest commercial buildings in the district, is built as a general store and is labeled the Park Building on Sanborn maps from 1884 to 1911. It now serves as a bank with drive-through lanes.
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A Hillsborough doctor has the picnic grounds and paths on Occoneechee Mountain put in order
A Dr. Wilson raised money to fix up the picnic grounds near the mountain spring and the paths to Sofa Rock and the Panther's Den, so the town could reach them easily. The Orange County Observer thanked him for the people of Hillsboro.
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A stock law ends open range in four Orange County townships
An 1885 act barred cattle from running at large in Cedar Grove, Little River, Hillsboro and Bingham townships and had the commissioners fence those townships from a special tax. A second act let Chapel Hill Township adopt the stock law on a petition of three-fourths of its freeholders.
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Edward Atkins Rosemond buys the East Tryon Street lot where he builds his house
Deeds show Edward Atkins Rosemond bought the property at 115 East Tryon Street in 1885. His two-story I-house went up between 1888 and 1894, was enlarged by 1905 and 1911, and passed to his daughter and granddaughter.
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Mrs. William L. DeRosset and others give St. Matthew's a Bible
Mrs. William L. DeRosset, with family and friends, presented the church's Bible as an Easter offering.
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A rector's chair is given to St. Matthew's in memory of Sarah Mary Matthews Murphy
Her husband and children gave the rector's chair on the south side of the altar in memory of Sarah Mary Matthews Murphy.
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The new Board of Education sets aside $50 for an institute for Black teachers
At its first meeting in the Hillsboro courthouse, the board created under the 1885 school law organized with Joseph Harris as chairman and voted fifty dollars to hold a training institute for the county's Black teachers.
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Miss Heartt keeps a private primary school in Hillsborough, later with Mrs. Bragg
A small private school for young children run by Miss Heartt appears in the Hillsborough paper by June 1886. From 1890 she taught it with Mrs. Bragg, and the two advertised each August that they would resume classes, the last such notice found being for August 28, 1911.
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E. H. Pogue & Co. hold the opening sale at the Hillsboro Tobacco Warehouse
The Hillsboro Tobacco Warehouse, run by E. H. Pogue & Co., held its opening sale on Tuesday, January 5, 1886, and the Observer reported a heavy break with good prices. Three days earlier Pogue and fourteen other men had incorporated the Orange County Tobacco Association to buy and sell leaf tobacco.
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Dickerson's Chapel trustees buy the old courthouse from the Philadelphia Friends
Trustees of the Philadelphia Friends' association for the relief of freedmen sold the old Baptist church lot, with the former courthouse on it, to the trustees of Hillsborough's African Methodist Episcopal church for $800. The congregation had worshipped and kept school there for twenty years.
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Haywood Craig, a Black man, is received into the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church
The session received Haywood Craig on profession of faith; the book records him under a heading for the church's Black members.
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D. C. Parks is elected a Hillsborough town commissioner
At a quiet town election Hillsborough chose George C. Corbin mayor and elected A. W. Graham, James Webb Jr., J. W. Hooker, William Anderson, D. M. Laws, D. C. Parks and William H. Newman commissioners.
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Edmund Strudwick of Norfolk buys the Turner house on North Churton Street for his mother and sisters
Norfolk cotton merchant Edmund Strudwick bought the house built for tinner Josiah Turner Sr. and enlarged it for his mother and sisters, apparently adding the gables, bay windows and new sash that give it a Victorian look.
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The revived Hillsboro Recorder moves Dennis Heartt's old press into its office
The new Hillsboro Recorder reported that it had just moved the press and some wood type Dennis Heartt brought from Connecticut for the first Recorder of 1820 out of a Hillsborough cellar, where they had sat since 1867, and into its own office.
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The Webb & Co. tobacco partnership in Hillsborough is dissolved
James Webb Jr., Joseph C. Webb and George C. Corbin gave notice that their tobacco manufacturing firm, Webb & Co., was dissolved, leaving the two Webbs to collect its debts and wind up its business. The firm had been making tobacco in Hillsborough since at least 1881.
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David S. Payne marries Eliza Mayo
The marriage joined two Black Hillsborough families tied to the Burwell School: Eliza was a granddaughter of the school's laundress Eliza Chavious, and David was the son of Bettie Payne and a grandson of Rev. William Payne, a founder of Dickerson Chapel.
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Frederick Strudwick co-owns and edits the Hillsborough Recorder
On 11 August 1887 Strudwick and C. E. Parish became co-owners and editors of the Hillsborough Recorder. Their first issue promised a firm and conservative stand on matters of public welfare and a thoroughly Democratic line in politics. Strudwick left the paper after the issue of 8 March 1888.
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The school board forms Occoneechee school district from land south of the Eno
The board created District 41, Occoneechee, from land south of the Eno River and part of the Hillsboro district.
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Edward Atkins Rosemond builds his house on East Tryon Street
Edward Atkins Rosemond built a two-story I-house on the East Tryon Street lot he had bought in 1885. It was enlarged at the rear by 1905 and given a front-gabled east wing by 1911.
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Hillsborough's commissioners sell the Public Spring Lot
The town sold its Public Spring Lot, one of the public lots set aside when Hillsborough was laid out, for $100. The finance committee's report for the year ending May 1, 1889 lists the sale.
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Richison Nichols buys the old Orange Hotel and builds its piazza over the West King Street sidewalk
Richison Nichols bought Isaiah Spencer's inn, apparently in 1888, and built the two-story piazza that reaches the street. The 1888 Sanborn map shows it as the Occoneechee Hotel, the name it kept until 1908.
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Samuel M. Gattis becomes chairman of the Orange County Democratic executive committee
In the year he began practicing law in Hillsborough, Gattis was elected chairman of the Orange County Democratic executive committee and a delegate to the party's national convention.
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Fire destroys the Parish and Berry buildings and the Recorder printing office in Hillsborough
A fire before dawn burned Postmaster Harry L. Parish's brick building, which held the post office, his store and the Hillsboro Recorder's printing office, then spread to the three-story Berry building next door. The Recorder lost its press, type and subscription books.
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Hillsborough church men organize a Young Men's Christian Association at the Presbyterian manse
Men from the town's churches met at the Presbyterian manse on a Monday night, adopted a constitution and bylaws, and elected Charles M. Parks president and Joseph A. Harris secretary. The next meeting was called for the manse on December 10.
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Samuel M. Gattis becomes clerk of the Orange County superior court
Judge Gilmer appointed the young Hillsborough lawyer clerk of the superior court after Dr. Pride Jones resigned. Gattis was elected to the office in 1889 and held it until 1894.
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A small office from the Turner-Strudwick grounds is moved to East Orange Street
A one-story frame office on the Turner-Strudwick House lot, shown on John Bailey's 1839 map when the lot belonged to Josiah Turner Sr., was moved next door to 110 East Orange Street, two years after Edmund Strudwick of Norfolk bought the property. It was later enlarged into a house and rebuilt in 1987. It is not Dr. Edmund Strudwick's medical office on West King Street.
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First Baptist Church of Hillsborough repairs its church and ties the walls with rods
In 1889 the Romanesque Revival brick church at 201 West King Street, which John Berry finished by 1868, was fully repaired, including reinforcing its walls with rods.
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Orange County names its first superintendent of health
Ten years after the 1879 law allowing county boards of health, Orange organized one, and the state health board's report for 1889-90 lists Dr. D. C. Parris of Hillsborough as part-time superintendent. Dr. C. D. Jones succeeded him in 1898 and served until the full-time department began in 1935.
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The Keystone Bridge Company replaces the wooden railroad bridge over the Eno at Hillsboro with an iron one
Crews of the Keystone Bridge Company of Pittsburgh began replacing the wooden railroad bridge over the Eno near the Hillsboro depot with an iron bridge, expecting to finish by August 10. Trains kept running across it at three miles an hour.
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Hillsborough's town commissioners first meet in the new brick mayor's office and guard house
The town board met for the first time in its new brick building on the courthouse square, with the mayor's office in front and two cells for prisoners behind. The building committee accepted the work and the board ordered $560 paid in full.
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Justices and commissioners elect a new board of education and school superintendent
In joint session on June 3 the justices and commissioners chose John Thompson, W. V. Andrews and D. S. Parker as the county board of education. The next day, at a joint meeting of the commissioners and the new board, B. C. Patton was elected county superintendent of public instruction in place of the Rev. J. L. Currie, who had resigned.
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Sans Souci is sold at auction and passes to Episcopal Bishop Lyman
Sans Souci was sold at public auction to a bidder named Parrish, who at once assigned his bid to the Episcopal bishop of North Carolina, Bishop Lyman of Raleigh.
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David C. Parks buys the Parks-Richmond lot and joins it to the Colonial Inn lot as one hotel
D. C. Parks bought Town Lot 18 on West King Street and combined it with Lot 15, the site of the present Colonial Inn, to run them as one hotel. The house on Lot 18 held the office, reception rooms and dining room, and the inn building held the sleeping rooms.
- 1890s
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D. C. Parks has designer Jules Körner remodel his hotel buildings and Twin Chimneys
While he owned the Occoneechee Hotel, David C. Parks hired Jules Körner of Kernersville to update the hotel, the Parks-Richmond House next door and Twin Chimneys across West King Street, giving them new window and door frames with pointed-arch surrounds.
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John Borland builds a two-story log house on his 100-acre farm
About 1890 John Borland put up a full two-story log house with half-dovetail corners. It is one of only two two-story log houses the survey found in the township.
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Jule Gilmer Korner remodels the former Burwell School
In the 1890s the old Burwell School house was remodeled by Jule Gilmer Korner of Kernersville, who gave it a bracketed cornice, a sawnwork porch, a new hall stair and new mantels, including a marble one in the parlor. Several of the older mantels were lost in the work, which was done for an owner thought to be Mrs. Charles M. Parks.
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The Jacobs farmhouse is built on St. Mary's Road
A two-story frame farmhouse of the Triple-A type was built in the 1890s on what the 1999 survey called the Jacobs property, where three barns and a silo also stand.
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Frederick Strudwick dies and Hillsborough holds a meeting in his honor
Strudwick died on 29 July 1890 after an illness of several months and was buried in the Hillsborough Cemetery. A special town meeting led by C. E. Parish was convened in his honor. Between the legislature and his death he had served as solicitor for the Fifth District for eight years.
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Benjamin Duke builds a country house at University Station
Durham tobacco industrialist Benjamin Duke built a large, richly trimmed country house at University Station in 1891. The site lay south of Hillsborough, where a railroad spur met the North Carolina Railroad. The retreat once took in a big pond, bridges, an office and many outbuildings; by 1993 most of these were gone, but the house with its wraparound porch was well kept.
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Dickerson's Chapel remodels the old courthouse church
The AME congregation remodeled its building, the county's former courthouse, five years after buying it.
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Julian S. Carr buys Poplar Hill south of the Eno and renames the estate Occoneechee Farm
John Wall Norwood sold Poplar Hill, the house James Hogg had built about 1794 on the south bank of the Eno, to the Durham industrialist Julian S. Carr, who renamed the property Occoneechee Farm. Carr enlarged and altered the house over the next three decades.
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Nash and Kollock School closes as a boarding school
The Nash and Kollock boarding school closed at the end of its 1890 to 1891 session after thirty-one years. The Misses Nash and Kollock went on with a day school from August 6, 1891.
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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.
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Hillsborough Methodist Church buys its first parsonage from C. M. Parks
The church bought about nine-tenths of an acre at Union and Churton streets, with a house that became its first parsonage. The trustees were H. N. Brown Sr., S. M. Gattis, J. A. Harris, O. J. Forrest and James Hedgepeth.
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Julian S. Carr rebuilds the Occoneechee mineral spring with a marble basin and a rustic spring house
On his new Occoneechee Farm, Carr had the old mineral spring cleaned out and extended, set a marble basin in it, laid a cement floor and covered it with a rustic spring house with seats for visitors. The Orange County Observer described the finished work in September 1891.
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Julian S. Carr nearly finishes a large stock barn at Occoneechee Farm
Carr's new stock barn at his Occoneechee plantation near Hillsboro was a brick and frame building 42 by 155 feet, with stalls for horses, mares and foals, storage for 500 tons of hay and an elevator.
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Julian S. Carr builds a fieldstone gate wall at the entrance to Occoneechee Farm
Carr put up a stone gate wall at the farm entrance, two curving walls of fieldstone gathered on the farm, one on each side of the driveway, set with round pillars capped by stacked round stones. The Durham Daily Globe reprinted the Orange County Observer's description in December 1891.
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Harvey's Chapel AME Church is organized
Families who had met as a brush-arbor congregation bought land and founded Harvey's Chapel AME Church in 1892 on a ridge about three miles southwest of Hillsborough. Lefler and Wager dated it about 1903, named Avery Harvey and Harpy Elkins as organizers and the Rev. Sandy Aiken as first pastor, and listed it as a CME church, though it is AME.
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Mildred C. Cameron gives St. Matthew's a new altar and reredos
Miss Mildred C. Cameron gave the altar and reredos in memory of Paul C. Cameron, Rebecca Graham and Pauline Sheppard.
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The Hillsborough Presbyterian Church is stuccoed and given Gothic windows and a shingled tower
In 1892 the 1816 brick church was covered with scored stucco and given pointed-arch windows, a gabled roof and a shingled entrance tower with a spire. A two-story rear wing was probably added at the same time.
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A brass altar rail is given to St. Matthew's in memory of Mildred Cameron
At Christmas Miss Margaret Mordecai gave a brass altar rail in memory of Miss Mildred Cameron, who had given the altar earlier that year.
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Bishop Lyman and his wife sell Sans Souci to Miss Ruffin
Bishop Lyman and his wife sold Sans Souci to a Miss Ruffin, who kept it until her death in the 1930s.
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The justices of the peace vote to repeal the county road tax
In joint session, a majority of the county's justices voted to end the alternative road system while every commissioner voted to keep it. After a second standoff in July, the commissioners gave way on August 8, 1893.
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Fire destroys Major John W. Graham's house at Montrose
Major John W. Graham's house east of Hillsborough burned to the ground on the night of October 19, with almost nothing saved and no insurance on a loss of about $15,000. It was the second Graham house lost to fire on the Montrose site, after the governor's house in 1862; the family moved into the old law office until the present house was built.
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The Chapel Hill News, forerunner of The News of Orange County, begins publication
The weekly that became The News of Orange County began in Chapel Hill in October 1893 as The Chapel Hill News. Renamed The News, it moved to Hillsboro between 1936 and 1941 and took the title The News of Orange County in 1944. The paper still dates its founding to 1893.
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A one-story brick store, a drug store by 1900, is built at 109 West King Street
The 1894 Sanborn map shows a smaller building on the lot at 109 West King Street; by 1900 the map shows a brick store much like the present one, labeled a drug store. It was a jeweler's in 1911.
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Frank Nash returns to Hillsborough to live and write
After breakdowns in health ended most of his Tarboro law practice, Frank Nash moved back to Hillsborough, where he had grown up at the Nash-Kollock school. He stayed about twenty years and began writing historical romances and local history.
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William Hooper's remains are taken from Hillsborough to Guilford Courthouse battleground
The remains of William Hooper, signer of the Declaration of Independence, were removed from his grave in Hillsborough's town cemetery and reburied at the Guilford Courthouse battleground near Greensboro. His original gravestone was left in the Hillsborough cemetery, on ground that had been his garden east of the house.
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Justices and commissioners hold their last joint meeting
At the final joint session the justices elected John Thompson county superintendent of common schools, chose D. H. Hamilton, W. A. Maddry and M. W. Moore as commissioners, and set the 1894 tax. It closed out the justices' part in running the county.
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Dr. John S. Spurgeon buys the former Burwell School
The dentist paid Charles Parks $2,500 for lots 152 and 153. The Spurgeons, whose household included Carrie Waitt Spurgeon, daughter of a Burwell student, lived there for about seventy years and added electricity and plumbing.
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The county is divided into five school townships, each with a five-man committee
When the county commissioners took over the schools, the county was regrouped into five school townships (Cedar Grove, Little River, Hillsboro, Bingham and Chapel Hill), each run by a committee of five in place of the many district committees.
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Julian S. Carr's new club house at Occoneechee Farm is shown to an excursion from Raleigh
Julian S. Carr hosted students of the A. and M. College and their friends at Occoneechee Farm with a barbecue. The visitors toured his new rustic club house, with its stone fireplace, pool table, piano and a clock that played "Carolina."
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Albert Long, a Black man, joins the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church by letter from New Hope
Albert Long transferred his membership by certificate from New Hope Presbyterian Church, one of two Black members the book names as received after the Civil War.
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Anne Roulhac gives St. Matthew's an oak litany desk
Miss Anne Roulhac gave an oak litany desk in memory of her niece Katherine R. Hamilton.
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Allen J. Ruffin and James H. Webb Jr. found the Eno Cotton Mill
Ruffin and Webb, both of old Hillsborough families, founded the Eno Cotton Mill on the north bank of the Eno west of town, chartered by special act of the General Assembly in 1896. It was the first textile mill in Hillsborough and in present-day Orange County.
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Hillsborough has its town pump water analyzed and the well cleaned
Chemist H. B. Battle tested the water of Hillsborough's town pump on Churton Street and found too much mineral matter. The well was then cleaned out and the trough, the likely cause of excess chlorine, taken away.
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Eno Cotton Mill begins production
Yarn production started late in the year.
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Samuel Paxon Watters serves fifteen years as rector of St. Matthew's
Samuel Paxon Watters led the parish from 1897 to 1912. His wife, an invalid through most of those years, was counted among the most useful women in the diocese.
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The Junior Order of United American Mechanics sets up a lodge in Hillsborough
A lodge of the Junior Order of United American Mechanics was set up in Hillsborough. It later moved to Carrboro and then to Chapel Hill, where it operated as Davie Council No. 52.
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Jesse King, the officer who held McCauley, is tried and acquitted at Hillsborough
King, returning alone to Chapel Hill with his prisoner, was met by masked men who overpowered him and hanged McCauley from a dogwood. Tried at Hillsboro for permitting the prisoner to be taken from him by the mob, he was acquitted; the News and Observer used the trial to confirm that the lynching had in fact happened.
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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.
Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1900s
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St. Matthew's receives a brass alms basin in memory of Rev. Joseph W. Murphy
Dr. Samuel W. Murphy and Mrs. Walter E. Stumph, the former rector's brother and daughter, gave a brass alms basin in his memory.
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The George Washington Walker Farm is laid out on St. Mary's Road
A farm of nearly 75 acres was set up on both sides of St. Mary's Road around 1900, with a one-story house and frame barns that still stand. Its later buildings follow the county's shifts from grain to dairy, poultry and beef.
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The Hillsboro Milling Company is chartered
The state chartered the Hillsboro Milling Company with $10,000 in capital stock. By early 1901 it had put in a corn mill and was buying wheat, with H. Winder Webb as secretary and treasurer, and it later ran roller mills in a large brick building east of the courthouse.
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Hillsboro Township petitions for and votes a special road tax
A petition presented on October 1, 1900 led to an election that carried, and the commissioners levied 10 cents per $100 and 30 cents a poll for Hillsboro Township roads. Bingham followed, and by 1903 all seven townships taxed themselves for roads.
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Hillsboro's commissioners refuse to deed the old Female Academy to the town school
The board had asked the town to deed the old Hillsboro Female Academy lot, near E. A. Rosemond's house, to the school committee. The town offered only a ten-year lease, which the board said the law did not allow it to accept, and it told the committee to find another site.
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Hillsborough Baptist Church ordains Robert P. Walker
The church ordained one of its own, Robert P. Walker, to the Baptist ministry, the first of the ordinations the book lists for the congregation.
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The Hillsboro school committee buys the town's first public schoolhouse and lot
The committee bought a house on a two-acre lot, known as the Wash Bruce or Gill lot, from E. S. Cooley for $500. Pender says Hillsboro had never before owned a school building; the county board furnished it and paid for repairs.
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Jesse Ruffin, coachman and stagecoach driver, dies
Jesse Ruffin died in his nineties at his grandson Lindsey Faucette's house, out between Hillsborough and Durham. The Durham Sun remembered him as Judge Ruffin's servant and later Paul Cameron's, and a stagecoach driver before the railroad came; he was carried to Hillsborough by train for burial.
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Josiah Turner Jr. dies at his Hillsborough home
Josiah Turner Jr., former Confederate congressman and editor of the Raleigh Sentinel, died at his home in Hillsborough and was buried in the churchyard of St. Matthew's Church.
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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.
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Charles E. Maddry is pastor of First Baptist Church, Hillsborough
Charles Edward Maddry was pastor of the First Baptist Church in Hillsborough while finishing his studies at the University of North Carolina.
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John W. Graham builds the present house at Montrose
After his 1893 fire, John W. Graham lived in the enlarged law office until 1902, when he built the two-story frame house that is the core of the present Montrose, the third house on the site.
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Merchant B. B. Forrest has a Victorian cottage built on North Wake Street
A one-story T-shaped cottage with shingled gables and bracketed porches was built for B. B. Forrest, partner in the O. J. and B. B. Forrest general store, about the year he married Mollie Belle Smith of Leasburg. The 2014 district update calls it a rare, intact example of a T-shaped Victorian cottage.
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Shepperd Strudwick brings his family back to Hillsborough
Shepperd Strudwick, a native of Hillsborough, returned to the town with his family when his son Clement, born in Tennessee in April 1900, was two.
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Lightning burns the race track barn at Occoneechee Farm
During an electrical storm, lightning struck the "Pocahontas" or race track barn on Julian Carr's Occoneechee Farm, destroying it with its feed and farm machinery. No livestock were inside, and the loss was insured.
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