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Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
- 1860s
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Flat River men organize the Flat River Guards
A meeting of Flat River citizens at Mangum's Store formed a volunteer company, the Flat River Guards, and elected Robert F. Webb captain, William K. Parrish, W. P. Hampton and William B. McMannen lieutenants and Dr. E. M. Holt surgeon. By the summer the company had new arms and uniforms and was preparing a Fourth of July celebration at South Lowell.
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Hillsborough elects Andrew Murdock magistrate of police and seven town commissioners
Hillsborough voters chose Andrew Murdock magistrate of police and elected Josiah Turner Sr., William F. Strayhorn, James C. Turrentine, A. W. Hedgepeth, Thomas C. Hayes, Henry N. Brown and H. C. Strowd town commissioners. That evening the board re-elected John Laws town treasurer, chose Charles L. Cooley constable and collector and named Col. William McCauley weigh master.
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Orange Democrats meet at the court house and name delegates to the state convention
A county meeting of Democrats in the Hillsborough court house, with Gen. Joseph Allison in the chair and Calvin E. Parish as secretary, adopted resolutions from a committee led by John W. Norwood warning that continued Northern aggression on Southern rights would end in disunion, and commended Governor Ellis for re-election. It named a long list of delegates, among them Paul C. Cameron, Cadwallader Jones and Pride Jones, to the state Democratic convention at Raleigh on March 8, and Norwood then spoke for two hours.
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The county school board requires teachers to pass in grammar and geography
The Board of Superintendents of Common Schools, meeting in the county court clerk's office, elected William H. Brown chairman, named Samuel W. Hughes, Joseph A. Tinnen and William H. Brown its examining committee, and ordered that no teacher be employed or paid without the committee's certificate. Certificates were to go only to applicants able to teach reading, writing, arithmetic, English grammar and geography, a rule that by late May had dropped some former teachers.
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The North Carolina Railroad stops carrying the mails and Hillsborough goes without
In a pay dispute with the Post Office Department, the North Carolina, Raleigh and Gaston, and Charlotte and South Carolina railroads stopped carrying the mails on May 1, and Hillsborough received no eastern mail. The roads resumed service within the week at the request of Congressman L. O'B. Branch, and the Recorder said the town was without mails from Monday to Saturday.
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Orange Democrats nominate Pride Jones, John W. Norwood and William F. Strowd
The Democratic county convention met at the Masonic Hall on Tuesday afternoon of May court and nominated Pride Jones for the state senate and John W. Norwood and William F. Strowd for the House of Commons. Precinct meetings in Sandy Field and eastern Orange had chosen delegates in the preceding weeks.
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The Orange Opposition convention nominates Josiah Turner Jr., Jones Watson and Henry K. Nash
A Constitutional Union (Whig and Opposition) county meeting on Tuesday of May court, with William A. Graham in the chair, nominated Josiah Turner Jr. for the state senate and Jones Watson and Henry K. Nash for the House of Commons on a platform of ad valorem taxation. The nominees accepted before the meeting.
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Hillsborough Academy trustees seek a new school as Tew's cadets move out
The trustees of the Hillsborough Male Academy, John W. Norwood president, announced that Col. Tew was about to move his military school from the academy buildings to his own new establishment, and invited classical teachers to propose schools for the vacant academy by July 10.
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The university catalogue counts 430 students at the close of 1859-60
At the end of the 1859-60 year the university listed 430 students, 245 of them from North Carolina and the rest from across the South and as far as California. Swain later cited the figure to show how quickly the war emptied the college.
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Hillsborough Military Academy cadets move into Colonel Tew's new barracks
The cadets of the Hillsborough Military Academy paraded and marched out to the new barracks that Col. Charles C. Tew had built for them just outside the town limits, putting the whole school in its own buildings under his eye. The editor credited Tew's energy since he had settled in Hillsborough eighteen months before.
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Captain W. D. Gaillard, a professor at the Hillsborough Military Academy, dies
Captain W. D. Gaillard, a 24-year-old South Carolinian who had taught for eighteen months at the Hillsborough Military Academy, died on the morning of July 3. On July 8 the cadets met, adopted resolutions of regret and agreed to wear mourning for thirty days.
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Orange County elects Josiah Turner Jr. to the Senate and William N. Patterson and Hugh B. Guthrie to the Commons
In the state election of August 2, Orange County returned the Whigs Josiah Turner Jr. to the state Senate and William N. Patterson and Hugh B. Guthrie to the House of Commons.
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Orange County gives John Pool a majority for governor
Orange County voted 1,238 for the Opposition candidate John Pool and 1,109 for Governor John W. Ellis in the August 2 election, a majority of 129, though Ellis carried the state. In 1858 the county had given Ellis 1,012 votes to 1,037 for McRae.
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Walter Clark enters Colonel Tew's military academy in Hillsborough
Walter Clark, then fourteen, enrolled at Colonel C. C. Tew's Military Academy in Hillsborough. He left for Confederate service after the war began.
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President Swain's circular tells parents half the states are represented at the university
In a circular to patrons dated September 4, 1860, President David L. Swain reported students from about half the states, including men from some thirty other colleges between Vermont and Texas, and judged the faculty and the students' conduct and scholarship as good as at any earlier time.
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Superior Court acquits university student Frederick Foard in the death of Nathaniel Watson
At the fall term of Orange Superior Court in the week of September 10, Judge Saunders presiding, university student Frederick Foard was tried for killing Nathaniel Watson, son of Jones Watson of Chapel Hill, in March. The jury acquitted him on a doubt raised by physicians whether the wound caused the death, since Watson had died in a fit of delirium tremens.
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The Hillsborough Military Academy's register lists 107 cadets from eight states
The academy's semi-annual register, just published, counted 107 cadets entered since February, from North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Mississippi and Virginia.
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The Orange Guards celebrate their fifth anniversary with visiting companies
On Monday, October 1, the Orange Guards under Captain Pride Jones marked their fifth anniversary by receiving the Flat River Guards and the Guilford Greys at Hillsborough. With the Salisbury Brass Band the companies paraded, watched the Hillsborough Military Academy cadets drill, where Paul C. Cameron thanked Colonel C. C. Tew for the school, and held a ball at the Masonic Hall before parting on October 2.
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Orange County gives John Bell its vote for president
In a quiet election on November 6, with a smaller vote than in August, Orange County gave a majority to John Bell of the Constitutional Union party over John C. Breckinridge, who polled 787, and Stephen A. Douglas, who polled 72. Breckinridge carried the state and Abraham Lincoln won the presidency.
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An Orange County mass meeting at the courthouse takes up the crisis of the Union
Called by William A. Graham, Paul C. Cameron, Cadwallader Jones, John W. Norwood and other men of both parties, a meeting of Orange County people at the Hillsborough courthouse on Saturday, December 15, directed that a committee be appointed to draft resolutions on the state of the Union and adjourned to December 22.
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Trustees allow students to be excused from chapel worship
Answering a memorial from the Episcopal convention that compulsory chapel on Sunday violated conscience, the trustees adopted Judge Matthias E. Manly's scheme letting the president excuse students whose parents lived in the village, who belonged to another church in town, or who or whose parents objected in writing. Morning and evening prayers stayed compulsory.
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Sidney Smith speaks for a state convention at an Orange County mass meeting in Hillsborough
At an adjourned mass meeting of Orange County citizens in the Hillsborough courthouse after Lincoln's election, with William H. Brown in the chair, William A. Graham's committee reported resolutions on the crisis. John W. Norwood moved to ask the legislature to call a state convention; Capt. Berry opposed it, Sidney Smith spoke for it, and the amendment was rejected before the committee's resolutions passed.
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Andrew Mickle refuses to raise his prices as Confederate money falls
Andrew Mickle was prospering as a merchant when the Civil War began, but he held that it was wrong to raise his prices when his neighbors could hardly get money. As the currency fell he sold his goods for much less than cost and lost his fortune.
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At least 1,260 Orange County men serve in the Confederate army
J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton counted 1,260 Orange men in Moore's Roster, of whom 249 died in service and 139 were wounded. He thought all three figures too low.
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F. M. Jordan preaches to enslaved people in the Baptist church basement
Rev. F. M. Jordan held services for enslaved people of Hillsborough in the basement of the Baptist church and married and baptized many Black members. One night his hearers gave him so much Confederate money that he carried it home in a handkerchief.
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George Attmore Sparrow is a cadet at the Hillsborough Military Academy
Sparrow, the teenage son of the Washington lawyer Thomas Sparrow, was enrolled as a cadet at the Hillsborough Military Academy in 1861 and 1862. He wrote home to his father from the academy through that period.
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Hillsborough Methodists refuse to give their church bell to be cast into Confederate cannon
When Confederate authorities, short of cannon, asked the Hillsborough Methodist Church for its bell to melt down, the congregation turned them down.
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John Wall Norwood and Paul C. Cameron run relief for Orange County soldiers' families
Through the Civil War, Norwood and Paul C. Cameron oversaw aid to the families of Orange County men in the army, working out of Norwood's law office. In August 1864 they reported that between 1,500 and 2,000 county men had served.
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Seniors in the army granted diplomas without examinations
With the consent of the trustees, the faculty granted degrees to all members of the senior class, though many had joined the army and did not stand their examinations. Only thirty of the eighty-seven graduates were present in person, and the Latin salutatory was dropped because its speaker was with his regiment at Yorktown.
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Solomon Pool is promoted to adjunct professor of mathematics
Pool was promoted to adjunct professor of mathematics in 1861 and held the position for six years. In 1866 he took leave to become a United States deputy appraiser in North Carolina on the understanding that the university need not reemploy him until it had need of him.
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State gives Ebenezer Emmons's geological collection to the university
Needing the space in the Capitol for war business, the state gave the university the rocks and minerals gathered by State Geologist Ebenezer Emmons. Professor William J. Martin spent two weeks sorting them and shipping them to Chapel Hill.
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The Weavers add a frame front wing to the log house
A plain one-and-a-half-story frame block with two rooms per floor was built across the front, by family account to shelter the wife and children of a Weaver who went off to the Civil War. The log wing got matching Greek Revival doors and sash at about the same time.
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Thirty-five men of the New Hope congregation die in Confederate service
Craig lists thirty-five men from within the bounds of the congregation who died in the Civil War, eight of them Strayhorns and three Craigs.
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UNC remains open during the Civil War
President David Lowry Swain kept the university in session as students left Chapel Hill at eight to ten a day to enlist in late April 1861. Enrollment fell to 91 by September 1861, Swain won a Confederate draft exemption for some students in 1863, and only four students graduated in 1865.
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William H. S. Burgwyn enrolls as a cadet at the Hillsborough Military Academy
Later in 1861 Burgwyn entered the Hillsborough Military Academy as a cadet. By the autumn he had been appointed drill master of the camp of instruction near Raleigh, and he was then elected a lieutenant in the Thirty-fifth North Carolina Regiment.
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Col. Cadwallader Jones, chairman of the county court, dies
Col. Cadwallader Jones, chairman of the Orange County special court and of its finance committee, died at his home near Hillsborough in his seventy-fourth year. A Virginia-born former navy midshipman and army officer who had long sat on the state Board of Internal Improvement, he had lived in Orange about thirty-five years, and the February county court entered tributes to him on its records.
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A Union meeting at the court house nominates Graham and John Berry for the convention
Union men of all parties met in the court house at Hillsborough, nominated William A. Graham for the proposed state convention and, on the report of a committee of nineteen, added Capt. John Berry. Berry accepted after Col. Guthrie withdrew David L. Swain's name, and on February 22 Swain confirmed that he had left the race.
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Orange County voters reject a secession convention
In the February 28, 1861 vote on calling a state convention, Orange County voted 1,436 against and 458 for, and chose Unionists William A. Graham and John Berry as delegates over secession candidates Henry K. Nash and Pride Jones. The governor's count showed the convention defeated statewide, 46,603 to 46,409, before Davie County reported.
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The legislature charters a University Railroad Company from Chapel Hill to the North Carolina Railroad
The 1860-61 General Assembly passed an act to incorporate the University Railroad Company, to run a line from Chapel Hill to the North Carolina Railroad.
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The legislature incorporates the Hillsborough Military Academy
The 1860-61 General Assembly passed an act to incorporate the Hillsborough Military Academy, Col. Charles C. Tew's school west of Hillsborough.
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The legislature incorporates the Orange Light Infantry
The 1860-61 General Assembly passed an act to incorporate the Orange Light Infantry, the volunteer company that left Chapel Hill for the war that April.
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Hillsborough orders its constable to keep Black people off the streets on Sundays and at night
The town commissioners made it the town constable's duty, until further orders, to keep Black people out of the streets and lots of Hillsborough on Sundays and at night, and allowed him a dollar a week for the work.
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The Orange County court refuses to appoint the tax collector the legislature ordered
The Orange County court declined to appoint the county tax collector that an act of February 1861 required for Orange and some twenty other counties, leaving, the act's supporters said, no officer to collect the county and state taxes. Commoner William N. Patterson defended the act in the Recorder, and Sheriff R. M. Jones answered that his bond as sheriff still entitled him to collect the taxes.
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A courthouse meeting in Hillsborough calls for a secession convention
Four days after Fort Sumter's surrender, a large crowd from across the county met at the courthouse. With Dr. Edmund Strudwick presiding and Dennis Heartt as secretary, it adopted resolutions asking the legislature to call a convention at once to pass an ordinance of secession. The meeting also pledged that the citizens of Orange would provide for the families of the Orange Guards while the company was in state service.
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Col. Charles C. Tew leaves the Military Academy to command Fort Macon
Col. Charles C. Tew, superintendent of the Hillsborough Military Academy, left Hillsborough on Thursday, April 18, 1861, to take command of Fort Macon. Capt. Lightfoot of the academy followed the next day after the Governor named him to his staff.
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The Orange Guards leave Hillsborough for Fort Macon
The Orange Guards, Hillsborough's volunteer company, left town for the coast on Saturday, April 20, 1861, the day after other companies passed through on their way to Fort Macon. The roster the company sent home from the fort a week later listed Pride Jones as captain, Joseph C. Webb and John W. Graham as first and second lieutenants, and Dr. William Strudwick as surgeon.
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Young men enroll at Chapel Hill in the Orange Light Infantry
William F. Strowd and other young men of the area, who had begun organizing a volunteer company on April 6, 1861, met at Chapel Hill on April 22 and enrolled for six months. As the Orange Light Infantry they were mustered into state service at Raleigh on May 13.
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Orange County companies mobilize for Confederate service
Answering Governor John W. Ellis's call, Capt. R. J. Ashe's Orange Light Infantry was to report at state headquarters on April 27, 1861, with about $1,000 raised by Chapel Hill residents, and was made the first company of the First Regiment of North Carolina Volunteers. The Orange Guards were drilling at Fort Macon by early May.
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Chapel Hill churches hold a farewell service for the Orange Light Infantry
A large meeting was held in the Baptist church the night before the Orange Light Infantry left Chapel Hill. The Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian and Episcopal pastors all took part, and a similar service was held in September when another company left.
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Students petition trustees to close the university for the war
After Fort Sumter the juniors, sophomores and freshmen asked the trustees to suspend exercises until fall, since eight or ten students were leaving each day. The petition was refused, and President Swain issued a circular that the university would go on as before.
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Hillsborough requires written passes for enslaved people in town at night and on Sundays
The town commissioners made it unlawful for slaveholders to let enslaved people be in Hillsborough away from their own homes between dark and daylight on weekdays, or at any hour on Sunday, without a written pass naming where they might go. Anyone found without a pass was to be committed to the county jail by the magistrate of police until the costs were paid.
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Orange County during the Civil War
Students left Chapel Hill to enlist from late April 1861, and Hillsborough Military Academy's founder, Charles Tew, left in May to command a Confederate regiment. The university stayed open as enrollment fell to about a dozen. Federal cavalry held Chapel Hill from April 17 to May 3, 1865, as many newly freed people left town or joined the army.
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The Hillsborough Military Academy counts 131 cadets in its new brick barracks
The academy's annual register reported 131 cadets, new and old, entered between February 6 and April 1, in new buildings put up under Superintendent Charles C. Tew: a brick main building 215 feet long and three stories high, and a second long building holding the mess hall, kitchen, hospital, surgeon's office and society hall. Two literary societies had formed among the cadets.
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Volunteers at Durham's form a company called the Orange Greys
Volunteers at Durham's Station began forming a military company in April 1861 and took the name Orange Greys. Paul C. Cameron addressed the company, which received a donation of $500.
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Orange County elects William A. Graham to the secession convention
Graham had led Union men in defeating a February 1861 referendum to call a convention on disunion. After Fort Sumter he was elected by a large margin to represent Orange County in the Constitutional Convention of May 1861, where he stood unsuccessfully for the presidency of the convention before voting for secession.
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Orange County sends delegates to the secession convention
On May 13, 1861, after Fort Sumter and Lincoln's call for troops, Orange County voters again chose William A. Graham and John Berry as delegates to the state convention, over Paul C. Cameron and Henry K. Nash. The Recorder printed the precinct returns and noted the convention would meet in Raleigh on May 20.
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North Carolina secedes from the Union
Meeting in Raleigh on May 20, 1861, the state convention, with Orange County's delegates William A. Graham and John Berry among its members, unanimously adopted an ordinance dissolving North Carolina's union with the United States and the same day ratified the provisional Confederate constitution.
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The Orange County court sets aside $50,000 for soldiers' families
Recognizing that many volunteers were men of small means, the county court appropriated $50,000 to support their families. The fund lasted until late in the war.
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The university catalogue counts 376 students for 1860-61
The university's annual catalogue, printed by John B. Neathery of Chapel Hill, counted 376 students for the year: 320 in the classical course, 40 in the scientific course and 16 partial-course students. North Carolina sent 221 of them, Mississippi and Tennessee 26 each, and every Southern state but Maryland and Delaware was represented.
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Hillsborough Baptists hold a prayer meeting called by Jefferson Davis
The Baptist church gathered for prayer in response to a proclamation by Confederate President Jefferson Davis, a few weeks after North Carolina left the Union.
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Women organize Ladies Aid Societies in Hillsborough and Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill women organized their Soldiers' Aid Society on June 8, 1861, with Mrs. M. Hargrave as president and Mrs. E. Grant as treasurer, and forty Hillsborough women met on July 15 to form a permanent society. These and later aid societies made clothing and bandages, gathered food and money, met troop trains and nursed the sick and wounded until the war ended.
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The Orange Greys lose men at First Manassas
Capt. William J. Freeland's company, the Orange Greys of the Sixth North Carolina State Troops, fought at First Manassas on July 21, where their colonel, Charles F. Fisher, was killed. Two of the company were killed in action and fourteen wounded; by early September two more had died of their wounds and three of typhoid fever.
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Gen. Joseph Allison, former legislator and county court clerk, dies
Gen. Joseph Allison died at his home in Orange County early on the morning of July 23. He had been elected many times to represent the county in the legislature and served eight years as clerk of the county court before poor health led him to decline reelection.
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Faculty deny rumors of closing and add military drill
Alarmed by reports that the university had suspended, the faculty issued a circular that there had been no suspension since 1795 and would be none, and that students were being taught military tactics. Drill was led first by a Mr. Lilly and Professor William J. Martin, and on March 18, 1862 tutor Frederick A. Fetter was made drill master.
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Hillsborough receives the body of Lt. William P. Mangum, mortally wounded at Manassas
The body of Lt. William Preston Mangum of the Flat River Guards, only son of former Senator Willie P. Mangum, arrived by train on August 1. Citizens met it at the depot and escorted it through town with the church and court house bells tolling and the town flag at half mast, and young men of the town went with it to his father's home for burial in the family graveyard.
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Women of southwest Orange form a Soldiers' Relief Society
Women of the southwest corner of Orange and the adjoining corner of Alamance met on August 2 and organized a Soldiers' Relief Society with Mrs. Rachel Morrow as president. Within a week they sent a box of hospital stores, with some money, to the sick soldiers at Yorktown.
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Sheriff R. M. Jones calls on Orange women for blankets and socks for the army
Acting on the governor's request to the sheriffs, Sheriff R. M. Jones on August 20 asked the women of Orange for woolen socks and blankets for soldiers in the coming winter and named agents around the county to receive them. Through the fall he printed lists of the gifts.
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Former Senator Willie P. Mangum dies at his home near Red Mountain
Willie P. Mangum, who had represented Orange in the legislature, sat as a superior court judge and served North Carolina in both houses of Congress, including as president of the Senate, died at his home near Red Mountain on September 7 after several years of illness. Members of the bar attending the fall term of Orange Superior Court met with J. W. Norwood presiding and adopted resolutions in his memory.
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Professor Martin's volunteer company leaves Chapel Hill for camp at High Point
A volunteer company raised around Chapel Hill by Professor Martin of the university left for the camp at High Point on September 10, the second company to leave the neighborhood. Its lieutenants were Johnston and Morrow, both university tutors, and Oldham, principal of the classical academy near Rock Spring, and its privates came from Chapel Hill and the Bethel, Antioch, Cane Creek and Bethlehem church neighborhoods. The night before, the Baptist, Methodist, Episcopal and Presbyterian ministers held a union prayer meeting for the company at the Baptist church.
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Families fleeing New Bern take refuge in Hillsborough
After Fort Hatteras fell to Union forces at the end of August, many people left New Bern for the interior, chiefly women and children, and several families had come to Hillsborough by September 4.
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Hillsborough subscribers send $11,000 to the Confederate loan
Subscriptions of $11,000 to Confederate States stock were sent from Hillsborough to the commissioners at Raleigh by early September, $10,000 of it taken by the Hillsborough Savings Institution.
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Presiding elder William Barringer dedicates the new Methodist church in Hillsborough
The brick church that Capt. John Berry built on the Tryon Street lot bought in 1859 was dedicated by William Barringer, presiding elder of the Raleigh District. The first sermon in it was preached by Jesse A. Cunninggim.
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The Eno Soldiers' Relief Society gathers supplies for the army
The women of the Eno Soldiers' Relief Society had sent or readied a large store of supplies for Confederate soldiers by late October, among them blankets, comforts, sheets, pillows, towels, shirts, drawers and more than a hundred pairs of socks, with hospital stores such as old linen, lint, bandages, sugar and tea.
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The Orange Cavalry leaves its Hillsborough camp for the coast
The Orange Cavalry, Capt. Josiah Turner Jr.'s company, left its camp at Hillsborough for a camp near Kittrell's Springs and then Hertford, and by mid-October was at Camp Pembroke near Edenton. First Lt. William A. Graham Jr., commanding, thanked the women of Hillsborough for their kindness during the encampment, and in November the company received uniforms they had made.
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Orange's Josiah Turner Jr. loses the Fifth District race for the Confederate Congress
In the November 6 election of presidential electors and members of the first Confederate Congress, A. H. Arrington of Nash won the Fifth District, which included Orange, over A. W. Venable and Josiah Turner Jr. of Orange. The vote in Orange was thin.
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Josiah Turner Jr. resigns as Orange County's state senator
In a public letter dated at Hillsborough on November 10, Josiah Turner Jr. resigned his seat as Orange County's state senator, saying the constitution barred an army officer from sitting in the legislature. He praised the Orange Light Infantry, the Flat River Guards and the Orange Grays and warned his constituents not to underrate the enemy.
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Hillsborough orders a nightly patrol and a pass rule for Black people on its streets
On December 7 the Hillsborough commissioners ordered the magistrate of police to appoint a patrol to go out every night. Any Black person found in the streets between dark and daylight, or on a Sunday except going to or from church, without a pass stating where he was permitted to go was to be arrested and brought before the magistrate of police.
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The Recorder cuts the size of its sheet for lack of paper
With paper scarce and much dearer, the Hillsborough Recorder came out on December 25 on a smaller sheet of poorer paper, promising to cut advertising rather than reading matter, and announced it would skip the next week's issue for the printers' holiday.
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A carved brownstone headstone marks Thomas Fletcher's grave in the enslaved people's section
Thomas Fletcher, 1838-1862, received a round-topped brownstone headstone with a monogrammed footstone in Section B, as did George, son of Samuel Barbee (no dates). The rough local stone points to a mason cutting gravestones on the side; with Burnett's ledger they are among the few inscribed antebellum markers in a North Carolina slave cemetery.
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Caroline Bennett and Sallie Brooks, free Black women, join the Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church
Early in the war the church admitted Caroline Bennett and Sallie Brooks, both free women of color, to a membership of a little over forty. The same year the roll counted three Black and thirty-seven white communicants.
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Commencement held without its ball or marshals
The ball managers told the trustees the seniors' ball could not be held unless the board gave $200 or $300, and the trustees did not answer, so it was omitted for the first time. A quarrel between seniors and juniors over the marshal left the commencement without marshals or music.
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Dr. Armand J. DeRosset of Wilmington buys a West Franklin house as a wartime refuge
DeRosset bought Mary Southerland's house and kept it as his family's refuge from the coast for the rest of the war. He sold it to Caroline Frederica Baudry in 1867.
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Druggist Richard Benbury Saunders makes blue mass for the Confederacy
Saunders enlisted in 1861 but was back at his Franklin Street drugstore by 1862, compounding blue mass, a mercury purgative the Confederate army counted as essential.
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Eagle Lodge's rooftop observatory is taken down and a hipped roof built
In 1862 the glassed-in observatory on the roof of the Masonic hall, said to have predated President Caldwell's 1831 observatory at the university, was removed and the present hipped roof built.
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George Attmore Sparrow gets approval for his discharge from the Hillsborough academy
Writing from the academy on 21 July 1862, Sparrow told his father he had approval for his discharge and would leave with other cadets when the session ended on 31 July. He was writing from the academy again that fall, through November 1862, and by April 1863 he was in camp with the Army of the Pamlico near Kinston.
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The legislature elects William A. Graham to the Confederate Senate
Early in the session that began after the 1862 election, the Assembly chose Graham, then Orange's state senator, for the Confederate Senate term starting in May 1864. He kept his state seat until December 1863.
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William A. Graham's house at Montrose burns
The house the Grahams had enlarged at Montrose burned in 1862, and the family moved to a house on West Tryon Street. Only the law office and outbuildings were left on the land.
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Fire destroys Robert Loder's clothing store
Robert Loder's store near Franklin and Columbia burned on Friday, January 17, 1862, with a large stock of soldiers' clothing, and the fire crossed Columbia Street to John Wesley Carr's store before it was put out.
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A posse kills a man who had escaped slavery and hidden near Hillsborough for eight months
Several white men went out to capture a man who had fled slavery in Alamance County in May 1861 and had been hiding near Hillsborough with help from a free Black woman and other enslaved people. When he refused to surrender and tried to escape up a chimney, one of the party shot him, and he died within minutes.
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Hillsborough bars Sunday liquor sales and orders free Black residents to renew good-behavior bonds
The Hillsborough commissioners fined any liquor retailer who opened or sold on Sunday ten dollars an offence and required retailers to close every night at ten o'clock. They also ordered all free Black residents of the town to renew their bonds for good behavior within ten days.
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Orange County's militia regiments draft a third of their men for state service
Under the state's call for troops, Orange County's 45th and 46th militia regiments drafted one third of their enrolled men unless enough volunteered. The 46th met at Hillsborough for the draft, and the 45th's drafted companies chose officers at Durham's on March 4 and were organized there the next day, while examiners heard claims for exemption.
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The Orange Light Artillery organizes at Hillsborough under Capt. William Cameron
The Orange Light Artillery, raised by Capt. William Cameron of Hillsborough under a Confederate commission, organized and elected James F. Cain senior first lieutenant, Henry Dickson junior first lieutenant and John Malone second lieutenant, with Thomas Dickson as first sergeant.
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New Hope's 1805 church burns
The church burned on a Saturday night, most people believing it was set on purpose. The next morning James Phillips preached to the congregation under the trees, and through the summer of 1862 they worshipped under a large arbor built on the grounds.
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The Presbyterian session drops Benjamin and Ellen Hedrick from membership
After his 1856 dismissal from the faculty for backing Fremont, Benjamin Hedrick and his wife Ellen found themselves shunned at church and stopped attending. The session then struck both from the roll for nonattendance.
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A Confederate provost marshal takes charge of railroad passes at Hillsborough
Lt. P. L. Harwell of the Confederate infantry was appointed provost marshal at Hillsborough, and no citizen or soldier was allowed to travel on the railroad without a pass from him.
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Robert Bingham goes to war with an Orange County militia company
Robert Bingham, a member of an Orange County militia company, enlisted in state service with his fellow members on March 8, 1862, and on March 25 was elected captain of Company G, Forty-fourth North Carolina Infantry. He was captured in June 1863 and held in Union prisons until he was exchanged in 1864.
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The Orange Cavalry joins a night attack at Gillett's farm and Capt. Turner is wounded
The Orange Cavalry was one of four companies under Lt. Col. Robinson that attacked a Union party at Thomas Gillett's house below Trenton at midnight. The mounted attack failed, Robinson was wounded and captured, the regiment lost a man killed and ten wounded, and Capt. Turner of the Orange company was wounded and sent home.
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Chapel Hill Presbyterians vote to give their church bell to the Confederacy
The congregation directed its trustees to offer the church bell to the Confederate government so it could be cast into artillery.
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The Episcopal diocesan convention meets at the Chapel of the Cross
The forty-sixth annual convention of the Episcopal Church in North Carolina met in the Chapel Hill church during the war. The rector, Francis W. Hilliard, and the parish's lay delegates William H. Battle, W. P. Mallett, A. Mickle and Manuel Fetter all attended.
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John W. Graham's volunteer company leaves Hillsborough and elects its officers
A volunteer company raised by John W. Graham to spare its men from conscription left the Hillsborough depot for Camp Mangum near Raleigh, and the next day elected John W. Graham captain, D. S. Ray first lieutenant and R. D. Graham third lieutenant.
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Company G of the 28th Regiment loses its captain and much of its strength near Hanover Court House
In the fight near Hanover Court House, Company G of the 28th North Carolina lost one man killed and four wounded, and Capt. G. B. Johnston with about thirty-four men, most of them on a scouting party with him, was captured. A Chapel Hill letter later reported Johnston and his men held safe on Governor's Island in New York harbor.
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The Orange Grays fight at Seven Pines and Capt. William J. Freeland is mortally wounded
At Seven Pines most of the Orange Grays fought alongside the 22nd North Carolina while fifteen men guarded Gen. Johnston's headquarters. Capt. William J. Freeland fell with a thigh broken by a shell, was left on the field and taken prisoner, lost his leg, and died at Fortress Monroe in late June; about ten of his men were wounded.
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The Orange County court orders ten thousand bushels of salt for the county's people
At its late-May session the county court appointed a salt commissioner and authorized him to buy ten thousand bushels of salt for the citizens of Orange, after the Recorder had urged the court to follow Mecklenburg in buying salt at cost.
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Hillsborough Baptists give their church bell to the Orange Light Artillery
Meeting in conference, the Baptist church voted to hand its bell to the Orange Light Artillery so it could be melted down for Confederate cannon. After the war the church bought a replacement, sold it as unsatisfactory, and bought the bell that still hung in the belfry in 1953.
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Capt. William K. Parrish of the Flat River Guards is wounded at Gaines's Mill
Fighting with the 6th North Carolina in the Seven Days, Capt. William K. Parrish of the Flat River Guards was wounded at Gaines's Mill on June 27, where the regiment lost four killed and forty-three wounded; in the fighting of early July it lost two more killed, among them Capt. Carter of the Hawfields company.
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North Carolina Railroad stockholders hold their annual meeting at Hillsborough
The North Carolina Railroad's stockholders met at Hillsborough, heard the president's report of the year's earnings, a large share of them from Confederate government traffic, and elected directors including Thomas Webb and Giles Mebane. The directors added an installment to the sinking fund for the company's bonds, declared an eight percent dividend, and the next week reappointed Webb president.
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The Hillsborough Soldiers' Aid Society reports six months of gifts to companies, hospitals and soldiers' families
The Soldiers' Aid Society of Hillsborough published the gifts of clothing, food, medicine supplies and money it had received since January and reported sending supplies to the Orange Guards, the Orange Cavalry and hospitals at Goldsborough, Petersburg and Richmond. In the past month it had given eighty dollars to needy families of absent soldiers, and merchant Henry N. Brown had pledged fifty dollars a month for them.
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Hillsborough forbids selling liquor in less than a thirty-gallon barrel
The Hillsborough commissioners banned the sale of spirituous liquor in any quantity less than a thirty-gallon barrel within the town or a mile of it, on pain of a hundred-dollar fine or thirty days in jail, while letting drug stores fill doctors' prescriptions and orders from the magistrate of police.
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Orange elects William A. Graham to the state senate and H. B. Guthrie sheriff
Orange County voters sent William A. Graham to the state senate, chose John Berry and William N. Patterson for the House of Commons over J. L. Stewart and William F. Strayhorn, and elected H. B. Guthrie sheriff over the incumbent R. M. Jones. At home the county gave Zebulon B. Vance 1,051 votes for governor to 308 for William Johnston.
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Hillsborough Savings Institution stockholders vote to stop paying interest
At a called meeting on August 9, 1862, stockholders holding 512 shares resolved to pay no interest on deposit certificates after September 16 and to settle all certificates by then. Cashier John U. Kirkland published the notice.
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The Baptists sell their old courthouse church to George Bishop of New Bern
Trustees H. C. Strowd, John Cheek and William Ward sold the old Baptist church lot at Churton and Queen streets, part of town lot 80, to George Bishop of New Bern for $750. Bishop later resold it to Philadelphia Friends working for freedpeople, and it became the home of Dickerson's Chapel.
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The Orange Cavalry charges into Washington, N.C., and loses John Grey
Capt. Turner's Orange Cavalry, led by Lt. Graham, rode in the dawn attack on Union-held Washington, North Carolina, charging into the town behind the infantry. The raiders held the place for about three hours before gunboat fire drove them out, and John Grey of the company was killed.
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Col. Charles C. Tew, founder of the Hillsborough Military Academy, is killed at Sharpsburg
Col. Charles C. Tew, who had founded the Hillsborough Military Academy and led the 2nd North Carolina State Troops, was shot in the head while leading his regiment at Sharpsburg. His body was never recovered, and Hillsborough held out hope for weeks that he had been taken prisoner.
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Maj. Robert F. Webb is wounded leading the 6th Regiment at Sharpsburg, where the Orange Grays lose their captain
At Sharpsburg Maj. Robert F. Webb of Orange, commanding the 6th North Carolina, was severely wounded in the arm. In the regiment's Company C, the Orange Grays, the captain was killed and several men were badly wounded, among them M. V. and W. V. Blalock.
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The Orange Guards lose three killed and about twenty wounded at Sharpsburg
Company G of the 27th North Carolina, the Orange Guards, fought at Sharpsburg under Lt. James A. Graham with three men killed and about twenty wounded. Lt. J. Y. Whitted was wounded in the leg and left in Union hands, and Sgt. Thomas C. Carmichael later died of his wound.
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The Little River neighborhood sends money and clothing to Capt. Miller's company and Vance's regiment
Families of the Little River neighborhood of Orange collected cash, shirts, socks, quilts, blankets, pants and drawers for Capt. Miller's company and for Col. Vance's 26th Regiment, and published the list of givers.
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Hillsborough women ride to Durham's almost daily to feed sick and wounded soldiers on the trains
Six or eight members of the Hillsborough Ladies' Soldiers' Aid Society took the train to Durham's nearly every day, handing out food and tending sick and wounded soldiers passing through before returning in the evening. The society appealed to exempted men and men over thirty-five in Orange to give provisions and money for the work.
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The Collins family buys the former Burwell School and calls it the Beehive
Members of the Collins family of Somerset Place, who had left Union-held eastern North Carolina, paid Robert Burwell $3,500 for the house and four lots. By 1863 about forty family members and enslaved servants lived there, and the family named it the Beehive.
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Thirty Chapel Hill families pool money to buy corn
Amid wartime scarcity, thirty heads of families sent Andrew Mickle to buy corn in a better-supplied district; he brought back about 1,921 bushels by rail to Durham and wagon from there, at $6.75 a barrel delivered. The livery keeper John H. Watson took ninety barrels, President Swain 33 and Judge Battle 24.
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Hillsborough meeting resolves to erect a monument to Col. Charles C. Tew
A Hillsborough meeting chaired by M. E. Manly resolved to raise a monument to Col. Tew, killed at Sharpsburg, at or near the front of his Military Academy, and named Dr. Edmund Strudwick, Dr. Pride Jones and Thomas Webb to collect funds and build it.
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Confederate authorities arrest the Rev. R. J. Graves of Bethlehem Church and remove him from the state
Confederate military authorities arrested the Rev. R. J. Graves, Presbyterian pastor of Bethlehem Church in Orange, over a letter in the Richmond Enquirer about Northern opinion that he wrote after a summer trip through the Union lines, and took him out of North Carolina for trial. A resolution by Mr. Graham in the legislature demanded his return, and the Recorder defended his loyalty and his right to be tried at home.
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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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New Hope Presbyterian Church builds its fourth church
In the middle of the Civil War, New Hope Presbyterian Church put up its fourth building, the one still in use in 1953.
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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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Wartime refugees from the coast swell the Chapel of the Cross congregation
Rector Francis W. Hilliard reported 59 communicants to the diocesan convention in 1861. By 1863 there were 92, the newcomers being refugees from coastal counties that Union forces held or threatened.
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President Jefferson Davis speaks to a crowd at the Hillsborough depot
Passing through by train on his way back to Richmond from the western states, Confederate President Jefferson Davis was met at the Hillsborough depot by a large crowd of women and men and made a short address praising North Carolina for the troops it had sent and its promptness under conscription, and hoping for an early peace.
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Cornelia Phillips Spencer begins teaching boys from refugee families
Widowed and growing deaf, Spencer began teaching three boys whose families had fled eastern North Carolina for Chapel Hill during the war: Baker Mallett, Hannis Taylor and Stephen Skinner. Taylor, later a writer on the English constitution, remembered her as the best-educated woman he had known.
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Justice Manly binds the Rev. R. J. Graves over for trial on a treason charge
Returned to Orange on January 1 after the legislature demanded him back from Confederate authorities, the Rev. R. J. Graves had his examination at Hillsborough before Justice Matthias E. Manly of the state Supreme Court, with George V. Strong prosecuting and William A. Graham defending, and was bound over for trial in the Confederate court at Richmond on a charge of treason that rested on a single witness, a captured soldier named Parker. In June a Richmond grand jury refused to indict him.
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Farmers of the Oaks neighborhood pledge to sell food to soldiers' families at fixed prices
A plan for Orange farmers to join an association selling necessities to soldiers' families and the poor at set moderate prices (corn at $1 a bushel, pork at $10 a hundred, bacon at 20 cents and beef at 6 cents a pound) came to little when bad weather stopped the January meeting of delegates at Hillsborough, but one neighborhood, the Oaks, sent in a list of a dozen men willing to join, among them William J. Bingham and Thomas D. Oldham, and the Recorder printed it so that families would know where to find supplies.
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Walter Clark resigns his Confederate commission and graduates first in his class at the university
When his regiment came back to North Carolina in February 1863, Walter Clark resigned his commission as a Confederate officer and went to the university, where he studied under David L. Swain and William H. Battle. He graduated first in his class in June 1864.
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Military Academy cadets take up a subscription for the Tew monument
Meeting on March 5, the cadets of the Hillsborough Military Academy joined the plan of Col. Charles C. Tew's regiment and the townspeople for a monument to Tew, their founder and former superintendent, killed at Sharpsburg, and opened a subscription to which former cadets were invited. By early July the officers and cadets had raised $500, which cadet W. K. Cathcart paid to Pride Jones, chairman of the Hillsborough monument committee.
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A special court at Hillsborough condemns five enslaved men for the killings of John Lockhart and Isaac Strowd
Under a new state law allowing special criminal terms, Judge Gilliam held a Court of Oyer and Terminer at the Hillsborough court house for prisoners held on capital charges. Two enslaved men, America and Daniel, were convicted of murdering John Lockhart, killed in the southern part of the county on February 17, and Solomon as an accessory before the fact; Lucian and Allen were convicted of killing Isaac Strowd, killed near his home southwest of Hillsborough on February 12. The judge sentenced the condemned to hang on April 10, and Solomon was later granted a new trial.
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Hillsborough licenses food sellers at the depot and hires a paid town patrol
The Hillsborough town commissioners ordered that anyone selling cooked food at the railroad depot pay the magistrate of police two dollars a month, under penalty of a fine for white or free people and a whipping for the enslaved, and, because so many of the men liable to patrol duty were away, authorized the magistrate of police to hire two men to patrol the town for the next month.
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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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America, Daniel, Lucian and Allen are hanged at Hillsborough
The four enslaved men condemned at the March special court, America and Daniel for the killing of John Lockhart and Lucian and Allen for that of Isaac Strowd, were hanged at Hillsborough on April 10. Solomon, convicted as an accessory in Lockhart's death, stayed in jail awaiting a new trial.
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A county meeting at Hillsborough condemns bread riots and buys corn and bacon for the needy
Days after some women of the Cane Creek neighborhood west of town asked about seizing food from farmers who were asking fifty dollars a barrel for flour, a public meeting of Orange citizens at Hillsborough, chaired by magistrate of police A. C. Murdock with former governor William A. Graham explaining its object, heard reports of want from across the county, condemned violence and disorder by women or anyone else, and resolved that the legislature's appropriation and the county court's fund were enough to relieve soldiers' families and the needy if put to better use. It named a committee including William J. Bingham, Freeman Walker and J. W. Norwood, which within days had bought corn and bacon for distribution.
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The county school board names committeemen for all 53 districts in wartime
The Board of Superintendents appointed school committeemen for each of Orange County's 53 districts, a sign the public schools stayed open during the war. That month W. H. Brown's examining committee also called would-be teachers to the courthouse in May.
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Three Black prisoners break out of the Hillsborough jail
On the night of May 8 three Black prisoners broke out of the county jail at Hillsborough: Solomon, an enslaved man convicted of murdering his owner, John Lockhart of Flat River, and held for a new trial; a man enslaved by Capt. J. W. Latta; and a free young man who had been living near Raleigh. Sheriff H. B. Guthrie offered $200 for Solomon and $50 for each of the others.
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The Orange company of the 56th N.C. loses Lieut. David S. Ray at Gum Swamp
When Union troops surprised the 56th North Carolina in its breastworks at Gum Swamp below Kinston, the regiment's Orange company, Company D, fought under Lieut. Robert D. Graham while its captain, John W. Graham, was away on duty at Wilmington. First Lieut. David S. Ray was shot in the mouth, captured and died at New Bern, and about sixteen men of the company were captured or missing.
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The county court sets up commissioners to direct the Soldiers' Fund
At its May term the Orange County court ordered that three commissioners in each taxable district appoint committeemen in every captain's district, who would decide which soldiers' families and other persons should receive aid from the county's Soldiers' Fund, and it named the commissioners for the Hillsborough, St. Mary's, St. Mark's, St. Thomas's, Caswell and Orange districts.
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A Confederate grand jury refuses to indict the Rev. R. J. Graves of the Oaks
The Rev. R. J. Graves, a pastor living at the Oaks, the seat of William J. Bingham's school, had been arrested by Confederate military authority on an anonymous charge that he was a disloyal Northerner, taken out of the state and jailed; the arrest was protested in the Confederate Senate and Bingham defended him in print. In June the grand jury of the Confederate court at Richmond, which heard only the government's witnesses, refused to find a true bill against him, and the case was dismissed.
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A Sabbath school starts at the Orange Factory
In the summer of 1863 a Sabbath school was started at the Orange Factory, the cotton mill village in northern Orange County (now Durham County). Ellen Ann Murray, daughter of William H. and Catherine C. Murray, was one of its teachers until her death from typhoid fever on September 12, and her pupils followed her to burial at Little River Church.
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Jim, an enslaved tobacco worker leased to Washington Duke, flees toward Union lines
Jim, an enslaved man whose labor Washington Duke leased to grow and cure tobacco, ran away with three others in June 1863 trying to reach Union lines. After the war he took the surname Cox and became a tobacco sharecropper in the Durham area.
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Chapel Hill counts its dead and wounded from Gettysburg
A casualty list for the companies from Chapel Hill at Gettysburg, calling the town a village of mourning, reported Lieut. John H. McDade of the 11th North Carolina and Lieut. Norwood Mickle of the 37th among the dead and Capt. E. Graham Morrow and Lieut. Lewis Battle among the wounded and captured. Maj. Joseph H. Saunders of the 33rd, at first counted among the dead, was reported in September to be alive, wounded and a prisoner.
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Capt. E. Graham Morrow of Orange dies of a wound received at Gettysburg
Capt. E. Graham Morrow, captain of Company C of a North Carolina regiment, died near Gettysburg of a wound received there on July 3. His obituary called him one of the best of the community's young men; at the August term of the county court Samuel F. Phillips qualified as executor of his estate.
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Hillsborough restricts Black vendors at the depot and in the produce trade
Meeting on the evening of Tuesday, August 4, the Hillsborough town commissioners amended their ordinance of March 13 so that the magistrate of police could issue no new licenses for enslaved or free Black people to sell food at the railroad depot, and could license white sellers there only on payment of five dollars a month. They also forbade enslaved and free Black people to buy chickens, butter, eggs or other provisions to sell again, on pain of twenty lashes for the enslaved and a ten-dollar fine for free people, for each offense.
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Assessors announce the listing of Orange County property under the Confederate tax
H. M. Stroud and A. M. Angier advertised fourteen places and dates, August 18 to September 4, to list produce, goods and money under the Confederate tax act of April 24, 1863. A tax-in-kind notice followed in December 1864.
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Enslaved men from Orange County work on the Wilmington fortifications
Enslaved men sent by their owners from the district of Orange County's 46th militia regiment worked on the Confederate fortifications at Wilmington. In August the regiment's colonel told the owners to send written orders so that Calvin G. Strayhorn of University Station could collect the pay due for their labor.
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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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Orange farmers begin delivering the Confederate tax in kind at Hillsborough and Durham's Depot
From September 30 the county agent for the Confederate produce tax, H. M. C. Strowd, began receiving farmers' tithes at Hillsborough and Durham's Depot, for the present in wheat, rye, oats, wool, Irish potatoes, cured hay and fodder, and offered millers contracts to grind the tithe wheat on government terms. In November and December the county's assessors rode a circuit of the county to assess the tax in kind on each farmer's crops.
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Hillsborough's W. W. Kirkland is promoted to brigadier general
Col. W. W. Kirkland of Hillsborough was promoted to brigadier general, and Capt. John W. Graham of Hillsborough, of the 56th North Carolina, was promoted major of that regiment in place of Major Schenck, who had resigned for ill health.
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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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The Orange Guards lose seven killed at Bristoe Station
In the charge of Cooke's and Kirkland's North Carolina brigades at Bristoe Station, Virginia, Company G of the 27th North Carolina, the Orange Guards, lost seven men killed, among them Corporal H. P. Woods, and many wounded, including Capt. S. Dickson; Lieut. James A. Graham of the company sent the full list home for publication.
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Swain asks Jefferson Davis to exempt university students from the draft
Acting on a trustee resolution of October 8, President David L. Swain wrote from Chapel Hill to Jefferson Davis asking that the remaining students be spared from conscription. He reported 63 students left of the 430 enrolled in 1860 and fifteen young men of the village already killed. The Conscript Office then told the district enrolling officer to grant the exemptions.
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Josiah Turner Jr. of Hillsborough is elected to the Confederate Congress
Turner won as an anti-administration candidate in the Confederate congressional election of November 4, 1863, carrying Orange by a majority of 739. In Congress his resolutions supported Graham's push for the Hampton Roads peace conference.
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The 6th N.C.'s two Orange companies are captured almost whole at Rappahannock Station
When Union troops overran the Confederate bridgehead at Rappahannock Station, Virginia, at dusk on November 7, nearly all of the 6th North Carolina was captured, and the regiment's casualty list showed its two Orange companies, the Flat River Guards (Company B) and the Orange Grays (Company C), with their captains among the missing: Company B lost about thirty-five men and Company C about twenty-two, with a few wounded and none killed.
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Black and Native American worshippers in Chapel Hill gather under a grape arbor and form the congregation that became St. Paul AME
A group that included William Thompson, Charles Craig, Jerry Hargraves, Kenny Brooks, Green Merritt and Green Cordal began meeting under a grape vine arbor, with Rev. Green Cordal preaching the first service. The congregation was received into the African Methodist Episcopal connection in 1870.
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Edwin W. Fuller studies at the university in Chapel Hill
Fuller entered the university as a freshman in the fall of 1864 and studied two years in Chapel Hill before going home to Louisburg to help in his father's business.
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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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Historic Black neighborhoods of Chapel Hill and Carrboro
Northside, Pine Knolls, Tin Top and Pottersfield in Chapel Hill and the Lloyd–Broad neighborhood in Carrboro grew from land bought by freedpeople such as Toney and Nellie Strayhorn, around their churches, the Orange County Training School and Lincoln High. Urban renewal, campus growth and rising land prices pressed them from the 1970s, and conservation districts, a zoning overlay in Carrboro and the Jackson Center’s work have answered since 2004.
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Northside, Pine Knolls, and Tin Top
Chapel Hill’s historic Black neighborhoods took shape after emancipation around the West End church and school, the Orange County Training School and its Rosenwald campus of 1924, St. Joseph CME and First Baptist, and the tin-roofed houses that named Tin Top. Lincoln High opened on Merritt Mill Road in 1951, residents resisted urban renewal in the 1970s, and as the Black population fell by about 40 percent the conservation districts, the Jackson Center and the 2015 Northside initiative worked to keep the neighborhoods in place.
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Orange County's roll of justices of the peace reaches 62
The county court had usually been small, and often only five or six magistrates sat at a term, but the number of justices rose sharply during the war. By 1864 Orange had 62.
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Wartime woodcutting strips the university forests
To ease the faculty's hardship the trustees let professors, and the widow of tutor George B. Johnston, cut firewood from university land, extending the privilege in December 1864 with Bursar Fetter to mark trees. Neighbors cut freely as well, and many acres near the village were stripped of oaks and hickories.
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William Bingham takes over the family school at the Oaks and incorporates it
With his brother Robert in the army and his father in declining health, William Bingham was running the school at the Oaks by 1864. That year he incorporated it as the Bingham School, a military and classical academy, and in December moved it to Mebaneville.
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William A. Graham resigns as Orange County's state senator on his election to the Confederate Senate
William A. Graham gave up his seat as Orange County's senator in the General Assembly after the legislature elected him to the Confederate Senate. Governor Vance named Edwin G. Reade to the Confederate seat until February 18, 1864, when Graham's term began, and ordered a special election for Graham's Orange seat.
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The 27th North Carolina, with 153 Orange men on its rolls, re-enlists for the war
The 27th North Carolina, which included the Orange Guards, re-enlisted unanimously for the war in its winter quarters in Virginia. Its record counted 153 Orange County men among all who had served in the regiment, the fifth-largest county contingent.
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The Hillsborough Savings Institution calls in its deposits before the currency change
Facing the new Confederate currency law, the directors of the Hillsborough Savings Institution resolved to pay undrawn dividends, certificates of deposit and checks dated before March 25 only in the old currency and asked holders to collect at once. They had already told depositors to withdraw their money by March 31.
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Confederate War Department refuses to exempt underclassmen
When the exemption Jefferson Davis had granted proved to cover only juniors and seniors, the trustees on March 5, 1864 had the petition sent to Secretary of War Seddon, showing that drafting the lower classes would add almost no soldiers. Seddon refused on March 10, and the students liable to conscription volunteered.
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Orange voters elect John Berry to the state Senate and Addison Mangum to the Commons
In the special election to replace William A. Graham, Orange voters sent Capt. John Berry to the state Senate over James N. Patterson and elected Capt. Addison Mangum to Berry's old seat in the House of Commons over Col. J. S. Leathers and Capt. J. W. Latta.
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Smallpox kills John Parker and his wife near Walnut Grove
Smallpox struck near Walnut Grove in Orange County, killing John Parker on April 12 and his wife, Hannah, a few days later.
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The Recorder endorses Vance but refuses to print soldiers' charges against Holden
Dennis Heartt printed resolutions from the men of Dickson's Battery backing Governor Vance but left out two: one that denounced W. W. Holden and one he read as scorning every man not in the army as a coward. He wrote that Holden sought an honorable peace and that no evidence made him a traitor, and he kept that stand when Raleigh papers objected.
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Capt. Robert Walker Anderson of Hillsborough is killed at the Wilderness and other town men are wounded
Capt. Robert Walker Anderson, ordnance officer of Cooke's brigade, was killed in the Wilderness on May 5. He was about twenty-five, the son of the late William E. Anderson of Hillsborough, and had married Paul C. Cameron's eldest daughter a year before. In the same fighting Webb of the 27th had an arm broken, Lt. J. A. Graham was wounded and Sgt. T. B. Whitted lost an eye.
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Company A, 66th N.C., an Orange company, loses Lieut. J. E. Lynch and four men killed
Company A of the 66th North Carolina, raised in Orange, reported Second Lieut. J. E. Lynch and four privates killed and about twenty men wounded, several since dead, in the fighting from Bermuda Hundred to Petersburg between May 11 and late July. Capt. A. G. Faucett and his men published a tribute to Lynch.
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Capt. Samuel P. Collins of Orange is killed leading Company A, 31st N.C., near Drewry's Bluff
Capt. Samuel P. Collins of Orange County, commanding Company A of the 31st North Carolina, was killed leading his company in a charge on the Union works near Drewry's Bluff and was buried on the field. He left a wife and four daughters.
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Company A of the 56th North Carolina, an Orange company, loses two killed near Ware Bottom Church
Company A of the 56th North Carolina, raised in Orange County, lost Privates Sidney Browning and Lewis L. Christmond killed and about fifteen men wounded in the fighting of May 19 and 20 near Ware Bottom Church, Virginia.
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Governor Vance speaks for two hours to one of the largest crowds ever gathered at Hillsborough
Governor Zebulon B. Vance, campaigning for re-election against W. W. Holden, addressed one of the largest crowds the editor had seen gathered at Hillsborough for such an occasion. He spoke for more than two hours on Tuesday of May court.
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The university graduates seven seniors at a thin wartime commencement
The University of North Carolina held its 1864 commencement with seven graduates, the remnant of sixty-eight freshmen of 1860-61. The student body had fallen from seventy-three during the year to thirty-six at its end as young men left for the army, there were no outside addresses, and Governor Vance attended.
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The Orange Guards lose Alves Norwood near Petersburg, and Hillsborough buries him
Alves Norwood, youngest son of John W. Norwood of Hillsborough, was killed with Company G of the 27th North Carolina, the Orange Guards, in the fighting east of Richmond, where six other men of the company were wounded. His body reached Hillsborough on Sunday, June 19, and was buried in the family ground before a large crowd.
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Dr. Osmond F. Long, Orange County physician and Presbyterian elder, dies
Dr. Osmond F. Long of Orange County, a physician and for twenty-nine years a ruling elder of the Presbyterian church, died at his brother James A. Long's home in Greensborough of an illness he caught while nursing a son badly wounded in battle.
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The Hillsborough Soldiers' Aid Society, its funds spent feeding wounded soldiers on the railroad, appeals for provisions
The women of the Hillsborough Soldiers' Aid Society, having used up nearly all their means giving food and refreshments to the many sick and wounded soldiers passing through on the railroad, asked country people for flour, meat and other provisions. Gifts were to be left with Mrs. Owen in Hillsborough.
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Orange County elects John Berry to the state senate
Orange County elected John Berry its state senator in the August 1864 election, by the list of members elected to the 1864-65 General Assembly.
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Orange County gives Governor Vance 1,321 votes to Holden's 227
In the August governor's election, the official return gave Gov. Zebulon B. Vance 1,321 votes in Orange County to 227 for W. W. Holden, against Vance's 1,451 to 372 over Johnston in 1862. Soldiers voted in camp on July 28 and the people at home on August 4.
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Sixty-eight Orange magistrates pledge a tenth of their grain to soldiers' families at schedule prices
The Orange County court, with sixty-eight magistrates present, resolved unanimously that each would sell a tenth of his wheat and corn crop at government schedule prices to destitute soldiers' families, called on all farmers to do the same, and the citizens in the courthouse pledged likewise. County agents P. C. Cameron and J. W. Norwood reported they had bought and given out more than 6,000 bushels since the previous fall but could buy no more with wheat at $25 a bushel.
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Lieut. Thomas J. Strayhorn, former county register and trustee, dies of a wound received at Reams Station
Lieut. Thomas J. Strayhorn of Company G, 27th North Carolina, the Orange Guards, died in Richmond of a wound received leading his men over the Union works at Reams Station on August 25. He had served Orange as Public Register and then County Trustee, and though not liable to service had left Hillsborough with the Orange Guards on April 20, 1861.
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Merchant Henry N. Brown gives $5,000 to the Hillsborough Soldiers' Aid Society
The Hillsborough Soldiers' Aid Society acknowledged $5,000 from merchant Henry N. Brown, smaller sums from other townspeople, and gifts of wool, yarn, socks, sheeting, flour, sugar and food, including wool from Mrs. P. C. Cameron and sugar from the Misses Nash and Kollock.
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Dennis Heartt leases the Recorder to James M. Turrentine for
Dennis Heartt, in failing health, leased the Hillsborough Recorder for the coming year to James M. Turrentine, who became its editor and publisher and promised a conservative family paper, while Heartt kept his interest and its profits and stayed on to supervise.
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Freedpeople build a church and school at Chapel Hill's West End
After emancipation, Black families kept homes and small farms on Chapel Hill's west end. St. Paul's congregation, first gathered under an arbor in December 1864, built a log church on Merritt Mill Road and bought land in 1878, and in 1866 Benjamin Craig and Green Cordal bought an acre nearby for a freedmen's school.
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Bingham School moves from the Oaks to Mebaneville
William Bingham and Robert Bingham, sons of William James Bingham, moved the school, late in 1864 or in 1865, to a site east of Mebane's Station on the North Carolina Railroad, after the legislature incorporated it in 1864 as a military and classical academy. The highway marker's 1865 may be when classes began at the new site.
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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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Emancipation frees about 6,000 people in Orange County, many of whom become tenants and sharecroppers
About 6,000 enslaved people in Orange County were freed at the end of the Civil War. Many Black families left for Durham and other towns, while some stayed on the land as tenant farmers or sharecroppers.
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George Laws carries the Orange magistrates' petition for a jury court to Governor Holden
With no courts open in the county after the Confederate surrender, the magistrates appointed by the provisional governor petitioned for a jury court twice a year. Laws carried the petition to Governor William W. Holden, who refused it.
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George Moses Horton leaves Chapel Hill with the Union cavalry
The enslaved poet George Moses Horton, who for decades had written verses for students, lived near Chapel Hill until Federal cavalry arrived in 1865. He left with them and went to Philadelphia with a Union officer after the war.
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Hillsborough Military Academy closes for a time at the end of the Civil War
After Charles C. Tew left for the army in 1861, the academy stayed open through the war under Maj. William M. Gordon. Its 1865 term began in February, but that spring, with Sherman's army in the adjoining county, the school closed for a time. Gen. Raleigh E. Colston announced that it would resume under his direction on October 1, 1866, as a polytechnic school on a military basis.
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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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Washington Duke begins manufacturing smoking tobacco on his farm
Back from Confederate service, Washington Duke starts making smoking tobacco on his Orange County farm, the start of the business his sons later built into W. Duke and Sons.
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Wilson Caldwell walks out with President Swain under a white flag to meet approaching Union troops
When Union troops approached Chapel Hill in 1865, Wilson Caldwell walked out under a white flag with President David L. Swain, Judge W. H. Battle and others to meet the incoming cavalry and seek protection for the town and the university.
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A Chapel Hill public meeting resolves to fight on after the peace talks fail
Meeting on the evening of February 10 and again the next afternoon, Chapel Hill citizens under Jones Watson resolved that peace could not be had on acceptable terms and pledged their support to the army and to soldiers' families. Samuel F. Phillips tried to substitute a call for a state convention, saying slavery was no longer the real question, but the move lost 81 to 62 in a disputed count, and the resolutions passed with a preamble amended by David L. Swain.
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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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Maj. James M. Palmer, railroad wood agent, dies at Hillsborough
Maj. James M. Palmer died at his home in Hillsborough. He had been for several years wood agent of the North Carolina Railroad.
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Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 4, 2026.
