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Orange County Indexed

Chronology

Key events from Orange County history: 100 highlights to start, then the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, each connected to the index. A storyline gathers many dated events into one history, such as the Regulator crisis.

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27 dated events match your filters.

Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–27.Back to highlights

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27 dated events
1757Colonial and Regulator years
  1. Colonial and Regulator years · 1680–1774
  2. Thomas Lloyd is appointed a justice of the peace

    Appointment, election or service · Orange County

    Thomas Lloyd, a settler of Welsh descent with a land grant on Mark Creek, was made a justice of the peace in 1757 and later sat in the North Carolina Assembly. He founded the large Lloyd family of southern Orange; by 1850 nineteen of his grandsons and great-grandsons lived around White Cross.

  3. Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
  4. White Cross Church, later an AME congregation, is organized

    Founding or opening · White Cross

    The church list dates the White Cross congregation and its first building to May 1832. It was rebuilt in 1921 and was an African Methodist Episcopal church by 1953.

  5. A stage inn, later the Snipes House, is built near White Cross

    Founding or opening · White Cross

    The Snipes House near White Cross began in the 1840s as a stagecoach inn, with paired chimneys at each end. It has since been altered.

  6. The Morris Lloyd family builds its first home, a log house near White Cross

    Construction or physical change · White Cross

    A log house of about 1840 near White Cross was the first home of the Morris Lloyd family. When Lloyd later put up a much larger timber-frame house in front of it, the log house stayed in use behind it as a kitchen and sleeping space.

  7. The Morris Lloyd farmhouse is built near White Cross

    Construction or physical change · White Cross

    A farmhouse is built around 1850 on the Morris Lloyd place near White Cross, a farm that keeps an early log house and a half-dovetailed log corn crib. The survey put it on the Study List.

  8. William Strowd builds a two-story frame house near White Cross

    Construction or physical change · White Cross

    A two-story frame house is built in 1851 on the William Strowd place near White Cross.

  9. A one-room log house goes up on the Bryant Nevilles farm near White Cross

    Construction or physical change · White Cross

    By family tradition a one-room log house and log smokehouse on the Nevilles farm near White Cross date to about the Civil War years. Bryant Nevilles (1850-1931), who married Julia Lloyd in 1872, later farmed here, and a frame bungalow was added to the farmstead in 1926. The farm is on the Study List.

  10. Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
  11. The White Cross Store is built

    Founding or opening · White Cross

    A country store is built at White Cross in the late nineteenth century. It was later covered in vinyl siding.

  12. Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
  13. A one-room school for Black children is built at Hickory Grove

    Founding or opening · Hickory Grove, near White Cross

    Hickory Grove, near White Cross, gets a one-room front-gable schoolhouse for African American children early in the twentieth century.

  14. Arch Cates's I-house goes up on what became Arthur Minnis Road

    Construction or physical change · Cates-Dodson-Minnis Farm, 923 Arthur Minnis Road, near Union Grove Church Road, White Cross area

    The two-story frame I-house at the Cates-Dodson-Minnis Farm was first owned by Arch Cates. It later passed to Albert Dodson and then to Albert and Lois Dodson Minnis, and was remodeled in the 1940s.

    Subject: Cates-Dodson-Minnis Farm

  15. A school district is created south of White Cross on donated land

    Founding or opening · White Cross

    The board approved a new district south of White Cross whose land and building were given on condition that they revert when no longer used for a public school, with Sunday school and preaching allowed. Children of the Old Field school were moved to it.

  16. Alston Grove Congregational Church builds its frame church near White Cross

    Construction or physical change · White Cross

    The Alston Grove Congregational Church near White Cross builds a front-gable frame church around 1920 beside its cemetery.

  17. White Cross AME Church builds its present church

    Construction or physical change · White Cross AME Church

    White Cross AME Church builds a new church in 1921; the congregation refaced it in brick veneer in 1958.

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

    Law, policy or court · Orange County

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

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

  19. A new consolidated school is built at White Cross on the Saxapahaw road

    Construction or physical change · White Cross

    After neighbors rejected a site at the crossroads near Leuco Lloyd's, the board placed the new White Cross school on the north side of the Chapel Hill and Saxapahaw road and let the contract to A. R. Davis for $14,436. It accepted the building in March 1925 and sold the old White Cross schoolhouse to F. J. Eubanks for $250.

    Subject: White Cross School

  20. White Cross School is built as a consolidated brick school

    Construction or physical change · White Cross

    White Cross School, built in 1933, is a brick school with four large classrooms split by an auditorium in the middle. The form names it one of the county's two best examples of the larger central schools that replaced one- and two-room schools during consolidation.

    Subject: White Cross School

  21. White Cross School burns and the board orders a new building

    Disaster or outbreak · White Cross

    The board learned in April 1933 that the White Cross school building had been destroyed by fire and authorized a new one for $10,859. At the same meeting it set aside $3,325 for two new rooms at Efland.

    Subject: White Cross School

  22. Civil rights era · 1945–1975
  23. Superintendent Proffit's $1 million school bond pays for a new Efland school for Black children and county lunchrooms

    Construction or physical change · Orange County

    The $1,000,000 school bond passed under Superintendent Glenn T. Proffit paid for grounds and a building for the Efland school for Black children, an addition to Hillsboro High School, and lunchrooms at Aycock, Efland, West Hillsborough and White Cross. It also bought a cannery and gymnasium at Aycock and a remodeling and auditorium at Caldwell.

    Subject: Efland schools · Aycock School · Hillsborough High School

  24. The Parkvue Drive-In Theatre opens west of Carrboro

    Founding or opening · N.C. Highway 54 (Greensboro Road), west of Carrboro

    The Parkvue, a drive-in theater for 280 cars on the Greensboro highway (N.C. 54) west of Carrboro, opened with two evening showings of Three Little Girls in Blue. J. W. Thompson and C. M. Rumley owned and ran it.

  25. White Cross voters turn down a merger with the Chapel Hill schools a second time

    Law, policy or court · White Cross

    White Cross voters defeated a merger of their school into the Chapel Hill city district, 116 to 110, a year after Carrboro had joined it; a first vote had failed in May 1958. A third vote failed in the spring of 1960, and the county closed the school in 1961. The county board sold the White Cross property to Edmiston Realty Company for $14,900 in 1967.

    Subject: Chapel Hill and Carrboro city schools · White Cross School

  26. Black parents at White Cross ask to send their children to White Cross School

    Protest or organizing · White Cross School, north side of NC 54 west of SR 1952, White Cross

    The parents of 23 Black children living near White Cross applied to move them from the Hillsboro Negro elementary school, a long daily bus ride away, to the white school in their own community. Most of the children had gone to school in Chapel Hill until White Cross voters again turned down a merger with the Chapel Hill district in 1960.

    Subject: White Cross School

  27. The county school board refuses the White Cross transfer requests

    Law, policy or court · White Cross School, north side of NC 54 west of SR 1952, White Cross

    The Orange County Board of Education turned down the Black families' request, saying no reassignment had been asked for within ten days of the parents being notified of their children's school.

    Subject: White Cross School

  28. Floyd McKissick represents the White Cross children at a school board hearing

    Law, policy or court · White Cross School, north side of NC 54 west of SR 1952, White Cross

    At a hearing on the transfers, the children were represented by Durham attorney Floyd McKissick; the county board denied them again, reading a statement it had prepared before the hearing began.

    Subject: White Cross School

  29. The school board's lawyer advises closing White Cross School rather than fight the case

    Law, policy or court · White Cross School, north side of NC 54 west of SR 1952, White Cross

    A. H. Graham, attorney for the county board, told it the transfer fight could not be won and recommended shutting White Cross School instead.

    People: Alexander H. "Sandy" Graham

    Subject: White Cross School

  30. The county board votes to close White Cross School and send its white pupils to Hillsborough

    Closing or ending · White Cross School, north side of NC 54 west of SR 1952, White Cross

    Rather than admit the Black children, the Orange County school board decided to close White Cross School at the end of the school year and move its 75 white pupils to Cameron Park School in West Hillsboro, a step it tied to its ten-year building program.

    Subject: White Cross School

  31. Recent decades · 1976–2026
  32. The state places rural Orange County houses, churches, schools and districts on the Study List

    Award or honor · Orange County

    On July 8, 1993, after the survey of the rural county, the National Register Advisory Committee placed 23 rural Orange County properties on the state Study List: eighteen farmhouses and log houses, the Carr Methodist and Harmony churches, White Cross School, and the Cedar Grove and Oaks Rural historic districts.

  33. The Cates-Dodson-Minnis House joins the Study List

    Naming or commemoration · Cates-Dodson-Minnis Farm, Arthur Minnis Road

    The National Register Advisory Committee placed the Cates-Dodson-Minnis farmhouse west of Chapel Hill on North Carolina's Study List, its list of properties likely to qualify for the National Register.

    Subject: Cates-Dodson-Minnis Farm

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A dated event is a fact, filed on the page of the subject it belongs to: a person, a place, a theme, or a named event or history. Pages are subjects, with their own works and sources; the Place, community, or institution filter also gathers the institutions that recur in the entries without a page of their own. The page opens on the highlights; a search or any filter looks through every dated event and storyline, and each filter’s counts say how many entries choosing it would show alongside the others. A storyline is a longer history that gathers related dated events, and each storyline’s page lists its own. Counts give dated events and storylines separately. Dates come from the sources named on the cards and from the index’s event pages; where sources disagree, the card follows the county records. Entries marked approximate or needing research say so on the card; the rest were checked against the source named on it. The correction link under the entries opens the contact form; name the entry and its date and the Friends will check the source. Suggest an event →

Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 2, 2026.

Two mice reading back to back against a leaf, with the hand-lettered words Friends of the Orange County Public Library
Illustration by Caldecott Medalist Matthew Cordell, gifted to the Friends 2026