Search and filters
Search and filters · 1 active
31 dated events match your filters.
Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–31.Back to highlights
Entries
Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
- 1800s
-
A brick house is built on West Queen Street for Rhody Berry, mother of builder John Berry
The one-and-a-half-story Federal house, the oldest surviving brick dwelling in the original town, was built about 1805 for Mrs. Rhody Berry. Tradition credits her son John Berry, but he was seven that year, and the 2014 nomination suggests neighbor Samuel Hancock, the brickmason who later became his partner.
- 1810s
-
The Hillsborough Presbyterian Church is built on the old St. Matthew's church lot with lottery money
The brick church on West Tryon Street was built in 1815 and 1816 near the site of the colonial St. Matthew's church, lost in the 1790s, with money raised by a lottery the state authorized. The brickmasons John Berry and Samuel Hancock are credited with the work.
- 1820s
-
James S. Smith's building commission starts Hillsborough's brick Masonic Hall
In July 1823 commissioners James S. Smith, Thomas Clancy and J. P. Sneed advertised in the Hillsborough Recorder for proposals to build a brick Masonic Hall in the town. The cornerstone was laid on November 23, 1823, for the Greek Revival hall designed by William Nichols and built by local brickmasons John Berry and Samuel Hancock.
-
The cornerstone of Eagle Lodge's Masonic hall is laid on West King Street
The cornerstone of the brick Masonic hall at 142 West King Street, designed by state architect William Nichols and believed built by brickmasons John Berry and Samuel Hancock, was laid on November 23, 1823. The lot was deeded to the lodge in 1824 after the building went up.
-
John Berry and Samuel Hancock build St. Matthew's Episcopal Church to William Nichols's design
St. Matthew's, an early Gothic Revival church of Flemish-bond brick, was built in 1825-1826 by the local masons John Berry and Samuel Hancock to a design by William Nichols, who set its size at 35 by 45 feet. It replaced an earlier church at Churton and West Tryon streets that had burned in 1793.
-
St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough is consecrated under its first rector, William Mercer Green
William Mercer Green became first rector of the reorganized St. Matthew's parish in 1825, the year work began on its brick church; state architect William Nichols and brickmaker John Berry were among the builders. Bishop John Stark Ravenscroft consecrated the church on May 21, 1826, during the diocesan convention it hosted.
- 1830s
-
Paul C. Cameron builds Burnside on the foundation of Thomas Ruffin's old house
Paul Cameron built the town house he named Burnside on South Cameron Street, on the stone foundation of his father-in-law Thomas Ruffin's earlier house. Enslaved workers from Cameron's Fairntosh plantation built it under his master carpenter Jack, and John Berry laid the brick.
-
John Berry completes a stone jail at Hillsborough
Building commissioners named in 1836 planned a two-story prison forty-five by twenty-four feet at a cost of no more than $4,000, and Berry won the contract.
- 1840s
-
John Berry adds a rear ell to Peter Brown Ruffin's house on West King Street
Builder John Berry added at least one two-story rear ell, with a Federal-style stair typical of his work, to the 1820s house that Peter Brown Ruffin owned in the 1840s. The house's first owner is unknown.
-
Dabney Cosby takes the masonry subcontract for the lengthening of Old East and Old West
Chapel Hill contractors Isaac J. Collier and Kendall B. Waitt subcontracted the masonry of the university additions to Cosby, who put enslaved workmen including the brothers Osborne and Albert on the job. Cosby and the architect Alexander Jackson Davis quarrelled over the drawings, and president David L. Swain asked the Hillsborough builder John Berry to look at the brickwork, which Berry reported was defective.
-
John Berry builds the Orange County Courthouse
County magistrates ordered a new Hillsborough courthouse in early 1844 and set aside $6,000, and its cornerstone was set to be laid with Masonic ceremonies on September 7, 1844. John Berry designed and built the Greek Revival temple-form building, which was standing by May 1845; the town clock went into its cupola in July 1846.
-
Builder John Berry enlarges a St. Mary's Road farmhouse into Sunny Side, his country home
John Berry, the Hillsborough brickmason and builder, enlarged and remodeled an older farmhouse on St. Mary's Road as a home for himself and named it Sunny Side. He kept his library there and lived there until his death in 1870.
-
Robert Burwell buys the house and has John Berry enlarge it
Burwell resigned his pulpit and bought the two lots from the church for $800 and back pay. The builder John Berry added a central hall and two rooms and turned the house to face Churton Street. A deed of trust of July 16, 1850 shows Burwell still owing Berry $2,500 and the church trustees $800, secured on the lots and on enslaved members of the household.
- 1850s
-
Builder John Berry holds 44 enslaved people, most working in his building trade
By 1850 the Hillsborough brick mason and builder John Berry held 44 enslaved people, most of them working with him in masonry and construction. Some, including his head carpenter Joseph Nichols, stayed with him after emancipation, and much of the carpentry in Berry's buildings after 1840 was likely Nichols's.
-
The old Burwell schoolroom is said to be moved to West Orange Street during John Berry's work on the Burwell School
The west wing of the bungalow at 114 West Orange Street is reputed to be the old Burwell schoolroom, moved there in 1850 while John Berry was renovating the Burwell School. The house around it dates from 1922.
-
Robert Burwell pledges Mary Ann and her children against his building debts
A deed of trust set out Burwell's debts of $2,500 to the builder John Berry and $800 to the Presbyterian trustees, and offered as security the enslaved seamstress Mary Ann, her four children and any children born to her, and a girl named Ann.
-
Benjamin Hedrick's house with an eight-sided room goes up on East Rosemary Street
Professor Benjamin Hedrick's house at 610 East Rosemary Street, known for its octagonal room, was ready by 1855 and the Hedricks moved in; Preservation Chapel Hill credits the Hillsborough builder John Berry and Hedrick's own design, and Little says he bought an older farmhouse from the university and added the eight-sided room. Horace Williams later owned it, and Preservation Chapel Hill now has its offices there.
-
An octagonal brick ice house is built for Burnside
A mostly underground octagonal brick ice house with a conical shingled roof was built for Burnside, the Cameron family estate on South Cameron Street; the brickwork is said to be John Berry's. It stands in the woods south of Cameron Park Elementary School and was restored around 2002.
-
Pride Jones has John Berry enlarge Sans Souci
After inheriting Sans Souci from Dr. William Cain in 1857, Dr. Pride Jones has builder John Berry renovate the house, adding the rear dining room and stair, the full-width front porch and the one-story wings.
-
Charles Tew chooses a site west of Hillsborough for a military academy
In late July 1858 Charles C. Tew, with Moses A. Curtis and A. S. Galliard, searched Hillsborough for a school site and settled on a 40-acre tract about a mile and a half west of town near the new North Carolina Railroad. They engaged the Columbia architect John A. Kay, and local builders John Berry and Henry Richards built the barracks and commandant's house.
-
The Hillsborough Military Academy commandant's house is ready to live in
The academy's neo-Gothic commandant's house, with turrets and crenellations along the roofline, was far enough along to be occupied by March 1859, though interior work may have continued for years.
- 1860s
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Orange County sends John Berry and Samuel F. Phillips to the 1865 convention
Orange would have elected Graham to the postwar convention, but his pardon was held up, so he withdrew and voters chose Berry and Phillips.
-
The legislature elects William A. Graham to the U.S. Senate, but Congress refuses to seat him
Elected to the state Senate in 1865, Graham could not take that seat without a pardon. The legislature then chose him for the U.S. Senate, and he was turned away with the rest of the state's delegation. His pardon arrived in 1867.
Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
- 1870s
-
Builder John Berry dies at Sunny Side while starting the Berry Building
John Berry, the self-taught builder of the Orange County Courthouse and a longtime state legislator, died of pneumonia at his home Sunny Side at 72. He had caught cold that winter while beginning his last project, a two-story brick store and ballroom downtown known as the Berry Building.
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
- 1960s
-
A bronze plaque honoring builder John Berry is placed on the Old Orange County Courthouse
A bronze plaque naming John Berry a contributor to the tradition of American architecture was fixed to the 1845 courthouse he built in Hillsborough.
Suggest a correction to an entry →
A dated event is a fact, filed on the page of the subject it belongs to: a person, a place, a theme, or a named event or history. Pages are subjects, with their own works and sources; the Place, community, or institution filter also gathers the institutions that recur in the entries without a page of their own. The page opens on the highlights; a search or any filter looks through every dated event and storyline, and each filter’s counts say how many entries choosing it would show alongside the others. A storyline is a longer history that gathers related dated events, and each storyline’s page lists its own. Counts give dated events and storylines separately. Dates come from the sources named on the cards and from the index’s event pages; where sources disagree, the card follows the county records. Entries marked approximate or needing research say so on the card; the rest were checked against the source named on it. The correction link under the entries opens the contact form; name the entry and its date and the Friends will check the source. Suggest an event →
Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 2, 2026.
