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Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
- 1850s
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Charles P. Mallett keeps the University Bookstore on Franklin Street
Mallett's University Bookstore was one of four businesses the book first maps in 1858, along with Andrew Mickle's dry goods, John R. Hutchins's clothing store and C. Gottenburg's mattress shop. All may have opened before 1853.
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John W. Graham joins the university faculty as a Latin tutor
A year after taking his A.B. in 1857, John W. Graham became a tutor in Latin at the University of North Carolina. He finished a law degree there in 1860.
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Jones Watson opens the Central Hotel
Watson remodeled and enlarged the old James Hogg house and the Barbee store beside it into the Central Hotel, which had several shops on the ground. It appears on the maps through 1868.
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St. Mary's Chapel is built
The Episcopal congregation of St. Mary's, about six miles northeast of Hillsborough, replaced its eighteenth-century church with a small brick Gothic Revival chapel on land bought beside the original tract. Bishop Thomas Atkinson consecrated it on November 25, 1859, and the congregation reported that the neat brick church had cost $2,000.
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Students of a lawless club riot and are sued for damages
A club of students sworn to back each other in breaking rules rang and stole the bell, stoned the faculty and piled the classroom benches and blackboards for a bonfire. The leaders were expelled and, sued in Orange Superior Court, made to repay the university about $200.
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The General Assembly lets Emily Hooper, a citizen of Liberia, return to slavery in Chapel Hill
A private act allowed Emily Hooper, who had emigrated to Liberia, to come back and live again as the enslaved property of her former owner, Sally Mallet of Chapel Hill.
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The brick McDade House is built on West Franklin Street
The two-story brick I-house at 113 West Franklin Street, with late Greek Revival touches and a long rear ell, was built after Isaac Hudson bought the old Nunn lot in 1854, probably for him about 1858-60, and stood by 1865. The 1992 survey's "about 1850" is a guess from its style. The McDades did not own it until 1894.
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The university opens its first infirmary, the Retreat, with Dr. Mallett in charge
The small building known as the Retreat stood in the southwest corner of the university-owned Tom Taylor property, and the town physician William P. Mallett ran it. It served as the infirmary until 1894.
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University enrollment reaches its antebellum peak
The university's catalogue for the 1858-59 session counted 456 students, its highest college enrollment before the Civil War. Counting eight independent law students, the 1857-58 total had been 461.
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Zeta Psi organizes a chapter at the university
The Zeta Psi chapter at the university was organized in January 1858. Battle counts four colonels among its members who served the Confederacy, and nine members killed.
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A marble monument to Joseph Caldwell is dedicated in McCorkle Place
A marble obelisk to Caldwell was dedicated north of the Davie Poplar. Its inscription names the President of the United States, the Governor and other alumni as donors and praises his advocacy of common schools and internal improvements. Caldwell and his wife still lay by the old sandstone shaft near New West; their remains, with her son's, were moved to the monument's east base in July 1904.
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New East and New West are built to William Percival's design
To house more students, the university built two dormitories with classrooms and debating society halls on either side of Old East and Old West, to designs by the English architect William Percival, with Thomas Coates as contractor. Work began in June 1858, and the faculty announced on July 31, 1861 that the buildings were ready to occupy.
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Pride Jones and John W. Norwood are elected to the House of Commons for Orange
Orange County elected Democrats Pride Jones and John W. Norwood to the state House of Commons in the August 1858 election.
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Charles Tew buys land west of Hillsborough for a military academy
On December 18, 1858, Charles C. Tew of South Carolina bought from Cad Jones a 61 1/4-acre tract lying between the Greensborough road and the North Carolina Railroad, on what is now the west end of Hillsborough, for a military academy modeled on the Citadel. His advertisements, dated September 15, 1858, had already announced that the school would open at Hillsborough in January 1859.
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Frederick Nash dies in Hillsborough and is buried in the Old Town Cemetery
Nash fell ill returning from a synod meeting at New Bern and died in December 1858 at his Hillsborough home, while serving as chief justice of the state supreme court. He was buried in the Hillsborough Old Town Cemetery.
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Beta Theta Pi's Eta chapter goes inactive
After a strong start the Eta chapter lapsed in 1859 as the Civil War approached.
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Farm labor in rural Orange County
Tobacco spread from Washington Duke’s turn to the crop in 1859, and after emancipation many freedpeople worked the land as tenants and sharecroppers; the 1930 census counted tenants on about a third of the county’s farms. Farm Security Administration loans reached Black farmers from 1938, tenancy fell sharply in the 1950s, and by 2022 the census counted 36 migrant workers on the county’s farms.
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Masons lay a cornerstone at the Hillsborough Military Academy
A delegation from Eagle Lodge took part in a Masonic cornerstone ceremony at the Hillsborough Military Academy in 1859.
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New Bethel Methodist Church is organized
John R. McMannan, Jackson Latta and five other men organized New Bethel Methodist Church in 1859. The church it used in 1953 dated from 1925.
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Professor William J. Martin buys the Franklin and Boundary corner and builds a house
Martin, who replaced Elisha Mitchell on the faculty and later served as a Confederate colonel, bought the northeast corner of Franklin and Boundary streets from Charles Phillips and built his home there soon after. He resigned his chair in the fall of 1867 and moved to Tennessee.
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Samuel F. Phillips closes his law school and shares the office with Judge Battle
Phillips, who had taught law in his Franklin Street office since 1854, closed the school, went back to practice, and shared the building with Judge William Horn Battle.
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The Nash and Kollock School turns the old Nash law office into a music room
After Chief Justice Frederick Nash died, his daughters Sally and Maria Nash and their cousin Sarah Kollock began holding their school's music lessons in his former law office on Margaret Lane.
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The legislature creates North Carolina's first Board of Medical Examiners
In 1859 the state set up its first Board of Medical Examiners by law. The book credits the urging of Hillsborough's Dr. Edmund Strudwick.
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Trustees buy a second thousand shares of bank stock on credit
When the old state bank's charter ran out, the trustees put the university's $100,000 into the new Bank of North Carolina and, by a bare majority, subscribed for another thousand shares on credit. Only $10,000 of that debt was ever paid, and after the war the university owed $90,000 on shares that were worthless.
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Washington Duke turns from cotton to tobacco on his Orange County farm
After a failed cotton crop, Washington Duke began growing tobacco in 1859 on his farm, then in Orange County, following favorable publicity among Orange County farmers. The farm used the labor of an enslaved girl, Caroline, bought in 1855, and later a leased enslaved man, Jim, who worked in tobacco.
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Hillsborough Military Academy opens
Charles C. Tew, then superintendent of the state military academy at Columbia, South Carolina, opened the Hillsborough Military Academy in January 1859, holding its first classes in the old Hillsborough Academy buildings. His advertisements had set the opening for January 12. In October 1860 the Hillsborough Recorder reported that the academy's barracks, built to house 125 cadets, had been erected at a cost of $30,000.
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Samuel Wellwood Hughes opens his own school near Cedar Grove
After fourteen years as founder and principal of Cedar Grove Academy, Samuel Wellwood Hughes opened his own classical school five miles northwest of Hillsborough, its first session beginning on the second Monday of January 1859. He taught there until his death in 1884; the surviving schoolhouse, dated about 1862, was later moved to Hillsborough and restored.
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Calvin E. Parish serves as mayor of Hillsborough
Parish followed Dr. Roscoe Hooker as mayor of Hillsborough in February 1859 and served until A. C. Murdock took office in February 1860.
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Corporators organize the Hillsborough Savings Institution
The corporators of the Hillsborough Savings Institution, among them Thomas Webb, William A. Graham, James F. Cain and Pride Jones, met in the county court clerk's office on April 1, 1859, adopted the charter and appointed Webb and others to open subscription books. By December 1860 Webb was its cashier.
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Hillsborough Methodist Church builds its church
The Hillsborough Methodist congregation, organized about 1807, bought its lot on April 4, 1859, and John Berry built the church, which was to be dedicated on Sunday, October 6, 1861. The war held up the finishing and the building was not paid for until 1874. Lefler and Wager counted 200 seats, and it was still the congregation's church in 1953.
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President James Buchanan attends commencement
President Buchanan and Interior Secretary Jacob Thompson, an alumnus, came to the 1859 commencement as guests of President Swain, received callers under the Davie Poplar and saw Buchanan given an honorary doctor of laws. The Wilmington Light Infantry, the first military company to attend a commencement, camped on the campus for the occasion.
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Nash and Kollock School for young ladies opens in Hillsborough
After Chief Justice Frederick Nash died in 1858, his daughters Sarah and Maria Nash and their cousin Sarah Kollock opened a select boarding and day school for girls in the Nash home.
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Five elders are ordained at New Hope
Samuel S. Claytor, Alexander Dickson, William S. Kirkland, Bryant Strayhorn and George R. Long were ordained and installed. Craig traces each to the founding families except Dickson.
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Bishop Atkinson consecrates St. Mary's Chapel
The St. Mary's Chapel building in eastern Orange County was consecrated by Bishop Atkinson with the Rev. Dr. Curtis taking part.
- 1860s
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A one-room log house goes up on the Bryant Nevilles farm near 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.
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Archbishop John Hughes preaches the commencement sermon
Invited again by the senior class, the Roman Catholic Archbishop Hughes preached the baccalaureate sermon, speaking without notes for an hour and three quarters on love of God and of neighbor. Some Protestant critics attacked the choice, and a Hillsborough Recorder correspondent charged that he was treated discourteously, which the university denied.
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Brick quarters for enslaved people are built at the Mangum House on St. Mary's Road
Around 1860 two four-bay brick buildings, likely quarters for enslaved people, and a brick smokehouse were built to serve the Priestly Mangum House on St. Mary's Road. The house later burned, and the Ruffin-Hill House went up near its site in 1877-1878; the quarters still stand at 311 and 313 St. Mary's Road.
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Census counts more than 5,000 enslaved people in Orange County
The 1860 census recorded more than 5,000 enslaved people in Orange County, whose labor sustained the county's farms. At emancipation they made up roughly a third of the county's population.
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David Moore, a free Black barber in Chapel Hill, holds property worth $4,400
The 1860 census recorded Moore's property at $4,400, the largest holding among the county's 29 free Black property owners, whose combined wealth was $16,175.
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Executive committee orders the faculty to stop hazing
The trustees' executive committee resolved that the ridicule and petty harassment of new students by older ones was cruel and contemptible and should be put down peremptorily by the faculty.
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First Baptist Church of Hillsborough builds its church
Seven years after organizing in the old courthouse, the First Baptist Church of Hillsborough began its brick church about 1860, to a design by William Percival. The congregation met in the courthouse until 1862 and the war stalled the work; John Berry took over from the first builder, D. Kistler, and finished it. The Baptist State Convention met in the newly completed church in the fall of 1868, when Rev. Thomas H. Pritchard of Raleigh preached the dedication sermon.
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Four in ten Orange farms now grow bright-leaf tobacco
Between 1850 and 1860 the share of county farms growing bright leaf rose from about 11 to about 41 percent and the crop grew fivefold to over a million pounds. Farms raising 100 bushels of wheat or more rose from 26 to 39 percent.
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Hillsborough counts 945 residents
Even with the railroad, the town hardly grew in the 1850s: about 900 people in 1850 and 945 at the end of the decade.
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James H. Pratt buys the Jehu Brown tract and a second share of the Cabe land
John Burton, Jamima Cabe's son by her first marriage, sold the 160-acre Jehu Brown tract with the house to Pratt by a deed dated 1860. The same year Pratt bought 130 adjoining acres that had been Nancy Cabe's share of her father's land.
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John Kimberly expands laboratory teaching at the university
Back in Chapel Hill after a year of study abroad in 1859, John Kimberly expanded laboratory instruction in chemistry and introduced the university's first laboratory fee for supplies.
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John Kirkland builds a log house on Kirkland Road
John Kirkland built a log house east of NC 86 that was widened with a frame section around 1900 and given a Triple-A roof. A kitchen joined by a breezeway, a smokehouse and a dairy on posts stand in the yard.
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Merchant Calvin Scott builds a Greek Revival house on West Cameron Avenue
Calvin Scott, a Chapel Hill merchant, is thought to have built the two-story I-house at 400 West Cameron Avenue about 1860. It later belonged to Samuel Mallette Gattis, a UNC alumnus of 1884 and a university trustee from 1909 to 1911.
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Most white male household heads in Orange County own no land
Citing Robert Kenzer's study of the county, the report says that in 1860 some 59 percent of white men heading households held no land and 71.5 percent held no slaves. A third held between 1 and 250 acres, and 21.6 percent held from one to nine enslaved people.
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New belfry built on South Building
A belfry was raised on South Building to plans by the builder Thomas H. Coates, replacing the one burned in 1856. It was strengthened after the 1875 reopening and still carried the bell in Battle's day.
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Orange County teaches 57 district schools
In 1860 Orange County taught fifty-seven district schools with forty-five licensed teachers, on about $7,400 in state school money and $1,800 in county taxes, in terms of about four months, two decades after the state's first public school law. The 1860 census, counting differently, listed 25 public schools with 2,163 pupils.
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Paul C. Cameron holds 470 people in slavery in Orange County
The 1860 count listed Cameron of Fairntosh as the owner of 470 enslaved people in Orange, and the joined Bennehan-Cameron holdings ran to as much as 30,000 acres worked by about 900 enslaved people.
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Seven in ten free Orange County residents hold no one in slavery
In 1860, 70 percent of the free population held no enslaved people. Of the slaveholders, only seven percent held 20 or more, and more than half held fewer than five.
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The Hillsborough Military Academy's commandant's house is built
The academy's castellated brick superintendent's house, known locally as the Commandant's House, with a turret at each corner and crenellated battlements, was presumably built about the same time as the barracks, which were complete by 1860. It was the home of Charles C. Tew, his wife Elizabeth and their children. John Berry was its builder, to designs by the Columbia architect John A. Kay, and Henry Richards Sr. is credited as its brickmason.
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The Neville House is built
The Neville House, built about 1860, was placed on the state Study List in July 1992 after the Chapel Hill Township survey.
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The Pitard Place is built near Cedar Grove
A two-story frame house with a very low hip roof, widely spaced windows and a two-tier entry porch, the broadest local take on the Greek Revival.
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The Sikes log house is built
The Sikes log house dates from about 1860 and was placed on the state Study List in July 1993.
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The Tally family I-house is built near Cedar Grove
The main house at the Tally Homeplace near Cedar Grove, a two-story I-house, goes up around 1860 and is altered in the 1880s. The farm keeps tobacco barns, two tenant houses of about 1900 and an office, and is on the Study List.
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The brick Mason-Lloyd-Wiley House is built on West Cameron Avenue
About 1860 a two-story brick house with carefully laid walls and a sidelighted double entrance went up at 412 West Cameron Avenue, among the biggest houses on the west side of the university. Turner Bynum may have built it.
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Thomas Kirkland starts a frame house and finishes it after the Civil War
Thomas Kirkland began a two-room frame house on University Station Road before he left for the war and completed it when he came back.
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Thomas and Mary Hogan build a farmhouse at Calvander
About 1860, around the time Thomas J. Hogan married Mary, the couple built a story-and-a-half frame farmhouse with Greek Revival trim on the old Hillsborough Road at Calvander; family tradition has their first child born there in 1862. Thomas served in the Civil War, and about 1890 the Hogans raised the house to two stories in the Queen Anne style.
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Webb and Whitted's plug tobacco factory is Hillsborough's largest works
The firm made plug tobacco in Hillsborough with 15 workers, the biggest manufacturing concern in present Orange County in the 1860 census.
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William H. S. Burgwyn enters the University of North Carolina
Burgwyn entered the University of North Carolina as a freshman in 1860, after schooling near Baltimore and at Horner's School in Oxford. He left in 1861 because of illness.
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William Shambley builds a log house before going to war
About 1860 William Shambley raised a one-room log house on Cornwallis Road, finishing it shortly before he left to fight in the Civil War. It remained well kept in 1992.
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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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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
During the Civil War Norwood and Paul C. Cameron acted as superintendents of relief for the families of Orange County soldiers, with Norwood's law office as their headquarters.
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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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Women organize Ladies Aid Societies in Hillsborough and Chapel Hill
Soon after secession women in the two towns formed aid societies, later joined by others, that 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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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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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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A courthouse meeting in Hillsborough calls for a secession convention
Ten days after Fort Sumter, 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.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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, and the fire crossed Columbia Street to John Wesley Carr's store before it was put out.
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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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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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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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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 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Fire destroys the block at the northwest corner of Churton and King streets
A fire that broke out about 1 a.m. destroyed seventeen buildings on the northwest corner of Churton and King streets in Hillsborough, among them the corner store owned by John U. Kirkland and occupied by W. F. and T. J. Strayhorn. The Recorder reported that few owners were insured.
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Pastor Henry B. Pratt tells the Presbyterian session he will serve the army as a chaplain
Pratt informed the Hillsborough church that he expected to go into Confederate service for the rest of the war once he obtained a chaplain's commission. He returned as pastor in 1867-68.
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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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Josiah Turner Jr. of Hillsborough is elected to the Confederate Congress
Turner won as an anti-administration candidate in the same year Orange gave Zebulon Vance an 885-vote majority over the peace candidate William W. Holden. In Congress his resolutions supported Graham's push for the Hampton Roads peace conference.
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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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Confederate War Department refuses to exempt underclassmen
When the exemption Jefferson Davis had granted proved to cover only juniors and seniors, the trustees petitioned Secretary of War Seddon, showing that drafting the lower classes would add almost no soldiers. Seddon refused, and the students liable to conscription volunteered.
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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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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.
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Orange County voters ratify the ordinances abolishing slavery and repudiating secession
In the 1865 vote on the convention's work, Orange approved the abolition of slavery 169 to 73 and the repudiation of secession 170 to 55.
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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.
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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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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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Wheeler's Confederate cavalry fought Union pursuers at New Hope Creek east of Chapel Hill
Retreating cavalry under Joseph Wheeler destroyed the bridge over the rain-swollen New Hope and the other bridges on the road toward Chapel Hill, then attacked Union cavalry trying to cross on fallen trees and driftwood at the Atkins plantation, about eight miles from the village. Cornelia Phillips Spencer, writing from Chapel Hill, called it the last skirmish and perhaps the last blood of the war and recorded that several men were killed on both sides.
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Wheeler's cavalry reaches Chapel Hill and posts a guard on the university
Confederate cavalry under General Joseph Wheeler reached Chapel Hill, and at the request of alumnus James P. Coffin, Wheeler detailed Lieutenant McBurney Broyles and fifteen men to report to President Swain and protect the university's books and apparatus. Wheeler's headquarters were opposite the Episcopal church.
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Sherman's orders protect the university and village of Chapel Hill
When a Federal officer rode into Chapel Hill at sunset on April 16, President Swain told him of General Sherman's promise to protect the university and village, and the officer said he had received the orders. When Smith D. Atkins's cavalry took the town the next morning, Sherman's orders were obeyed and dwellings and university property were guarded.
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Sherman and Johnston first meet at the Bennitt farm on the Hillsborough Road
William T. Sherman and Joseph E. Johnston met midway between their lines on the Hillsborough Road, seven miles from Durham Station, and moved to James Bennitt's nearby farmhouse. Before talks began Sherman showed Johnston a telegram announcing President Lincoln's assassination; Sherman offered military terms only, and Johnston asked for terms of a permanent peace.
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Union troops occupy Chapel Hill
Wheeler's Confederates left Chapel Hill at midday on Easter Sunday, April 16, and a small Federal party rode in at sunset, met President David Lowry Swain and returned to camp. Smith D. Atkins's cavalry took possession about 8 a.m. on Monday, April 17, posting guards from the Ninth Michigan at houses that asked for them and quartering officers and horses in the college buildings.
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Johnston accepts Sherman's basis of agreement at the Bennitt farm
At their second meeting at James and Nancy Bennitt's farm on the Hillsborough Road, then in Orange County, Joseph E. Johnston accepted the "basis of agreement" William T. Sherman submitted, which offered an armistice, disbanding of the armies, recognition of state governments and a general amnesty. Jefferson Davis approved the terms, but Washington rejected them.
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Swain asks Sherman to stop the stripping of farms around Chapel Hill
President Swain wrote General Sherman that Wheeler's men and then the Federals had stripped the country of forage and horses, leaving families such as the Rev. George W. Purefoy's fifty people with no food and no work animals. Sherman replied on April 22 that seizures would stop when the war ended.
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Johnston surrendered to Sherman at the Bennett farm, then in Orange County
After meetings on April 17 and 18 whose terms Washington rejected, Joseph E. Johnston and William T. Sherman met again at the farm of James and Nancy Bennitt and signed a military surrender covering forces in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. North Carolina Historic Sites describes the Bennitt farm as a 325 acre place in Orange County, on the Hillsborough road west of Durham Station.
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Charles P. Mallett wrote that federal troops had held Chapel Hill for fourteen days
Writing from Chapel Hill, the merchant Charles P. Mallett reported that Union troops had held the village for fourteen days, that they had behaved tolerably where safeguards were posted but had stripped the surrounding countryside of horses and mules, and that General Judson Kilpatrick had held a review in the village the previous day.
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Confederate leaders gather at Hillsborough
Wade Hampton and Joseph E. Johnston used the Dickson farm on the edge of Hillsborough as a temporary headquarters while Johnston negotiated with Sherman, and Confederate officials including Secretary of War John C. Breckinridge came there to work on terms. Johnston and his staff rode from the Dickson place along the old Hillsborough to Durham road to complete the surrender.
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Paul Cameron complains that Jesse Ruffin is raising freedpeople's hopes of land
In May 1865, weeks after the Confederate surrender near Durham, Paul Cameron wrote to his father-in-law Thomas Ruffin that the judge's longtime coachman Jesse had stirred the freedpeople on his place to hope for a freehold in the land they worked, and asked that his name not be linked with Jesse's.
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General Smith D. Atkins married Eleanor Swain, daughter of the university president
The courtship began during the occupation, when Atkins called on President David Lowry Swain, met his daughter Eleanor, had his regimental band serenade her and gave Swain two horses. Atkins was mustered out in June and the two married in Chapel Hill on August 23, 1865; many invited guests stayed away, students tolled the college bell for three hours and hanged Swain and Atkins in effigy.
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First Baptist Church organizes independently
The minute books of the church now called University Baptist record a unanimous vote on September 3, 1865 to let the colored patrons withdraw and organize a church of their own, and note that sixty-one colored members were dismissed that month for the purpose. The new congregation, later First Baptist Church of Chapel Hill, met at first in the old Quaker schoolhouse on Franklin Street under Rev. Eddie H. Cole.
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Job Berry calls a fair to buy a building for a Black school
The Hillsborough Recorder printed Job Berry's notice that the colored citizens of Hillsborough would hold a fair on September 23 to raise money for a school building. The school later met in the old courthouse at Queen and Churton streets.
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Freedom, schools, and Black community-building after emancipation
After emancipation, Black residents of Orange County built their own institutions. Chapel Hill's First Baptist Church formed in September 1865; Job Berry and Philadelphia Quakers opened Hillsborough's freedmen's school in the old courthouse on June 5, 1866; Black residents bought land for a Chapel Hill school in 1866; and St. Paul AME bought its church lot in 1878.
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Job Berry buys an acre on South Wake Street
Months after emancipation, Job Berry paid Henry N. Brown $300 for parts of lots 20 and 17 off South Wake Street, next to the Nash and Kollock School, where his wife Rebecca Nash had been enslaved.
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Bricks at the Coachman's Quarters carry the date Dec 5, '65
Two bricks in a small outbuilding near the Burnside stable in Hillsborough carry the hand-cut inscription 'Dec 5, '65', found during the building's restoration after 2003. The owners and descendants connect it to Jesse Ruffin, a coachman once enslaved by Thomas Ruffin. According to family tradition he cut the date to mark the day after the General Assembly ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which formally ended slavery.
Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
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Benjamin Craig and Green Cordal secure land for a Black school
In 1866 Benjamin Craig and Green Cordal bought a plot of land near what is now the corner of West Franklin Street and Merritt Mill Road and gave part of it to the Philadelphia Quakers for a school for freedpeople and the rest for the church that became St. Paul AME. In the spring of 1867 the Friends reported that the freedmen were putting up a school and house of worship on a fifty-dollar lot.
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Bingham School circular sets its year, board and tuition
The postwar circular describes a single forty-week session opening the first Wednesday of March in two terms, with board and tuition at $350 a year and $435 once uniform and book deposits are added. Boys lived in the superintendent's family, under a mile from the Mebaneville depot.
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Cornelia Phillips Spencer publishes The Last Ninety Days of the War in North-Carolina
Encouraged by her friend, former governor David L. Swain, Spencer published her first book, an account of the war's last months in North Carolina that describes Wheeler's Confederate cavalry passing through Chapel Hill and the town's occupation by Union cavalry in April 1865.
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Fire destroys the Hargrave house on Franklin Street
The large house Dr. Charles Yancey built in 1822, owned by the Hargraves since 1840, burned. Jesse Hargrave's children Molly and Fred stayed on the lot in a much smaller building facing the street.
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Freedpeople register their marriages in Orange County
An 1866 state law declared formerly enslaved couples who had lived together as husband and wife legally married and required them to register their unions, most often with the county register of deeds. Orange County’s cohabitation records from that registration survive at the State Archives and are digitized in North Carolina Digital Collections.
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General Colston takes charge of the reopened Hillsborough Military Academy
After closing at the end of the war, the academy reopened with General R. C. Colston as superintendent. In 1868 he signed a lease with Col. Tew's widow to live in the superintendent's house, but his family later moved to Wilmington.
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George Laws chairs the stewards of the Hillsborough Methodist church
In 1866, when Hillsborough Station took in Hillsborough, Cedar Grove, Walnut Grove, Lebanon and New Sharon, Laws was chairman of its Board of Stewards. As treasurer in 1867 he told members that if they wanted preaching they must pay for it.
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John U. Kirkland serves as Orange County's clerk and master in equity
In 1866 John U. Kirkland, as clerk and master in equity at his office in Hillsborough, advertised court-ordered sales of Orange County land.
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John W. Graham serves as Orange County solicitor
After the Civil War, John W. Graham of Hillsborough was solicitor for Orange County from 1866 to 1868, before going as a delegate to the 1868 constitutional convention and into the state senate.
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John Wall Norwood buys the brick law office facing the courthouse
Attorney Richard Ashe sold the one-room brick law office on Court Street, facing the Orange County Courthouse, to John Wall Norwood for $400. The office, already shown on an 1839 map, is now called the Norwood Law Office.
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Orange County votes against the proposed state constitution of
Voters rejected the constitution submitted by the reconvened convention, 494 to 392.
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Quakers open a freedmen's school in Chapel Hill
In 1866 Philadelphia Friends opened a school for Black children in Chapel Hill; by early 1867 it had been running more than half a year with 248 pupils, in a rented house while the freedpeople built a school and house of worship on a fifty-dollar lot the Friends had bought. The school, which came to stand on the land near West Franklin Street and Merritt Mill Road that Benjamin Craig and Green Cordal bought in 1866, merged into Orange County Training School in 1917.
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The AME congregation later called Dickerson Chapel begins worshipping in the old courthouse
The AME congregation later known as Dickerson Chapel moved into the 1790 courthouse building on Queen Street in 1866, sharing it with the freedmen's school the Philadelphia Friends ran there. Lefler and Wager date its formal organization to 1873, and the Friends conveyed the building to the church's trustees in 1886.
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The Collins women sell their shares of the Beehive to Dr. Thomas D. Warren
After the war the Collins relatives who had lived at the Beehive left Hillsborough, and the women sold their shares of the house to Dr. Thomas D. Warren, who had married Elizabeth Alethea Collins.
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The Methodist conference forms a Hillsborough District, with Hillsborough heading a station of five churches
In 1866 the Methodists created a Hillsborough District, under presiding elder W. H. Bobbitt, and made Hillsborough a station that also took in Cedar Grove, Walnut Grove, Lebanon and New Sharon. W. C. Wilson was pastor.
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The Union League organizes Black voters in Orange County
The Republican Union League, organized in Orange, Alamance and Guilford by Albion W. Tourgee, its first state president, recruited nearly every Black man who would vote before the 1867 election. It had faded by the end of 1870.
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Thomas and Anne Ruffin move from the Haw River plantation to Hillsborough
Thomas Ruffin and his wife Anne left their Haw River plantation early in 1866 and moved to Hillsborough, where he had bought the house he called Little Hawfields the year before.
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Trustees mortgage all university property to settle its debts
Facing $103,000 of debt against worthless bank stock and Confederate securities, the trustees compromised with the Bank of North Carolina and other creditors at a quarter of the debt in gold, pledging all the university's property at Chapel Hill and its Buncombe County lands. The General Assembly also voted $7,000 for one year to pay the officers.
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Trustees strike Confederate leaders from the commencement ball
The student ball managers named Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, John C. Breckinridge, Zebulon Vance and other Confederate figures as honorary managers without asking them. Fearing hostile action by Congress, the trustees ruled the choice improper.
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Twenty Black members leave First Baptist Church of Hillsborough and organize Mount Bright Baptist Church
Twenty Black members withdrew from First Baptist Church of Hillsborough in 1866, or about 1868 by another account, and organized a congregation of their own, named for its first pastor, Rev. Alfred E. Bright. The widow of Governor William A. Graham gave the group the West Union Street site where the congregation still worships.
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E. H. Pogue starts making tinware for the wholesale trade in Hillsborough
E. H. Pogue announced that he had begun manufacturing tinware in Hillsborough for merchants and retail dealers, and would also sell it to townspeople at wholesale rates. By early 1867 his store stood west of the courthouse, where he also sold groceries, stoves and tobacco and took country produce in barter.
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Thomas Lynch becomes stated supply at New Hope after James Phillips
Lynch took up the New Hope pulpit after Phillips stopped preaching there at the end of 1865 and served until the winter of 1867.
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Charles Phillips is ordained at New Hope Church in Orange County
Phillips was ordained on 14 April 1866 at Orange County's New Hope Church, which had long been under the pastoral charge of his father James Phillips. Orange Presbytery had convened there on Wednesday, April 11, and ordained Phillips and Calvin H. Wiley during the meeting.
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Bodies of Junius and Wesley Lewis Battle brought home for burial
The bodies of Corporal Junius C. Battle, mortally wounded at South Mountain, and Lieutenant Wesley Lewis Battle, killed at Gettysburg, sons of Judge William H. Battle and former students, were brought home to Chapel Hill. The village turned out to meet them, and they lay side by side in the Episcopal church before burial.
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Calvin H. Wiley is ordained at New Hope
At the last meeting of Orange Presbytery held at New Hope, Calvin H. Wiley was ordained with Charles Phillips, both sine titulo, without a pastoral charge.
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Jesse and Rebecca Ruffin register the marriage they made in
Jesse Ruffin, coachman to Judge Thomas Ruffin, and Rebecca, who had kept the keys of the Norwood household across the Eno, had married in 1828 while enslaved to different families. They recorded the marriage with the Freedmen's Bureau and later bought a farm.
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Rev. Job Berry and the Philadelphia Friends open Hillsborough's first school for Black children and adults
Job Berry, who had advertised a fair in September 1865 to raise money for a school, worked with the Friends of Philadelphia to buy the former Orange County courthouse on Queen Street for twelve hundred dollars and open a freedmen's school in it on June 5, 1866. More than three hundred children and adults learned to read and cipher there.
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Sheriff H. B. Guthrie announces that the county treasury is empty
His notice to taxpayers said no county tax had been levied or collected for 1865, the treasury held not a dollar and the wardens of the poor were deep in debt. He set fifteen collection days in July.
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Freedpeople hold a Black Fourth of July celebration
Cornelia Phillips Spencer's journal records that the Black residents of Chapel Hill marched in procession behind a banner, heard an address by Colonel J. J. Guthrie and a reading of part of the Declaration of Independence by Jurdon Swain, then sat down to a dinner they had provided themselves on the ground bought from the Craigs for their new school house. The banner mottoes were "Respect for Former Owners" and "Our Hope is in God".
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Peter and Diannah Benton acquire land south of Hillsborough
A deed from Frances Thompson conveyed land half a mile south of town, where the Chatham and Chapel Hill roads divided (today Mayo Street and Orange Grove Road), to Peter Benton, his wife Diannah and Jimmy Thompson. Peter Benton, a free man, had gardened at the Burwell School in 1855.
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Thomas Ruffin buys six lots next to his Hillsborough house from Pride Jones
Thomas Ruffin bought lots 177, 178, 179, 204, 205 and 206, which adjoined the house he had acquired the year before, from Pride Jones.
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Allison and Corbin run a plug tobacco factory at Cedar Grove
By the late 1860s Cedar Grove had a plug tobacco factory run by Allison and Corbin that employed fourteen men, the largest workforce of any business in the area. Dr. John J. Allison, a large landowner, was also a partner in dry goods, hardware and grocery stores, and William W. Allison kept a hotel.
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Andrew Green Ruffin Lloyd builds a log house on Old Hillsborough Road
Around 1867 Andrew Green Ruffin Lloyd raised the log core of a house that later generations of Lloyds enlarged several times. Frame outbuildings stand on the farm.
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Civil War veteran William Couch builds a frame farmhouse east of Hillsborough
William Couch, a Confederate veteran, builds a two-story frame house around 1867 beside an older log house, and adds outbuildings to the farm. The farm is on the Study List, next to the Sam Couch farm.
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Cornelia Phillips Spencer moves into Sam Phillips's house and takes in boarders
After her father's death the family had to leave their university-owned home, so Spencer, her widowed mother and her daughter moved into her brother Sam's empty house on East Franklin and took boarders to make ends meet.
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J. Morrow and Sons grind flour and corn at Oaks
In the late 1860s and early 1870s J. Morrow and his sons ran a flour and corn mill at Oaks, where a dry goods store and a tannery also operated in the community that had grown up around the Bingham school.
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James Webb Jr. advertises his Cheap Cash Store in Hillsborough
Advertisements in the Hillsborough Recorder in 1867 offered garden seeds, white granite cups and saucers, coffee, sugar and candies at the Cheap Cash Store of James Webb Jr.
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Rev. Job Berry officiates at more than forty weddings of freed people
Between 1867 and 1877 Job Berry officiated at more than forty weddings of Black couples in and around Hillsborough, among them one held at the Freedmen's School House on September 17, 1868. Orange County marriage books record him as minister, later as AME minister of Bethel.
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Sarah J. Woodson teaches at the freedmen's school in Hillsborough
Sarah J. Woodson, an Oberlin graduate from Ohio, was principal of the school for Black children in Hillsborough, which she taught with V. S. Williams. The Freedmen's Bureau's report of January 1868 named it among the large, well-run schools in North Carolina.
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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.
