Chronology

Lt. Thomas H. Hay praises Hillsborough's Howard Freedmen's School and asks the Philadelphia Friends for more teachers

Writing to the secretary of the Friends' Freedmen's Association of Philadelphia, Hay called the Howard Freedmen's School at Hillsborough one of the most flourishing he had seen in the South and its teachers, Misses Harris and Allen, competent and faithful, and said nearly every freedman in town wanted them back after their vacation. He asked whether the association could send three or four teachers by September 1 for schools he was organizing.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

Lt. Thomas H. Hay reports twenty cases settled in June and freedmen's schools closed for the summer

Hay investigated and settled twenty cases in June 1868, eighteen brought by freedmen and two by white men, and judged the freedmen to be working better than a year before. Some schools had closed for the summer, with children in the fields and some Northern teachers recalled for three months; he expected all to reopen in the fall and at least four new ones to start. Orange County needed some rations, nearly as many for whites as for Black residents.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

William H. S. Burgwyn graduates from the university with first honors

After the Civil War Burgwyn re-entered the University of North Carolina as a sophomore and graduated in June 1868 with first honors, delivering the Latin salutatory address. He was a member of the Philanthropic Society.

A Chapel Hill magistrate and his son beat Mills Saunders while he is held on a civil warrant

On July 1, 1868, constable Judd McDade brought Mills Saunders, a Black farm worker, to magistrate Jones Watson's store at Chapel Hill on a civil warrant from his employer; when Saunders said he had business to attend to on the Bureau's advice, Watson and his son Charles went at him with chairs, Saunders struck the son with his stick, and Watson, by his own account, hit Saunders with the stick near the post office. McDade tied Saunders's hands and led him back to the store, and the next day Hay summoned the Watsons, McDade and the employer to answer a charge of cruel and unjustifiable assault and battery. On July 6 Lt. Thomas H. Hay heard Saunders's charge at Hillsborough, with witnesses who included former sheriff H. B. Guthrie, who had seen the magistrate strike him, and Black neighbors who called the magistrate fair; the parties settled, the defendants paying the costs and $10, and Hay also gave Saunders $18.02 in wages.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

People: Hugh B. Guthrie

Freedpeople at Cedar Grove put up a school house and win Bureau rent for it

Trustees led by Sam F. Martin wrote on July 4, 1868 that they were putting up an 18 by 20 foot school building at Cedar Grove and would open with 20 scholars, and asked the Bureau for $8 a month for a year. Lt. Thomas H. Hay, who had visited on July 2 and met the leading Black men of the district, recommended it, and on July 28 the superintendent of education agreed to pay $8 a month rent, to go to John F. Masters.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

Professor Charles Phillips certifies aged Chapel Hill residents for Bureau rations

On July 8 and 9, 1868, Charles Phillips, signing as professor in the University of North Carolina, wrote certificates asking the Bureau to give food to an aged, bedridden freedwoman of the village and to an elderly couple. He wrote that the want of patronage to the University had so reduced the means of the people who had long helped the couple that they had to turn to the Bureau, and Jones Watson, J.P., A. Mickle and H. B. Guthrie endorsed his statements.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

People: Charles Phillips · Jones Watson · Hugh B. Guthrie

Chapel Hill freedmen seek Bureau aid for a building that Lt. Hay judges is meant as a Baptist church

Thomas Kirby and others of Chapel Hill wrote Gen. O. O. Howard on July 15, 1868 asking help to build a school house on land they had secured. The superintendent of education advised against it because the Bureau had already helped build one school there. Lt. Thomas H. Hay reported a school house of 44 by 22 feet already standing, enough for all the Black children who would attend, judged that the letter's main object was a house of worship for Chapel Hill's Black Baptists, and recommended refusal.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

St. Mark's district residents tell the Bureau that county relief has failed

On July 28, 1868, four residents of St. Mark's district wrote to Hay asking Bureau provisions for a very old woman who had been a charge on the county for many years, saying her efforts to get relief from the county had now failed. They wrote that the neighborhood would have fed her as before but that hardly anyone had surplus grain or meat, and Samuel Lynch, a former warden of the poor, vouched for them.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

Lt. Thomas H. Hay reports ten freedmen's day schools in Orange and Person, nearly all with Black teachers

In his first school report from Hillsborough, Hay listed five day schools in Orange, at Hillsborough, Chapel Hill, Durham's, Bains and Cedar Grove, and five in Person, with 10 of the 11 teachers Black. The schoolhouses at Hillsborough and Chapel Hill belonged to the Friends' Freedmen's Association of Philadelphia and those at Bains and Cedar Grove to the freedpeople, who in Hay's judgment could scarcely make a living and could give little toward schools.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

Lt. Thomas H. Hay reports whites refusing Bureau summonses since the state's return to the Union

Hay reported 23 complaints in July 1868, 21 by Black residents against whites and 2 by whites against Black residents, of which 11 were settled and the rest referred or pending. Since North Carolina's readmission, he wrote, whites were less willing to obey his summonses and claimed every case belonged in state or county courts, and many were driving freedmen off the farms where they worked on trivial excuses. He asked that the Bureau keep hearing freedpeople's complaints through the year, since the civil courts were too slow for people who lived by their daily labor.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

Governor Holden appoints about forty temporary justices of the peace for Orange

Governor W. W. Holden named about forty men as justices of the peace for Orange County, among them Washington Duke and Wilson Caldwell, to serve until the townships set up under the new constitution could elect their own. The appointees were called to the courthouse in Hillsborough on July 25 to be qualified.

People: William W. Holden · Washington Duke · Wilson Swain Caldwell

Klansmen whip William Husky, one of Governor Holden's detectives

Members of the Klan order whipped William Husky in Orange County, according to Josiah Turner Jr.'s testimony before the Senate committee in February 1871. Husky told Turner he was whipped for his work as one of Governor Holden's paid detectives; Turner, a Conservative opponent of Holden, called him a rogue who had confessed to stealing the year before and said he never learned how severe the whipping was.

Part of The congressional Ku Klux hearings, 1871 · 22 events

The Bureau distributes 5,620 pounds of corn and 836 pounds of bacon among Orange County's destitute

Lt. Thomas H. Hay reported that 5,620 pounds of corn and 836 pounds of bacon were given out among the destitute of Orange County during July 1868, about equally between white and Black recipients.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

Swain protests his removal to Governor Holden

Learning that the new Reconstruction trustees had declared his 1867 resignation final, David L. Swain wrote Governor William W. Holden, as chairman of the board, that no charge had been made against him and that a resignation accepted by a board that no longer existed could not be revived. He asked for reconsideration, but died later that month.

People: David L. Swain · William W. Holden · Charles Manly

Orange County's first elected board of commissioners takes office

Elected in April 1868 at the election that ratified the new constitution, five commissioners qualified at the courthouse and chose Lemuel Lynch chairman, replacing the old county court of justices. Within days the newly elected sheriff, treasurer, register of deeds and clerk of superior court gave their bonds.

People: John U. Kirkland · Jones Watson · David C. Parks · George Laws · Lemuel Lynch

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

Freedpeople at Durham's Station buy land and build a school house

Lt. Thomas H. Hay went to Durham's on August 10, 1868 to establish a school. By August 27 the freedpeople had bought land and were putting up a building for 60 scholars and would pay a teacher's board; Hay asked $150 toward a salary for James Stagg, a white man the freedmen wanted, judging that the two small rival schools then kept by Empson Moore and George Bradshaw were doing little good. Bradshaw was teaching the freedmen's school at Durham's in November.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

David L. Swain dies after a buggy accident

Weeks after the Reconstruction board of trustees accepted his resignation, David L. Swain was thrown on August 11, 1868, from a buggy pulled by the horse General Sherman had given him. He seemed to be recovering but died on August 27 and was buried on August 29 in the garden of his Chapel Hill home; Charles Phillips preached his funeral sermon.

People: Charles Phillips

Josiah Turner Jr. dismisses a freedman at a Conservative rally for belonging to the Union League

At an adjourned Conservative meeting at the Hillsborough courthouse, chaired by John W. Norwood and moved into the open air by the crowd, Josiah Turner Jr. announced that he had dismissed Solomon, a freedman in his service, because Solomon belonged to the Union League, defying the new state law against discharging workers to sway their votes. William A. Graham and others spoke, and the meeting named twenty-five delegates to a district convention. Testifying under oath before a Senate committee in February 1871, Turner said he had declared in a speech at Hillsborough that he would keep no freedman who did not vote with him, but swore he had never acted on it.

People: John Wall Norwood · William A. Graham

Four people are held in the Orange County jail for the killing of Smith Green

Lt. Thomas H. Hay reported that Smith Green's widow and three others were in the county jail awaiting trial for his murder at the superior court term beginning November 2, 1868, and sent up the coroner's inquest and testimony. Her mother had asked the Bureau's agent at Elizabeth City about the case.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

Lt. Thomas H. Hay reports threats to turn freedmen off farms for their politics

In his August 1868 report Hay wrote that threats to dismiss freedmen from plantations were sometimes made on account of their political opinions but few had been carried out. In September he knew of one dismissal for politics, in which the employer would pay; in October he found politics taking much of the freedmen's time but expected no serious trouble on election day; and on November 30 he reported the election excitement over and few such threats carried out.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

Freedpeople at Bains put up a school house on their own land

In August 1868 Lt. Thomas H. Hay reported a school under way at Bains, about five miles from Hillsborough, where the freedpeople had built a school house on land they owned and 35 pupils were taught by a man Hay judged incompetent; trustees led by Orange Holman asked on September 30 for $8 a month rent for a house Hay found would hold about 50. James A. Whitted was the teacher by October; in November he had 30 on the roll and 25 attending, and Hay asked help for him as a faithful man the freedmen could pay little.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

Raleigh ends the Hillsborough Bureau clerk's post, citing the Bureau's coming close

Headquarters told Major Thomas H. Hay that George Raynes's appointment as clerk of the Hillsborough office would be revoked on September 15 and that, with the Bureau soon to close, no other clerk would be hired; Raynes was given transportation to New York City. A new clerk, Theo Josephs, was nonetheless ordered to report to Hay on September 21, and the Secretary of War revoked his appointment as of November 10 as no longer needed.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

Esther Anderson arrives to teach Hillsborough's freedmen's school

Lt. Thomas H. Hay reported that Miss Anderson, the new teacher for Hillsborough sent by the Friends' Freedmen's Association of Philadelphia, arrived the night of September 25, 1868. In November he wrote on her behalf that her October salary had not come and she was behind on her board.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

Chapel Hill's freedmen's school gets Bureau money for repairs and desks

Trustees led by Ben J. Craig reported 90 scholars on September 28, 1868, and said the Friends' Freedmen's Association of Philadelphia had paid $50 for the school and $30 toward the building, to which the Bureau had given $70. In November the teacher counted 42 day, 15 night and 50 Sunday scholars. The Bureau allowed $50, Richard Mayo did $48 of carpentry on the building, twelve desks made at Hillsborough went to the school in late December, and the trustees drew $12 a month rent.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

A freedmen's school opens at Cotton Run and closes when its teacher resigns

Trustees led by Samuel Ellison wrote on October 3, 1868 that they had rented a building and engaged a teacher and would open with 35 scholars, soon 45, and asked the Bureau for $8 a month. Lt. Thomas H. Hay, who called the neighborhood very poor, recommended the aid and named Empson Moore the teacher, but on November 12 reported the school suspended because Moore had resigned.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

Lt. Thomas H. Hay cancels apprenticeships made by an earlier Bureau officer and returns children to their parents

Between October and December 1868 Hay voided three sets of indentures that had bound nine Black children to Orange County masters, made by Capt. Crockett, the Bureau officer at Hillsborough in 1865-66, as improperly executed. Five children were taken from a minister near Chapel Hill and delivered to their father on October 8 after the father complained to Governor Holden, two boys were returned to their mother on November 27, and two girls were released in December.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

Trustees open a freedmen's school at a chapel near Chapel Hill

Trustees led by Nelson O'Kelly wrote on October 12, 1868 that they had a school building and a teacher at a chapel in Orange County and could send 40 children, and asked $8 a month for rent. Lt. Thomas H. Hay called the trustees among the most reliable Black men in the county and the teacher competent, and had offered $6 a month toward the salary of teacher John Weaver if they would board him and send 35 scholars.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

Freedpeople at New Hope rent a building and hire a teacher for a school

Trustees led by Nelson Kirklin wrote from New Hope that they had rented a school building and secured a teacher and could send about 40 scholars, and asked the Bureau for $10 a month during the school season. Lt. Thomas H. Hay recommended the aid, citing the many Black children of the neighborhood and the freedmen's poverty, and visited the school in November.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

Commissioners hire Silas M. Link to divide the county into townships

Link was paid $75 to lay the school districts out into townships, and the board approved his plan of eight: Hillsboro, Little River, Mangum, Durham, Patterson, Chapel Hill, Bingham and Cedar Grove. In 1877 the board split Mangum at Little River to form Lebanon Township.

Three justices, one of them Black, investigate a fight and a shooting at Durham's

Governor W. W. Holden sent Lt. Thomas H. Hay and J.P. W. F. Strayhorn the complaint of freedman Henry Goss that Samuel Rodgers, a white man, had struck him and that he struck back in self-defense. On October 30, 1868 Strayhorn, Hay and Richard Mayo, a Black justice of the peace, found an affray in which both men were to blame and Rodgers was worst hurt, and sent it to superior court; when Rodgers had been reported killed, a party set out to arrest Goss and Theophilus Chavis, and someone fired a pistol as Chavis ran, but who fired, or at whom, could not be learned, and Hay saw no need for troops at Durham's.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

People: W. W. Holden

The Baptist State Convention meets with the Hillsborough church

The Baptist State Convention of North Carolina held its session with the Hillsborough Baptist church, and townspeople of every denomination boarded the delegates. Thomas Ruffin asked in particular to host the evangelist Elias Dodson.

An injunction charges four elected Orange commissioners with usurping office

An injunction was served on J. U. Kirkland, Robert F. Morris, Jones Watson and W. H. Patterson, four of the county commissioners chosen at the spring election, charging that they held office although the Fourteenth Amendment disqualified them, and summoning them to show cause at Greensborough on October 13. The Recorder called them the people's choice but expected them to be put out.

People: John U. Kirkland · Jones Watson

Georgianna Rumbley opens the freedmen's school at Cedar Grove

The Friends' Freedmen's Association of Philadelphia sent Rumbley to teach at Cedar Grove, where the freedpeople guaranteed her board, fuel and light. She went reluctantly after being told the place was dull, but by October 24 Lt. Thomas H. Hay reported the school open since the first week of October and better supplied with books and maps than any in the district except Hillsborough's.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

New freedmen's schools open at Banocks Chapel, Cotton Run and New Hope, all with Black teachers

Hay's October 1868 report counted 13 day schools in Orange and Person, adding schools at Banocks Chapel near Chapel Hill (John Weaver), Cotton Run and New Hope (London Moore) to those at Hillsborough, Chapel Hill, Durham's, Bains and Cedar Grove. All 11 teachers were Black, among them R. G. Fitzgerald and E. E. Anderson at Hillsborough, James Whitted at Bains and Georgianna Rumbley at Cedar Grove, and the freedpeople owned the schoolhouses at Banocks Chapel, Bains and Cedar Grove.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

People: Robert G. Fitzgerald

Hillsborough Baptists dedicate their new church during the state convention

The Baptists of Hillsborough dedicated their newly completed church, said to be one of the handsomest church buildings in the state, at a Sunday night service with a sermon by Rev. Thomas H. Pritchard, while the Baptist State Convention was holding its annual session in the building.

People: Thomas Henderson Pritchard

Orange elects John W. Graham to the Senate seat denied Josiah Turner Jr. and votes for Seymour

In a quiet election held under Governor Holden's writ to fill the Senate seat from which Josiah Turner Jr. had been excluded under the Fourteenth Amendment, Orange chose the Conservative John W. Graham by about 400 votes, and the Seymour and Blair electors carried the county by about the same margin. A county Conservative convention had nominated Graham on October 17, though a second Conservative candidate refused to withdraw.

People: Josiah Turner Jr. · William W. Holden

Judge Tourgee holds Orange's first superior court under the new constitution

The first superior court held in Orange under the 1868 constitution and the new code of procedure sat at Hillsborough a week late, with Judge Albion W. Tourgee presiding. About sixty state cases were on the docket; four Black defendants, two men and two women, were arraigned for the murder of one woman's husband and their trial was put off to the next term, and the grand jury presented the judges who had campaigned in the late election and all secret political societies. Tourgee left on Friday for the university trustees' meeting with only two civil cases tried.

The new county commissioners name school committees for all 53 districts

Working from Silas Link's report, which listed the school districts in each new township, the board named three committeemen for every one of the county's 53 districts. Presumably they were meant to hold office until the townships could elect their own.

Part of Building the public schools, 1868–1920 · 192 events

A Cedar Grove meeting expels Samuel H. Martin from the freedmen's school committee

At a meeting called by trustees Augustus Allison and Arthur Anderson, the people of Cedar Grove voted unanimously to expel Samuel H. Martin from the freedmen's school committee, elected John Clark in his place, and agreed that the teacher Georgiana Rumbley should receive the Bureau's rent check. The Bureau's superintendent of education had held back the school's $8 monthly rent in October after getting no reports from the school Martin had taught.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

Freedmen around Hillsborough ask about railroad work near Raleigh

Lt. Thomas H. Hay asked headquarters on November 23, 1868 about a report among local freedmen that many hands were wanted on a railroad near Raleigh, saying many would go for better wages. The reply said the president of the Chatham Railroad wanted 60 or 70 hands at once and 1,000 more before Christmas, at $10 a month and rations. On December 15 Hay asked the road's superintendent for terms for several white and Black applicants.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

Lt. Thomas H. Hay counts about 330 day pupils in Orange County's freedmen's schools

Hay's table for the month ending November 30, 1868, gave enrollment at eight Orange schools: Hillsborough 71 day, 20 night and 100 Sunday scholars; Chapel Hill and Cedar Grove 56 day pupils each; Barracks Chapel 42; Durham's 35; New Hope 27; Bains 25; and Mrs. Richardson's school at Hillsborough 18, with Cotton Run lacking a teacher. The Durham's schoolhouse belonged to its Black teacher George Bradshaw, and Fannie Culver at Chapel Hill was the only white teacher in the two counties.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

Reconstruction trustees vote down admitting women

The executive committee of the new Republican board of trustees recommended co-education, but the full board refused to admit women as students.

Part of The university closes and reopens · 78 events

Trustees vote to found a university branch for Black students near Raleigh

On Victor C. Barringer's motion the Reconstruction trustees called for a school for Black students near Raleigh equal to the one at Chapel Hill, and on Albion W. Tourgee's motion made it a branch of the university, with Tod R. Caldwell moving that at least 100 acres be bought. Nothing came of it, nor of a later proposal to give Black students a third of the land-scrip money or of Tourgee's request for equal white and Black departments under one board.

Part of The university closes and reopens · 78 events

People: Tod Robinson Caldwell · Albion W. Tourgee

Cornelia Phillips Spencer describes the emptied campus and village

In a letter to the Sentinel written under the Old Poplar, Spencer described the shut buildings and reported that nearly twenty of Chapel Hill's leading families were leaving and six places now sold liquor openly. She named the departing faculty, among them Judge William H. Battle, and called the town the Deserted Village of the South.

People: Cornelia Phillips Spencer · William Horn Battle

Major Hay orders Sheriff John Turner to return two Black children held by a white man

Major Thomas H. Hay ordered Orange County Sheriff John Turner to go to the house of a white man whom Hay found to be illegally holding two Black girls and to deliver them to the freedwoman who was the mother of one and aunt of the other. Deputy Sheriff W. H. Jordan served the order and handed over the children on December 18.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

Lt. Thomas H. Hay tries to talk teacher Robert G. Fitzgerald out of running for clerk

Hay wrote privately to Alfred H. Jones, superintendent of the Friends' Freedmen's Association schools, that Fitzgerald, a teacher at Hillsborough, was thinking of standing for clerk at the municipal election due the next month. Hay had told him it was unwise, saying he could not do his duty to the association's school and the clerk's office both and that it did not look well for a teacher to be a politician.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

The Bureau closes its Hillsborough office as Lt. Thomas H. Hay rejoins his regiment

Army Special Orders No. 305 of December 22, 1868 relieved Hay from Bureau duty to rejoin the 42nd Infantry from December 31, and the assistant commissioner told him to send all the office's books, papers and property to the chief quartermaster at Raleigh. Hay transferred the property by the North Carolina Railroad on December 26 and left Hillsborough on December 31.

Part of The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868 · 84 events

A school report finds 43 schoolhouses for nearly 6,000 children

A. Hooker, late chairman of the common schools board, counted 3,667 white and 2,235 Black children in the county and only 43 schoolhouses, most run down, to serve both races. He put the need at 63 new buildings of about $100 each.

Part of Building the public schools, 1868–1920 · 192 events

A Chapel Hill town meeting passes resolutions against Solomon Pool's administration

Townspeople met and adopted resolutions against Pool's running of the university, an outburst of a year of pent-up anger. Shaken, Pool told the merchant Andrew Mickle that he had bought property and settled in the village and would find it hard to move.

People: Solomon Pool · Andrew Mickle

A count of Chapel Hill finds 483 white and 454 Black residents

Four years after emancipation, Chapel Hill had 483 white and 454 Black residents, close to half and half. Freed families were making homes on the village's western side, on West Cameron Avenue, West Franklin Street and around Potter's Field west of Church Street.

Alexander Kirkland, a son of the congregation, supplies New Hope

The Rev. Alexander Kirkland, son of the New Hope elder Joseph Kirkland, supplied the church for part of 1869 and 1870 after Pratt.

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

Alexander McIver joins the reorganized faculty as professor of mathematics

McIver, a Moore County native who had graduated first in the class of 1853 and taught briefly as a tutor, came from Davidson College to teach mathematics on the Republican faculty that reopened the university under Solomon Pool.

Part of The university closes and reopens · 78 events

People: Solomon Pool

An 1869 account finds Chapel Hill grown to about 1,000 people

By 1869 the village that had one store and one doctor in 1836 counted eight or ten stores, two drugstores, four churches and six schools, with about 1,000 people. The growth came mostly between the mid-1850s and the war, when new streets were opened and many houses built.

An Orange grand jury finds no bill against John A. Thompson in the Squire Alston raid

John A. Thompson of Alamance County, charged with being one of the party that burned Squire Alston's house and shot his son, was bound over by a magistrate under $1,000 bail and went before the grand jury in Orange County, where Alston swore he knew Thompson by his voice and face and that Thompson had shot at him, while a woman of the Alston household swore it was not Thompson, and no bill was found. Hillsborough constable W. G. Turrentine gave the account to the Senate committee on January 31, 1871, as the one trial of a masked man in Orange he knew of; he said none had been convicted there.

Baptists form the Mount Zion Association

The Mount Zion Baptist Association was formed, with the Chapel Hill Baptist church a charter member. Howell, working from the church's minute book, says it was established in 1869 and first met formally at Chapel Hill in 1870. By 1953 nearly every Baptist church in Orange County belonged to it, replacing the older Sandy Creek Association.

Subject: University Baptist Church

Black families make homes on Lot 16 on East Franklin Street

After E. Hunt closed his boarding house and Dr. Johnston B. Jones left town, Black families moved into both buildings: Tom Moore into the larger two-story house and the Burnett family into the small former medicine shop. Several other Black families settled on what had been Lot 16.

Black men from Orange who rode in disguise to retaliate are sent to the penitentiary

Some Black men in Orange County who disguised themselves and went out, as they said, to retaliate against men they accused of punishing them were caught, tried and sent to the state penitentiary, according to the testimony of James M. Justice before the Joint Select Committee in July 1871. Justice said they were the only disguised night riders in the central counties he knew to have been convicted, and that Conservative speakers cited them to claim the only Ku Klux were Black.

Part of The congressional Ku Klux hearings, 1871 · 22 events

Chapel Hill's Black school holds a commencement with a Fayetteville brass band

The village school for Black children held its own commencement, with a procession, speeches, a dialogue and a supper, and music by a brass band from Fayetteville. Spencer printed a note on it to mock the poorly attended commencement of Pool's university.

Chapel Hill's new commissioners levy a tax of fifty cents on the hundred dollars

The village's new board of commissioners laid a property tax of fifty cents on each hundred dollars of value, at a time when, with the university nearly empty, residents could hardly find the money to pay their town taxes.

Court strikes down the act for a state-built railroad to Chapel Hill

An 1869 plan had the state build a line from the North Carolina Railroad to Chapel Hill through commissioners, paid for with $300,000 in state bonds. When the commissioners chose Henry C. Thompson as president over Governor Holden's choice, Holden refused to sign the bonds, and in the University Railroad Company's suit against him the court held the act unconstitutional over Judge Reade's dissent.

Part of Railroads through Orange, 1849–1900 · 82 events

People: William W. Holden

Subject: North Carolina Railroad

David McCauley buys the Union Hotel and renames it the Chapel Hill Hotel

McCauley bought the Union Hotel, the house Nancy Hilliard had once kept as the Eagle Hotel, and gave it the name Chapel Hill Hotel. He also bought the building at the northeast corner of Franklin and Henderson streets where Richard Benbury Saunders had kept his drugstore.

People: Nancy Hilliard · David McCauley

Subject: Eagle Hotel (Chapel Hill)

Disguised men shave the heads of white women in Orange County

Before March 1870, disguised men in Orange County shaved the heads of some white women and otherwise mistreated them, according to the testimony of Dr. Pride Jones before the Joint Select Committee on June 5, 1871. Jones gave no names or places and said he knew of no white men attacked.

Part of The congressional Ku Klux hearings, 1871 · 22 events

Dr. Abner B. Roberson opens a general store that specializes in drugs

With Saunders gone, the village's new druggist, Dr. Abner Benton Roberson, opened a general store on the south side of Franklin Street that dealt mainly in drugs and medical supplies. It stood on the property of his father-in-law, Haywood Stone.

People: Abner Benton Roberson

Former governor William A. Graham lives in the Nash-Hooper House

William A. Graham, former governor of North Carolina, made the Nash-Hooper House on West Tryon Street his home from 1869 until 1875.

Subject: Nash-Hooper House

Great oaks are cut down in the faculty yards under the Pool administration

After the Reconstruction faculty took over the old professors' houses, old oaks in their yards were felled for firewood, among them a large tree at the Swain house that Mrs. Swain said she would not have sold for $2,000. Timber cutting later spread to the woods behind the college.

People: Solomon Pool

J. W. Norwood of Hillsborough warns county farmers that their methods are ruining the land

In an 1869 talk to Orange County farmers, Norwood said the county's fields were exhausted because growers added no organic matter, rotated nothing and let rain wash the soil away. He urged a new system before ruin set in.

People: John Wall Norwood

Most Black members leave the Chapel Hill Methodist church after the war

When Black members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, withdrew in 1869 and 1870 to form a separate church, the Chapel Hill congregation lost nearly all of its Black membership, which had peaked at 81 in 1864 and stood at 8 in 1871.

Part of Freedom, schools, and Black community-building after emancipation · 143 events

Subject: University United Methodist Church

Nelson Hall runs a flour and grist mill near Caldwell

In 1869 Nelson Hall, a large landowner in the Caldwell area, was operating a flour and grist mill alongside his farm, one of several planters who took up a side business after the war.

Pleasant Green Methodist Church builds a frame church on the site of its log churches

In 1869 the Pleasant Green congregation in the Eno neighborhood replaced the second of its log churches, the first dating from the 1830s, with a frame building.

Subject: Pleasant Green Methodist Church

Robert K. Rice buys the Pettigrew log house farm

Elkins Pettigrew sold the farm to his son-in-law Robert K. Rice, husband of his daughter Martha, for $375 in 1869. Rice improved the place, which the 1880 census valued at $1,500, and it stayed in the Rice family for more than a century.

Subject: Paisley-Rice Log House

Samuel F. Phillips sells his East Franklin Street house to Henry J. Hogan

Samuel Phillips sold his East Franklin Street house and lot to Henry J. Hogan, who moved to Tennessee right away and left the place to his father, William J. Hogan. The sale sent Phillips's mother and his sister Cornelia Phillips Spencer to live in Charles Phillips's house.

Solomon Pool accepts the presidency of the university

Pool accepted the presidency of the University of North Carolina in 1869 at a salary of fifteen hundred dollars and was permitted to keep his federal appraiser post at the same time. Governor William W. Holden had taken charge of the board of trustees to secure a president with Republican affiliations.

Part of The university closes and reopens · 78 events

People: William W. Holden

Solomon Pool buys Nancy Hilliard's house, the Crystal Palace, at a sheriff's sale

When the hotel keeper Nancy Hilliard went bankrupt, university president Solomon Pool bought her Franklin Street home, known as the Crystal Palace, at a sheriff's sale for $150. He let Col. Hugh B. Guthrie and his wife Jane, a daughter of Hudson Cave, move in, which Bryant reads as a way of forcing Hilliard out.

People: Solomon Pool · Nancy Hilliard

St. Matthew's replaces its flat roof and builds a recessed chancel

Rector Moses Ashley Curtis reported in 1869 that the old flat roof of St. Matthew's had given way to a high open one and the east end had been extended for a recessed chancel, vestry room and organ room. The chancel was lit by a triple stained glass window, and the $1,600 cost came almost entirely from present and former members.

People: Moses Ashley Curtis

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

The sheriff auctions the former Burwell School to David C. Parks

Dr. Thomas D. Warren was deep in local debt, and the Orange County sheriff sold the house at auction to David C. Parks for $600. Parks and his brother Charles traded the property between them for the next quarter century.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 189 events

People: David C. Parks

Subject: Burwell School

Thomas Fitzgerald buys Woodside, where his son Robert builds a freedmen's school

In 1869 Thomas Fitzgerald, father of the freedmen's teacher Robert G. Fitzgerald, moved to Orange County from Delaware and bought a 158-acre farm for $1,200. The family place, Woodside, lay about six miles east of Hillsborough. Robert built a freedmen's school on the property, and his diaries record a tanning business and a brick kiln he set up with his brother.

Part of Freedom, schools, and Black community-building after emancipation · 143 events

Three barns burn on one night after a Black tenant family is evicted in southwestern Orange

After William M. Jones had a Black tenant family turned out by a writ of possession, served by officer James F. Minor with Jesse W. Morrow helping, the barns of all three men, newly filled with wheat, burned within the same ten minutes one night after harvest, according to George Laws, clerk of the superior court, testifying before the Senate committee on February 15, 1871. Laws said evidence in his court showed Jeff Morrow, a Black man, had meant to have satisfaction after harvest, and that the disguised men who took two prisoners from the Hillsborough jail and hanged others acted over these burnings; constable W. G. Turrentine counted two barns, and said the one prisoner tried on the charge was acquitted. Two Alamance men who admitted White Brotherhood membership, W. S. Bradshaw and George S. Rogers, also described barns burned in one night in that neighborhood near the Alamance line, Rogers placing it in 1868, and Josiah Turner Jr. testified that the fires came just after harvest.

Part of Racial-terror lynchings in Orange County · 36 events

People: George Laws

University treasurer puts the land-grant fund into railroad bonds later repudiated

Treasurer Robert W. Lassiter invested the $125,000 land-scrip fund in North Carolina bonds, including $160,000 face value of special tax bonds issued for the Western North Carolina Railroad. The legislature repealed the acts behind those bonds on March 8, 1870, and the fund earned nothing until 1875.

Wilson Caldwell resigns from the university and founds a school for Black children

In 1869 Wilson Caldwell, who had worked at the university as an enslaved servant and janitor, resigned and started a school for children of color in Chapel Hill.

Part of Freedom, schools, and Black community-building after emancipation · 143 events

People: Wilson Swain Caldwell

New Hope's present graveyard is begun

Because the old graveyard lay so low that winter graves filled with water, James Newton Craig and elder David Craig chose a dry site a little south of east of the church. His nine-month-old son Vernon, who died on December 31, 1868, was buried there on January 1, 1869 as its first grave.

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

Hillsborough elects A. C. Murdock magistrate of police

Hillsborough's town election chose A. C. Murdock as magistrate of police, with E. H. Pogue, D. C. Parks and Joseph Reece among the town commissioners.

People: A. C. Murdock · E. H. Pogue · David C. Parks

Dennis Heartt gives up the Hillsborough Recorder after nearly fifty years

In the Recorder of January 11, 1869, Dennis Heartt announced that his connection with the paper would end with that number, thirteen months short of fifty years after its first issue. An 1899 history of the paper says he sold it to Capt. C. N. B. Evans of the Milton Chronicle.

Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

Manuel Fetter and his daughters leave Chapel Hill at midnight for Durham

Turned out with the old faculty, professor Manuel Fetter crossed the street at midnight to give Spencer the key of his empty house and a last candle, then drove off to Durham with his three daughters.

People: Cornelia Phillips Spencer

Charles Phillips ordains two elders and leaves the emptied Presbyterian church in their care

With the university closed and most of the faculty gone, Charles Phillips ordained Thomas Kirkland and a Mr. Thompson as elders just before he left for Davidson College and put the church in their hands. The Sunday school went on under Thompson, and the presbytery sent a visiting minister now and then.

People: Charles Phillips

Subject: University Presbyterian Church

Cornelia Phillips Spencer publishes her Pen and Ink Sketches of the University

Writing unsigned from Chapel Hill for Josiah Turner's Raleigh Sentinel, Spencer published a series on the history of the university under its old faculty, addressed to the alumni. Other Southern papers and the North Carolina Presbyterian reprinted the sketches, and they helped build the alumni opinion that later brought the university back.

Part of The university closes and reopens · 78 events

People: Josiah Turner Jr.

Arbitrators settle the builder's claim against the Hillsborough Baptist church

The contractor sought $1,400 plus interest from 1862 for the last payment on the church's brickwork, which the congregation said departed from the contract. Arbitrators awarded him $1,107, leaving a debt the war-weakened church had to raise money to pay.

Federal court dismisses the state's suit to void the university's bank mortgage

The Reconstruction trustees had the state sue in the United States Circuit Court, returnable at the June 1869 term, to cancel the university's mortgage to the Bank of North Carolina, but Judges Hugh L. Bond and George W. Brooks dismissed the bill for want of jurisdiction. On July 20, 1871 the trustees present advised against an appeal.

The Pool faculty holds its first commencement

After a first term that began March 3, the university reported on June 10, 1869 three sophomores and seven freshmen and gave an A.B. to Abdel Kader Tenney. At the thinly attended commencement Governor William W. Holden argued for educating both races in one university, whites at Chapel Hill and Black students elsewhere.

People: Solomon Pool · William W. Holden

The Pool faculty takes furniture from the society halls for their parlors

Before the June 1869 commencement, Professor David S. Patrick broke open the Philanthropic Society's door to take its velvet rugs and a carpet, and furniture was carried out of the society halls to furnish the faculty's parlors. Villagers were furious, and Alexander McIver refused to use the societies' things.

People: Alexander McIver

Subject: Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies

Chapel Hill's town board holds the earliest meeting with surviving minutes

The oldest surviving town minutes record a meeting of commissioners H. C. Thompson, James F. Craige and Greene Brewer. The town census taker, W. S. Guthrie, reported 937 residents, 483 white and 454 Black.

People: James B. Mason

Fisk Brewer's sister comes to Chapel Hill to teach the Black school

A sister of Fisk P. Brewer, the new professor of Greek and an outspoken supporter of Black education, came to Chapel Hill to take charge of the village school for Black children.

People: Fisk P. (Fisk Parsons) Brewer

Post office opens at Cedar Grove with John D. Corbin as postmaster

A post office was established at Cedar Grove on mail route 6308 between Hillsborough and Milton, with John D. Corbin as postmaster.

Alexander Pleasants wins Hillsborough Township clerk with Black votes

Alexander Pleasants, who had broken with the Conservative county convention of July 10, was nominated by Black voters and elected clerk of Hillsborough Township in the first township elections.

Orange County holds its first township elections

Voters in each township chose magistrates, a clerk, a constable and school committeemen for the first time. In Chapel Hill Township 540 of 565 registered voters cast ballots.

People: Jones Watson · Andrew Mickle · John Wesley Carr

Robert G. Fitzgerald marries Cornelia Smith of Chapel Hill

Fitzgerald married Cornelia Smith, a niece of Mary Ruffin Smith, the Chapel Hill benefactor of the university. Their granddaughter Pauli Murray later told the family's story in Proud Shoes.

People: Pauli Murray · Mary Ruffin Smith · Cornelia Smith Fitzgerald

Frank Whitted, a Black candidate, is ruled not elected Hillsborough Township magistrate

Frank Whitted, a Black candidate thought to have won a Hillsborough Township magistrate's seat, was ruled short of the votes required, and the seat was filled by appointment; Whitted went to Raleigh to appeal to Governor Holden.

Hoax Ku Klux notices bring Black residents out in force at Chapel Hill

Boys at Chapel Hill posted mock notices that the Ku Klux would meet at the town pump at night; Black residents turned out in force to meet them, and no Klan appeared.

Klansmen from Chatham County stone November Caldwell's house by mistake

A Ku Klux party from Chatham County rode into Chapel Hill after Ben Edwards, a man denounced in Chatham, and stoned the house of November Caldwell, taking it for his. Village youths who followed the riders were ordered off; Solomon Pool went to Raleigh for militia, but the local magistrates would not sign a petition for it.

People: Solomon Pool

Klansmen take two Black prisoners from jail and shoot one of them

A few nights after three barns burned in late July 1869, two Black men accused of another barn burning were taken from jail. One was let go; the other was shot and died.

Part of Morrow family killings, 1869

Subject: Orange County jail, Hillsborough

Orange sheriff's posse tracks the Hillsborough jail raiders' horses toward Alamance

On the morning after disguised men broke open the Orange County jail and shot two Black prisoners, the sheriff summoned Hillsborough men to follow the raiders' horse tracks from the bridge where the prisoners were shot. About three miles out, where the road forked, the tracks split toward Chatham and toward the Oaks in Alamance; Empson Moore counted forty or fifty tracks and picked up a stuffed cloth horn with blood on it, and Haywood Beverley followed twelve or fifteen riders about ten miles, to within two miles of Webb's store in Alamance. Both men described the pursuit at Governor Holden's impeachment trial on March 8, 1871.

Part of Racial-terror lynchings in Orange County · 36 events

W. G. Turrentine is elected Hillsborough Township constable on the Republican ticket

W. G. Turrentine was elected constable for two years in August 1869 on the Republican ticket, along with all but one of the township's magistrates, according to his testimony before the Senate committee on January 31, 1871. By then he believed he was the only Republican constable left in Orange County; he said he was sometimes cursed as a radical on his rounds but never molested.

Wright Malone is abducted and lynched near Little River

On the night of September 6, 1869, four mounted men took Wright Malone, a young Black farmer, from the coal kiln he was burning with his father near Little River in eastern Orange County. A neighbor found his body hanging from a tree on September 12, and the coroner concluded the killing had been planned in advance.

People: Wright Malone

Governor Holden warns Orange County it may be declared in insurrection

Holden's proclamation of October 20, 1869, named Lenoir, Jones, Orange and Chatham counties and said that in Orange the jail had been forced, two Black prisoners taken out and shot, and three other Black men hanged. He warned that he would declare those counties in a state of insurrection and use the whole power of the state if the violence continued.

People: William W. Holden

Bursar reports the plundering of university property

Professor David Settle Patrick reported that when exercises were suspended in 1868 many in Chapel Hill believed the university's property belonged to the people. Books had been taken from the libraries and tools carried off, and only some had been returned.

Cyrus Guy is lynched by a masked mob in western Orange County

A masked mob seized Cyrus Guy, a 24-year-old Afro-Indigenous farmer from a free family of color, and hanged him from a tree on the High Rock Road near the Alamance County line, above the county poorhouse. The Hillsborough Recorder reported that an inquest held under Sheriff Turner found out nothing, and Ben Johnson recalled in 1937 that the body was left hanging for four days.

People: Cyrus Guy

U.S. troops are quartered in a college building at Chapel Hill

Federal troops were quartered in one of the university buildings at Chapel Hill and took in ten students found out at night, which the paper said would drive students away.

Barkeeper M. V. Blalock is murdered and robbed in Hillsborough

M. V. Blalock, who kept a bar in Hillsborough, was murdered and robbed in the heart of the town on Christmas night; three Black men, Tom Young, Bob Gunn and Joe Lutterloh, were charged, and the same men were said to have burned a barn and Charles S. Cooley's cabinet shop to draw townspeople away. At a special term of Superior Court under Judge Tourgee in early February 1870, Lutterloh was acquitted on an alibi.

A Quaker teacher named Dickson is reported elected to the university's agricultural chair

Word went round Chapel Hill that a new professor had been chosen for the university's agricultural college: Dickson, an English Quaker known as a teacher and agent for Black schools. Two months later Spencer learned that the appointment had never been put before the trustees.

A marble monument is set over the Mitchell family graves in the old Mitchell garden

A marble monument was placed over the graves of Elisha Mitchell's family members buried in the garden of his former home, then lived in by Alexander McIver's family. Mrs. McIver and Spencer agreed the dead belonged in the village graveyard.

People: Alexander McIver

Klansmen from Hillsborough ride to kill Senator T. M. Shoffner and turn back

A Klan party coming from Orange County that included Hillsborough legislator Frederick N. Strudwick and A. Hedgepeth of Hillsborough gathered at a Bradshaw home in Alamance County to kill state senator T. M. Shoffner, author of the anti-Klan militia bill. Dr. John A. Moore, sent by James E. Boyd, told them Shoffner had gone to Greensboro, and they turned back.

People: Frederick N. Strudwick

The remains of David L. Swain and his daughter Annie are taken from Chapel Hill to Raleigh for reburial

An undertaker, K. P. Waitt, carried the coffins of the former governor and university president and his daughter Annie from their graves in Chapel Hill to Raleigh, where they were buried side by side in the old city cemetery with only family and a few friends present.

People: David L. Swain

A two-story frame house, later known as the Pool-Patterson House, goes up on West Cameron Avenue

The survey dates the L-plan frame house at 403 West Cameron Avenue to about 1870. Its bracketed roofline and wraparound porch reflect the later Victorian remodeling.

Anne Ruffin buys the last two lots and the Ruffin place fills a whole town block

Completing a purchase begun before her husband's death, Anne M. Ruffin bought lots 202 and 203. The Ruffin property then took in an entire block of about ten acres, which was still intact in 1971.

People: Anne Kirkland Ruffin

Subject: Ruffin-Roulhac House (Little Hawfields)

Archibald Lynch builds a farmhouse on Mount Hermon Church Road

Around 1870 a rear wing was built for the farmer Archibald Lynch, and about 1890 a small frame I-house was added in front of it.

Black-owned family farms and sawmills made up the Rogers-Eubanks area

By the late nineteenth century the area between Homestead and Eubanks roads, north of Carrboro and Chapel Hill, was a neighborhood of Black-owned family farms and sawmills set among forest. RENA and the Town of Carrboro both date settlement of the wider area to the 1700s.

Subject: Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association

Eliza Beaty keeps a boarding house in the William Whitted House

In the late nineteenth century Mrs. Eliza Beaty runs a well-known boarding house in the old William Whitted House at East Queen and North Churton streets. The Italianate wing facing Churton Street may have been added for her.

Subject: William Whitted House

J. T. Hogan serves as an Orange County commissioner

Lefler and Wager's list of Orange County commissioners gives J. T. Hogan a term from 1870 to 1872.

People: Samuel Wellwood Hughes · William N. Patterson

James Tilley builds a small frame farmhouse on the NC 54 corridor

About 1870 James Tilley built a modest frame I-house with a separate frame kitchen, which remains in good shape. He lies in a family graveyard on the farm.

Josiah Turner Jr. turns down a militia guard after shots are fired into his Hillsborough house

After shots were fired into Josiah Turner Jr.'s house near Hillsborough while he was away, Colonel William J. Clarke wired that he was sending a guard of twenty men with orders to arrest every suspicious person, and Holden's private secretary, W. R. Richardson, asked Turner for particulars of the attempted outrage on Mrs. Turner. Turner replied from Hillsborough that the attackers were unknown, pointed to two Black men he said had been seen nearby, and said he had told Clarke the civil law was ample in Orange and he would have the militia arrested for trespass if they set foot on his land. Holden's defense put the exchange in evidence on February 18, 1871.

People: Josiah Turner Jr.

Mount Sinai Baptist Church is organized

Black Baptists organized Mount Sinai Baptist Church in 1870 with E. H. Cole as first pastor.

Orange County reports on its poorhouse to the new Board of Public Charities

Orange County's report to the state Board of Public Charities described two one-story brick buildings of six rooms each on a 400-acre tract five miles from Hillsborough. The poorhouse held 41 people, ten able to do light work, with ten deaths since July 1868.

People: Edmund Strudwick

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

Orange County votes 1,740 to 970 for the Conservative congressional candidate Rogers

In the 1870 congressional election Orange County gave Rogers, the Conservative candidate, 1,740 votes to 970 for the Republican Harris, figures the committee chairman read from Greeley's almanac during Pride Jones's testimony on June 5, 1871. In 1868 the county had given Rogers 1,897 and the Republican Deweese 1,446, a fall in the Republican vote that the chairman put at 496; Jones agreed and said the Conservative vote had fallen too.

Orange representative Frederick N. Strudwick presses the repeal of the Shoffner Act

In the legislative session of 1870-1871, Frederick N. Strudwick of Orange helped bring forward the bill repealing the Shoffner Act of January 1870, under which Governor Holden had declared counties in insurrection; the repeal passed and took effect at once. Justice Thomas Settle said so before the Senate select committee in February 1871, adding that Strudwick introduced the impeachment resolution against Holden and had been named in testimony as one of the party sent to kill Senator Shoffner.

People: Frederick N. Strudwick

T. U. Faucett becomes stated supply at New Hope

Thomas U. Faucett served the church as stated supply from 1870 until the fall of 1872.

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

The 1870 census records Orange County's losses since

Against 1860, farm values fell from $2,141,690 to $977,308, improved acreage from 101,354 to 73,745 and livestock value by nearly half, while manufacturing establishments rose from 61 to 92. The population was 17,507, including 6,420 Black residents.

The Camerons move a two-story building thought to be slave quarters to Burnside

In the late nineteenth century the Cameron family moves a two-story frame building, thought to have been built as quarters for enslaved people, to the southeast corner of the Burnside house at 201 South Cameron Street. It was joined to the main house at the second floor in the 1950s.

Subject: Burnside

The Dukes move their tobacco business into a wooden factory in Durham

The Duke family's smoking tobacco business outgrows the farm and moves into a wooden factory at Durham, then still part of Orange County.

Part of Durham’s rise while part of Orange, 1850s–1881 · 40 events

People: Washington Duke

The Reilly Log House is built near Rougemont

A one-room log farmhouse with half-dovetailed corners, a rock chimney, and a log kitchen joined by a breezeway was built near Rougemont in the 1870s. Mattson treats it as one of the county's best late log dwellings.

The Watson family builds an ornate I-house near Cedar Grove

An ornate I-house is built on the Watson farm on NC 86 near Cedar Grove in the 1870s; the farm also keeps three log tobacco barns. It is on the Study List.

Trustees refuse land for a Black school in Chapel Hill

The Chapel Hill school committee of Morgan Closs, W. H. Bunch and H. C. Andrews asked the trustees for two acres on the Pittsboro Road next to the Hubbard lot for a school for Black children, saying friends of education would pay for a schoolhouse. The board declined because the land was under mortgage.

Part of Building the public schools, 1868–1920 · 192 events

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.

Subject: Sunnyside (John Berry farm)

Thomas Ruffin dies at his Hillsborough home

Ruffin died in the northeast room of the house on January 15, 1870, and his widow Anne inherited the estate. He was buried at St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough, on ground he had given for the church, where he had served on the vestry.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church · Ruffin-Roulhac House (Little Hawfields)

C. N. B. Evans closes the Milton Chronicle and joins the Recorder

C. N. B. Evans, who had closed his Milton Chronicle, became associate editor and publisher of the Hillsborough Recorder with his son, Capt. T. C. Evans.

Part of The Hillsborough Recorder begins publication, 1820 · 27 events

Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

Joseph E. Pogue clerks in his brother E. H. Pogue's Hillsborough store

At 18, Joseph Ezekiel Pogue left East Tennessee for Hillsborough, where he clerked in the general store of his brother, E. H. Pogue, until September 1871. He then became a traveling salesman for a tobacco factory, the start of a tobacco career that took him to Henderson in 1875 and Raleigh in 1885.

People: E. H. Pogue

Frederick Strudwick takes an unexpired Orange County seat in the House

In February 1870 Strudwick, a Democrat, was chosen to fill the unexpired term of J. J. Allison in the North Carolina House of Representatives. He was elected to a full two-year term that August.

Hillsborough men ask Governor Holden to commission Pride Jones against the Klan

On March 5, 1870 six Hillsborough men, among them J. W. Norwood, James Webb and Henry K. Nash, recommended to Governor Holden that Pride Jones be made a militia captain to put down night riding. Holden sent the commission on March 7 and Jones accepted on March 9. The raids soon stopped, and Jones resigned after four weeks.

People: William W. Holden · Pride Jones · George Laws · John Wall Norwood

Disguised men whip residents of the county poorhouse

Men in disguise entered the poorhouse at night and whipped several of the men and women living there. On March 10 the commissioners offered a $200 reward for the attackers, over the written protest of commissioner W. N. Patterson, who defended the raiders' motives.

Part of Racial-terror lynchings in Orange County · 36 events

People: William N. Patterson

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

Orange County Klansmen agree to disband after Pride Jones carries the governor's offer

Starting on March 8, 1870, when he rode eight miles into the country, Captain Pride Jones went to men he suspected of leading the Klan in Orange and told them, on Governor Holden's word passed through John W. Norwood, that past offenses would be overlooked if they disbanded. By his sworn account in June 1871, several said they were tired of it, the klans disbanded within about four weeks, and after four to six weeks he wrote Holden that the county was quiet.

People: Pride Jones · John Wall Norwood · William W. Holden

Governor Holden tells Captain Pride Jones he cannot promise the Orange Klan amnesty

Writing from Raleigh on March 17, 1870, Governor Holden told Pride Jones, his new militia captain for Orange County, that the executive had no power to proclaim amnesty and could pardon only after a conviction. He told Jones to discourage secret political societies, above all disguised and armed ones, to back the Orange sheriff with a posse if process was resisted, and to arrest men who came into Orange from Alamance. The letter was read into Jones's testimony before the Joint Select Committee on June 5, 1871.

People: William W. Holden · Pride Jones

Susan Washington Graham reports the Baptist church's building debt paid

Susan Washington Graham, wife of former governor William A. Graham, told the church that the last of the debt on its building was settled. Much of the money came through her appeals by letter to friends after the church's building savings were lost in the war.

Tom Young and Bob Gunn are hanged at Hillsborough for the Blalock murder

Tom Young and Bob Gunn were hanged at the Hillsborough jail for the murder of barkeeper M. V. Blalock, attended by the Rev. George E. Hunt; Young made a confession.

Subject: Orange County jail, Hillsborough

Dennis Heartt dies in Hillsborough

Dennis Heartt died at his home in Hillsborough on the morning of May 13, 1870, in his eighty-seventh year, and his funeral was held at the Presbyterian church the next day while the town's stores closed. The Recorder noted that Governor W. W. Holden, once his apprentice in the Recorder office, had him appointed Hillsborough postmaster after the war.

People: William W. Holden

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

Orange Conservative convention nominates its 1870 county ticket

The Conservative county convention, reconvened at the courthouse with W. W. Guess in the chair, nominated William A. Graham for the state Senate, Frederick N. Strudwick and Mathew Atwater for the House, Andrew Mickle for sheriff and a full slate of county officers. Graham declined the Senate nomination two days later, and several other men came forward for the seat.

People: William A. Graham · Frederick N. Strudwick · Andrew Mickle

Great freshet sweeps away bridges and mill dams across Orange

A flood on the Eno, Little River and Flat River carried away bridges and mill dams, among them Thompson's, Berry's, Lyon's and Compton's dams on the Eno and all but one dam on Flat River, and ruined crops on the creek bottoms.

Henrietta Heartt is appointed Hillsborough's postmaster

Henrietta Heartt becomes the first woman on the list of Hillsborough postmasters, succeeding Dennis Heartt. The Hillsborough Recorder reported on May 25, 1870 that Governor Holden had offered the office to the Heartt family and that it had been declined, and on June 1 that Arch. C. Hunter of University Station had been appointed postmaster. Harriet H. Strayhorn in 1873 and Mary E. Berry in 1882 followed her.

People: Dennis Heartt · Mary E. Strayhorn Berry

Subject: University Station

Mrs. Fordyce Hubbard and her daughter leave Chapel Hill for good

The family of the former Latin professor Fordyce M. Hubbard, whose books had been boxed for shipping, drove away from their Chapel Hill home to join him in New York, one of the last old faculty households to go.

Historical society reorganized at the university's 1870 commencement

During commencement on June 8 and 9, 1870, a meeting with Professor Alexander McIver in the chair organized the North Carolina Historical Society with Col. John H. Wheeler as president and McIver as secretary and treasurer. A committee was named to recover from Eleanor H. Swain the books and manuscripts the society claimed.

People: Alexander McIver

North Carolina Railroad stockholders hold their annual meeting in the Hillsborough courthouse and elect four directors

The company's twenty-first annual meeting convened in the court house at Hillsborough with Maj. John W. Graham in the chair and heard President William A. Smith's report. By stock vote it elected Thomas M. Holt, John I. Shaver, R. B. Haywood and D. A. Davis as directors and set the president's salary at $5,000 a year.

People: John W. Graham

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough · North Carolina Railroad

Railroad stockholders at Hillsborough ask for lawyers to look into the sale of sinking-fund bonds to George W. Swepson

On Paul C. Cameron's motion the meeting unanimously asked the president and directors to hire Ralph Gorrell and William A. Graham, working with B. F. Moore, to look into how state bonds held by the commissioners of the company's sinking fund had been sold and passed to G. W. Swepson and others, and to sue if needed to protect the company.

People: Paul C. Cameron · William A. Graham · Bartholomew F. Moore

Railroad stockholders meeting at Hillsborough vote to ask the legislature for banking powers

Thomas Webb moved that the company's officers ask the General Assembly to amend the charter so the North Carolina Railroad could do banking business, with the private stockholders electing the bank's officers. Motions to table it (from Paul C. Cameron) and to send it to a committee both failed, and it carried by 5,006 shares to 2,271 with the state's proxy declining to vote.

People: Thomas Webb · Paul C. Cameron

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough · North Carolina Railroad

Governor Holden reports fifty state troops posted at Hillsborough

In a letter of July 20, 1870 asking President Grant for federal troops, Governor W. W. Holden counted his state forces and listed fifty white men at Hillsborough, with Kirk's 350 in Alamance and Caswell and others at Raleigh and in Gaston County. The letter survives here as a War Department abstract printed in the appendix of the Senate select committee's report.

People: W. W. Holden

A squad of Holden's militia marches into Chapel Hill and camps behind the college

During the Kirk-Holden war a squad of state militia under a Dr. Emery marched into Chapel Hill and camped behind the college, while some county men took to the woods and Frederick Strudwick and William L. Saunders hid to avoid arrest. Spencer wrote the next year that the militia had broken into the Philanthropic and Dialectic society libraries and taken books.

People: Frederick N. Strudwick · William L. Saunders

Josiah Turner Jr. tells James E. Boyd at Hillsborough of a planned election-eve Klan ride

At the North Carolina Railroad stockholders' meeting in Hillsborough in July 1870, Josiah Turner Jr. told James E. Boyd, then a Conservative candidate in Alamance, that he had heard the Ku Klux would ride the night before the August election and warn Black voters they would be met on the road home if they voted; Turner advised Boyd neither to back the plan nor speak against it. Boyd swore to the conversation in an affidavit taken by Colonel Kirk on July 19, 1870, and repeated it to the Senate select committee on January 28, 1871. Turner testified to the same committee on February 24, 1871; his reply is not on these pages.

People: Josiah Turner Jr.

Josiah Turner Jr. dares Governor Holden in print to arrest him

In a card dated at Hillsborough on August 3, 1870 and printed in his Raleigh Sentinel, Josiah Turner Jr. dared Holden to arrest him and charged that Holden's followers, stirred by talk of Turner as head of the Klan, had shot powder in Mrs. Turner's face and thrown a rock through her window near one of his children. Kirk's militia arrested Turner at Hillsborough two days later; Holden's counsel read the card at the impeachment trial on March 13, 1871 to show the spirit in which Turner had invited arrest. In a second letter dated at Hillsborough on August 4 and printed in the Sentinel on August 6, read by the House managers on February 18, he told Holden to come on with his chains.

People: Josiah Turner Jr.

Captain Hancock at Hillsborough wires Burgen that he has news he cannot send without breaking orders

On August 5, 1870, the day Josiah Turner Jr. was arrested at Hillsborough, Captain Hancock, commanding the state troops there, telegraphed his superior, Lieutenant Colonel B. G. Burgen at Company Shops, that he had a matter of great importance to report but could not do so without violating orders. Thomas Bragg, closing for the House managers on March 20, 1871, cited the telegram as evidence that Holden ordered the arrest and said the telegrams kept at the Shops were spirited away before they could be called for.

People: Josiah Turner Jr.

Lieutenant Hunnicutt wires from Hillsborough that he has Turner under guard, and Burgen orders anyone who tries to free him shot

On August 5, 1870, Lieutenant J. W. Hunnicutt telegraphed Lieutenant Colonel Burgen at Company Shops from Hillsborough that he had arrested Josiah Turner Jr., had him under the bayonet and wanted an extra train. Burgen answered that Hunnicutt should come up on the freight and shoot on the spot anyone who tried to release Turner. The telegrams, from the Hillsborough telegraph office, were read into evidence by the House managers at Holden's impeachment trial on February 18, 1871.

People: Josiah Turner Jr.

State troops search Josiah Turner Jr.'s house outside Hillsborough and carry off his guns

While Lieutenant Hunnicutt held Josiah Turner Jr. at the Hillsborough depot, two or three of his men went to Turner's house about a mile off to search for arms and came back with two pistols and two guns. Turner, testifying at Holden's impeachment trial on February 16, 1871, said one pistol came back only after he offered a $10 reward and the rest stayed with Kirk; a Sentinel editorial of August 9, 1870, read into evidence, said every room was searched without a warrant and his boys' shotguns taken.

People: Josiah Turner Jr.

The officer holding Josiah Turner Jr. at Hillsborough says he will arrest anyone who brings a habeas corpus writ

At the Hillsborough depot, Lieutenant J. W. Hunnicutt told Senator John W. Graham that he had arrested Josiah Turner Jr. by Governor Holden's order and that he had a general order, passed down through Colonel Burgen, to arrest anyone who came with writs of habeas corpus, Graham included. Graham gave this account under oath at Holden's impeachment trial on February 16, 1871, adding that Hunnicutt said Burgen had detailed him to take ten men to Hillsborough for the arrest.

People: John W. Graham · Josiah Turner Jr.

A public common school opens in Chapel Hill

After long delay the village's common school was running by late August 1870, taking in local boys who might otherwise have attended the Pool university as day scholars.

Part of Building the public schools, 1868–1920 · 192 events

An Orange County court indictment is found against Colonel George W. Kirk

An indictment was found in the Orange County court against Colonel George W. Kirk, whose militia had arrested Josiah Turner Jr. at Hillsborough in 1870, according to Turner's testimony before the Senate committee in February 1871. Turner said he gave the capias and a bench warrant to the sheriff of Wake County, but the U.S. marshal, who held Kirk on a federal writ Turner had sued out, would not let them be served, and Kirk slipped out of Raleigh.

People: Josiah Turner Jr.

Black voters keep a committee at the ballot box in the Orange County election

At the August 1870 election in Orange County, which he called quiet and orderly, Black voters kept a committee at the ballot box to guard it and inspect the votes, according to the testimony of George Laws, Conservative clerk of the superior court, before the Senate committee on February 15, 1871. Laws gave it in answer to a question about intimidation among Black voters; he also said two or three Black Conservatives in Hillsborough had been much abused for their votes but held out, and that about twenty Black men there now voted Conservative.

People: George Laws

Josiah Turner Jr. asks Justices Dick and Settle for a bench warrant against Holden, Kirk and Bergen

After Kirk's men arrested him at Hillsborough, Josiah Turner Jr. filed an affidavit and applied to Justices Dick and Settle of the state supreme court for a bench warrant against Governor Holden and Colonels Kirk and Bergen. The justices had counsel argue whether a warrant could issue against the governor and whether the colonels could be taken outside the insurrection counties, with Mr. Bailey on one side and William H. Battle on the other, according to Battle's testimony before the Senate committee on February 13, 1871; he read his argument from the Daily Sentinel of October 7, 1870.

People: Josiah Turner Jr. · W. W. Holden · William Horn Battle

Students of the Pool university board chiefly with Black families

With about fifteen students from away and as many day scholars, the Pool university's boarders lived mostly with Black households, among them those of Wilson Caldwell, John Ashe and Sam Mahew. Spencer noted that all the boys were poor and held free scholarships.

Part of The university closes and reopens · 78 events

People: Wilson Swain Caldwell

Sheriff Turner and armed men try to take Colonel Kirk off a train at Hillsborough

Soon after his militia regiment was mustered out in late September 1870, George W. Kirk rode the North Carolina Railroad toward Raleigh under a protective arrest arranged with a federal marshal. At Hillsborough, by his account, Sheriff Turner waited with thirty to thirty-five men armed with shotguns and pistols to take him from the train; the marshal refused to give him up, and the men clung to the cars cursing until the train got under way. Kirk told this to the Senate select committee on January 27, 1871, and called the men Ku Klux, which he asserted but did not show.

Durham citizens meet to mourn Robert E. Lee

A large meeting at Durham (now Durham County), with Col. D. C. Parrish in the chair and C. B. Gunn as secretary, adopted resolutions on the death of Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Incendiaries burn Maj. Bedford Vaughn's tobacco factory near Stagville

Maj. Bedford Vaughn's tobacco factory near Stagville, in the lower edge of the county (now Durham County), was set afire with shingles piled under a shed holding boxes of worked tobacco; the incendiaries fled into the woods and fired at those who came to the fire.

Orange County Sheriff John Turner dies

John Turner, sheriff of Orange County, died in 1870; his executrix qualified to settle his estate in October.

Orange gives Manning a 711-vote majority in the special congressional election

In the special election to fill the late Robert B. Gilliam's seat in Congress, Orange County gave Manning, the Conservative candidate, an official majority of 711 over J. W. Holden.

The trustees vote to suspend the university's exercises and stop faculty salaries from February 1

On the motion of the Rev. James Reid of Franklin County, the Reconstruction board of trustees voted on December 1, 1870, to suspend the university's exercises until further orders, and on James B. Mason's motion fixed February 1, 1871, as the day the faculty's salaries ended. The same day President Solomon Pool laid before the board a plan to lease the Chapel Hill property and bring the state's colleges under the university, which its committees dropped on February 1.

People: Solomon Pool · James Augustus Graham · James B. Mason

Orange County representative Frederick N. Strudwick moves to impeach Governor Holden

Frederick N. Strudwick of Orange introduced the House resolution to impeach Governor William W. Holden, which the House adopted on December 14, 1870. On December 19 he chaired the Committee of the Whole that adopted the eight articles of impeachment and elected the seven House managers.

Part of Governor Holden’s impeachment and trial, 1870–1871 · 20 events

People: William W. Holden · Frederick N. Strudwick

Strudwick of Orange goes with two other members to impeach Holden at the bar of the Senate

Frederick N. Strudwick of Orange, with Thomas Sparrow and W. P. Welch, was named by Speaker Thomas J. Jarvis to go to the bar of the state Senate and impeach Governor Holden in the name of the House and the people of North Carolina. The three did so on December 15, 1870, and Sparrow reported back that the Senate had received the message.

Part of Governor Holden’s impeachment and trial, 1870–1871 · 20 events

People: Frederick N. Strudwick

Strudwick is kept off the impeachment managers because of his Klan reputation

After guiding the impeachment resolution through the house judiciary committee and the full house, Strudwick was not chosen as a manager for the senate trial. It was feared that his widely known association with the Ku Klux Klan would make the proceedings look like a Klan prosecution.

Part of Governor Holden’s impeachment and trial, 1870–1871 · 20 events

People: William W. Holden

Joseph Blount Cheshire studies law under William K. Ruffin at Hillsborough

Cheshire read law for several months under William K. Ruffin of Hillsborough, a son of Chief Justice Thomas Ruffin. He then worked three months in a Tarboro law office and was licensed in January 1872.

Land is bought for Hillsborough's (New) Town Cemetery on Corbin Street

The six-acre cemetery just north of the old town limits stands on land bought in 1871, though its earliest graves date from the 1860s. It now holds more than 3,000 graves in regular rows behind a brick wall on East Corbin Street, including military markers for both Confederate and Union soldiers.

The Chapel Hill Baptist Church bars the Black congregation from its building

The Black members who left in 1865 had been allowed to keep using the church building for a small fee. In 1871 the white church passed a long resolution ending that use.

Part of Freedom, schools, and Black community-building after emancipation · 143 events

Subject: University Baptist Church

McIver moves that the faculty step aside for the university's revival

At a faculty meeting without President Pool, McIver offered a resolution that no member wished to stand in the way of reviving the university, since the faculty lacked public confidence. It passed with McIver and Patrick for and Brewer against.

Part of The university closes and reopens · 78 events

People: Solomon Pool

Holden answers that he never ordered Josiah Turner Jr. arrested in Orange County

In his written answer read to the Senate on January 23, 1871, Governor Holden denied ordering Josiah Turner Jr.'s arrest in Orange. He said he had told the militia officers to arrest Turner only if found in Alamance or Caswell, that any arrest in Orange was against his orders and without his knowledge, and that when told Turner was under arrest in Alamance he ordered him held there and in Caswell. Holden also said he believed Turner belonged to the secret organizations and was urging citizens to drive out the militia, a charge the answer states as Holden's belief.

Part of Governor Holden’s impeachment and trial, 1870–1871 · 20 events

People: Josiah Turner Jr. · William W. Holden

William A. Graham of Hillsborough joins the prosecution of Governor Holden

The House managers announced to the impeachment court that former governor William A. Graham of Hillsborough, with Thomas Bragg and Augustus S. Merrimon, would act as their counsel. Graham argued points of evidence for the prosecution through the trial.

Part of Governor Holden’s impeachment and trial, 1870–1871 · 20 events

People: William A. Graham · Thomas Bragg · Thomas Sparrow

Hillsborough constable describes Orange County Klan killings to a U.S. Senate committee

W. G. Turrentine, a Hillsborough constable, told the Senate select committee in Washington that five Black men had been killed in Orange County and many people whipped, some for voting Republican. He described how, in August 1869, 75 to 100 disguised men forced the Hillsborough jail and shot a prisoner held on a barn-burning charge, who died.

Part of The congressional Ku Klux hearings, 1871 · 22 events

Subject: Orange County jail, Hillsborough

Disguised men calling themselves Red Birds whip four people near Hillsborough

Disguised men who called themselves Red Birds and dressed in red whipped two women and two young men of about twenty at a house about three miles from Hillsborough, tore off its roof, knocked down the chimney and set it on fire, according to the testimony of Hillsborough constable W. G. Turrentine before the Senate committee on January 31, 1871. Turrentine, who saw the wrecked house when he went to make arrests, said it was thought to have been aimed at a disorderly house. George Laws, testifying on February 15, described what seems to be the same affair five or six miles from town as neighborhood fathers breaking up a disorderly house, with the boys paddled and the roof torn off, and said it was not the Ku Klux. The one man arrested on Turrentine's warrant was discharged by a magistrate after his sister-in-law and a Dr. William Strudwick swore he had been too drunk that evening to sit his horse.

Part of The congressional Ku Klux hearings, 1871 · 22 events

People: George Laws

Solomon Pool asks alumni and friends to pay the university's debts

In January 1871 Pool addressed alumni and friends of the university and pleaded for money to pay off its debts. The appeal came too late, and the trustees decided that the institution should close on 1 February 1871.

Part of The university closes and reopens · 78 events

Clerk of court George Laws testifies on Orange County before the Senate committee

George Laws of Hillsborough, clerk of the Orange superior court and judge of probate, testified before the Senate select committee in Washington on February 15, 1871. A Conservative, he described the jail raid and three hangings of Black men, said no one had been brought to justice for them because no evidence could be had, credited the Ku Klux with checking thefts by freedpeople after the war, and said the county had been quiet for eighteen months and that a Black man could get justice in its courts. The committee majority quoted him as proof that Klan crimes in Orange went unpunished.

Part of The congressional Ku Klux hearings, 1871 · 22 events

People: George Laws

Josiah Turner Jr. of Hillsborough testifies at Holden's impeachment trial about his arrest

Josiah Turner Jr. told the Senate court that on August 5, 1870, armed men from Company Shops, eight or ten white men and two Black men, came to Hillsborough on a freight train, ran at him with guns cocked as he rode away from the depot, and held him there under Lieutenant Hunnicutt from about eleven until near three while Captain Hancock paraded his company before the depot. He testified for the House managers on February 16, 1871, and on cross-examination denied any tie to the Klan but admitted saying in private talk that the militia ought to be shot.

Part of Governor Holden’s impeachment and trial, 1870–1871 · 20 events

People: Josiah Turner Jr.

Hillsborough telegraph operator Joseph G. Cooley declines to produce the militia telegrams at Holden's trial

Joseph G. Cooley, 24, the Hillsborough telegraph operator, told the impeachment court that he had been subpoenaed on January 30, 1871, to bring every telegram sent or received about the state troops at Company Shops, but that his superintendent had ordered him to answer no questions about them as confidential and the office manager, Mr. Starke, had sent the originals away. After argument the chief justice ordered the telegrams filed with the clerk, and they were read the next day.

Part of Governor Holden’s impeachment and trial, 1870–1871 · 20 events

Impeachment court admits Holden's 1870 letters with Pride Jones on the Orange Klan

The Senate, sitting as the court of impeachment, voted 25 to 19 to admit Governor Holden's March 1870 correspondence with Dr. Pride Jones of Hillsborough, which the defense offered to show that Holden tried peaceful means against the Klan in Orange before he used troops in Alamance. The managers objected that the court had already shut out evidence of Klan activity outside Alamance and Caswell; the presiding officer let it in as bearing on Holden's motive, noting Holden's answer that Josiah Turner Jr.'s arrest was justified by the excitement Turner had stirred in Orange. Holden's secretary John B. Neathery then read Jones's March 4 letter, the March 5 recommendation by six Orange men and Holden's March 7 commission.

Part of Governor Holden’s impeachment and trial, 1870–1871 · 20 events

People: Pride Jones