Chronology

Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies

Hillsborough Academy reopened under Andrew Flinn in 1801 and grew under William J. Bingham, who left in 1844 to open his own school at the Oaks. The Burwell School for girls ran from 1837 to 1857. The Nash and Kollock School and Hillsborough Military Academy opened in 1859; the military academy sent its cadets home in May 1865.

Suit by William Kirkland and others leads to the sale of Hannah and her children

Legal proceedings brought by William Kirkland, Catlett Campbell, Jacob Greer and Isaac Mordecai against Robert Bell placed Hannah and her children Jenny and David in the hands of the sheriff. Sheriff Samuel Turrentine sold the three at public auction at the Hillsborough Market House to Duncan Cameron for 200 pounds.

People: Duncan Cameron · William Kirkland

Polly Burke helps organize the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

In September 1816 Mary W. Burke joined eight other people and the Rev. John Knox Witherspoon to organize the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church, which acquired the town's brick church built in 1810. She rented pew 13 on the first pew list and supported the church for the next eighteen years.

People: John Knox Witherspoon

George Moses Horton begins selling poems to UNC students

By about age twenty, George Moses Horton, enslaved on a Chatham County farm, was carrying fruit to the UNC campus on Sundays, and students began paying him to compose love poems and acrostics. His first printed poem appeared in April 1829, the year The Hope of Liberty was published.

The Hillsborough Recorder begins publication

Dennis Heartt began publishing the weekly Hillsborough Recorder in February 1820, at three dollars a year. The paper ran until 1879, and its surviving issues are a main record of nineteenth-century Hillsborough and Orange County.

Part of The Hillsborough Recorder begins publication, 1820

People: Dennis Heartt

Thomas Ruffin issues the State v. Mann decision

Thomas Ruffin of Hillsborough, newly seated on the North Carolina Supreme Court, wrote the opinion in State v. Mann, overturning the conviction of John Mann of Edenton for shooting Lydia, an enslaved woman he had hired, as she fled a whipping. Ruffin held that a master's power must be absolute, and abolitionists later cited the ruling widely.

People: Thomas Ruffin · Lydia

Burwell School for young women operates

Robert and Margaret Anna Burwell operated their Hillsborough school for girls from 1837 to 1857.

Part of The Burwell School and the Burwell household

People: Margaret Anna Burwell · Robert Armistead Burwell

The North Carolina Railroad is chartered and built

The General Assembly chartered the North Carolina Railroad in 1849, after Senate speaker Calvin Graves cast the deciding vote. The state built the 223-mile line from Goldsboro to Charlotte between 1851 and 1856, running it through Hillsborough, and the first train ran its full length in January 1856.

Elizabeth Keckly purchases freedom for herself and her son

Elizabeth Keckly purchased freedom for herself and her son in St. Louis, after earlier enslavement in Hillsborough.

Part of Elizabeth Keckly in Hillsborough

People: George Kirkland

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 16 to May 3, 1865, as many newly freed people left town or joined the army.

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.