Chronology

Antebellum and Civil War: 11 highlights. Back to the highlights →

1. Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
2. 1801–1865 Orange County’s nineteenth-century academiesStoryline · Hillsborough

   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.

3. 1804 Suit by William Kirkland and others leads to the sale of Hannah and her childrenSale of enslaved people · Hillsborough, Market House

   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.

4. September 25, 1816 Polly Burke helps organize the Hillsborough Presbyterian ChurchFounding or opening · Hillsborough, 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.

5. About 1818–1829 George Moses Horton begins selling poems to UNC studentsCultural milestone · Chapel Hill

   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.

6. February 1820 The Hillsborough Recorder begins publicationFounding or opening · Hillsborough

   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.

7. 1829 Thomas Ruffin issues the State v. Mann decisionCourt case · Countywide

   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.

8. 1837–1857 Burwell School for young women operatesTrend · Hillsborough

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

9. 1849–1856 The North Carolina Railroad is chartered and builtFounding or opening · Hillsborough

   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.

10. 1855 Elizabeth Keckly purchases freedom for herself and her sonSt. Louis, Missouri; earlier Hillsborough connection

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

11. 1861–1865 Orange County during the Civil WarStoryline · Chapel Hill

    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.

12. 1865–1878 Freedom, schools, and Black community-building after emancipationStoryline · Hillsborough

    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.

The other dated entries wait behind a subject, a place, an era, a month, or the All dated entries switch, and each storyline’s page carries its own component entries. Dates come from the sources named on the cards and from the index’s event pages; where sources disagree, the card follows the county records. Entries marked approximate or needing research say so on the card; the rest were checked against the source named on it. Each card’s “Correct this” link opens the contact form with the entry already named. Suggest an event →

Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated September 14, 2026.