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Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1900s
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A Black congregation builds Neville's Chapel outside Chapel Hill
An African American congregation outside Chapel Hill built the small frame sanctuary now called Neville's Chapel (United Church of Christ) in the early twentieth century. A cornerstone on the site names an earlier Strowd Grace Church and its pastor, H. B. Baldwin.
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A frame depot replaces the box car that had served West End as a station
From 1882 a box car had been the passenger depot at West End. In 1900 a one-story frame depot was built a few yards north of the later station; after the 1913 station opened it became a freight shed, and a new freight house had replaced it by 1925.
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A log house near Caldwell is enlarged into the Annie Parrish House
Around 1900 a one-room log house near Caldwell, built some fifty years earlier, was wrapped into a new story-and-a-half frame house with a center gable. The form uses the Annie Parrish House to show how early log houses survive inside later ones.
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A one-room school for Black children is built at Hickory Grove
Hickory Grove, near White Cross, gets a one-room front-gable schoolhouse for African American children early in the twentieth century.
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Adam A. Kluttz buys the lot west of his store and moves its houses back to Rosemary Street
Kluttz bought the property just west of his East Franklin Street store and had its two old houses moved to the rear of the lot, turned to face Rosemary Street, where they stood until 1963. He is said to have built a second store beside the first, run as a haberdashery.
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Arch Cates's I-house goes up on what became Arthur Minnis Road
The two-story frame I-house at the Cates-Dodson-Minnis Farm was first owned by Arch Cates. It later passed to Albert Dodson and then to Albert and Lois Dodson Minnis, and was remodeled in the 1940s.
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Blackwood Station grows into a small railroad settlement
In the early twentieth century a cluster formed where Mount Sinai Road meets NC 86, with a store, a building remembered as store and post office, and two bungalows. The Blackwoods are said to have kept a post office and store on their farm nearby once the railroad arrived.
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Charles Baskerville heads UNC's chemistry department
When Francis P. Venable became university president in 1900, Baskerville succeeded him as chairman of the chemistry department, Smith Professor and director of the chemical laboratory, posts he held until 1904.
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Confederate chaplain J. William Jones becomes pastor of the Chapel Hill Baptist Church
John William Jones, chaplain-general of the Confederate veterans and a biographer of Robert E. Lee, served as pastor and often spoke on university programs. Howell says he carried the Lost Cause into his sermons and even his prayers.
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Damascus Christian Church builds a Gothic Revival frame church
Damascus Congregational Christian Church southwest of Chapel Hill builds a frame church with Gothic Revival details around 1900; its cemetery lies beside it.
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Eben Alexander becomes the university's first dean of the faculty
Back from diplomatic service in Greece, Eben Alexander was named the first dean of the faculty under President Francis P. Venable in 1900, heading the College of Liberal Arts and graduate studies and supervising the library until poor health forced a leave in 1909.
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Ernest Graves captains the Carolina baseball team
Graves, the team's catcher, captained the university baseball team in 1900, the year he graduated.
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Four mill houses go up on Shelton Street for Bill Lloyd
Bill Lloyd, a cousin of Alberta Cotton Mill owner Thomas F. Lloyd, had four identical one-story houses built to rent to the mill's workers. Each had two front doors so family members on different shifts could come and go; carpenter Thomas Clark, brought from Cane Creek by the Lloyds, built number 107.
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Francis P. Venable serves as president of the university
Elected president in 1900, Venable enlarged the student body, faculty and campus and built an administration for a growing institution. He asked for leave in 1913 and resigned in 1914, returning to teaching and research.
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Fraternity members make up about 18 percent of UNC students
In 1900 the university counted 93 fraternity men against 419 non-members, yet the fraternities ran much of student life, including the athletic association that published the Tar Heel.
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Julian S. Carr gives the university the Carr Building
At the 1900 commencement the trustees accepted the Carr Building, a three-story dormitory that Julian S. Carr paid for at a cost of $18,000. It was designed by Pearson and Ashe and housed seventy-four students.
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Lloyd and Neville's cotton gin operates on Laurel Street
The gin occupied the lot at 108 Laurel Street from the first years of the century into the 1930s. When it was dismantled its materials are said to have gone into houses, perhaps the two porcelain-enamel-tile houses at 108 and 110 Laurel Street.
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Marcia Louise Latham wins the mathematics department's Holt Medal
Latham took the department's top award only three years after women were first admitted. Dean reports that department head William Cain, who had expected no women in his classes, changed his mind about them.
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Mill owner Isaac W. Pritchard builds a large frame house on Ransom Street
Isaac Pritchard, who ran one of the first textile mills near the Carrboro depot, built a spacious house at 400 Ransom Street combining a hipped roof and Palladian dormer with a Queen Anne entrance and wraparound porch. Most of his land later became part of the Westwood subdivision.
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Mount Hermon, Bethel and Crossroads Baptist congregations build new churches
With farm prices rising after 1900, three established rural Baptist congregations each replaced their meeting houses with new buildings in the first decade of the century.
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Orange County replaces log schoolhouses and opens forty rural libraries
Between 1900 and 1910 the county went from no rural libraries to forty. Log schoolhouses for white children fell from twenty-two to none, while those for Black children fell only from twenty to eight. School terms grew from seventy to eighty-nine days for white pupils and from sixty-five to eighty-two for Black pupils.
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Orange County's number of farms falls from 2,044 to 1,967
Between the 1900 and 1910 censuses the county lost 77 farms, which the bulletin read as land gathering into fewer hands. In 1910 nine owners held 500 to 999 acres each and three held more than 1,000.
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Pender Store is moved across the road at Cedar Grove
In 1900 the Pender Store building was moved to the other side of the road, where it still stands.
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Southern Railway begins buying cross ties from farmers at the Carrboro depot
In the 1900s the Southern Railway began buying hand-hewn oak cross ties at the depot, where its agent graded them and paid the farmers who hauled them in from Orange and nearby counties. By the early 1920s Carrboro was among the largest tie markets in the East, and tie wagons crowded its streets into the early 1930s.
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St. Matthew's receives a brass alms basin in memory of Rev. Joseph W. Murphy
Dr. Samuel W. Murphy and Mrs. Walter E. Stumph, the former rector's brother and daughter, gave a brass alms basin in his memory.
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The 1900 census counts 14,690 people in Orange County, 707 in Hillsborough and 1,099 in Chapel Hill
Figures from the 1900 census put Orange County's population at 14,690, a fall of 258 in ten years, while Hillsborough grew by 45 to 707 and Chapel Hill by 82 to 1,099. Chapel Hill and Hillsborough were the county's only towns.
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The Blackwood family settles the farm that becomes the Blackwood Brothers Dairy
From the early twentieth century the Blackwoods held a farm on Mount Carmel Church Road with a story-and-a-half house and a complete set of log and frame farm and dairy buildings.
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The Bradsher House is built in northwest Orange County
The one-story Bradsher House, a plain cottage given a shingled center gable and factory-made porch trim, dates from about 1900.
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The Carr Store is built on NC 49
A store is built at Carr on NC 49 early in the twentieth century; it was later enlarged and altered. Carr Store Road takes its name from the crossroads.
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The Foxes Knob schoolhouse is enlarged and becomes a house
Soon after 1900 the one-room log Foxes Knob School near Mebane is enlarged; after its school years it served as a residence.
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The George Washington Walker Farm is laid out on St. Mary's Road
A farm of nearly 75 acres was set up on both sides of St. Mary's Road around 1900, with a one-story house and frame barns that still stand. Its later buildings follow the county's shifts from grain to dairy, poultry and beef.
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The Lloyd-Webb Building goes up on the south side of East Franklin Street
This row of two-story brick shops at 138-142 East Franklin Street, with stepped brick cornices and two-over-two windows upstairs, dates from about 1900. The store at 144 next door was built to the same pattern.
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The Morrow-Neville House is built on Mallette Street
The two-story hip-roofed house at 118 Mallette Street, with a small rear ell and a square-columned porch that are probably original, dates from about 1900.
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The Southern Stone Company works a quarry on Occoneechee Mountain
A quarry begun on the mountain in the late 1800s was run around the turn of the century by the Southern Stone Company of Culpeper, Virginia. Convicts did much of the work, and a narrow-gauge rail bed ran on three levels down to a rock crusher by the river. Quarrying went on at least until about 1910.
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The Sparrow family builds a two-story farmhouse on Old Lystra Road
Around 1900 a frame I-house was built on the Sparrow farm, reportedly around a smaller house from before the Civil War. The family had held the place from the start.
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The Texas community builds Jeffries Cross Church and Martin's Chapel Baptist Church
Around the turn of the twentieth century the community built two churches on land given by Joe and Levi Jeffries and by Sam Martin, in place of the circuit riding preachers who had served the settlement before. Social life in the community turned on its churches and its school.
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The Thomas Laws House is built in the Little River community
A two-story T-shaped farmhouse with a wraparound porch was built for the Laws family in the Little River community around the turn of the century.
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The Walter Hawkins farmstead with its tobacco barns takes shape near Caldwell
The Walter Hawkins farm near Caldwell is laid out around 1900 and keeps several tobacco barns the survey singled out. It is on the Study List.
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The Warriole-Tilley House is built on Mallette Street
The one-story frame house at 113 Mallette Street, with a center front gable, a tall hip-roofed rear ell and a bracketed porch that looks original, dates from about 1900.
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The William Woods McDade House is built in the Cedar Grove area
Around 1900 a story-and-a-half house with a decorated center gable, a cutaway bay and a wraparound porch with turned posts was built near Cedar Grove. The county survey knows it as the William Woods McDade House, though William Woods McDade himself died in 1862; the 1993 survey form dates it about 1890.
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Tobacco farmer Ira Rogers builds tenant housing in upper Orange County
In the early 1900s Ira Rogers built many frame and log houses for the tenants who worked his tobacco land. One that survives has two stories, a chimney in the middle and two front doors, which suggests it housed two families.
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William Cole builds a house near Chapel Hill as a wedding present for his daughter
In 1900 William Cole gave his daughter a new one-story house near Chapel Hill, covered in patterned shingles and trimmed with turned porch work. Mattson calls it the showiest house of its kind in the county.
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William Edgar Shambley builds a log house near his grandfather's
About 1900 William Edgar Shambley, grandson of William Shambley, built a one-room log house of the usual local type at Cornwallis and Mount Hermon Church roads, a sign that log building went on into the new century.
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A state Supreme Court ruling unseats a legislature-named school director in Orange
Following a North Carolina Supreme Court decision on the 1899 school act, the county board reorganized: director Stephen Forrest lost his seat and A. R. Holmes of the old Board of Education returned to finish a term running to July 1900.
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Orange County tobacco growers form a county association
Tobacco farmers meeting at Hillsborough organized a county Tobacco Growers' Association, with A. L. Holden of Little River Township as chairman and W. L. McDade of Cedar Grove Township as secretary. They chose M. W. Moore, A. L. Holden, James M. Monk, L. S. Watkins and a Mr. Walker as delegates to the state growers' convention at Raleigh on January 17.
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The county board counts 5,056 school children and divides the school fund
The County Board of Education finished apportioning the general school fund of $6,572.80 among the townships at $1.30 for each child of school age. The new school census counted 5,056 children, 3,304 white and 1,752 Black, about 400 more than the last count. The county's $710.80 share of the legislature's special $100,000 school appropriation was held back until the state money came in.
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A case of smallpox breaks out at the University
A medical student from Mount Airy came down with smallpox a few days after returning to the University from the Christmas vacation, and the University took steps to keep it from spreading. By early February he had recovered and gone home, and Chapel Hill was reported free of the disease.
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Julian S. Carr's gift clears the last debt on the Chapel Hill Methodist church
A gift from Julian S. Carr let the Methodist church at Chapel Hill pay off the last of its debt.
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The school board rules the Cannadas' Chapel Hill school is not a public school
The Chapel Hill district had contracted J. W. and C. S. Cannada to teach all its school-age children, but the teachers had not met the school law. The board declared the school was not a public school and withheld pay until they complied.
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William Jennings Bryan speaks at Chapel Hill
William Jennings Bryan, the Democrats' 1896 candidate for president, spoke at Chapel Hill the day after giving two speeches in Raleigh.
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Smallpox reaches Hillsborough and the postmaster's house is quarantined
Dr. William Strudwick and Dr. C. D. Jones, the county superintendent of health, found that Postmaster J. Clyde Cheek had smallpox, perhaps caught from handling the mail. The town commissioners then met and, since Hillsborough had no health officer of its own, acted under Dr. Jones to cut the Cheek house off from the public. Everyone on the premises was vaccinated, no other town case followed, and Cheek was well and out again by late March.
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Smallpox appears among telephone-line workers near University Station and White Cross
After a first case near University Station on February 19, two more smallpox cases turned up among Black workmen building the telephone line between Hillsborough and Greensboro, one near University Station and one between White Cross and Chapel Hill. On February 24 Dr. Harrill of Statesville, a smallpox expert, went out with county health superintendent Dr. C. D. Jones and confirmed both University Station cases; a suspected case in Brownsville, west of Hillsborough, proved to be measles. The county had no pest house, so each patient was quarantined at home and everyone exposed was vaccinated.
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Miners strike a vein of ore 120 feet thick at the Chapel Hill iron mine
Miners at the iron mine at Chapel Hill, leased by the Empire Iron and Steel Works of Greensboro, struck a vein of ore 120 feet thick. A shaft was being sunk to 200 feet with tunnels every 40 feet, and the mine was expected to turn out 200 tons a day once it was done.
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University trustees decide to keep the University open all year
The University trustees decided that the University would hold continuous sessions, lengthening the summer school to cover June, July, August and part of September so that it stayed open the whole year.
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Orange commissioners buy land for a smallpox pest house
On the advice of county physician Dr. C. D. Jones, the Orange commissioners bought 15 acres south of the railroad, a mile from Hillsborough, at $4 an acre and ordered a two-room pest house built there at once for smallpox patients. The tract had belonged to William Wheaton, a Black landowner.
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Gen. Francis H. Cameron is buried at St. Matthew's in Hillsborough
The body of Gen. Francis H. Cameron, a Hillsborough-born Confederate officer who died at his Richmond home on March 31, was brought to Hillsborough on April 2 and buried in St. Matthew's churchyard after a funeral in the church the next morning.
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Orange Democrats instruct their state delegates for a Senate primary
The Orange Democratic county convention, with C. W. Johnston in the chair, elected 21 delegates to the state convention, endorsed Charles B. Aycock for governor and unanimously instructed the delegates to work for a primary at the November election to choose a United States senator.
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Grippe kills four aged inmates of the Orange County Home
On their quarterly visit to the County Home for the Aged and Infirm on April 3, the county commissioners found a grippe epidemic there that had killed four very old inmates within ten days.
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Herbert Lloyd takes charge of the Chapel Hill post office
Herbert Lloyd became postmaster at Chapel Hill in April 1900; he had just taken charge when burglars blew open the office safe on April 18.
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Hillsborough re-elects Mayor Joseph A. Harris over William Strain
Hillsborough voters re-elected Democrat Joseph A. Harris mayor over Republican William Strain, 91 to 60, and elected the Democratic board of S. J. Lynch, James A. Cheek, James Webb Sr., E. A. Rosemond, O. J. Forrest, E. G. Sherrill and James H. Hedgpeth.
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Chapel Hill re-elects Mayor A. S. Barbee and its board
Chapel Hill's town election returned Mayor Algernon S. Barbee and the sitting board of commissioners, which was carrying out extensive street improvements.
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President Alderman resigns to head Tulane University
Offered the Tulane presidency in April 1900 at more than twice his Chapel Hill pay, Alderman resigned in May despite the trustees' pleas. The book suggests thin state funding after the 1898 campaign, when Democrats promised the church colleges not to seek more for the university, weighed on his decision.
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Orange Democrats nominate Samuel M. Gattis and the 1900 county ticket
The Orange Democratic county convention nominated Samuel M. Gattis for the House, John K. Hughes for sheriff, John Laws for register of deeds, E. A. Dickson for treasurer, James O. Webb for surveyor, Dr. D. C. Parris for coroner and W. A. Maddry, J. M. Monk and James Laws Jr. for county commissioners.
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The university opens its first summer term of regular courses
For the first time the university offered a twelve-week summer term of regular courses that counted toward a degree, opening on June 12, 1900, alongside the four-week Summer School for Teachers. Tuition was twenty dollars.
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Commencement marks twenty-five years since the university reopened
The 1900 commencement was given over to the reopening of 1875, with nineteen members of the 1875-76 student body present and addresses by Kemp Battle, George T. Winston, W. J. Peele and President Alderman.
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Charles B. Aycock addresses a White Supremacy rally at Hillsborough
Charles B. Aycock, Democratic candidate for governor, spoke for two hours in the court house yard at Hillsborough for the suffrage amendment before a crowd put at 3,000 voters plus women and children. A horseback parade met him at the depot, the Gate City Brass Band of Greensboro played, and the Eno Cotton Mill and town businesses shut for the day.
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David Blount, sexton of St. Matthew's, dies in Hillsborough
David Blount, a Black Hillsborough man of about 70 who served as sexton of St. Matthew's Church, died on July 16. He had been Gov. William A. Graham's butler in Raleigh and Washington, went to the front in 1865 to attend two wounded Graham sons, and was with the Confederates who surrendered at Appomattox.
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Orange County narrowly votes down the suffrage amendment
In the state election the official Orange County canvass showed the suffrage amendment losing in the county by a handful of votes and the Fusion state ticket carrying it by two to nine votes, while Democrats won the legislative seats and county offices; Samuel M. Gattis beat Thomas E. Sparrow for the House, 1,488 to 1,420, and Sheriff John K. Hughes was re-elected.
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The State Farmers' Alliance, meeting near Hillsborough, asks for four-month schools and a child labor ban
Meeting at its headquarters near Hillsborough with its largest attendance in two years, the North Carolina Farmers' State Alliance petitioned the legislature for a special tax to keep public schools open four months, permanent support and free tuition at the state colleges, compulsory school attendance, a ban on employing young children in manufacturing, and reformatories for young offenders.
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The Alliance sells part of its shoe factory machinery and shuts the plant
The Farmers' State Alliance reported at its annual meeting that part of the machinery in its shoe factory near Hillsborough had been sold and that the factory would not reopen, for some time at least.
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The Hillsboro Milling Company is chartered
The Hillsboro Milling and Manufacturing Company raised its cash and organized in early August 1900, with Dr. C. D. Jones as president, Dr. J. S. Spurgeon as vice president and H. W. Webb as secretary and treasurer, and the state granted its charter, with $10,000 in capital stock, about August 16. It planned a roller mill and a shuttle-block factory in the Webbs' brick building east of the courthouse. By early 1901 it had put in a corn mill and was buying wheat.
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Hillsboro Township petitions for and votes a special road tax
A petition presented on October 1, 1900 led to an election that carried, and the commissioners levied 10 cents per $100 and 30 cents a poll for Hillsboro Township roads. Bingham followed, and by 1903 all seven townships taxed themselves for roads.
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Thomas Wolfe, who came to Chapel Hill as a student in 1916, was born
Thomas Wolfe was born in Asheville and entered UNC in 1916.
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Hillsboro's commissioners refuse to deed the old Female Academy to the town school
The board had asked the town to deed the old Hillsboro Female Academy lot, near E. A. Rosemond's house, to the school committee. The town offered only a ten-year lease, which the board said the law did not allow it to accept, and it told the committee to find another site.
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Hillsborough Baptist Church ordains Robert P. Walker
The church ordained one of its own, Robert P. Walker, to the Baptist ministry, the first of the ordinations the book lists for the congregation.
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Chapel Hill gets its first long-distance telephone
Through the efforts of Professor Joshua W. Gore, the first long-distance telephone line was set up at the university during the 1900-01 session, connecting by way of Durham.
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Charles E. Maddry serves as superintendent of the Orange County schools
While a student at the University of North Carolina, Charles Edward Maddry served as superintendent of the Orange County schools.
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Clyde Eubanks moves his drugstore into a building of his own
Eubanks left the Central Hotel and set up his drugstore in a new building he had put up on the west corner of the Tankersley property on Franklin Street.
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Eben Alexander has the first telephone in Chapel Hill
Bryant lists Professor Eben Alexander, who lived in the old Tom Taylor house on East Franklin Street, as the first in town to have a telephone; in 1901 his number was 1.
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Fairfield Presbyterian Church is remodeled with pointed Gothic windows
The one-story frame church near Cedar Grove, built about 1834, kept its gable-front shape but got pointed-arch windows and doorway in a 1901 renovation.
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Gerrard Hall is renovated and its south portico torn down
Gerrard Hall got a new roof and interior: chairs replaced the pews, the old doors were walled up and two new doors opened on the east. The decaying south porch and its columns were pulled down.
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Isaac Hall Manning joins the UNC medical faculty
Manning came to the School of Medicine in 1901 as professor of physiology and began teaching bacteriology in 1902.
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John W. Canada's school closes and its building becomes a rooming house
The John W. Canada School closed, and the old building on the southwest corner of Franklin and Columbia streets where it had met became a rooming house. The brick building beside it was used as a Masonic hall.
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Josephus Daniels serves on the University of North Carolina board of trustees
Daniels became a member of the university board of trustees in 1901 and remained an active trustee until his death in 1948. During the 1920s he pressed for consolidating the state colleges at Chapel Hill, Raleigh and Greensboro into one university, and in 1930 he championed Frank P. Graham to succeed Harry Woodburn Chase as president.
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Lincoln Hospital opens in Durham for Black patients
Dr. Aaron Moore and John Merrick won Duke family funding for a separate hospital where Black physicians and nurses treated Black patients, after Watts Hospital had excluded them. It opened in 1901 as a 50-bed frame building.
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Segregation and access to medical care
Black patients in the county went to Durham’s Lincoln Hospital from 1901, well-baby clinics were held separately in the 1940s, and the new hospitals of the 1950s opened with separate wards. UNC admitted its first Black medical student in 1951, the NAACP picketed Memorial Hospital in 1963, and the hospital ended racial segregation in 1965.
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The Alumni Building is finished
The Alumni Building was completed in 1901 with fourteen lecture rooms and the university's administrative offices. Venable put its cost at $36,000.
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The Mary Ann Smith Dormitory is completed
The Mary Ann Smith Dormitory was finished in 1901, adding thirty-eight student rooms. Venable later gave its cost as $16,000.
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The Yackety Yack replaces the fraternity-sponsored Hellenian as UNC's yearbook
The Hellenian, the yearbook put out by the fraternities, gave way in 1901 to the Yackety Yack.
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The pharmacy department is made part of the university
The department of pharmacy, run by Dean Edward V. Howell, was formally incorporated into the university in 1901. Its laboratory and lecture space was then doubled.
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The university completes its water works, sewerage and central heating plant
During 1900-01 the university finished its water works and sewer system, installed a forced-circulation hot-water heating plant, and built a boiler house, workshop and printing office. Two new dynamos doubled its electric lighting.
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The university track team wins the Southern championship at New Orleans
Running on a cinder track given by student Henry S. Lake, a university track team competed at New Orleans against Vanderbilt, Tulane and Texas and won the Southern championship.
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Thomas F. Lloyd gives a church lot facing his mill to Chapel Hill's four congregations
Lloyd offered a Weaver Street lot to the Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists and Methodists of Chapel Hill. The first two gave up their rights, and the Baptists and Methodists built Union Chapel on it in 1901 or 1902, a frame building about twenty by thirty feet.
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J. W. Goodman preaches his first sermons as pastor of the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church
Rev. J. W. Goodman, who had been pastor of the Presbyterian church at High Point for two or three years, preached two sermons at Hillsborough as the new pastor of the Presbyterian church. His installation was set for the first Sunday in February.
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The Hillsboro school committee buys the town's first public schoolhouse and lot
The committee bought a house on a two-acre lot, known as the Wash Bruce or Gill lot, from E. S. Cooley for $500. Pender says Hillsboro had never before owned a school building; the county board furnished it and paid for repairs.
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The school board refuses to let Mormon elders preach in county schoolhouses
Among grievances heard in January 1901, the board went on record against allowing Mormon missionaries to preach in Orange County school buildings.
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The American Bridge Company replaces the railroad bridge over the West Eno with a heavier iron bridge
A crew of about thirty men from the American Bridge Company of Pennsylvania tore out the old Southern Railway bridge over the West Eno, about two miles west of Hillsborough, and began putting up a much heavier iron bridge, which was expected to be finished about March 1.
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Harriet Berry works for the state Geological and Economic Survey in Chapel Hill
Berry began work in Chapel Hill with the North Carolina Geological and Economic Survey in 1901 and rose from stenographer to secretary and, in 1917, acting head. She left in 1921, the year her Good Roads lobbying produced the state highway commission law.
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Jesse Ruffin, coachman and stagecoach driver, dies
Jesse Ruffin died in his nineties at his grandson Lindsey Faucette's house, out between Hillsborough and Durham. The Durham Sun remembered him as Judge Ruffin's servant and later Paul Cameron's, and a stagecoach driver before the railroad came; he was carried to Hillsborough by train for burial.
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Fire destroys James A. Cheek's stores
Fire destroyed the stores of Hillsborough merchant James A. Cheek on March 17, 1901; in January 1902 Cheek offered a $300 reward for evidence to convict whoever set it.
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Lightning kills Black schoolteacher Alston A. Whitted near Hillsborough
Alston A. Whitted, a well-known Black schoolteacher, and his horse were killed by lightning between noon and 1 p.m. as he rode through the Strudwick plantation, about a mile south of Hillsborough and half a mile from his home. Their bodies were not found for two or three hours.
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The legislature amends Hillsborough's charter, cutting the town board to five and setting a $100 liquor license
The General Assembly passed an amendment to Hillsborough's town charter that reduced the board of town commissioners from seven members to five and fixed the town liquor license at $100 a year. Mayor Harris had prepared the changes in January for Representative S. M. Gattis to carry to Raleigh.
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The university catalogue reports a record 529 students
The University of North Carolina's catalogue for 1900-1901, issued from the university press in March, counted 529 students apart from the summer school: 391 in the academic department, 64 in law, 42 in medicine and 32 in pharmacy, the largest enrollment in its history.
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A post office called Mohan opens in Little River Township
A new post office named Mohan was established in Little River Township, seven miles east of Hillsborough, with E. Marvin Lockhart as postmaster.
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Hillsborough elects Mayor Norwood and a five-member town board under its amended charter
In the first town election under the amended charter, Hillsborough chose Mayor Norwood and Commissioners James Webb, James A. Cheek, O. J. Forrest, N. W. Brown and Fletcher R. Faucett, with Brown polling 92 votes. The new board took the oath on May 9, elected R. L. Faucett clerk and re-elected Dr. J. S. Spurgeon treasurer.
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Mayor Norwood breaks a tie to license Hillsborough's three saloons for another year
With Commissioner Fletcher R. Faucett absent, the town board split two to two on James A. Cheek's motion to license William F. Jackson, Theodore Turner and Cheek himself to sell liquor for twelve months from July 1, and Mayor Norwood cast the deciding vote for the licenses. James Webb and Cheek voted yes and N. W. Brown and O. J. Forrest voted no; the county commissioners granted the three their retail licenses on July 1.
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County commissioners order new bridges over New Hope Creek, Cane Creek and Little River
The Orange County commissioners ordered new bridges built over New Hope Creek at Robson Station, over Cane Creek near Oaks, and over Little River at Anderson Toler's. At the same meeting they settled with the county treasurer and revised the jury list.
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Hillsborough's Daughters of the Confederacy hold Memorial Day on Jefferson Davis's birthday
Bad weather having prevented the observance on May 10, the Gen. George B. Anderson Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy held Memorial Day on June 3. Boys set small battle flags and women and girls strewed flowers on the graves of 24 Confederate soldiers in the Episcopal churchyard, those in the Presbyterian churchyard and more in the town cemetery.
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Archibald Henderson receives the first Ph.D. in mathematics from UNC
Archibald Henderson, who had graduated from UNC in 1898, received the university's first doctorate in mathematics at the June 1901 commencement. He stayed on the Chapel Hill faculty until 1948.
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County commissioners stop aid to the outside poor unless they apply in person
The Orange County commissioners ordered that no help be given to the outside poor unless they applied in person or sent a certificate from reliable authority that they could not. Sitting as a pension board the same day, they approved 27 of 28 Confederate soldiers' applications and all 27 widows', against 16 soldiers and 26 widows on the county list the year before.
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A school district is created south of White Cross on donated land
The board approved a new district south of White Cross whose land and building were given on condition that they revert when no longer used for a public school, with Sunday school and preaching allowed. Children of the Old Field school were moved to it.
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A new law makes hunting on another's land in Orange County without written consent a misdemeanor
Chapter 410 of the Public Laws of 1901 made it a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of $5 to $10, to hunt game with or without dog, gun, net or trap on another person's land in Orange County without the written consent of the owner or his agent. The act took effect on August 1, 1901.
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Josiah Turner Jr. dies at his Hillsborough home
Josiah Turner Jr., former Confederate congressman and editor of the Raleigh Sentinel, died at his home in Hillsborough and was buried in the churchyard of St. Matthew's Church.
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Eleven Black convicts work Orange County's public roads under overseer W. P. Riley
Orange County had eleven Black convicts at work on its public roads under overseer W. P. Riley, and the October term of superior court sentenced five more men to the county roads.
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State aid pays for six rural school libraries in Orange County
The state issued warrants for its share of 210 rural school libraries, and Orange County received help for its full quota of six: five for white schools and one for a Black school at Chapel Hill.
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The Methodist conference sends J. T. Draper to the Hillsborough Circuit
The North Carolina Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, appointed Rev. J. T. Draper to the Hillsborough Circuit and sent the circuit's pastor, Rev. E. W. Fox, to the Garysburg Circuit.
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A Pilgrim Holiness congregation is organized in West Hillsborough
A Holiness congregation, later the Pilgrim Holiness Church of West Hillsborough, was organized in 1902. It had a 250-seat building and 27 members in 1953.
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Charles E. Maddry is pastor of First Baptist Church, Hillsborough
Charles Edward Maddry was pastor of the First Baptist Church in Hillsborough while finishing his studies at the University of North Carolina.
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Merchant B. B. Forrest has a Victorian cottage built on North Wake Street
A one-story T-shaped cottage with shingled gables and bracketed porches was built for B. B. Forrest, partner in the O. J. and B. B. Forrest general store, about the year he married Mollie Belle Smith of Leasburg. The 2014 district update calls it a rare, intact example of a T-shaped Victorian cottage.
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S. J. Brockwell builds a three-story brick building at Franklin and Columbia streets
Samuel Jackson Brockwell put up a three-story brick building on the northeast corner of Franklin and Columbia streets. Its first tenant, Samuel Weldon Andrews, took both ground-floor storefronts, with groceries on the Columbia Street side and dry goods on the other.
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Shepperd Strudwick brings his family back to Hillsborough
Shepperd Strudwick, a native of Hillsborough, returned to the town with his family when his son Clement, born in Tennessee in April 1900, was two.
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The university offers the clinical years of medicine in Raleigh
From 1902 to 1910 the university tried offering the two clinical years and an M.D. degree, but those courses were taught in Raleigh rather than Chapel Hill. Otherwise it gave only the first two years of medicine until 1952.
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The university withdraws from the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association
After two years as a member, the university left the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association in 1902. Its schools lay in Tennessee, South Carolina and farther south, out of touch with Chapel Hill.
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Walter Dallam Toy builds a new house on West Franklin Street
Newly married, Professor Toy built a new house on the land he had bought from Julia Graves. In 1912 Robert B. House noted it near the corner of Church Street.
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Cedar Grove district finishes a new $279 schoolhouse with county help
The board paid $150 from the general fund toward the new schoolhouse of Cedar Grove District No. 6, which cost $279.
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The county pays $214 toward a schoolhouse at Pleasant Green
The board paid Pleasant Green, District No. 1 of Little River Township, $214 for its school building.
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The county school board reports nine new schoolhouses and six rural libraries
Meeting at Hillsborough to apportion the school fund, the Orange County Board of Education reported nine new schoolhouses built in the past year: seven paid from the general fund, one paid by its district under the old law, and one given with an acre of land by George Pickard of White Cross. It also had six rural libraries running, the most the law allowed, and planned six more houses for 1902, though building costs left too little money for four-month terms for the county's 4,847 school-age children.
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Hillsborough's new railroad depot nears completion
A new railroad depot at Hillsborough, replacing the old one, was all but finished in late January 1902 and was expected to be a considerable improvement.
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Caldwell Institute starts a school library
Under Prof. Roberts, its head since August 1901, Caldwell Institute started a library with help from the school's society and well-wishers as the academy recovered from two unsettled years.
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Southern Bell puts a telephone in James Webb's store at Hillsborough
The Southern Bell Telephone Company installed a telephone for Hillsborough in the store of James Webb.
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Teacher Lizzie Holden publishes the song McKinley's Gone
Lizzie Holden, a county school teacher and daughter of A. L. Holden of Little River Township, published a song with music, McKinley's Gone, sold at the Hillsboro Bookstore for fifty cents.
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The state charters the Blanche Hosiery Mills Company at West End
The secretary of state issued a charter to the Blanche Hosiery Mills Company, formed by W. R. Lloyd, T. J. Hogan, John Lloyd and W. E. Lindsay to make hosiery. The company began on $6,500 in stock, with leave to raise it to $15,000.
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Van Fuller gets thirty years for burning S. P. Kirkpatrick's barn
At the spring term of Orange Superior Court, Van Fuller, a Black man arrested in Virginia in January for barn burnings in the county, pleaded guilty to burning S. P. Kirkpatrick's barn and was sentenced to thirty years in the penitentiary. The same term sent Winnie Leak to the penitentiary for twenty years for arson.
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Buckhorn residents build an academy that will also house the public school
The board approved a Gravelly Hill committee's plan to build an academy at Buckhorn and locate the public school there, retiring the old Buckhorn schoolhouse. The trustees guaranteed the board use of the building for school purposes permanently.
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Caldwell Institute gets a large new school district
A committee from Caldwell Institute asked for one district made from parts of the Wilson, Little River and Poplar Grove districts. The board approved and had the boundary surveyed.
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Kemp P. Battle settles Mary Ruffin Smith's estate at Hillsborough
Kemp P. Battle, an executor of Mary Ruffin Smith, settled her estate in full at Hillsborough after collecting more than $18,000; the residuary legatees, the two Episcopal dioceses of North Carolina, received about $6,500 each.
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The university catalogue counts 563 students and three new departments
The university's new catalogue listed 563 students besides 92 in the summer school (415 in the college, 61 in law, 62 in medicine and 29 in pharmacy) and a faculty of 58, and recorded new departments of economics, Romance languages and botany, a four-year medical course, two new buildings and a central heating plant.
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Unpaid poll tax keeps 875 Orange men from voting
When the May 1 deadline passed, Sheriff John K. Hughes reported that 375 white and 500 Black men in Orange County had not paid their 1901 poll tax, which under the new suffrage amendment barred them from voting that November.
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Charles E. Maddry is ordained at the Chapel Hill Baptist Church
Charles Edward Maddry was ordained to the Baptist ministry at the Chapel Hill Baptist Church, now University Baptist Church.
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Lightning burns the race track barn at Occoneechee Farm
During an electrical storm, lightning struck the "Pocahontas" or race track barn on Julian Carr's Occoneechee Farm, destroying it with its feed and farm machinery. No livestock were inside, and the loss was insured.
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The Blanche Hosiery Company builds its own knitting mill near the West End depot
After more than a year in the upper story of Tom Lloyd's cotton mill, the Blanche Hosiery Company put up a $1,500 building of its own near the depot and planned to move in about July 1. The owners said Lloyd charged too much for power.
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A northeast windstorm tears two limbs from the Davie Poplar
A fierce wind from the northeast on August 6, 1902, destroyed many old trees on the campus and tore two large limbs from the Davie Poplar. The tree later put out new growth.
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The State Farmers' Alliance meets at Hillsborough and moves its business office to Raleigh
Meeting at Hillsborough, the State Farmers' Alliance re-elected T. B. Parker secretary-treasurer and state business agent and decided to move the business agent's office to Raleigh while keeping its headquarters at Hillsborough.
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Orange Democrats name their 1902 county ticket
The largest Democratic county convention in years met at the court house and nominated W. N. Pritchard for the state Senate, S. M. Gattis for the House, D. H. Hamilton for clerk, Sheriff John K. Hughes for another term, John Laws for register of deeds, M. A. McCauley for treasurer over the sitting treasurer E. A. Dickson, and Thomas H. Wilson, A. F. Andrews and B. H. McKee for county commissioners.
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Orange County holds separate institutes for its white and Black teachers
Required teachers' institutes met at Hillsborough for a week, the white teachers in the court house under Prof. C. C. Crittenden of Wake Forest College and the Black teachers in a hall west of the court house under Prof. Charles H. Boyer of Raleigh, a Yale graduate, with large attendance at both. On August 23 State Superintendent J. Y. Joyner addressed the teachers of both institutes before one of the largest crowds seen in Hillsborough in years, urging consolidated districts and local school taxes.
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Daniel Morrow, Hillsborough's Black barber, dies
Daniel Morrow, the well-known Black barber of Hillsborough, died at his home of Bright's disease aged forty-five, leaving a widow and four daughters; his funeral at the A.M.E. church drew a large Black congregation and some of his white friends.
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Orange Republicans elect Luico Lloyd county chairman
The Orange County Republican convention at Hillsborough chose delegates to the state and district conventions and adjourned to name a ticket later; a resolution by Henry N. Brown Sr. against supporting anyone who accepted the 1900 suffrage amendment as final was not acted on. The county executive committee then accepted D. F. Crawford's resignation as chairman and elected Luico Lloyd of Bingham Township chairman and W. E. Lindsay of Chapel Hill secretary.
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The county elections board creates St. Mary's precinct and moves two polling places
The Orange County Board of Elections merged the Pleasant Green and Orange Academy precincts of Little River Township into a new St. Mary's precinct voting at St. Mary's school house, moved the West Hillsboro polling place from J. W. Hooker's store to John Christmas's store on King Street, and moved the Patterson's precinct polling place in Chapel Hill Township to Joseph J. Whitfield's store.
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Orange Republicans name a county ticket
The reconvened Orange County Republican convention nominated E. N. Cates of Bingham Township for register of deeds, George W. Tate for surveyor, and William E. Hall, B. C. Patton and J. P. Teer for county commissioners, leaving the nomination for sheriff to the county executive committee.
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The first Yearly Union Picnic of Orange draws nearly a hundred Confederate veterans to Efland
The first Yearly Union Picnic of Orange, organized by the county's Christian Temperance Union for its white citizens and especially its Confederate veterans, was held at Efland; nearly a hundred old soldiers attended, and the Hillsborough chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy helped feed them.
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Mayor Norwood surfaces Hillsborough's sidewalks and crossings with crushed stone
Hillsborough's mayor, Norwood, had the town's streets, crossings and sidewalks repaired, surfacing the sidewalks and crossings with gravel from the Southern Stone Company's works; more money, the paper said, would buy more lasting work before winter.
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Caldwell asks for an election on a rural graded school
The Caldwell community asked for a vote on establishing a rural graded school, and the board asked the county commissioners to call the election.
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Baptists organize Union Chapel in West End
On land Thomas Lloyd deeded for churches, Baptists and Methodists shared a small Weaver Street building on alternate Sundays, and the Baptists organized as Union Chapel with seventeen charter members; the congregation became Venable Baptist in 1911 and Carrboro Baptist in 1914.
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Hillsborough subscribers and the county school board fund a new public schoolhouse
Townspeople answered County Superintendent Charles E. Maddry's appeal with subscriptions for a new public schoolhouse at Hillsborough, where children were being turned away for lack of room, and the county board of education pledged to match every dollar so the house could be built at once; Maddry then advertised for building bids.
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J. William Jones leaves Chapel Hill for Richmond
The Rev. J. William Jones, the Confederate chaplain, moved with his family from Chapel Hill to Richmond, Virginia, to become secretary of the Confederate Memorial Association.
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Democrats carry Orange and Sheriff Hughes beats an independent challenger
Orange County went Democratic again in the general election: Sheriff John K. Hughes, against whom the hardest fight was made, defeated James M. Atwater, a Democrat running as an independent, and the rest of the Democratic county and legislative ticket won. W. N. Pritchard and R. L. Walker carried the Nineteenth Senatorial District over Thomas J. Oldham of Orange and J. E. Lyon of Durham.
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Charles Baskerville announces two new elements, carolinium and berzelium
Baskerville's research at the university on thorium and other rare earths led him in 1903 to announce two previously unknown elements, which he named carolinium and berzelium.
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Charles T. Woollen becomes the first director of the university band
Charles T. Woollen, a university administrator, became the first director of the university band in 1903 and led it until 1919. The band first performed at a university baseball game in 1904 and was giving concerts on the Alumni Building steps by 1906.
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Edward Vernon Howell owns Chapel Hill's first automobile
Pharmacy dean Edward Vernon Howell, then living in the old Fetter house on East Franklin Street, became the first in town to own a car, a one-cylinder Oldsmobile.
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George Howe is elected professor of Latin at the university
The trustees elected George Howe, who held a Ph.D., professor of Latin for 1903-04 in place of Dr. H. F. Linscott, who had died in December. Howe kept the chair until 1936.
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Gooch's Café opens in Chapel Hill with seven seats
Gooch's Café began feeding university students in Chapel Hill about 1903, with seven seats by its own later account. It stayed a student gathering place for more than fifty years.
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John Sprunt Hill endows a fellowship in history
In his 1903 alumni address John Sprunt Hill gave the interest on $4,000 to set up a fellowship in the department of history. The first year's interest was to go toward a YMCA building.
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Mount Bright Baptist Church's first building burns
Fire destroyed Mount Bright Baptist Church's original building, on the lot Susan Graham had given the congregation. The 2014 Hillsborough Historic District documentation places that first church on South Churton Street near the Eno, before the congregation moved to West Union Street early in the twentieth century.
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Sidney W. Crabtree starts a farm on land from the Smith plantation
A 54-acre farm on Smith Level Road was formed in 1903 from part of the old Smith plantation. Its Triple-A farmhouse and six outbuildings survive, and a graveyard there is thought to hold people enslaved on the plantation.
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The Bingham house is moved down East Union Street to clear the corner for Shepperd Strudwick's house
The 1831 William J. Bingham House is moved half a block east on East Union Street so that Shepperd Strudwick can build on its lot at the corner of Churton and Union. Much of the old house's outside dates from the move.
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The Martha Patterson House is built on McCauley Street
A two-story Triple-A house with a center front gable went up about 1903 at 223 McCauley Street. It takes its name from a former owner, Martha Patterson.
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William C. Coker begins turning a boggy pasture into the campus arboretum
UNC's first professor of botany began developing a five-acre boggy pasture on the campus into an outdoor classroom for the study of trees, shrubs and vines native to North Carolina. From the 1920s through the 1940s he added many East Asian trees and shrubs.
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Caldwell school district votes a special tax for a rural graded school
Voters in Caldwell District No. 5, Little River Township, approved a local tax for a rural graded school by 17 to 10, setting 30 cents on the $100 of property and 90 cents on each poll.
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The county board of education apportions the school fund and sets aside $1,000 for new schoolhouses
The Orange County Board of Education divided the year's school fund among about 4,700 children of school age and set aside more than $1,000 for new schoolhouses to be built in 1903.
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James Nichols begins building a new public schoolhouse for Hillsborough's white children
The Black contractor James Nichols began work on a new public school building for the white children of Hillsborough and expected to finish it in February.
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More than a hundred state convicts arrive to quarry railroad ballast on Occoneechee Mountain
Over a hundred convicts were brought from Mitchell County to Hillsborough to get out stone on Occoneechee Mountain for ballasting the North Carolina Railroad, and another gang came from Raleigh in February.
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A passenger train kills two Caswell County farmers at Scarlett's crossing
The eastbound afternoon passenger train struck a covered wagon at Scarlett's crossing east of University Station, killing W. A. Cooper and his nephew, a young man named Boland, both Caswell County farmers on their way home from the Durham tobacco market; the crossing, on a sharp curve and steep grade, was known as dangerous.
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Orange County receives $1,315 in state aid to keep its schools open four months
State Superintendent J. Y. Joyner sent Orange County $1,315 as its share of the $100,000 the General Assembly voted to bring the public schools up to a four-month term.
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Hillsborough's commissioners fire the police chief and elect J. C. Scott
After Chief of Police Stone took off his badge in a bar room and fought a man who dared him to, the town commissioners discharged him and elected J. C. Scott in his place.
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A guard kills a convict trying to escape from the Occoneechee Mountain stone works
A white state convict named Stevens, serving thirty years for murder, was shot dead by a guard named Blake when he broke for liberty as the convicts went to dinner at the stone works on Occoneechee Mountain.
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Hillsborough Methodist Church buys town lot 94 and its house for a new parsonage
The church bought lot 94, with a one-story five-room house, from James Webb, son of Dr. James Webb, and used it as the parsonage. The lot later held the 1958 parsonage.
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Contractor Haywood H. Thompson begins a weave mill and dye house at the Eno Cotton Mill
Haywood H. Thompson began making brick for a weave mill and dye house at the Eno Cotton Mill, planned to run about 400 looms and employ 75 to 100 more hands; by early June he was preparing the foundations.
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Hillsborough Methodists sell their Churton Street parsonage lot to Shepperd Strudwick
The trustees of the Hillsborough Methodist church sold the Churton Street house and lot used as the parsonage to Shepperd Strudwick, who planned to build a residence there, and moved the parsonage to the Webb house at Tryon and Wake streets.
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The county commissioners adopt a general road law and elect road supervisors
The Orange County commissioners adopted a general road law drafted by S. M. Gattis for working the public roads everywhere but Chapel Hill Township, which kept its own road law, and elected road supervisors for the townships.
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Hillsborough votes for prohibition for the first time and elects Joseph A. Harris mayor
For the first time in the town's history the prohibition ticket carried Hillsborough's election: Joseph A. Harris was elected mayor, and O. J. Forrest, N. W. Brown, P. H. Smith and A. F. Crabtree won on the prohibition ticket with James Webb on the license ticket, giving a board expected to refuse saloon licenses after July 1.
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The university confers its first Doctor of Medicine degrees
On the evening of May 7, 1903, Dean Hubert A. Royster presented four graduates of the Medical Department, and the M.D. degree was conferred for the first time in the university's history.
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Charles G. Rosemond takes charge of the Hillsborough post office
Charles G. Rosemond took over the Hillsborough post office from J. Clyde Cheek, who had resigned in March, after a contest among six Republican candidates; A. J. Gordon became assistant postmaster.
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Commissioners create Cheeks and Eno townships
Acting on a 1903 act, the county board carved Cheeks Township out of western Hillsboro Township and formed Eno River Township out of pieces of Hillsboro and Little River.
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Frank Nash publishes Hillsboro, Colonial and Revolutionary
Nash collected his articles on the town from the Charlotte Observer and the North Carolina Booklet into a book, printed in Raleigh by Edwards & Broughton. It was reprinted in 1953.
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Hillsborough's commissioners refuse every saloon license, making the town dry after June 30
The new town board unanimously refused the applications of James A. Cheek, Theodore Turner and H. Goodman to retail liquor, so that when the licenses ran out on June 30 Hillsborough would be dry for the first time.
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Hillsborough's barrooms close and the town goes dry
Hillsborough's saloons closed on the night of Tuesday, June 30, 1903, ending the legal sale of spirituous liquor in the town.
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Fire destroys John Christmas's store at King and Occoneechee streets
A one-story frame storehouse belonging to John Christmas at the northwest corner of King and Occoneechee streets burned to the ground between 11 and 12 o'clock on the night of July 10, 1903, with the stock of groceries kept there by a Mrs. Rosemond as agent.
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Orange County's Black teachers hold their institute at Hillsborough
The Orange County institute for Black teachers met at the court house in Hillsborough in the week of July 27, 1903, conducted by Prof. Charles H. Boyer of St. Augustine's School, Raleigh; on July 30 A. C. Burnett, a Black graduate of the A. and M. College at Greensboro raised near Ridge Church, spoke to it on agriculture.
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A monument is raised over Archibald D. Murphey's grave in the Presbyterian churchyard
By the start of July 1903 a monument had been erected over the grave of Judge Archibald D. Murphey in the Presbyterian churchyard at Hillsborough; his grandson Judge Archibald Aiken of Danville, Virginia, came to see it.
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Commissioners call a special school tax election in the Chapel Hill district
On August 3, 1903, the county commissioners ordered an election in the Chapel Hill school district on September 14 to learn whether its voters would levy a special school tax, naming John O'Daniel registrar and S. W. Andrews and J. D. Webb judges.
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Orange County physicians reorganize the county medical society
Meeting at the court house in Hillsborough on August 27, 1903, with Dr. Hubert A. Royster of Raleigh explaining the state society's plan, the county's physicians organized the Orange County Medical Society, with Dr. Isaac H. Manning president and Dr. C. D. Jones secretary, to meet quarterly. A county medical society had already petitioned the legislature in 1897.
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Major George P. Collins dies at Hillsborough
Maj. George P. Collins, son of Josiah Collins of Washington County and a Confederate quartermaster of Pettigrew's, later Kirkland's, brigade, died at his Hillsborough home on August 30, 1903, in his 58th year, and was buried in St. Matthew's churchyard on September 1.
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M. A. McCauley resigns as county treasurer and Ed. A. Dickson is elected
At their September 1903 session the county commissioners accepted the resignation of County Treasurer M. A. McCauley for failing health and elected former treasurer Ed. A. Dickson to the unexpired term, by two votes to one for McCauley's son Charles F. McCauley.
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The county school board merges districts for new schoolhouses at Efland and near Ridge
Meeting at Efland on September 18, 1903, the county board of education merged the Efland and Railroad districts and voted a two-room schoolhouse at Efland, merged the Occoneechee and Ridge districts with a schoolhouse to be built near M. C. Ray's, and obtained a loan from the State Board of Education to build both.
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Elm Grove district voters turn down a graded school tax
At an election held at Cates' mill in Chapel Hill Township on October 12, 1903, voters of the Elm Grove district rejected a special tax to establish a graded school, 19 to 16.
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B. C. Patton replaces Mrs. William Allison as Cedar Grove postmaster
By October 22, 1903, B. C. Patton, a member of the county Republican executive committee, had been appointed postmaster at Cedar Grove in place of Mrs. William Allison, the former postmaster Delia Findley, who had lately married a Democrat.
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Mars Hill Baptists build a new church north of Hillsborough
By late October 1903 the Baptists of Mars Hill, just north of Hillsborough, had built a new church. It was dedicated on Sunday, September 30, 1906, with Dr. Vann preaching.
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Two rural free delivery routes are laid out from Hillsborough
By October 8, 1903, two rural free delivery mail routes had been laid out from Hillsborough to start on October 15: Route 1 east by the Oxford road toward Overaker's corner, 20 3/4 miles serving 105 houses, with E. Marvin Lockhart as carrier, and Route 2 north through Cedar Grove and Heno, 21 miles serving 104 houses, with Edward R. Sykes as carrier; the Mohun and Heno post offices were to close.
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Fire destroys the Hillsborough depot
About midnight on November 9, 1903, fire destroyed the Southern Railway's freight and passenger depot and telegraph office at Hillsborough with all the freight, baggage, tickets and records inside, including goods just unloaded for local merchants.
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Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 8, 2026. Download the full chronology as a spreadsheet (CSV).
