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Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
- 1860s
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Benjamin Craig and Green Cordal secure land for a Black school
In 1866 Benjamin Craig and Green Cordal bought a plot of land near what is now the corner of West Franklin Street and Merritt Mill Road and gave part of it to the Philadelphia Quakers for a school for freedpeople and the rest for the church that became St. Paul AME. In the spring of 1867 the Friends reported that the freedmen were putting up a school and house of worship on a fifty-dollar lot.
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Bingham School circular sets its year, board and tuition
The postwar circular describes a single forty-week session opening the first Wednesday of March in two terms, with board and tuition at $350 a year and $435 once uniform and book deposits are added. Boys lived in the superintendent's family, under a mile from the Mebaneville depot.
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Cornelia Phillips Spencer publishes The Last Ninety Days of the War in North-Carolina
Encouraged by her friend, former governor David L. Swain, Spencer published her first book, an account of the war's last months in North Carolina that describes Wheeler's Confederate cavalry passing through Chapel Hill and the town's occupation by Union cavalry in April 1865.
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Fire destroys the Hargrave house on Franklin Street
The large house Dr. Charles Yancey built in 1822, owned by the Hargraves since 1840, burned. Jesse Hargrave's children Molly and Fred stayed on the lot in a much smaller building facing the street.
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Freedpeople register their marriages in Orange County
An 1866 state law declared formerly enslaved couples who had lived together as husband and wife legally married and required them to register their unions, most often with the county register of deeds. Orange County’s cohabitation records from that registration survive at the State Archives and are digitized in North Carolina Digital Collections.
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General Colston takes charge of the reopened Hillsborough Military Academy
After closing at the end of the war, the academy reopened with General R. C. Colston as superintendent. In 1868 he signed a lease with Col. Tew's widow to live in the superintendent's house, but his family later moved to Wilmington.
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George Laws chairs the stewards of the Hillsborough Methodist church
In 1866, when Hillsborough Station took in Hillsborough, Cedar Grove, Walnut Grove, Lebanon and New Sharon, Laws was chairman of its Board of Stewards. As treasurer in 1867 he told members that if they wanted preaching they must pay for it.
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James Phillips pays Dilsey her first wages as a free woman
Dilsey and her husband Ben stayed with the Phillips family after emancipation, and in 1866 James Phillips paid Dilsey her first wages as a freedwoman with the first five-dollar gold piece he received after the war.
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John U. Kirkland serves as Orange County's clerk and master in equity
In 1866 John U. Kirkland, as clerk and master in equity at his office in Hillsborough, advertised court-ordered sales of Orange County land.
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John W. Graham serves as Orange County solicitor
After the Civil War, John W. Graham of Hillsborough was solicitor for Orange County from 1866 to 1868, before going as a delegate to the 1868 constitutional convention and into the state senate.
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John Wall Norwood buys the brick law office facing the courthouse
Attorney Richard Ashe sold the one-room brick law office on Court Street, facing the Orange County Courthouse, to John Wall Norwood for $400. The office, already shown on an 1839 map, is now called the Norwood Law Office.
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Quakers open a freedmen's school in Chapel Hill
In 1866 Philadelphia Friends opened a school for Black children in Chapel Hill; by early 1867 it had been running more than half a year with 248 pupils, in a rented house while the freedpeople built a school and house of worship on a fifty-dollar lot the Friends had bought. The school, which came to stand on the land near West Franklin Street and Merritt Mill Road that Benjamin Craig and Green Cordal bought in 1866, merged into Orange County Training School in 1917.
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Spencer counts thirty-five Chapel Hill men dead in Confederate service
Spencer reckoned that thirty-five young men of the village died in the war, up from the fifteen in Swain's count of October 1863. Four companies were raised in and around the town, and the first left in 1861 with the Orange Light Infantry.
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The AME congregation later called Dickerson Chapel begins worshipping in the old courthouse
The AME congregation later known as Dickerson Chapel moved into the 1790 courthouse building on Queen Street in 1866, sharing it with the freedmen's school the Philadelphia Friends ran there. Lefler and Wager date its formal organization to 1873, and the Friends conveyed the building to the church's trustees in 1886.
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The Collins women sell their shares of the Beehive to Dr. Thomas D. Warren
After the war the Collins relatives who had lived at the Beehive left Hillsborough, and the women sold their shares of the house to Dr. Thomas D. Warren, who had married Elizabeth Alethea Collins.
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The Union League organizes Black voters in Orange County
The Republican Union League, organized in Orange, Alamance and Guilford by Albion W. Tourgee, its first state president, recruited nearly every Black man who would vote before the 1867 election. It had faded by the end of 1870.
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The women of St. Matthew's organize a Ladies Sewing Society
Led by organist and choir director Lizzie Jones, the society met weekly for more than thirty years. Its money paid for enlarging the church, a steeple, the first stained glass window and the 1883 pipe organ.
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Thomas and Anne Ruffin move from the Haw River plantation to Hillsborough
Thomas Ruffin and his wife Anne left their Haw River plantation early in 1866 and moved to Hillsborough, where he had bought the house he called Little Hawfields the year before.
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Trustees mortgage all university property to settle its debts
Facing $103,000 of debt against worthless bank stock and Confederate securities, the trustees compromised with the Bank of North Carolina and other creditors at a quarter of the debt in gold, pledging all the university's property at Chapel Hill and its Buncombe County lands. The General Assembly also voted $7,000 for one year to pay the officers.
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Trustees strike Confederate leaders from the commencement ball
The student ball managers named Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, John C. Breckinridge, Zebulon Vance and other Confederate figures as honorary managers without asking them. Fearing hostile action by Congress, the trustees ruled the choice improper.
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Twenty Black members leave First Baptist Church of Hillsborough and organize Mount Bright Baptist Church
Twenty Black members withdrew from First Baptist Church of Hillsborough in 1866, or about 1868 by another account, and organized a congregation of their own, named for its first pastor, Rev. Alfred E. Bright. The widow of Governor William A. Graham gave the group the West Union Street site where the congregation still worships.
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The legislature names a new bench of Orange County magistrates
The General Assembly, called back in January to restore civil government, appointed a new body of justices of the peace for Orange County. Sheriff H. B. Guthrie summoned the long list of appointees to take their oaths at the Hillsborough court house on February 3, 1866.
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William A. Graham backs Black testimony in the state's courts
Writing from Hillsborough to two members of the House of Commons, former governor William A. Graham endorsed the code commission's proposal to let Black witnesses testify in all cases touching the rights of Black people, as a matter of right as well as safety. He held that the vote should stay with white men.
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Federal command lets Orange courts try freedpeople's cases
Answering a letter from Orange County's county attorney that Governor Jonathan Worth had passed on, General Ruger's headquarters ruled that the civil courts could try offenses where the law punished Black and white offenders alike. Freedmen's Bureau agents kept only petty cases punishable by up to a month in jail or a $100 fine.
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E. H. Pogue starts making tinware for the wholesale trade in Hillsborough
E. H. Pogue announced that he had begun manufacturing tinware in Hillsborough for merchants and retail dealers, and would also sell it to townspeople at wholesale rates. By early 1867 his store stood west of the courthouse, where he also sold groceries, stoves and tobacco and took country produce in barter.
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Thomas Lynch becomes stated supply at New Hope after James Phillips
Lynch took up the New Hope pulpit after Phillips stopped preaching there at the end of 1865 and served until the winter of 1867.
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Charles Phillips teaches a Sunday school for Black residents of Chapel Hill
Charles Phillips and his wife Laura taught a Sunday school for Black people in Chapel Hill, and in March 1866 a supply of books arrived from New York for it. When he left for Davidson College in 1868, a crowd of his scholars stood weeping at the gate.
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Orange Superior Court sentences convicted thieves to the lash
At the spring term of Orange Superior Court in Hillsborough a dozen white and Black defendants were tried for larceny, and most were convicted and sentenced to whipping. The judge warned the grand jury that harsher laws could follow if punishment did not check theft.
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William H. Brown, Hillsborough Methodist leader, dies
William H. Brown died suddenly at Hillsborough in his 57th year. A Methodist for forty years, he had served the Hillsborough church as steward, class leader and trustee and its Sunday school as superintendent for about twenty-five years, and the quarterly conference adopted a tribute to him.
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Charles Phillips is ordained at New Hope Church in Orange County
Phillips was ordained on 14 April 1866 at Orange County's New Hope Church, which had long been under the pastoral charge of his father James Phillips. Orange Presbytery had convened there on Wednesday, April 11, and ordained Phillips and Calvin H. Wiley during the meeting.
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Bodies of Junius and Wesley Lewis Battle brought home for burial
The bodies of Corporal Junius C. Battle, mortally wounded at South Mountain, and Lieutenant Wesley Lewis Battle, killed at Gettysburg, sons of Judge William H. Battle and former students, were brought home to Chapel Hill. The village turned out to meet them, and they lay side by side in the Episcopal church before burial.
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Orange County's school board writes off its Confederate funds and rents out the schoolhouses
Meeting after the war, the Board of Superintendents of Common Schools found that its balance of about $3,190 in Confederate money and a state draft for $1,732 payable in the same currency were worthless. It told each district's committeemen to rent out their schoolhouses and pay the rents to the county chairman.
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Frederick Nash Jr. is brought home from a prison burying ground and reburied at Hillsborough
The remains of Frederick Nash Jr., son of the Presbyterian minister F. K. Nash, who had joined the Confederate army at about seventeen and died a prisoner of war, were brought home and laid beside his kindred at Hillsborough.
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Calvin H. Wiley is ordained at New Hope
At the last meeting of Orange Presbytery held at New Hope, Calvin H. Wiley was ordained with Charles Phillips, both sine titulo, without a pastoral charge.
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The Bureau office at Hillsborough tries freedpeople's claims against white residents
In the spring of 1866 the Bureau officers at Hillsborough sat as a court on freedpeople's complaints, and this file holds three Orange cases. On May 20 Brevet Captain George H. Penniman ordered a white man who failed to appear to pay a freedman $100 in wages or go to the county jail for 30 days (a new trial was granted, and Porter dismissed the case on September 2 on evidence the debt was paid); on May 22 Penniman ruled that a mule four white men had taken from a freedman's plough was government property and ordered the seller to refund the freedman, and in June Porter reheard a freedman's claim to a threshing machine because no record of the first hearing survived.
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Jesse and Rebecca Ruffin register the marriage they made in
Jesse Ruffin, coachman to Judge Thomas Ruffin, and Rebecca, who had kept the keys of the Norwood household across the Eno, had married in 1828 while enslaved to different families. They recorded the marriage with the Freedmen's Bureau and later bought a farm.
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A. W. Hedgpeth, longtime keeper of the Hillsborough House, dies
A. W. Hedgpeth, for many years proprietor of the Hillsborough House hotel and a town commissioner elected that February, died suddenly at Hillsborough in his 54th year.
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Black residents of Hillsborough ask the Bureau to find teachers for their children
On May 31, 1866, Lieutenant Isaac Porter reported that Black families in Hillsborough had asked him to get teachers and that the town had enough children for a school of 100 to 125 pupils. His application went to the Bureau's state superintendent of education, F. A. Fiske, on June 2.
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Lieutenant Isaac Porter takes charge of the Freedmen's Bureau office at Hillsborough
By May 22, 1866, Second Lieutenant Isaac Porter of the Veteran Reserve Corps was the Bureau's assistant superintendent for the sub-district of Orange at Hillsborough, finishing cases begun by Brevet Captain George H. Penniman; an earlier officer, Lieutenant Crockett, had left no record of the cases he tried. In June Porter also had the Alamance sub-district, four counties in all (Orange, Person, Alamance and Caswell), and headquarters refused him a clerk for lack of funds although he had lost his left arm.
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The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough
From May 1866 to the end of 1868 the Freedmen's Bureau kept an office at Hillsborough for the sub-district of Orange, under Lt. Isaac Porter until the fall of 1867 and, after a run of agents, Lt. Thomas H. Hay from May 1868. It heard freedpeople's complaints over wages, crops and children, approved labor contracts and sent cases to the courts, gave rations to destitute people white and Black, and helped freedpeople open and keep schools across the county.
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Rev. Job Berry and the Philadelphia Friends open Hillsborough's first school for Black children and adults
Job Berry, who had advertised a fair in September 1865 to raise money for a school, worked with the Friends of Philadelphia to buy the former Orange County courthouse on Queen Street for twelve hundred dollars and open a freedmen's school in it on June 5, 1866. More than three hundred children and adults learned to read and cipher there. The Freedmen's Bureau's state superintendent of education wrote on June 2, 1866 that a freedmen's school had then been running in Hillsborough for more than four months, with 107 pupils in April, and would reopen under its former principal.
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Sheriff H. B. Guthrie announces that the county treasury is empty
His notice to taxpayers said no county tax had been levied or collected for 1865, the treasury held not a dollar and the wardens of the poor were deep in debt. He set fifteen collection days in July.
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The Bureau office at Hillsborough reviews apprenticeships made by the Orange County court
In June 1866 two complaints about Black youths bound out by the Orange County court reached Lieutenant Isaac Porter. On June 2 he upheld the court's indenture of a boy against his mother's plea to have him back, judging her unfit and noting that the court bound white children the same way, and headquarters had him countersign the indenture; on June 25 headquarters sent him a young man bound before the war who said he had received nothing but clothing in more than six years and no wages since returning in November 1865, with orders to investigate.
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Zebulon Vance gives the commencement address on the duties of defeat
At a commencement with only three seniors but a large crowd, Zebulon B. Vance spoke on what a defeated people owed. Spencer hoped the speech would help answer the hostility then growing against the university and its faculty.
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Freedpeople hold a Black Fourth of July celebration
Cornelia Phillips Spencer's journal records that the Black residents of Chapel Hill marched in procession behind a banner, heard an address by Colonel J. J. Guthrie and a reading of part of the Declaration of Independence by Jurdon Swain, then sat down to a dinner they had provided themselves on the ground bought from the Craigs for their new school house. The banner mottoes were "Respect for Former Owners" and "Our Hope is in God".
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Thomas Webb of Hillsborough becomes president of the North Carolina Railroad
The North Carolina Railroad's stockholders held their seventeenth annual meeting at Hillsborough on Thursday, July 12, 1866, and the directors elected Thomas Webb president in place of Nathaniel Boyden, with P. B. Ruffin as treasurer, F. A. Stagg as secretary and Edward Wilkes as superintendent. The state's directors for the year included John Berry and Josiah Turner Jr. of Orange.
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The Freedmen's Bureau turns freedpeople's cases in Orange and Alamance over to the county courts
After Governor Jonathan Worth certified that state law no longer discriminated against free people of color in the courts, the Freedmen's Bureau ordered its officers to send all cases involving freedpeople to the county and state courts, keeping only claims for wages under contracts its agents had approved. Lt. Isaac Porter, assistant superintendent of the Bureau's sub-district of Orange and Alamance, published the order in Hillsborough. The order reached Porter by an endorsement of July 13 from the Bureau's Central District headquarters, which turned criminal cases over to the civil courts and told him to act as counsel for freedpeople there.
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A Hillsborough meeting backs the National Union Convention and names district delegates
A public meeting at Hillsborough, with James P. Clark in the chair and Dr. Charles J. Freeland as secretary, endorsed the call for a National Union Convention at Philadelphia on August 14, 1866, in support of President Johnson's restoration policy. On resolutions offered by Josiah Turner Jr. it named thirteen men, among them Henry K. Nash, Thomas Webb, John W. Graham, Samuel F. Phillips and Paul C. Cameron, to a district convention at Raleigh, and recommended William A. Graham as a delegate for the state at large.
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Orange County votes against the proposed state constitution of
Voters rejected the constitution submitted by the reconvened convention, 494 to 392.
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Bureau headquarters declines to overturn a magistrate's judgment against a freedman
On August 14, 1866, Lieutenant Isaac Porter reported that an Orange magistrate had given a $15 judgment against a freedman for a horse sold to him two weeks before Lee's surrender, while he was still enslaved, although Porter had written to the magistrate that the horse was branded government property and that no legal claim could lie against an enslaved man. Headquarters answered that his only remedy was a higher civil court, and on August 29 ruled that by giving security to stay execution he had accepted the county court's jurisdiction and the Bureau could not help him.
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R. F. Morris & Son form a partnership to make Durham smoking tobacco at Durham's Station
Robert F. Morris and his son Edward W. Morris, with William H. Willard as a special partner who put in $5,000 in cash, formed the limited partnership of R. F. Morris & Son to manufacture tobacco, especially 'the famous Durham Smoking Tobacco,' and to keep a small general store at Durham's Station (now Durham County). The partnership ran from September 1, 1866, to September 1, 1869.
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Orange Superior Court sends Wesley Watson and seven others to the whipping post
At the fall term of Orange Superior Court at Hillsborough, Judge Fowle had eight people whipped, four white and four Black, most of them for theft. Wesley Watson, described in evidence as a wartime deserter who had broken jail twice and led a band that robbed people in Orange and nearby counties, was sentenced for stealing a mule to thirty-nine lashes at once and more at the November and March terms, despite a plea for mercy from his counsel Josiah Turner Jr.
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The Philanthropic Society condemns the hazing of freshmen
The university's Philanthropic Society resolved to put on record its disapproval of the custom of abusing members of the freshman class, asked all who followed its motto of virtue, liberty and science to help banish the practice, and sent copies to the trustees, the faculty and the state's papers.
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Peter and Diannah Benton acquire land south of Hillsborough
A deed from Frances Thompson conveyed land half a mile south of town, where the Chatham and Chapel Hill roads divided (today Mayo Street and Orange Grove Road), to Peter Benton, his wife Diannah and Jimmy Thompson. Peter Benton, a free man, had gardened at the Burwell School in 1855.
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The Bureau's school superintendent seeks Quaker teachers for Chapel Hill and Bane's School House
After Lieutenant Isaac Porter answered a schools survey on September 24, 1866, superintendent F. A. Fiske wrote on October 6 that he expected the Friends of Philadelphia, through their superintendent George Dixon, to send two teachers to Hillsborough and would try to get them to send others to Chapel Hill and to Bane's School House, though the society's funds were low. On October 15 Porter reported that Black residents throughout the sub-district were providing schools for themselves with much success, while in his view the schooling of poor whites was entirely neglected.
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The Bureau office warns that Orange County provides only for its white poor
Asked what suffering to expect in the coming winter, Lieutenant Isaac Porter replied on October 15, 1866, that helpless Black people in Orange would lack food and clothing because the county provided only for white paupers. The chairman of the wardens of the poor told him the November county court would take up provision for the Black poor, and Porter added that no one would suffer for want of protection while the government kept a Bureau officer there.
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Orange elects John Berry to the state Senate and S. D. Umstead and W. W. Guess to the Commons
In the state election of Thursday, October 18, 1866, Orange County chose Capt. John Berry for the state Senate over Richard M. Jones and Thomas Vickers, and S. D. Umstead and William W. Guess for the House of Commons over John F. Lyon, B. C. Hopkins and John H. Watson. The county also voted for Governor Jonathan Worth over Alfred Dockery.
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The Bureau disputes a coroner's verdict clearing C. C. Tinnen in the shooting of Bill Fuller
On the night of November 2, 1866, Bill Fuller, a Black youth, was fatally wounded in the leg when C. C. Tinnen fired a gun out a window to break up a freedmen's corn shucking at his place, and a coroner's jury the next day found he meant no harm. Lieutenant Isaac Porter reported on November 9 that only two of the fifteen or twenty people present had been examined and that justice had not been sought, and on November 23 the acting assistant commissioner ruled the verdict unjustified by the evidence and ordered a complaint made to the civil authorities to bring the case to trial.
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Nine prisoners rush the Hillsborough jailer and six escape
On Sunday morning, November 11, 1866, nine prisoners in the county jail at Hillsborough rushed the keeper when he opened the cage to give them breakfast, threw a blanket over his head, tried to choke him and ran out the jail door. The keeper and a few men who answered his call took three of them back; six, held on charges ranging from larceny and housebreaking to rape, got away.
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Seventeen freedpeople at Hillsborough seek passage to a Mississippi plantation
On November 20, 1866, Lieutenant Isaac Porter asked the Bureau to carry 17 freedpeople from Hillsborough to Commerce, Mississippi, to work on George P. Collins's plantation, where Collins and neighboring planters proposed a church and school. Most had been moved from the Deep South during the war and wanted to return, and with the farms they had lived on now rented to white tenants Porter judged they could not support themselves in Orange; headquarters refused on November 23 because they were not shown to be dependent.
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General Colston offers the state free scholarships at the Hillsborough Military Academy
Gen. R. E. Colston, superintendent of the Hillsborough academy, offered without charge one scholarship for a young man from each congressional district and one from the state at large, to be named by the governor. Governor Jonathan Worth laid the offer before the General Assembly in his annual message and asked it to help the poor young men chosen meet their other costs.
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The Hillsborough Bureau office approves 62 labor contracts
The office's tally of labor contracts made and approved totals 62 from November 1866 to August 1867, most in the winter hiring season: 9 in November, 13 in December, 7 in January and 14 in February, then 4 in March, 8 in May, 4 in June and one each in July and August. In June 1867 Porter wrote that his orders kept him out of contract disputes unless a Bureau officer or agent had witnessed or approved the contract.
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The Hillsborough Bureau office hears about twenty freedpeople's claims for wages and crops
Between November 1866 and August 1867 Porter's office settled four claims over crop shares and rent by umpire and sent about fourteen claims for wages, crop shares and small debts, from $2.40 to $70, to the civil authorities. It also held hearings of its own, dismissing a wage claim in November 1866 after the employer's books showed payment, and in February 1867 ordering a deputy sheriff to release hay that a freedman claimed as his share under a contract approved by an earlier Bureau officer, Lt. N. N. Crockett, a case dismissed when the freedman did not appear.
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The Hillsborough Bureau office records nine attacks on freedpeople
Porter's register of outrages for November 1866 to July 1867 lists the killing of a freedman and eight assaults and batteries on Black men and women, most sent to magistrates on warrants; in one case in February 1867 two white men beat two freedmen, and one was bound over to the county court while the other fled. Through the same months Porter's twice-monthly reports to Raleigh each said no outrages had been reported in the period they covered.
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The Methodist conference forms a Hillsborough District, with Hillsborough heading a station of five churches
In 1866 the Methodists created a Hillsborough District, under presiding elder W. H. Bobbitt, and made Hillsborough a station that also took in Cedar Grove, Walnut Grove, Lebanon and New Sharon. W. C. Wilson was pastor.
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Thomas Ruffin buys six lots next to his Hillsborough house from Pride Jones
Thomas Ruffin bought lots 177, 178, 179, 204, 205 and 206, which adjoined the house he had acquired the year before, from Pride Jones.
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A Black newspaper editor from Baltimore canvasses Hillsborough for subscribers
George T. Cook, a Black editor from Baltimore, spent a day in Hillsborough about December 1, 1866, taking subscriptions for his paper among Black residents, and on December 3 wrote from Hillsborough to the Bureau that Guilford County's courts dealt unjustly with Black people. The assistant commissioner's office, which thought him a sensationalist, asked Lt. Isaac Porter about him; Porter replied on December 18 that he had not met Cook and knew of the visit only from Black residents.
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Allison and Corbin run a plug tobacco factory at Cedar Grove
By the late 1860s Cedar Grove had a plug tobacco factory run by Allison and Corbin that employed fourteen men, the largest workforce of any business in the area. Dr. John J. Allison, a large landowner, was also a partner in dry goods, hardware and grocery stores, and William W. Allison kept a hotel.
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Andrew Green Ruffin Lloyd builds a log house on Old Hillsborough Road
Around 1867 Andrew Green Ruffin Lloyd raised the log core of a house that later generations of Lloyds enlarged several times. Frame outbuildings stand on the farm.
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Charles Phillips serves as stated supply for the Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church
Phillips, licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Orange in December 1857, succeeded his father James as stated supply of the Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church after James died in March 1867, and served until he left for Davidson College in February 1869. He taught and superintended the church Sunday school and with his wife started a Sunday school for Black residents.
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Civil War veteran William Couch builds a frame farmhouse east of Hillsborough
William Couch, a Confederate veteran, builds a two-story frame house around 1867 beside an older log house, and adds outbuildings to the farm. The farm is on the Study List, next to the Sam Couch farm.
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J. Morrow and Sons grind flour and corn at Oaks
In the late 1860s and early 1870s J. Morrow and his sons ran a flour and corn mill at Oaks, where a dry goods store and a tannery also operated in the community that had grown up around the Bingham school.
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James Webb Jr. advertises his Cheap Cash Store in Hillsborough
Advertisements in the Hillsborough Recorder in 1867 offered garden seeds, white granite cups and saucers, coffee, sugar and candies at the Cheap Cash Store of James Webb Jr.
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Rev. Job Berry officiates at more than forty weddings of freed people
Between 1867 and 1877 Job Berry officiated at more than forty weddings of Black couples in and around Hillsborough, among them one held at the Freedmen's School House on September 17, 1868. Orange County marriage books record him as minister, later as AME minister of Bethel.
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Rock Spring Academy advertises under principal H. M. Cates
The Hillsboro Recorder in 1867 praised Rock Spring Academy, then headed by H. M. Cates, who was also Cane Creek's church clerk, and noted special terms for disabled Confederate veterans. The school did not last much longer.
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Sarah J. Woodson teaches at the freedmen's school in Hillsborough
Sarah J. Woodson, an Oberlin graduate from Ohio, was principal of the school for Black children in Hillsborough, which she taught with V. S. Williams. The Freedmen's Bureau's report of January 1868 named it among the large, well-run schools in North Carolina.
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The legislature authorizes the Durham North-Carolina Industrial Association
The General Assembly passed an act authorizing the formation of the Durham North-Carolina Industrial Association in Orange County, an early act of incorporation for the Durham's Station community (now Durham County).
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The Bureau investigates reports that a Hillsborough freedmen's teacher was shot at and driven away
Warren Yardley of Germantown, Pennsylvania, wrote on January 23, 1867, that citizens near Hillsborough had fired at him and forced out the teacher Mr. Leeds, and General O. O. Howard ordered the school reestablished and guarded if that were so. Lt. Isaac Porter reported on February 5 that Leeds and his school had met only threats and insults from one drunken man and two or three failed demonstrations, that Leeds had never missed a day of teaching, and that in Porter's judgment local sentiment was against any interference with the school.
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Legislature gives the university North Carolina's land-grant scrip
At President Swain's urging, the General Assembly transferred to the university the state's scrip under the federal Morrill Act, on condition that it set up at least two professorships in agriculture and the mechanic arts. Each county court could send one needy student free of tuition, and students could enter those branches without the usual classical preparation.
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Orange County court has four Black people publicly whipped for stealing
The Hillsborough Bureau office's record of corporal punishment by the civil authorities notes that at the February 1867 term of the Orange County court, with James C. Turrentine presiding, four Black people were publicly whipped for stealing. Three weeks earlier Lt. Isaac Porter had reported no corporal punishment in the sub-district since the army's order forbidding whipping had been suspended.
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Orange County court binds out eight Black children as apprentices with the Bureau officer attending
Lt. Isaac Porter attended the February 1867 term of the Orange County Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions at Hillsborough, with James C. Turrentine presiding and John W. Graham as county solicitor, and reported that the court made eight indentures of apprenticeship of Black children, all in his view in keeping with the Bureau's circular, and cancelled none. At the May term he reported no indentures made or cancelled.
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Lt. Isaac Porter reports that the Bureau has issued no rations in Orange in a year
Asked how many people deserved a share of Northern relief, Porter wrote that the Bureau had issued no rations in the sub-district in the past year and that he knew of no pressing need the county authorities did not meet, but put at about 300 the number to whom help would be a relief. His twice-monthly reports from November 1866 to June 1867 likewise reported no rations issued and called the freedpeople's condition generally satisfactory, adding in December 1866 that nearly all were employed at reasonable wages.
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Orange Superior Court convicts Catlett C. Tinnen of manslaughter
At the March term of Orange Superior Court, Catlett C. Tinnen was tried for murder after he fired out of his kitchen window at guests leaving a corn shucking that Dill Faucett, a freedman living on his place, had called, and a man was found shot. On testimony given entirely by freedpeople, the jury found him guilty of manslaughter, and Judge Warren fined him $250 rather than jail him.
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James Phillips dies in the college chapel
On the morning of March 14, 1867, James Phillips went early to the college chapel to lead morning prayers and was found dead on the rostrum as the bell rang. He had taught at the university since 1826 and was buried in the Chapel Hill Cemetery.
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Milly Johnson of Chapel Hill asks the Bureau to recover children taken from her in slavery
On March 26, 1867, Milly Johnson, a freedwoman living in Chapel Hill, asked the Bureau at Hillsborough to help her find five children sold or kept by former owners in Virginia and North Carolina, among them a daughter her former owner Albert Elliott had carried off after the surrender, claiming her until she was 21. Lieutenant Isaac Porter vouched for her account and sent it up on April 2; Virginia agents could not find the children sold there, and on July 31 the assistant commissioner ordered Elliott to return the daughter at his own expense, which he promised to do before October 1. On June 14 Porter wrote her that one daughter had left her owner in 1865 and was thought to be in Washington, that a son sold in 1859 through a Richmond firm could not be traced because its books had burned, and that her former husband was living in Essex County, Virginia.
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An Orange County meeting at the courthouse resolves to submit to the Reconstruction Acts
A meeting of Orange County citizens at the Hillsborough courthouse, chaired by Thomas Wilson, resolved to bear the Reconstruction Acts while protesting them, thanked President Johnson for his vetoes and named a committee of five to memorialize Congress. Capt. John F. Lyon urged every man not disfranchised to register and vote, and Lieut. Porter of the army and the Freedmen's Bureau told the meeting he knew of no one in Orange persecuted for loyalty to the Union.
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Lt. Isaac Porter reports four freedmen's schools running in Orange and the Hillsborough school closed
In his school report Porter listed schools at Chapel Hill with an estimated average attendance of 150, the Oaks with 40, Durham's with 75 and Mebanesville with 80, while the Hillsborough school, with about 140 pupils, was organized but without teachers, having closed on Saturday, March 23. He recommended night schools and books for adult freedpeople, teachers who were Black or native white, and a school to train Black teachers.
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Job Berry is admitted as a preacher by the A.M.E. Church
Meeting in Greensboro, the church's North Carolina Conference admitted Job Berry on trial and sent him to Mebanesville and Graham, making formal the ministry he had carried on while state law barred Black preachers.
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The Bureau and James C. Turrentine distribute 150 bushels of corn to Orange County's poor
The Bureau told Lt. Isaac Porter on April 10, 1867, that 150 bushels of corn given by citizens of Philadelphia were coming for Orange County's destitute, to be shared without regard to race, politics or religion under his and James C. Turrentine's supervision. When the shipment went to Charlotte by mistake, the Bureau's quartermaster paid $225 for 150 bushels bought locally, and Porter later reported that no distinction of color had been made: all eleven applicants from Chapel Hill were Black and all received corn.
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Hillsborough commissioners ban Sunday trading and offer rewards against housebreakers
The Hillsborough town commissioners passed an ordinance fining any merchant, liquor dealer or other person who sold goods on the Sabbath, except in real necessity, up to $10 for each offence. At the same meeting they offered rewards of $50 for convicting anyone who broke into a dwelling and $30 for other night break-ins.
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Lt. Isaac Porter reports that talk of land and houses is drawing freedpeople from their crops
In his monthly report Porter wrote that a report circulating widely among Orange's freedpeople, that they were to be given land and houses, was in his judgment doing harm by leading some to neglect their crops or stop work. He said he had tried to correct the idea but found it hard while some of the state's newspapers encouraged such hopes.
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Chapel Hill farmers organize the Chapel Hill Agricultural Society
Citizens of Chapel Hill and the surrounding country met with Judge William H. Battle in the chair and organized the Chapel Hill Agricultural Society, to meet monthly, with George W. Purefoy as president and A. Mickle as treasurer. Dues were twenty-five cents a year, and members were to read essays and look into farm problems such as insects in young corn.
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Freedpeople ask the Hillsborough Bureau office to recover children held by employers and former owners
Between April 1867 and July 1868 the office took up nine complaints over Black children kept by white employers, former owners or masters under indentures, eight of them from parents or a grandparent. Lt. Isaac Porter ordered one employer in June 1867 to give a boy back to his mother as his lawful guardian and found bindings in Person County lawful, and in 1868 the agents ordered a child delivered to its parent, left a granddaughter with her grandmother and warned a master that ill treatment would cost him his apprentice.
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Lt. Isaac Porter recommends men to register Orange County's voters under the Reconstruction Acts
Porter wrote to the governor on May 13, 1867, that he knew Messrs. Laws and Blackwood, applicants to be registrars for Orange County, and thought them qualified and acceptable to citizens of both races. On May 15 he sent the Bureau's state headquarters the names of persons to act as registrars and inspectors of elections in each of Orange's election districts.
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Dialectic Society students ask Governor Worth to help make President Johnson a member
Writing from Chapel Hill on May 27, 1867, J. R. Strayhorn, P. B. Means and W. S. Pearson asked Governor Jonathan Worth, on behalf of the Dialectic Society, to use his influence to secure President Andrew Johnson as an honorary member. They noted that the society already counted James K. Polk among its regular members.
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William A. Graham receives his presidential pardon
William A. Graham of Hillsborough, a former Confederate senator, received his pardon from President Andrew Johnson, lifting the cloud on his loyalty that had followed him since the war.
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Lt. Isaac Porter takes charge of Orange and Person counties for the Bureau from Hillsborough
Under a Bureau circular of June 18, 1867, Porter reported that he had assumed the duties of assistant sub-assistant commissioner for Orange and Person counties with headquarters at Hillsborough. From June 1 his office had dealt directly with the assistant commissioner's headquarters in Raleigh instead of the Central District office.
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President Andrew Johnson attends commencement
Andrew Johnson came to the 1867 commencement with Secretary of State William H. Seward, Postmaster General Alexander Randall and General Daniel E. Sickles, the military governor under the Reconstruction Acts, and recalled passing through Chapel Hill on foot in 1826. Johnson joined the Dialectic Society and Seward the Philanthropic, but a minority of Dialectics blocked Sickles.
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Cicero M. Faucett is confirmed as clerk of the Bureau office at Hillsborough
On July 17, 1867, the Bureau in Washington appointed C. M. Faucett clerk at Hillsborough at $60 a month from July 1, confirming a post he had held since February. Refused a clerk in June 1866, Lieutenant Isaac Porter had employed Frederick Nash by August 1866 and Thomas A. Wilbon, at $59.50 a month, in November and December 1866.
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The Chapel Hill Baptist Church goes without regular services
When the mission board could no longer help pay him, N. W. Wilson preached his last sermon on July 28, 1867, ending a six-and-a-half-year pastorate. The church then had about a hundred members, down from over two hundred, and its doors stayed practically shut until W. R. Gwaltney was called in 1869.
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The Bureau office at Hillsborough draws corn and bacon for the destitute and proposes ending rations
Lt. Isaac Porter drew 5,600 pounds of corn and 800 pounds of bacon in July 1867 for the destitute of the sub-district of Orange, which then also took in Person County, and by August 2 had issued 2,996 pounds of corn and 428 of bacon. His ten-day returns show more white than Black recipients (51 whites and 41 freedpeople in the period ending August 5), and he advised stopping the issue after that month; he reported none issued in September.
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A flood on the Eno sweeps away the Hillsborough bridge
A heavy rainstorm that began on Wednesday, August 14, broke into a downpour between one and two o'clock the next afternoon and raised the Eno at Hillsborough eighteen inches to two feet above any level in years. The flood carried off the bridge at the town, and the editor heard that every bridge on the river had gone, with mill dams and bottomland crops ruined.
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Orange County's board of registration begins enrolling voters under the Reconstruction Acts
Under General Sickles's registration order, Orange's board of registration opened its sessions on August 16, 1867, sitting in turn at Cedar Grove and other stations and finishing with six days at Hillsborough, the last on September 3. Thomas Wilson chaired the board, which met again at Hillsborough on November 5 to revise the lists before the November convention election.
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Swain and the faculty resign as trustees plan a new university
At a meeting Governor Jonathan Worth called to face the university's collapse, Charles Phillips presented the resignations of President Swain, Professors Hubbard, Fetter and Smith, law professor William H. Battle and himself, and the trustees adopted Kemp P. Battle's resolution for a committee to plan an elective university system with higher standards.
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Trustees sell the land-grant scrip at fifty cents an acre
The trustees accepted an offer from G. F. Lewis and Fisher, Booth and Company of Detroit to buy the scrip for 270,000 acres at fifty cents an acre, with most of the money due only after Congress let Southern scrip be located. On William A. Graham's motion $13,500 of the first payments went to general expenses, relieving unpaid officers.
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The wardens' yearly count finds 21 people in the poorhouse
The count listed three adult men, thirteen adult women and five children of color, three of whom had white mothers. In October the wardens kept James M. Bain as superintendent at $150 a year, with $25 for his wife.
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Freedpeople near White Oak Spring gather 75 children for a school
Aaron Wilson and others of Orange County wrote the Bureau office at Hillsborough that they had signed up 75 Black children for a school within reach of the White Oak Spring school house and church, and recommended Jos. W. McKee as teacher.
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Lt. Isaac Porter sends the Bureau his annual report for the sub-district of Orange
For the year ending September 25, 1867, Porter counted 15 labor contracts made and 81 approved, 5 cases tried and 47 settled by arbitration, 71 accounts drawn up for freedpeople to collect, and 23 applications by freedpeople for children, 15 of them granted after investigation. He put average wages at $9 a month for men and $6 for women, said few contracts were submitted and none of the Homestead Act was used, and blamed most complaints of idleness on loose contracts, though in his judgment some freedmen had lately grown inclined to be idle.
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The Bureau relieves Lt. Isaac Porter and puts Orange County under its Raleigh agent
Special Orders No. 120 relieved Porter from Bureau duty in North Carolina and added Orange and Person counties to the sub-division of Wake and Chatham under Dr. H. C. Vogell at Raleigh, to whom Porter was to turn over the Bureau's property. The Hillsboro letter book then has no entries until late February 1868.
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William A. Graham writes from Hillsborough against the convention call
In a public letter dated at Hillsborough on October 23, 1867, to J. A. Engelhard, former governor William A. Graham argued that the one specific object of the convention Congress required was to extend the vote to Black men without distinction. He urged North Carolinians to keep control of their own suffrage and to oppose the call.
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Orange Conservatives nominate John W. Graham and Edwin M. Holt for the constitutional convention
A Conservative meeting at the court house in Hillsborough on November 2, 1867, seated a delegation of Black Conservatives from Durham and named a nominating committee of five white and five Black members from all parts of the county. The committee put forward Maj. John W. Graham and Dr. Edwin M. Holt as the party's candidates for the state convention.
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Black men vote in Orange County's first Reconstruction election
Under the 1867 Reconstruction Acts, Black men registered and voted alongside white men in the November 19-20, 1867 election for a state constitutional convention. Orange County elected the Conservative nominees, E. M. Holt and J. W. Graham, as delegates, by about 900 majority.
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Trustees adopt an elective system of ten schools
Over William A. Graham's dissent, the trustees voted 18 to 3 for Kemp P. Battle's committee plan to replace the fixed four-year course with ten independent schools, from political science to modern languages, beginning in fall 1868. After the new state constitution put the university under a new board, the old trustees on June 4, 1868 reappointed Swain and the faculty and rescinded the plan.
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A trustee committee including Albion W. Tourgee finds the university not bound to pay its bank debt
On Edward Cantwell's motion the Reconstruction trustees named Cantwell, Justice E. G. Reade and Albion W. Tourgee to inquire into the university's debts. Their report held that the university was not legally or equitably bound to pay its debt to the bank, since it could not buy bank stock on credit, and that the Cameron and Swain debts should be scaled down.
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Building the public schools
After the Civil War Orange County organized its public schools by township and district, with separate schools for Black and white children under local school committees. In the 1880s and 1890s the county board formed new districts and counted its log and frame schoolhouses; after 1900 districts voted local taxes for graded schools for white children, eight rural schoolhouses went up in one school year, and a 1918–19 survey found white teachers earning a median $50 a month and Black teachers $35.
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Charles Phillips is dismissed from the university faculty
When the state's Reconstruction government reorganized the University of North Carolina in 1868, Phillips was dismissed from the faculty. He took a professorship at Davidson College in February 1869.
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Dialectic and Philanthropic societies hide their books and papers
Believing the societies would not be run under their constitutions after the university changed hands, their last officers gave the Dialectic records to Alexander McIver and the Philanthropic records to William L. Saunders. The property lay safe until the societies revived in 1875.
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Dr. Johnston Blakeley Jones sells his West Franklin home to banker William A. Wright
Bankrupt by 1865, Jones left for a new practice in Charlotte in 1868 and sold his house to William A. Wright, president of the Bank of Cape Fear, who wanted it as a refuge.
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Forty or fifty masked riders pass through Hillsborough
A large body of disguised riders, perhaps forty or fifty, rode through Hillsborough a year or more before February 1871, according to Josiah Turner Jr.'s testimony before the Senate committee. Turner said he was in Raleigh at the time, heard of it afterward and had no doubt they were masked; he gave it when pressed on whether he had reason to believe the Klan existed before 1870.
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Governor Holden appoints Wilson Caldwell a justice of the peace
In 1868 Governor William W. Holden appointed Wilson Swain Caldwell a justice of the peace. Caldwell had been enslaved by university president David L. Swain and had worked at the university since boyhood; he taught school for a time before returning to the university in 1875.
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Hillsborough Methodist Church opens a lending library for its members
Around 1868 the church began a library of religious and general books, many donated by members and townspeople and some bought by Sunday school classes. Books went out on Sunday mornings, and the record book later counted 937 volumes.
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Josiah Turner Jr. wins Orange's Senate seat but is excluded under the Fourteenth Amendment
Turner won election as state senator in 1868 but was not seated, since his disabilities under the Fourteenth Amendment were still in force. John W. Graham was elected instead.
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Judge William H. Battle pays off the Chapel of the Cross rectory lot
Largely through Battle's efforts the parish had bought property for a rectory sometime between 1851 and 1868. In 1868 he paid the $500 still owed on it with interest, and in October 1878 the vestry agreed to repay him $600 at six percent from the start of 1879.
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Ned Strowd organizes Terrell Creek Baptist Church
Ned Strowd organized Terrell Creek Baptist Church, a Black congregation, on Atwater Road about two miles south of its later site.
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Robert G. Fitzgerald comes to Hillsborough to teach a freedmen's school
Fitzgerald, a Union Navy and cavalry veteran who had taught freedpeople in Amelia County, Virginia, came to Hillsborough through the Friends' Freedmen's Association of Philadelphia to teach at a new school for Black students. The Freedmen's Bureau's monthly school reports name Misses Harris and Allen as the Hillsborough teachers from February to August 1868 and first list Fitzgerald there in September; by December he and Hester Anderson taught the town's Howard school.
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Six freedmen's schools are running in Orange County
By 1868 six schools for freed people had been set up in the county, paid for mostly by the Freedmen's Bureau and Quaker missions, with Black families giving what they could. The Freedmen's Bureau's own monthly reports count five day schools in Orange in February and March 1868 and eight to ten by the end of the year.
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Solomon Pool's new faculty move into the old professors' houses
With Swain and the old faculty gone, the professors Pool brought in took over their Franklin Street homes: Fisk P. Brewer the Tom Taylor house, David Settle Patrick Swain's house, and James A. Martling the late James Phillips's house.
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St. Mary's Chapel is reported as no longer entitled to representation as a parish
Long served once a month from Hillsborough and weakened as its old families' children drifted away, St. Mary's Chapel was reported to the 1868 diocesan convention as no longer qualifying for parish representation.
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The Chapel of the Cross nearly empties while the university is closed
When the university shut in 1868 most parishioners left Chapel Hill, and for a time the parish had too few men to form a vestry. Lay readers and a monthly visit from R. B. Sutton kept services going until Joseph Blount Cheshire came as rector in 1878.
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The White Brotherhood, a Ku Klux order, appears in Orange County
The first Klan-type order to reach North Carolina, the White Brotherhood, set up camps including one at Hillsborough. Its Orange County chief was Colonel Joseph C. Webb, followed by Frederick N. Strudwick.
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The university gives Bartholomew F. Moore an honorary LL.D.
At the 1868 commencement, which Battle calls the last of the old regime, the university granted the degree of Doctor of Laws to ex-Governor Seymour and to Moore, a Raleigh lawyer and active trustee.
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Cornelia Phillips Spencer moves into Sam Phillips's house and takes in boarders
After her father's death Spencer moved with her daughter into her brother Sam's empty house on East Franklin Street, sleeping there first on January 13, 1868, so that she could take student boarders to make ends meet. Her widowed mother would not come with her.
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Orange delegate John W. Graham writes the convention's minority report on suffrage
John W. Graham, Orange County's delegate to the 1868 constitutional convention, wrote the minority report on the suffrage question that he and Plato Durham laid before the convention against the majority's plan. The Recorder reprinted it from the Raleigh Sentinel in April.
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Mayor Calvin E. Parish reports that no Hillsborough commissioner can take the test oath
With the town's annual election due the first Saturday in February, Mayor C. E. Parish told the military post commander at Raleigh that none of Hillsborough's sitting commissioners could take the test oath required of officeholders, though all were willing to keep serving, and that no white man in town could take it. On February 6 the post referred his letter to James Carle, the Bureau agent at Hillsborough, asking him to recommend a complete list of town officers who could take the oath.
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William A. Graham asks President Johnson to keep armed men from the polls
Writing from Hillsborough on January 30, 1868, former governor William A. Graham sent President Andrew Johnson a copy of the state act forbidding militia musters or armed men at the time and place of any election. He renewed the request he had made in Washington for a proclamation or general order barring armed men and military forces from the coming vote on the constitution drafted by the Reconstruction convention.
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Orange Conservatives hold a county meeting at the courthouse and name an executive committee
A large Conservative meeting at the courthouse in Hillsborough, chaired by Capt. John Berry, heard William A. Graham speak for more than an hour and Josiah Turner Jr. after him. It adopted resolutions backing the state Conservative convention, calling for government by white men and opposing Black suffrage, and the chair named a county executive committee under the party's plan of organization.
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The Bureau assigns agent Charles B. Whittemore to Hillsborough in charge of Orange and Person counties
Special Orders No. 19 from the Bureau's headquarters in Raleigh assigned agent C. B. Whittemore to Hillsborough in charge of Orange and Person counties, relieving agent James Carle. Whittemore's school report for March says he had then been at Hillsborough one month.
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Ben and Dilsey leave the Phillips household to live on their own
Ben and Dilsey, held by the Phillips family since the 1820s and kept on as servants after emancipation, left Cornelia Phillips Spencer's household in February 1868. Spencer wrote that she hoped the parting was only for a time.
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Bureau agent James Carle reports five freedmen's day schools and fifty districts without schools in Orange
The Hillsborough office's school report for February 1868 listed day schools at Hillsborough, taught by Misses Harris and Allen, Cedar Grove (Frank Whitted), Pleasant Green (William Douglass), the Ridge (London Moore) and Durham's (George Bradshaw). It counted 50 school districts without schools and about 6,000 children of both races who might attend, though it advised organizing schools in no more than half of them; agent James Carle had written to men in Orange and Person for the figures.
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Agent Whittemore makes a planter divide a crop with two freedmen after two former Confederate officers vouch for them
In his first case, agent Charles B. Whittemore heard two freedmen's claims to shares of a crop raised on a planter's farm about twelve miles from Hillsborough. Robert Bingham and Maj. William B. Lynch, who told him they had been Confederate officers with no love for Yankees, came with the freedmen and said they were faithful and industrious men about to be robbed of their dues. Whittemore ordered the crop held, on March 24 awarded one freedman 920 sticks of tobacco and 50 bushels of corn, and on April 17 sent Deputy Sheriff J. M. Blackwood to weigh and divide the rest.
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Agent Charles B. Whittemore counts 26 freedmen's schools in Orange and Person, most of them Sabbath schools
Whittemore's March 1868 report counted 26 freedmen's schools in his two counties, 6 day schools, 2 night schools and 18 Sabbath schools, with 15 teachers, 7 white and 8 Black. Five of the day schools were in Orange, at Hillsborough, Cedar Grove, Pleasant Green, the Ridge and Durham's; he put the Black children without schools at about 1,000 and wrote that at planting time nearly all children outside the towns were needed at work.
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Agent Whittemore summons Orange County employers in more than thirty claims brought by freedpeople
Between early March and mid-May 1868 Whittemore wrote more than thirty letters ordering white employers and neighbors to settle claims brought by freedpeople, mostly for unpaid wages or withheld shares of the 1867 crop, and a few over cows, a horse and land, or to appear at his office and explain. He threatened to send an officer to seize crops, told one debtor that bankruptcy did not cancel a wage claim, and ordered another to answer a girl's complaint that he had whipped her and kept her clothes.
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Robert Allen is driven from his farm near Ridge Meeting House over his Republican vote
Robert Allen, a Black sharecropper living about six miles west of Hillsborough near Ridge Meeting House, told the Bureau that his landlord, Daniel F. Thompson, ordered him to leave because he would not vote as Thompson wished. Allen said that late on the night of Monday, April 20, 1868, a man came to his door with a musket, claimed that twenty or thirty men surrounded the house and that Thompson had offered $300 for his scalp because he was a Radical, and warned that the family would be killed if they stayed; Allen left the next day. Thompson swore that he never ordered Allen off the place, and on May 27 the assistant commissioner sent Allen's complaint to the Hillsborough office for settlement. Agent Charles B. Whittemore, who doubted the landlord's counter-charge that Allen meant to burn his buildings and break into his smokehouse, heard it on April 29 and decided it in Allen's favor on May 13.
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Conservatives win every Orange County office in the first election under the 1868 constitution
In the three-day election on the new constitution, Orange County's Conservatives elected their entire county ticket. George Laws won the Superior Court clerkship by about 1,100 votes, John Turner the sheriff's office, Josiah Turner Jr. the state Senate seat by 863, and John Laws the register's office by about 1,500, while the county voted against the constitution by 850.
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Orange County votes against the 1868 constitution and for Thomas S. Ashe over Holden
Orange rejected the new Reconstruction constitution 1,863 to 1,324 and gave Conservative Thomas S. Ashe 1,834 votes to 1,310 for William W. Holden, who carried the state.
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A freedman is shot on a plantation near South Lowell, and the Bureau orders the planter arrested
Agent Charles B. Whittemore wrote Sheriff John Turner on April 25, 1868 that a Black man, named in his letter as Ned Gate, had been shot at Henry F. Gate's plantation near Turner's Mills or South Lowell on Thursday, April 23, during the election, and had died the next night, and told the sheriff to arrest Gate and hand him to the military at Raleigh. In June George Dixon of the Philadelphia Friends wrote to the Hillsborough office that a freedman named Ned Bumpass had been killed for voting the Radical ticket by a man he named as Quincy Gates, who was still at large; the office's register lists a letter on the murder of Ned Bumpass, and the two reports may be of the same killing.
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The Bureau agent orders a Mebaneville landowner to pay Jordan White for railroad cordwood
On April 24, 1868, Whittemore settled Jordan White's complaint against Addison E. Wilson, on whose land near the North Carolina Railroad White had cleared ground and cut wood, by ordering Wilson to pay him for 22 cords and a dollar a cord on 27 more and to let him stay and work his part of the place until November 1. Wilson asked for a new hearing on April 27, and Benjamin F. Mebane, William Bingham and Robert Bingham signed a statement that the custom of giving the wood to whoever cleared the land did not hold along the railroad, where wood had a cash value. White wrote to Gen. Nelson A. Miles on June 10 that the ruling had been turned against him at a hearing he was not called to; the case went to Lt. Thomas H. Hay and was closed on October 30 with a $7.50 judgment from a justice of the peace.
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The Hillsborough Bureau office dockets about sixty complaints in the summer of
From May 14 to October 16, 1868, the office's complaint docket recorded about 60 cases, some 50 of them from Orange and the rest from Person, most of them claims by freedpeople for wages, crop shares or small debts from 1867, which agents Manchester W. Weld, Charles B. Whittemore and Thomas H. Hay usually settled with awards of a few dollars, a few bushels of corn or a lien on the tobacco crop. The office also told a magistrate to recall warrants against a freedman, had the sheriff enforce an agent's order, and from late July sent more cases to the new justices of the peace, among them William F. Strayhorn.
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Lt. Thomas H. Hay is ordered to Hillsborough to take charge of Orange and Person counties
Special Orders No. 48 sent Hay, a first lieutenant of the 42nd Infantry, to Hillsborough to take charge of the two counties. It ended a quick turnover of agents: Charles B. Whittemore was relieved on May 9, Manchester W. Weld reported for duty on May 13 and took twenty days' leave on May 18 with clerk George Raynes left in charge, and Hay was signing letters at Hillsborough by May 20.
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Lt. Thomas H. Hay finds about 150 people in Orange County in need of relief
After talking with white and Black residents from all parts of the county, Hay reported little destitution bordering on starvation, but some old, feeble and sick people of both races, and a few widows of Confederate soldiers with families, who needed help; he put the number at no more than 150. With the wardens of the poor giving outdoor relief besides keeping 24 inmates at the poorhouse, and their chairman agreeing to take cases he referred, Hay asked that 4,000 rations be kept at Hillsborough for emergencies until the early crops came in.
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Thomas H. Hay's freedmen's court at Hillsborough decides Orange cases
From May 23 to July 11, 1868, papers headed 'In Freedmens Court, Orange Co.' record seven Orange cases before Thomas H. Hay, first lieutenant in the 42nd Infantry and brevet major, the Bureau's officer at Hillsborough: four wage or account claims, a debt over pledged corn, a marriage dispute and an assault charge; he also tried four Person County cases at Roxboro on June 1-6. In each money claim in these papers with a recorded decision the freedperson won all or part, in sums from $5.55 to $35 in Orange and up to $107.97 in Person, paid at the Hillsborough office or collected by the sheriff.
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Lt. Thomas H. Hay reports on the May term of the Orange County court and its cases against Black defendants
Hay attended the term that sat from May 25 to May 30, 1868 under chairman James C. Turrentine with John W. Graham as county solicitor. The court made indentures binding Black children and cancelled the indentures of five. In state cases against Black defendants, petit larceny brought four convictions, three acquittals and one continuance, bastardy two convictions and two continuances, and keeping a disorderly house one conviction.
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The Bureau sends sick freedmen from Hillsborough to its Salisbury hospital until it stops taking patients
In June and July 1868 Lt. Thomas H. Hay got transportation for two poor, sick freedmen to the Freedmen's Hospital at Salisbury, saying the county poorhouse had no means to care for them. When he recommended a third, from Flat River, in October, headquarters replied on October 23 that with the Bureau soon closing no more patients would be received, and Hay advised sending the man to the poorhouse on a county commissioner's order.
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Henry B. Pratt, a missionary to South America, supplies New Hope
Pratt preached at New Hope for six months with the Hillsborough church. On May 24, 1868, D. I. Craig, John T. Hogan and three women were received and baptized as members.
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Destitute Orange residents, white and Black, apply to the Bureau office at Hillsborough for rations
In July 1868 the Hillsborough office received about 112 certificates asking rations for about 116 destitute people, 57 described as Black or freed, 51 as white and 8 not stated, most of them old, sick, disabled, widowed or caring for children. Justices of the peace and other residents of Hillsborough, Chapel Hill, Durham, Rock Spring, Caldwell and St. Mark's district signed them, Josiah Turner Jr. among them, and the white applicants included a veteran of the War of 1812 and a Confederate soldier who had lost a leg near Petersburg. Notes on two show rations paid to one applicant on July 13 and refused to another.
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The Hillsborough Bureau office sends freedpeople's assault complaints to the magistrates, one against Pride Jones
A freedwoman's complaint of July 1, 1868, that a white man had beaten her that day went to justice Andrew Murdock, who bound him over to court, and a freedman's complaint of assault on July 13 went to the same justice to have the accused bound over. A Chapel Hill freedman beaten by several men on July 2 settled for $10 and costs, and a wife's complaint of a violent beating by her husband was sent to justice Washington Jordan to bind him to keep the peace.
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The Philadelphia Friends' association owns the freedmen's schoolhouse at Hillsborough and lends it to the Methodists
George Dixon wrote on June 26, 1868, that the Friends' teachers at the Hillsborough freedmen's school would leave early the next week and that the association had tried to keep a teacher for the youngest pupils through the summer. He said the schoolhouse belonged to the Philadelphia association, which let the Methodists preach in it without any claim to the property, and asked that they keep it in repair for the three months.
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The Court of Wardens of the Poor holds its last meeting
The seven-member wardens' court, which had run poor relief and the county poorhouse, met for the last time before the new board of county commissioners took over its work.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Reconstruction Republicans reshape UNC governance
The 1868 constitution gave the choice of university trustees to the state Board of Education, controlled by Governor William W. Holden. In July 1868 the new trustees removed President David L. Swain and his faculty, and a Republican faculty under Solomon Pool reopened classes in March 1869 amid strong partisan opposition.
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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.
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The university closes and reopens
Reconstruction Republicans took control of the trustees in 1868 and dismissed the old faculty; Solomon Pool's presidency drew almost no students, and the university closed in February 1871. The legislature revived it in March 1875, Cornelia Phillips Spencer rang the bell, and it reopened in September under a rebuilt faculty.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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