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Orange County Indexed

Chronology

Key events from Orange County history: 100 highlights to start, expand to see all 1,473 dated entries and where they connect to the index.

Filters · 2 active
Entries may appear under more than one subject.
A town matches the place recorded for each entry.

September across every year, Reconstruction and the New South: 3 dated entries from the full dataset. Back to the highlights →

  1. Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
  2. Wright Malone is abducted and lynched near Little RiverRacial terror lynching · Little River, eastern Orange County

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

  3. UNC reopensFounding or opening · Chapel Hill

    The university resumed classes on Monday, September 6, 1875, after more than four years closed, with Charles Phillips as chairman of the faculty, and held a public celebration on September 15. Kemp P. Battle, then secretary of the trustees, was elected president in 1876.

  4. Women enroll at UNC for the first timeEducation milestone · Chapel Hill

    After the trustees opened UNC's post-graduate courses to women early in 1897, four women registered in September for the 1897–98 session, which The Tar Heel called the start of coeducation: Dixie Lee Bryant, Sallie Walker Stockard, Cecye Dodd and Mary MacRae. President Edwin Alderman let women enter junior and senior classes as well.

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

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

Two mice reading back to back against a leaf, with the hand-lettered words Friends of the Orange County Public Library
Illustration by Caldecott Medalist Matthew Cordell, gifted to the Friends 2026