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Orange County Indexed

Chronology

Key events from Orange County history: 100 highlights to start, then the full chronology of 6,577 dated events and 63 storylines, each connected to the index. A storyline gathers many dated events into one history, such as the Regulator crisis.

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4 dated events match your filters.

Searched the full chronology of 6,577 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–4.Back to highlights

Entries

  1. Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865

  2. Violence or armed conflict · Chapel Hill Students give up pistols and dirks after a Washington's Birthday brawl

    After Walker Anderson's oration a dinner ended in drunken fighting, a dirk was drawn and a peacemaker was stabbed in the arm. The students were made to hand in their weapons, six pistols and two dirks, to be held while they remained at the university.

  3. Property or economic transaction · Ruffin-Roulhac House, Churton and Orange streets, Hillsborough Frances Blount buys the Hawks house and the lot beside it

    Walker Anderson, acting for Francis L. Hawks, sold the house to Frances Blount, who is thought to have been renting it. She also bought the neighboring lot 180 that year.

  4. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill Trustees make the senior professor Caldwell's deputy and add an adjunct professor

    When Caldwell's illness first forced him to ask for help, the trustees gave the professor of longest standing, Elisha Mitchell, power to act in the president's place and created an adjunct professorship of natural philosophy and astronomy, filled by Walker Anderson. Mitchell served as acting president until Swain arrived.

  5. Appointment, election or service · St. Matthew's Episcopal Church, Hillsborough The diocesan convention meets in St. Matthew's for the second and last time

    The Episcopal convention met at St. Matthew's in Hillsborough in June 1835 while Bishop Ives was in Europe for his health; by 1890 it had not returned, though Hillsborough was chosen again several times. Newly ordained deacon Moses Ashley Curtis arrived on June 4 and preached that night, probably his first sermon, from the chancel he would later serve for many years as rector.

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A dated event is a fact, filed on the page of the subject it belongs to: a person, a place, a theme, or a named event or history. Pages are subjects, with their own works and sources; the Place, community, or institution filter also gathers the institutions that recur in the entries without a page of their own. The page opens on the highlights; a search or any filter looks through every dated event and storyline, and each filter’s counts say how many entries choosing it would show alongside the others. A storyline is a longer history that gathers related dated events, and each storyline’s page lists its own. Counts give dated events and storylines separately. 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. The correction link under the entries opens the contact form; name the entry and its date and the Friends will check the source. 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 October 2, 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