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Orange County Indexed

Chronology

Key events from Orange County history: 100 highlights to start, then the full chronology of 6,171 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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6 dated events match your filters.

Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–6.Back to highlights

Entries

  1. Early twentieth century · 1900–1944

  2. Chapel Hill Herman G. Baity serves as dean of UNC's School of Engineering

    Baity, head of sanitary engineering since 1928, was dean of the School of Engineering from 1930 until 1936, when the sanitary engineering department moved to the School of Public Health. He chaired it there until 1955.

  3. Property or economic transaction · UNC campus south of the Carolina Inn, Chapel Hill Trustees offer land and the PWA approves a grant for an Institute of Government building

    University trustees agreed to give the Institute a site valued at $15,000 on the western edge of the campus south of the Carolina Inn, the building to go to the university if the Institute ended. The Public Works Administration approved $55,498 for labor, one of 52 grants from 300 applications in the state, toward a building then estimated at $123,000.

  4. Closing or ending · UNC campus south of the Carolina Inn, Chapel Hill The PWA withdraws its grant for the Institute of Government building

    Coates won two thirty-day extensions, the first from President Roosevelt at Senator Josiah Bailey's request, and in February 1936 was allowed to let a contract on his word that the money was in hand. The promised materials and cash never fully came through, and in the summer of 1936 PWA administrator H. G. Baity rescinded the grant; a brief revival by Interior Secretary Harold Ickes in 1937 also failed.

  5. Founding or opening · Chapel Hill Chapel Hill appoints its first town planning commission

    After more than a year of urging by the Chapel Hill Weekly, the town named a five-member planning commission to review the design of new and remodeled buildings. It set the Colonial Revival look of downtown for the next decade.

  6. Recent decades · 1976–2026

  7. Chapel Hill UNC dedicates the Herman G. Baity Environmental Laboratory

    The School of Public Health dedicated McGavran-Greenberg Hall and the Herman G. Baity Environmental Laboratory, with Chancellor Paul Hardin giving the dedication.

  8. Chapel Hill Baity Hill graduate and family housing opens on former Baity land

    UNC completed the Baity Hill housing complex in 2005 on land once owned by Herman G. and Elizabeth Chesley Baity, whose family home stands on the grounds. It replaced Odum Village.

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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