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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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Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–10.Back to highlights

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10 dated events
1933Early twentieth century
  1. Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
  2. Henry P. Brandis Jr. becomes the Institute of Government's first associate director

    Appointment, election or service · Institute of Government, Chapel Hill; General Assembly, Raleigh

    Paid from the Cone pledges at $50 a week, Brandis, a Salisbury native with a Columbia law degree, left a New York firm and went straight to Raleigh to follow the General Assembly and digest its new laws. He was later dean of the UNC law school.

    People: Albert Coates · Henry P. Brandis Jr.

    Subject: Institute of Government

  3. The Institute of Government publishes its digest of the 1933 laws and its first guidebook, for clerks of court

    Publication, speech or performance · Institute of Government, Chapel Hill

    Henry Brandis's summary of the laws passed by the 1933 General Assembly came out as an issue of Popular Government, followed by a guidebook written for clerks of court. Covington treats them as the Institute's first substantial publications that local officials could use in their daily work.

    People: Henry P. Brandis Jr.

    Subject: Institute of Government

  4. Institute of Government staff begin daily bulletins on the General Assembly

    Publication, speech or performance · General Assembly, Raleigh

    From rented offices in the Raleigh Building, Brandis, Dillard Gardner and T. N. Grice followed every bill of the 1935 session from the gallery and put a bulletin of the day's action on each member's desk by the next morning. A weekly digest of statewide bills went to every newspaper in the state, so local officials learned of bills before they became law.

    People: Albert Coates · Henry P. Brandis Jr.

    Subject: Institute of Government

  5. With its money gone, the Institute's first staff leave for state jobs

    Closing or ending · Institute of Government, Chapel Hill

    By 1938 the Cone gifts were spent and the staff had gone weeks without pay. Brandis became research director of the State Tax Commission, Dillard Gardner joined the state supreme court staff and Grice the state auditor's office, while two young assistants stayed on at reduced pay; the last regular monthly Popular Government went out in January 1938.

    People: Albert Coates · Henry P. Brandis Jr.

    Subject: Institute of Government

  6. Henry P. Brandis Jr. joins the UNC law faculty

    Chapel Hill

    After two state tax posts, Brandis, the Institute of Government's first full-time staff member, joined the university's law school faculty in 1940. He became its dean in 1949 and a Graham Kenan Professor of Law in 1965, and retired in 1972.

    Subject: Institute of Government · UNC School of Law

  7. Civil rights era · 1945–1975
  8. Henry Brandis becomes dean of the UNC law school

    Appointment, election or service · School of Law (Manning Hall), UNC, Chapel Hill

    Brandis, the Institute's first associate director, was promoted from professor of law to dean in 1949. Under him the law school and the Institute drew closer, with Institute staff teaching Coates's classes when he was away.

    People: Henry P. Brandis Jr.

    Subject: UNC School of Law

  9. Dean Brandis handles the applications of Pauli Murray and three other Black students to the law school

    Chapel Hill

    After the trustees left admissions to each professional school's dean, Brandis wrote Chancellor R. B. House about four Black applicants, Pauli Murray, J. Kenneth Lee, Harvey E. Beech and William C. Chance Jr., and on June 6 told Murray the school offered no graduate law courses. The UNC Libraries exhibit reads these letters as showing the law school resisting integration.

    People: Pauli Murray · R. B. House · J. Kenneth Lee · Harvey E. Beech

    Subject: UNC School of Law

  10. Chapel Hill school board refuses Stanley Vickers a transfer to all-white Carrboro Elementary and adopts a first-grade proximity policy

    Law, policy or court · Chapel Hill

    The Chapel Hill City Board of Education denied ten-year-old Stanley Vickers a transfer from all-Black Northside Elementary to the nearer all-white Carrboro Elementary School, and at the same meeting adopted a policy of limited integration at the first-grade level starting with the 1960-61 year. UNC law dean Henry Brandis, who had twice moved to approve the transfer, resigned from the board in protest and called the action both morally and legally indefensible.

    People: Stanley Vickers · Henry P. Brandis Jr.

    Subject: Chapel Hill and Carrboro city schools · Carrboro Elementary School · Northside School

  11. Brandis returns for the Vickers hearing, then leaves the Chapel Hill school board

    Chapel Hill

    Brandis withdrew his August 3 resignation so he could sit at the board's hearing on Stanley Vickers's transfer request on August 31. He resigned again after that meeting, and the board named a committee to find his successor.

    People: Stanley Vickers

    Subject: Chapel Hill and Carrboro city schools

  12. Law dean Henry Brandis Jr. turns down Albert Coates's last appeal for a merger

    Law, policy or court · School of Law, UNC, Chapel Hill

    Coates sent Dean Henry Brandis Jr. a pleading letter with thirty-nine pages of enclosures urging that the Institute become part of the law school. Brandis refused to reopen the question and said that once Coates returned to full-time teaching, Institute staff would no longer teach his courses, since their part had weakened the school's instruction.

    People: Henry P. Brandis Jr.

    Subject: UNC School of Law

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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