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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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3 dated events match your filters.

Searched the full chronology of 6,577 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–3.Back to highlights

Entries

  1. Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865

  2. Founding or opening · Orange County courthouse, Hillsborough Elias Dodson holds Hillsborough's first known Baptist services in the courthouse

    Elias Dodson, a Virginia-born graduate of William and Mary, preached in the courthouse and is the first Baptist minister the authors could find holding services in town. When the county built a new courthouse he bought the old one for the Baptists.

  3. Construction or physical change · Corner of North Churton and East Queen streets, Hillsborough The Old Orange County Courthouse is moved up Churton Street to Queen Street

    After the county built a new courthouse, its commissioners advertised the old wooden courthouse for sale at the November 1845 county court, to be removed from the court square. The Baptist missionary Elias Dodson bought it, and by about 1847 it stood at the corner of Churton and Queen streets as a church. The building later became the freedmen's school and then the home of Dickerson Chapel AME Church.

  4. Founding or opening · Corner of North Churton and East Queen streets, Hillsborough First Baptist Church of Hillsborough is organized in the old courthouse

    The First Baptist Church was organized in Hillsborough and met in the former 1790 courthouse building, now Dickerson Chapel, until 1862, while it raised its own church building on a lot acquired between 1854 and 1860.

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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