Search and filters
Search and filters · 1 active
2 dated events match your filters.
Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–2.Back to highlights
- Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
-
Three men hanged for a string of Chapel Hill burglaries
In 1877 a band of four broke into six houses in and near Chapel Hill and wounded the widow Margaret Hendon with an axe blade while trying to rob her. Albert Atwater, a Black man held for a lesser offense, confessed and named two white men and a Black man, who were convicted in Orange Superior Court and hanged on April 16, 1878 after Governor Jarvis refused clemency.
People: William P. (William Peter) Mallett · Thomas Ruffin · Thomas Jordan Jarvis
-
State convicts build the University Railroad
Governor Thomas J. Jarvis supplied state convicts at low hire to grade the line from University Station to Chapel Hill, while the Richmond and Danville company laid the rails. A white convict was shot dead while fleeing, and a Black convict named Fries died of gangrene after a whipping by the road's managers, which the solicitor found no ground to prosecute.
People: Thomas Jordan Jarvis · Kemp Plummer Battle · Alexander Boyd Andrews
Subject: University Station
Suggest a correction to an entry →
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.
