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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. Early twentieth century · 1900–1944

  2. Founding or opening · Hillsborough The county welfare department is reorganized under Social Security

    A new three-member welfare board of O. L. Crabtree, Bruce Strowd and Charlie McDade, a Black member, took charge, and W. T. Mattox became superintendent in July 1937. The office moved to Hillsborough that year and kept a branch in Chapel Hill.

  3. Property or economic transaction · Orange County home, north of Efland Orange County sells the county home and its farm at auction

    The county auctioned the old county home, its 241-acre farm, buildings, stock and tools, and a Forrest was the high bidder. Its last residents had been boarded with relatives and friends at county expense, which the welfare superintendent said cost less than half as much.

  4. Civil rights era · 1945–1975

  5. Appointment, election or service · Hillsborough Annie Strowd becomes superintendent of public welfare

    Strowd succeeded Mrs. Jean Heer, who had followed W. T. Mattox after his death in 1947, and still held the post when the book was written.

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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