Chronology

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1. Colonial and Regulator years · 1680–1774

2. 1765
   Orange County William Nunn serves as sheriff of Orange County

   William Nunn, one of the most prominent of the first residents of Hillsborough, was sheriff of Orange County in 1765.

3. spring and summer 1768
   Protest or organizing · Orange County Orange farmers swear scores of depositions against county officers

   They accused Sheriff William Nunn and his deputies of seizing deer skins, livestock, a gun and cloth, and one man swore he had paid clerk Francis Nash for letters of administration he never received.

4. August 29, 1768
   Property or economic transaction · Hillsborough Hillsborough's town commissioners sign the earliest town deed on record

   James Watson, William Nunn, Edmund Fanning and Francis Nash, acting as commissioners for the town, sign the earliest of the Hillsborough town deeds kept by the Orange County register of deeds.

5. Revolution and early republic · 1775–1799

6. 1795
   Property or economic transaction · Nunn's Tavern and Inn, Lot #5, Franklin Street, Chapel Hill William Nunn buys James Patterson's inn and adds a tavern

   Captain William Nunn, a Revolutionary War officer and former Orange County sheriff, bought Patterson's inn. He and his wife Betsy enlarged the rooms for lodgers and added a tavern, and the business stayed in the Nunn family for more than half a century.

7. Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865

8. about 1805
   Property or economic transaction · Nunn's Tavern and Inn, Lot #5, Franklin Street, Chapel Hill Betsy Nunn carries on the tavern and inn after her husband's death

   When William Nunn died, his widow Betsy kept the tavern lot and went on running the inn. She held it until her death in her nineties, and the frontage maps label it Nunn's Tavern and Inn through 1848.

9. December 20, 1851
   Life event · Chapel Hill Elizabeth Nunn, who boarded students for fifty years, dies

   Mrs. Elizabeth Nunn, widow of the Revolutionary captain William Nunn, died in her ninety-second year after about fifty years of feeding students and unmarried professors at Chapel Hill. As a girl she had lived through the Regulator troubles.

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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.