Chronology

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1. Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865

2. June 1842
   Slavery and freedom · Hillsborough William Norwood's estate lists Rebecca Ruffin and her daughters

   When William Norwood died, the inventory of his estate named Rebecca, wife of Judge Ruffin's coachman Jesse, and two of their daughters, Nancy and Julia, among 57 enslaved people.

3. May 1865
   Slavery and freedom · Hillsborough Paul Cameron complains that Jesse Ruffin is raising freedpeople's hopes of land

   In May 1865, weeks after the Confederate surrender near Durham, Paul Cameron wrote to his father-in-law Thomas Ruffin that the judge's longtime coachman Jesse had stirred the freedpeople on his place to hope for a freehold in the land they worked, and asked that his name not be linked with Jesse's.

4. Inscribed December 5, 1865
   Statistic or record · Coachman's Quarters, South Cameron Street, Hillsborough Bricks at the Coachman's Quarters carry the date Dec 5, '65

   Two bricks in a small outbuilding near the Burnside stable in Hillsborough carry the hand-cut inscription 'Dec 5, '65', found during the building's restoration after 2003. The owners and descendants connect it to Jesse Ruffin, a coachman once enslaved by Thomas Ruffin. According to family tradition he cut the date to mark the day after the General Assembly ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which formally ended slavery.

5. Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899

6. May 1, 1866
   Life event · Hillsborough Jesse and Rebecca Ruffin register the marriage they made in

   Jesse Ruffin, coachman to Judge Thomas Ruffin, and Rebecca, who had kept the keys of the Norwood household across the Eno, had married in 1828 while enslaved to different families. They recorded the marriage with the Freedmen's Bureau and later bought a farm.

7. Early twentieth century · 1900–1944

8. March 6, 1901
   Life event · Hillsborough Jesse Ruffin, coachman and stagecoach driver, dies

   Jesse Ruffin died in his nineties at his grandson Lindsey Faucette's house, out between Hillsborough and Durham. The Durham Sun remembered him as Judge Ruffin's servant and later Paul Cameron's, and a stagecoach driver before the railroad came; he was carried to Hillsborough by train for burial.

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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.