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Searched the full chronology of 9,006 dated events and 77 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–14.Back to highlights
- Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
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Witherspoon takes charge of the Hillsborough Academy
Returning to Hillsborough at twenty-five, Witherspoon took a double charge: the pastorate of the newly built Presbyterian church and the principalship of the closely allied Hillsborough Academy. He gave up the academy sometime after 1819.
Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 189 events
Subject: Hillsborough Academy · Hillsborough Presbyterian Church
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Polly Burke helps organize the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church
In September 1816 Mary W. Burke joined eight other people and the Rev. John Knox Witherspoon to organize the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church, which acquired the town's brick church built in 1810. She rented pew 13 on the first pew list and supported the church for the next eighteen years.
People: John Knox Witherspoon
Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church
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The Rev. John Knox Witherspoon adds the paired end chimneys to his West King Street house
While he owned the house now called Twin Chimneys, the Presbyterian minister and schoolmaster built the Flemish-bond pairs of chimneys at each gable end that gave it its name. The two-story front porch dates from about 1816.
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Hillsborough Academy publishes its rules for students
Under principal John Witherspoon, Hillsborough Academy printed its rules of conduct in the Raleigh Register. Students had to attend daily worship, stay out of stores and taverns, avoid liquor, and keep the Sabbath.
People: John Knox Witherspoon
Subject: Hillsborough Academy
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The university closes its grammar school and makes Hillsborough Academy its preparatory school
When Abner W. Clopton gave up the grammar school the university dropped it. Caldwell arranged for Hillsborough Academy, under John Witherspoon with John Rogers teaching, to prepare boys for the university, whose faculty could attend its examinations and admit its top pupils on certificate.
People: Abner Wentworth Clopton · John Knox Witherspoon · Joseph Caldwell · John Rogers
Subject: Hillsborough Academy · University grammar school (Preparatory School)
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Visiting Episcopal clergy hold the first recorded services of the revived church in Hillsborough
In the convention year 1819-20, John Phillips of Tarboro and G. T. Bedell of Fayetteville became the first clergy recorded as officiating in Hillsborough, Bedell preaching in the Presbyterian church lent by its pastor John Witherspoon and baptizing nine children in Orange County. Eight of the baptisms took place at Thomas Latta's house four miles from town and were entered in the Latta family Bible, which Murphy found still kept in the same room in 1890.
People: John Knox Witherspoon
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Bethlehem Presbyterian Church is organized
Elisha Mitchell, Elijah Graves and Samuel Child led the organization of Bethlehem Presbyterian Church, which built its first church the next year.
People: Elisha Mitchell · John Knox Witherspoon · Elijah Graves
Subject: Bethlehem Presbyterian Church
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The Orange County Sunday School Union asks the Assembly to fund its schools
The Orange County Sunday School Union petitioned the General Assembly for 25 cents a year per pupil for its 22 Sunday schools, which taught 800 to 1,000 children, many from poor families, to read. John Scott of Hillsborough presented it in the House of Commons, which turned it down.
People: James Webb · William Kirkland · William Norwood · John Knox Witherspoon · Dennis Heartt · John Wall Norwood · William Huntington
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John Witherspoon opens a private boarding school
The Raleigh Register announced the Rev. John Witherspoon's Private Boarding School for opening in 1826. The school seems to have run until 1830 or later.
People: John Knox Witherspoon
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Fire destroys Witherspoon's farmhouse and the Orange Presbytery records
The fire burned the Witherspoons' rural home a mile and a half south of Hillsborough and its contents, including all but one volume of the old records of Orange Presbytery, which Witherspoon held as stated clerk. Losses were put at about 3,000 dollars and the house was rebuilt.
Subject: Tusculum (Witherspoon farm)
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Witherspoon ends seventeen years as pastor at Hillsborough
Witherspoon severed his connection with the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church and moved to Camden, South Carolina. His advocacy of religious education, Sunday schools and preaching for enslaved people had strained relations with his congregation.
Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church
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Witherspoon's farm Tusculum is sold at the courthouse door
Dr. Edmund Strudwick, who had long held the mortgages, bought the farm at public sale. Susan Witherspoon was allowed to stay on at Tusculum by Strudwick's provision.
People: Edmund Strudwick
Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough · Tusculum (Witherspoon farm)
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Witherspoon dies at Tusculum and is buried in the Old Town Cemetery
He died penniless at the Tusculum farmhouse on the thirty-seventh anniversary of the organization of the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church. His funeral was held in that church and he was buried nearby in the Nash-Strudwick plot of the Old Town Cemetery, where the congregation and townspeople paid for the obelisk over his grave.
Subject: Old Town Cemetery, Hillsborough · Hillsborough Presbyterian Church · Tusculum (Witherspoon farm)
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Hillsborough Presbyterian Church sells the people it held in trust for the Witherspoons
People once held by John Knox Witherspoon had passed to the church in trust for the care of his ailing daughter. The session refused a sale in August 1852, but after Witherspoon's death it agreed, and part of the money went to Mary Witherspoon. The names of those sold are not recorded.
People: John Knox Witherspoon
Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church
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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 4, 2026.
