Chronology

Orange County reports its county taxes to the state for the first time

County taxes, all on property and polls, came to $9,432.53 in 1856: $6,153.98 for county costs, $1,583.92 for the poor and $1,694.63 for common schools. By 1864 the county levy had grown to $35,106.63.

Samuel F. Phillips represents Orange County in the House of Commons

A Whig, Phillips was elected to the House of Commons in 1856 and 1858 and again in 1864 and 1865, representing Orange, and was chosen speaker in 1865. He moved to Raleigh in 1867.

Orange County Agricultural Society holds its third fair near Hillsborough

At the society's third annual fair, on its grounds near Hillsborough, members elected Paul C. Cameron president and Thomas Webb secretary. Cameron, away in Alabama, had given the society a flag that flew from a pole more than eighty feet high.

People: Paul C. Cameron · Josiah Turner Jr. · William A. Graham

Brick mason William Maynard builds his frame farmhouse

William Maynard, a brick mason who also farmed, completed a story-and-a-half frame house two rooms deep in 1857, with a wide center hall and plain Greek Revival details. The older log dwelling behind it then became the kitchen. The 1993 form ranks it among the most intact antebellum farmhouses in the county.

Subject: Maynard Farm

The wardens of the poor elect Dr. Benjamin F. Mebane physician to the poorhouse

At the same April 1857 meeting the Court of Wardens told its treasurer to hand over the rest of the 1856 poor taxes so the superintendent could pay the oldest orders first.

People: Benjamin Franklin Mebane

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

The wardens of the poor order poorhouse repairs and a $1,000 loan

After a called meeting on May 11, 1857 about the state of the poorhouse building, the wardens asked the county court on May 25 to summon the magistrates on the condition of the poor. They named a committee to repair the west building and let the superintendent borrow $1,000.

People: John U. Kirkland · Pride Jones

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

Robert Bingham becomes a partner in his father's school at the Oaks

After graduating from the University of North Carolina in 1857, Robert Bingham was admitted in July as junior partner in his father's school at the Oaks, which took the firm name W. J. Bingham and Sons. His brother William was also a partner.

People: William Bingham (1835-1873) · William James Bingham

Subject: Bingham School

A small smoking-tobacco factory opens by the depot at Durham's Station

Built beside the tracks and worked by free Black and white laborers, the plant was the start of the tobacco industry that later made Durham a factory town.

Pride Jones and John W. Norwood are elected to the House of Commons for Orange

Orange County elected Democrats Pride Jones and John W. Norwood to the state House of Commons in the August 1858 election.

People: John Wilkins Norwood

Washington Duke turns from cotton to tobacco on his Orange County farm

After a failed cotton crop, Washington Duke began growing tobacco in 1859 on his farm, then in Orange County, following favorable publicity among Orange County farmers. The farm used the labor of an enslaved girl, Caroline, bought in 1855, and later a leased enslaved man, Jim, who worked in tobacco.

Samuel Wellwood Hughes opens his own school near Cedar Grove

After fourteen years as founder and principal of Cedar Grove Academy, Samuel Wellwood Hughes opened his own classical school five miles northwest of Hillsborough, its first session beginning on the second Monday of January 1859. He taught there until his death in 1884; the surviving schoolhouse, dated about 1862, was later moved to Hillsborough and restored.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Hughes Academy (Cedar Grove Academy)

Census counts more than 5,000 enslaved people in Orange County

The 1860 census recorded more than 5,000 enslaved people in Orange County, whose labor sustained the county's farms. At emancipation they made up roughly a third of the county's population.

Four in ten Orange farms now grow bright-leaf tobacco

Between 1850 and 1860 the share of county farms growing bright leaf rose from about 11 to about 41 percent and the crop grew fivefold to over a million pounds. Farms raising 100 bushels of wheat or more rose from 26 to 39 percent.

Most white male household heads in Orange County own no land

Citing Robert Kenzer's study of the county, the report says that in 1860 some 59 percent of white men heading households held no land and 71.5 percent held no slaves. A third held between 1 and 250 acres, and 21.6 percent held from one to nine enslaved people.

Orange County teaches 57 district schools

In 1860 Orange County taught fifty-seven district schools with forty-five licensed teachers, on about $7,400 in state school money and $1,800 in county taxes, in terms of about four months, two decades after the state's first public school law. The 1860 census, counting differently, listed 25 public schools with 2,163 pupils.

Paul C. Cameron holds 470 people in slavery in Orange County

The 1860 count listed Cameron of Fairntosh as the owner of 470 enslaved people in Orange, and the joined Bennehan-Cameron holdings ran to as much as 30,000 acres worked by about 900 enslaved people.

People: Paul C. Cameron

Seven in ten free Orange County residents hold no one in slavery

In 1860, 70 percent of the free population held no enslaved people. Of the slaveholders, only seven percent held 20 or more, and more than half held fewer than five.

The Neville House is built

The Neville House, built about 1860, was placed on the state Study List in July 1992 after the Chapel Hill Township survey.

The Sikes log house is built

The Sikes log house dates from about 1860 and was placed on the state Study List in July 1993.

At least 1,260 Orange County men serve in the Confederate army

J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton counted 1,260 Orange men in Moore's Roster, of whom 249 died in service and 139 were wounded. He thought all three figures too low.

People: J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton

Women organize Ladies Aid Societies in Hillsborough and Chapel Hill

Soon after secession women in the two towns formed aid societies, later joined by others, that made clothing and bandages, gathered food and money, met troop trains and nursed the sick and wounded until the war ended.

People: Cornelia Phillips Spencer

Orange County elects William A. Graham to the secession convention

Graham had led Union men in defeating a February 1861 referendum to call a convention on disunion. After Fort Sumter he was elected by a large margin to represent Orange County in the Constitutional Convention of May 1861, where he stood unsuccessfully for the presidency of the convention before voting for secession.

The legislature elects William A. Graham to the Confederate Senate

Early in the session that began after the 1862 election, the Assembly chose Graham, then Orange's state senator, for the Confederate Senate term starting in May 1864. He kept his state seat until December 1863.

People: William A. Graham · John Berry

Robert Bingham goes to war with an Orange County militia company

Robert Bingham, a member of an Orange County militia company, enlisted in state service with his fellow members on March 8, 1862, and on March 25 was elected captain of Company G, Forty-fourth North Carolina Infantry. He was captured in June 1863 and held in Union prisons until he was exchanged in 1864.

The county school board names committeemen for all 53 districts in wartime

The Board of Superintendents appointed school committeemen for each of Orange County's 53 districts, a sign the public schools stayed open during the war. That month W. H. Brown's examining committee also called would-be teachers to the courthouse in May.

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

Jim, an enslaved tobacco worker leased to Washington Duke, flees toward Union lines

Jim, an enslaved man whose labor Washington Duke leased to grow and cure tobacco, ran away with three others in June 1863 trying to reach Union lines. After the war he took the surname Cox and became a tobacco sharecropper in the Durham area.

Assessors announce the listing of Orange County property under the Confederate tax

H. M. Stroud and A. M. Angier advertised fourteen places and dates, August 18 to September 4, to list produce, goods and money under the Confederate tax act of April 24, 1863. A tax-in-kind notice followed in December 1864.

Josiah Turner Jr. of Hillsborough is elected to the Confederate Congress

Turner won as an anti-administration candidate in the same year Orange gave Zebulon Vance an 885-vote majority over the peace candidate William W. Holden. In Congress his resolutions supported Graham's push for the Hampton Roads peace conference.

People: Josiah Turner Jr. · Zebulon B. Vance · William W. Holden · William A. Graham

Orange County's roll of justices of the peace reaches 62

The county court had usually been small, and often only five or six magistrates sat at a term, but the number of justices rose sharply during the war. By 1864 Orange had 62.

William Bingham takes over the family school at the Oaks and incorporates it

With his brother Robert in the army and his father in declining health, William Bingham was running the school at the Oaks by 1864. That year he incorporated it as the Bingham School, a military and classical academy, and in December moved it to Mebaneville.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

People: William James Bingham

Subject: Bingham School

Bingham School moves from the Oaks to Mebaneville

William Bingham and Robert Bingham, sons of William James Bingham, moved the school that December to a site east of Mebane's Station on the North Carolina Railroad, after the legislature incorporated it in 1864 as a military and classical academy. The highway marker's 1865 may be when classes began at the new site.

People: Robert Bingham · William Bingham (1835-1873) · William James Bingham

Subject: Bingham School · North Carolina Railroad

Emancipation frees about 6,000 people in Orange County, many of whom become tenants and sharecroppers

About 6,000 enslaved people in Orange County were freed at the end of the Civil War. Many Black families left for Durham and other towns, while some stayed on the land as tenant farmers or sharecroppers.

Orange County sends John Berry and Samuel F. Phillips to the 1865 convention

Orange would have elected Graham to the postwar convention, but his pardon was held up, so he withdrew and voters chose Berry and Phillips.

People: Samuel (Samuel Field) Phillips · William A. Graham · William W. Holden

Orange County voters ratify the ordinances abolishing slavery and repudiating secession

In the 1865 vote on the convention's work, Orange approved the abolition of slavery 169 to 73 and the repudiation of secession 170 to 55.

The legislature elects William A. Graham to the U.S. Senate, but Congress refuses to seat him

Elected to the state Senate in 1865, Graham could not take that seat without a pardon. The legislature then chose him for the U.S. Senate, and he was turned away with the rest of the state's delegation. His pardon arrived in 1867.

People: John Berry

Washington Duke begins manufacturing smoking tobacco on his farm

Back from Confederate service, Washington Duke starts making smoking tobacco on his Orange County farm, the start of the business his sons later built into W. Duke and Sons.

Johnston accepts Sherman's basis of agreement at the Bennitt farm

At their second meeting at James and Nancy Bennitt's farm on the Hillsborough Road, then in Orange County, Joseph E. Johnston accepted the "basis of agreement" William T. Sherman submitted, which offered an armistice, disbanding of the armies, recognition of state governments and a general amnesty. Jefferson Davis approved the terms, but Washington rejected them.

People: William T. Sherman

Johnston surrendered to Sherman at the Bennett farm, then in Orange County

After meetings on April 17 and 18 whose terms Washington rejected, Joseph E. Johnston and William T. Sherman met again at the farm of James and Nancy Bennitt and signed a military surrender covering forces in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. North Carolina Historic Sites describes the Bennitt farm as a 325 acre place in Orange County, on the Hillsborough road west of Durham Station.

Part of Orange County during the Civil War, 1861–1865 · 42 events

People: Joseph E. Johnston · William T. Sherman

Orange County votes against the proposed state constitution of

Voters rejected the constitution submitted by the reconvened convention, 494 to 392.

The Union League organizes Black voters in Orange County

The Republican Union League, organized in Orange, Alamance and Guilford by Albion W. Tourgee, its first state president, recruited nearly every Black man who would vote before the 1867 election. It had faded by the end of 1870.

People: Albion W. Tourgée · William W. Holden

Charles Phillips is ordained at New Hope Church in Orange County

Phillips was ordained on 14 April 1866 at Orange County's New Hope Church, which had long been under the pastoral charge of his father James Phillips. Orange Presbytery had convened there on Wednesday, April 11, and ordained Phillips and Calvin H. Wiley during the meeting.

People: James Phillips

Subject: New Hope Presbyterian Church

Sheriff H. B. Guthrie announces that the county treasury is empty

His notice to taxpayers said no county tax had been levied or collected for 1865, the treasury held not a dollar and the wardens of the poor were deep in debt. He set fifteen collection days in July.

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

The wardens' yearly count finds 21 people in the poorhouse

The count listed three adult men, thirteen adult women and five children of color, three of whom had white mothers. In October the wardens kept James M. Bain as superintendent at $150 a year, with $25 for his wife.

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

Josiah Turner Jr. wins Orange's Senate seat but is excluded under the Fourteenth Amendment

Turner won election as state senator in 1868 but was not seated, since his disabilities under the Fourteenth Amendment were still in force. John W. Graham was elected instead.

People: John W. Graham

Orange County votes against the 1868 constitution and for Thomas S. Ashe over Holden

Orange rejected the new Reconstruction constitution 1,863 to 1,324 and gave Conservative Thomas S. Ashe 1,834 votes to 1,310 for William W. Holden, who carried the state.

People: William W. Holden

Six freedmen's schools are running in Orange County

By 1868 six schools for freed people had been set up in the county, paid for mostly by the Freedmen's Bureau and Quaker missions, with Black families giving what they could.

People: Robert G. Fitzgerald

Commissioners hire Silas M. Link to divide the county into townships

Link was paid $75 to lay the school districts out into townships, and the board approved his plan of eight: Hillsboro, Little River, Mangum, Durham, Patterson, Chapel Hill, Bingham and Cedar Grove. In 1877 the board split Mangum at Little River to form Lebanon Township.

The new county commissioners name school committees for all 53 districts

Working from Silas Link's report, which listed the school districts in each new township, the board named three committeemen for every one of the county's 53 districts. Presumably they were meant to hold office until the townships could elect their own.

A school report finds 43 schoolhouses for nearly 6,000 children

A. Hooker, late chairman of the common schools board, counted 3,667 white and 2,235 Black children in the county and only 43 schoolhouses, most run down, to serve both races. He put the need at 63 new buildings of about $100 each.

Thomas Fitzgerald buys Woodside, where his son Robert builds a freedmen's school

Thomas Fitzgerald, whose son Robert had persuaded the family to move from Pennsylvania, bought Woodside, a 158-acre plantation six miles east of Hillsborough, from Robert J. Jeffreys for $1,200 in April 1869, with Robert writing the deed. Robert built a freedmen's school on the property, and the family also farmed and ran a tannery and brick making there.

Robert G. Fitzgerald marries Cornelia Smith of Chapel Hill

Fitzgerald married Cornelia Smith, a niece of Mary Ruffin Smith, the Chapel Hill benefactor of the university. Their granddaughter Pauli Murray later told the family's story in Proud Shoes.

People: Pauli Murray

Klansmen take two Black prisoners from jail and shoot one of them

A few nights after three barns burned in late July 1869, two Black men accused of another barn burning were taken from jail. One was let go; the other was shot and died.

Subject: Orange County jail, Hillsborough

Wright Malone is abducted and lynched near Little River

On the night of September 6, 1869, four mounted men took Wright Malone, a young Black farmer, from the coal kiln he was burning with his father near Little River in eastern Orange County. A neighbor found his body hanging from a tree on September 12, and the coroner concluded the killing had been planned in advance.

People: Wright Malone

Governor Holden warns Orange County it may be declared in insurrection

Holden's proclamation of October 20, 1869, named Lenoir, Jones, Orange and Chatham counties and said that in Orange the jail had been forced, two Black prisoners taken out and shot, and three other Black men hanged. He warned that he would declare those counties in a state of insurrection and use the whole power of the state if the violence continued.

People: William W. Holden

Cyrus Guy is lynched by a masked mob in western Orange County

A masked mob seized Cyrus Guy, a 24-year-old Afro-Indigenous farmer from a free family of color, and hanged him from a tree on the High Rock Road near the Alamance County line, above the county poorhouse. The Hillsborough Recorder reported that an inquest held under Sheriff Turner found out nothing, and Ben Johnson recalled in 1937 that the body was left hanging for four days.

People: Cyrus Guy

Baptists form the Mount Zion Association

The Mount Zion Baptist Association was formed. By 1953 nearly every Baptist church in Orange County belonged to it, replacing the older Sandy Creek Association.

Orange County reports on its poorhouse to the new Board of Public Charities

Orange County's report to the state Board of Public Charities described two one-story brick buildings of six rooms each on a 400-acre tract five miles from Hillsborough. The poorhouse held 41 people, ten able to do light work, with ten deaths since July 1868.

People: Edmund Strudwick

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

The 1870 census records Orange County's losses since

Against 1860, farm values fell from $2,141,690 to $977,308, improved acreage from 101,354 to 73,745 and livestock value by nearly half, while manufacturing establishments rose from 61 to 92. The population was 17,507, including 6,420 Black residents.

The Dukes move their tobacco business into a wooden factory in Durham

The Duke family's smoking tobacco business outgrows the farm and moves into a wooden factory at Durham, then still part of Orange County.

Frederick Strudwick takes an unexpired Orange County seat in the House

In February 1870 Strudwick, a Democrat, was chosen to fill the unexpired term of J. J. Allison in the North Carolina House of Representatives. He was elected to a full two-year term that August.

Hillsborough men ask Governor Holden to commission Pride Jones against the Klan

On March 5, 1870 six Hillsborough men, among them J. W. Norwood, James Webb and Henry K. Nash, recommended to Governor Holden that Pride Jones be made a militia captain to put down night riding. Holden sent the commission on March 7 and Jones accepted on March 9. The raids soon stopped, and Jones resigned after four weeks.

People: William W. Holden · Pride Jones

Disguised men whip residents of the county poorhouse

Men in disguise entered the poorhouse at night and whipped several of the men and women living there. On March 10 the commissioners offered a $200 reward for the attackers, over the written protest of commissioner W. N. Patterson, who defended the raiders' motives.

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

Strudwick is kept off the impeachment managers because of his Klan reputation

After guiding the impeachment resolution through the house judiciary committee and the full house, Strudwick was not chosen as a manager for the senate trial. It was feared that his widely known association with the Ku Klux Klan would make the proceedings look like a Klan prosecution.

Part of Kirk-Holden War connections, 1870 · 11 events

People: William W. Holden

Orange County names a three-man Board of Education and a panel of teacher examiners

Under the Reconstruction school law the county had a Board of Education of W. N. Patterson, J. T. Hogan and Jones Watson in 1872. Samuel W. Hughes and Charles Curtis were among the county examiners who licensed teachers that year.

People: Samuel Wellwood Hughes · Jones Watson

Jones Watson and Pride Jones are elected to the state House for Orange County

Running as Conservative (Democratic) candidates, Jones Watson and Dr. Pride Jones won Orange County's two seats in the state House of Representatives in the August 1872 election.

People: Pride Jones

Robert Bingham takes charge of the Bingham School near Mebane

When his brother William died in 1873, Robert Bingham became headmaster of the Bingham School, which had moved from the Oaks to Mebane. In May 1879 he bought out his cousin William B. Lynch's interest and became sole proprietor.

People: William Bingham (1835-1873) · W. B. (William Bingham) Lynch

Subject: Bingham School

Robert F. Hoke obtains a charter for the Chapel Hill Iron Mountain Railroad

While the university was closed, Robert F. Hoke, owner of an iron mine north of Chapel Hill, obtained a state charter for a railroad to carry ore from Iron Mountain to the North Carolina Railroad.

Subject: North Carolina Railroad

The Board of Education divides the 1872 school fund among the townships by race

At its March 5, 1873 meeting the board named a teacher examining committee and apportioned the 1872 fund at the same rate per child for both races: $4,219.60 for 3,080 white children and $2,402.98 for 1,754 Black children across eight townships.

People: Samuel Wellwood Hughes

The Board of Education appoints Hazel Norwood county examiner

The board filled the county examiner's post with Hazel Norwood after Dr. Morgan Clop resigned, and settled its account with the treasurer, who held a balance of $7,686.92 from the state's 1872 apportionment.

A county school census finds 24 more schoolhouses are needed

An 1874 count of school-age children by township found 2,380 Black children and set the need at 24 additional schoolhouses, ten of them in Hillsboro Township.

The new trustees sue Solomon Pool and Alexander McIver at Orange Superior Court and win possession of the university in the Supreme Court

At the May 1874 term of Orange Superior Court the new board brought one action against Superintendent Alexander McIver, who held the university's seal and books and had agreed to a friendly test suit, and another against Solomon Pool for the buildings. Judge Albion W. Tourgee ruled against the trustees; John W. Graham and James A. Graham of Hillsborough argued for them without fee, as did B. F. Moore and William H. Battle on appeal in June 1874. At its January term 1875 the state Supreme Court decided for the university on every point, and possession passed to Andrew Mickle, the board's agent, with the seal, books and papers going to Treasurer Kemp Battle.

People: Solomon Pool · Albion W. Tourgée · Kemp Plummer Battle · Alexander McIver · James Augustus Graham · John W. Graham · Andrew Mickle

William A. Graham defeats Washington Duke for a seat in the 1875 convention

Orange elected Graham over Duke, 1,908 to 1,528, and Josiah Turner Jr. over John T. Hogan. Graham died before the convention met, and William N. Patterson beat Duke again in a special election, 2,000 to 1,297.

People: Josiah Turner Jr.

Commissioners order a new bell for the courthouse

The board authorized David C. Parks to buy and hang a new bell for the courthouse and to sell the old one on the best terms he could.

People: David C. Parks

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

County commissioners and township trustees adopt a uniform tax scale for livestock

Meeting with a trustee from each township, the board fixed values such as $100 for a first-class horse or mule, $20 for first-class cattle and $1 a head for sheep and goats. In May and June it sat sixteen days as a board of equalization to revise the tax list.

The poorhouse count records ten deaths in a single year

The enumeration listed six white men, eight white women, four Black men and six Black women living at the poorhouse. Over the previous year ten residents had died, two children had been born, twelve people had come in and four had left.

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

The school board names committeemen for 52 numbered school districts

The board's 1877 appointments name every district school in the county, from North East and Deals Creek to Prospect Hill and Orange Factory, with three committeemen for each.

The present Morrow's Mill is built on Cane Creek

The timber-framed mill on a stone foundation known as Morrow's Mill was built in 1878 on Cane Creek in southwestern Orange County, the third mill on a site whose stone dam enslaved laborers had built before the Civil War. It ground grain until 1930, and the 1993 county survey found it the only rural mill building besides Faucett's still standing, with its dam kept up.

The railroad is rechartered as the State University Railroad

The legislature rechartered the stalled iron-mine line as the State University Railroad, shifting its purpose to a rail link for the university, with UNC president Kemp P. Battle working alongside Hoke to raise funds.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle

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

The Charles Davis Farm is built

The Charles Davis Farm, built about 1880, was placed on the state Study List in July 1991 at its owner's request.

Subject: Charles Davis Farm

The upstairs courtroom of the Orange County Courthouse is renovated

In the 1880s the second-floor courtroom of John Berry's 1844-1845 courthouse on East King Street was renovated; the rest of the interior keeps most of its original finish.

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

Fire destroys the Bingham School buildings near Mebaneville

A fire that started in a cadet's quarters about 9:30 in the morning burned the barracks, office and library, the academy hall, the infirmary and the mess hall. About 175 cadets were in barracks, no one was hurt, and the loss was put at about $30,000.

People: Robert Bingham

Subject: Bingham School

Bingham School finishes new buildings after the spring fire

Less than three months after the fire, the rebuilt Bingham School stood nearly complete, with timber cut and sawed nearby. Thomas C. Oakley of Durham was the builder.

People: Robert Bingham

Subject: Bingham School

Tenant farmer Jessa Buttler mortgages his horse and crop to landowner C. R. Miller

Orange County tenant Jessa Buttler signed a chattel mortgage pledging his horse and his entire crop of corn, wheat, oats and tobacco to landowner C. R. Miller for a debt of $88.20. By October 1890 the debt stood at $106.04 despite partial payments.

Charles White, merchant and postmaster at Bingham School, dies

Charles White, who kept the store and post office at Bingham School near Mebane, died on Thursday, May 24, 1883. The Observer called him successful in business; his widow, Mary E. White, qualified as executrix of his will.

Orange County reports 33 white and 31 Black public schools

In 1884 Orange had 33 white and 31 Black public schools, with 1,369 white and 1,134 Black pupils, a term under ten weeks, and mostly log buildings. School property was valued at $3,500 for white schools and $2,500 for Black schools.

A building of Mrs. Charles White's used by Bingham School cadets as a mess burns

Early on Tuesday morning, August 19, 1884, fire destroyed a building owned by Mrs. Charles White that some Bingham School cadets used as a messing club. Its insurance had lapsed and the loss was put at about $1,000.

Subject: Bingham School

A stock law ends open range in four Orange County townships

An 1885 act barred cattle from running at large in Cedar Grove, Little River, Hillsboro and Bingham townships and had the commissioners fence those townships from a special tax. A second act let Chapel Hill Township adopt the stock law on a petition of three-fourths of its freeholders.

Orange County sets up its first postwar Board of Education

Under an 1885 law, Orange created its first Board of Education since the Civil War, chosen by the justices of the peace and county commissioners together. The Rev. J. L. Currie became superintendent in June 1885.

The school board requires the superintendent to visit every school and grade its teachers

On resolutions offered by Professor Winston, the board told Superintendent Currie to spend a day at each public school while in session, give each teacher a mark for practical skill, meet each district committee and report on where districts and schoolhouses should be, at $2.50 a day.

People: George Tayloe Winston

W. V. Andrews takes Professor Winston's seat on the county Board of Education

Professor Winston of the university left the new Orange County Board of Education six months after its first meeting, and W. V. Andrews was named in his place.

People: George Tayloe Winston

Superintendent Currie's first annual report lists each district schoolhouse as log or frame

Currie's report read to the board in January 1886 gave the first district-by-district inventory of schoolhouses for both races, most of them log buildings valued at $50 to $200, and a school term averaging ten weeks.

The school board asks the commissioners for a special tax to keep schools open four months

Superintendent Currie found the schools needed $2,000 beyond their apportionment to run the four months the law required, and the board petitioned the county commissioners to levy it. The board also set a floor of $40 for each white school and $30 for each Black school.

The county school board adds nine new school districts under Superintendent Currie

In the first years of the 1885 board, Superintendent James L. Currie laid out school districts and appointed committeemen, and by 1887 nine more districts had been created. In June 1886 he had told the board it needed $2,000 to keep the schools open four months.

The superintendent's report shows Black schools running half the term of white schools

Currie's annual report counted 33 white and 25 Black public schools. White schools averaged close to nine weeks of teaching and Black schools under four and a half, and Black women teachers earned $17 a month against $24 for white women.

Samuel M. Gattis becomes chairman of the Orange County Democratic executive committee

In the year he began practicing law in Hillsborough, Gattis was elected chairman of the Orange County Democratic executive committee and a delegate to the party's national convention.

The school board authorizes a countywide summer institute for teachers

The board empowered Superintendent Currie to hold a teachers' institute for the whole county that summer.

B. C. Patton's report finds most Orange County schoolhouses still built of logs

Patton's annual report to the state counted 43 white and 41 Black schools with 1,425 white and 1,048 Black pupils. Thirty of the 43 white schoolhouses and 17 of the 24 Black ones were log buildings, and terms ran about twelve weeks.

Most Orange County farmers are renters, sharecroppers or hired hands

In 1890, 58 percent of the county's farmers did not own their farms. Among Black farmers over half were field hands, a third sharecroppers and a tenth owners; more than a third of white farmers owned no land.

The Manly Snipes House is built in southwest Orange County

The Manly Snipes House, a two-story farmhouse with a second-story wing projecting over the front entrance, was probably built around 1890.

The Pritchard-Poythress Farm is built

The Pritchard-Poythress Farm dates from the 1890s and was placed on the state Study List in July 1992 after the Chapel Hill Township survey.

The average Orange County farm is down to 114 acres

As plantation land was sold off after the Civil War, farms in Orange County grew more numerous and smaller; the 1890 agricultural census put the average at 114 acres.

The state superintendent tells Orange County to make its sheriff pay over the school taxes

Teachers were holding $500 in unpaid orders with nothing in the school treasury because Sheriff John Knox Hughes had not turned over the taxes he collected. Asked for advice, the state superintendent advised Patton to collect from the sheriff or take him to court.

John W. Thompson of Cedar Grove becomes superintendent of the Orange County schools

John W. Thompson, a Cedar Grove teacher, took over the county schools from B. C. Patton in June 1890. He held the post until the board was abolished in 1895 and stayed on as supervisor under the county commissioners.

The school board rebukes teachers who skipped Charles McIver's institute

Told that some teachers had not attended the state institute taught by Charles D. McIver, the board passed a resolution regretting their want of zeal and noting that attendance was required by law.

A county farmer writes that merchants hold mortgages on most Orange farms

With tobacco and cotton prices falling, a yeoman farmer said Orange was "mortgaged to death," claiming merchants held liens on seven-tenths of the county's farms.

Bingham School leaves Orange County for Asheville

After fire destroyed the academic buildings and dormitories at the Mebane campus in December 1890, Robert Bingham moved the school to Asheville in 1891. Owen W. Bingham ran a separate school, the William Bingham School, at the Mebane site.

People: Robert Bingham

Subject: Bingham School

Orange County adopts a countywide road tax

Using an 1889 state act, the county laid a road tax of 7 cents per $100 valuation and turned the money over to the township supervisors. It ran for 1891 and 1892 before the justices forced its repeal.

Trustee Paul C. Cameron dies

Cameron, who had held nearly two thousand people in slavery before emancipation, chaired the building committees for the 1875 repairs and for Memorial Hall and lent $8,000 to finish the hall. After his death his heirs accepted ten Cameron Scholarships, each giving one student free tuition, in settlement of the loan.

The school board hires D. H. Thompson to audit the sheriff's school accounts

Rather than sue, the board engaged Major D. H. Thompson to go through Sheriff Hughes's accounts of school money, hoping to settle the matter without a lawsuit.

The Vance Daniel Farm is built

The Vance Daniel Farm was built about 1892 and was placed on the state Study List in July 1992 after the Chapel Hill Township survey.

Colonel George Tate is allowed to sell his county map to school committees

The board gave Colonel George Tate, maker of a map of Orange County, leave to offer it for sale to the school committee of every district.

James Long is elected to the county Board of Education after James Cole resigns

When James Cole left the Orange County Board of Education in 1894, James Long was chosen for the vacancy, a year before the legislature abolished the county boards.

County commissioners take charge of the Orange County schools

From 1895 to 1897 Orange had no Board of Education or superintendent; the county commissioners ran the schools. John W. Thompson, superintendent before and after, returned in June 1897.

The county is divided into five school townships, each with a five-man committee

When the county commissioners took over the schools, the county was regrouped into five school townships (Cedar Grove, Little River, Hillsboro, Bingham and Chapel Hill), each run by a committee of five in place of the many district committees.

The school board cuts its per-child apportionment and ties teacher pay to attendance

With little of the last tax levy collected, the board lowered its planned $1.35 a child to $1.25 for the county's 4,814 children, $6,017.50 in all, and barred the superintendent from signing pay orders for schools averaging under ten pupils.

T. M. Jordan & Co. moves its drugstore at Caldwell to a new stand

Thomas M. Jordan and his brother Dr. Archibald C. Jordan ran a store and pharmacy at Caldwell. In 1896 the firm moved its stock of drugs from the old stand, and Jordan told customers he had moved the drugstore to West Caldwell.

Voters again elect Orange County's commissioners

From August 1878 the justices of the peace had chosen the county commissioners every two years under the 1877 act. In 1896 the choice went back to the voters.

A new state act restores the Orange County Board of Education under C. P. Burch

After two years of the commissioners running the schools, a legislative act brought back the county board with C. P. Burch as chairman and Albert Holmes and James Monk as members. Capt. John P. Lockhart took Monk's seat when he resigned, and the board made John W. Thompson superintendent again.

The school board tells township committees to build frame schoolhouses and stop patching log ones

The board urged every township committee to provide more comfortable frame schoolhouses and to spend nothing more repairing old log walls.

Manly McCauley and Maggie Brewer leave the Brewer farm west of Chapel Hill

On a Wednesday afternoon Maggie Brewer, wife of the farmer Milton Brewer, left the family farm four miles west of Chapel Hill with Manly McCauley, an eighteen-year-old Black farmhand who had worked there about a year. A posse of eighteen men led by her husband set out after them on Friday and overtook the pair beyond Jonesboro.

Part of Racial-terror lynchings in Orange County · 17 events

People: Manly McCauley

Manly McCauley's body is found hanging from a tree three miles west of Chapel Hill

A farmer, Thomas Myrick, found McCauley's body hanging from a bent dogwood beside the public road some three miles west of Chapel Hill, a week after masked men had taken him from the officer bringing him back. Coroner Jordan was telegraphed to hold an inquest.

Part of Racial-terror lynchings in Orange County · 17 events

People: Manly McCauley

The 1899 school report shows two and a half times as much spent on white schools as Black

Supervisor John Thompson's report for 1899 counted 50 white and 25 Black schools and $4,391.51 spent on white schools against $1,688.09 on Black schools. Almost half the schoolhouses of each race were still log.

A legislature-appointed Board of School Directors takes over the Orange County schools

An 1899 act abolished the county Board of Education, which met for the last time on March 7, and put in its place a Board of School Directors named by the legislature. The Orange directors organized in April.

Orange County adopts an American Book Company contract for school textbooks

The county commissioners, with the directors' consent, accepted the American Book Company's offer to supply textbooks and take old books in exchange, adopting a list headed by McGuffey's Eclectic Primer at ten cents.

The school board names committees for every district school, township by township

The July 1899 appointments list about 55 district schools in five townships, among them schools marked as Black at Payne's Chapel, North Side and Hillsboro, and white schools at Breeze, Efland, Rail Road and Flat Rock.

Mount Hermon, Bethel and Crossroads Baptist congregations build new churches

With farm prices rising after 1900, three established rural Baptist congregations each replaced their meeting houses with new buildings in the first decade of the century.

Nearly four in ten Orange farmers are sharecroppers, and cotton covers 5,000 acres

At the turn of the century close to 40 percent of the county's farmers were sharecroppers working 20 to 60 acres, and about 5,000 acres went to cotton, mostly in the southern townships.

Orange County replaces log schoolhouses and opens forty rural libraries

Between 1900 and 1910 the county went from no rural libraries to forty. Log schoolhouses for white children fell from twenty-two to none, while those for Black children fell only from twenty to eight. School terms grew from seventy to eighty-nine days for white pupils and from sixty-five to eighty-two for Black pupils.

The Bradsher House is built in northwest Orange County

The one-story Bradsher House, a plain cottage given a shingled center gable and factory-made porch trim, dates from about 1900.

Tobacco farmer Ira Rogers builds tenant housing in upper Orange County

In the early 1900s Ira Rogers built many frame and log houses for the tenants who worked his tobacco land. One that survives has two stories, a chimney in the middle and two front doors, which suggests it housed two families.

A state Supreme Court ruling unseats a legislature-named school director in Orange

Following a North Carolina Supreme Court decision on the 1899 school act, the county board reorganized: director Stephen Forrest lost his seat and A. R. Holmes of the old Board of Education returned to finish a term running to July 1900.

Charles E. Maddry serves as superintendent of the Orange County schools

While a student at the University of North Carolina, Charles Edward Maddry served as superintendent of the Orange County schools.

The school board refuses to let Mormon elders preach in county schoolhouses

Among grievances heard in January 1901, the board went on record against allowing Mormon missionaries to preach in Orange County school buildings.

Commissioners create Cheeks and Eno townships

Acting on a 1903 act, the county board carved Cheeks Township out of western Hillsboro Township and formed Eno River Township out of pieces of Hillsboro and Little River.

Orange County teachers are offered the university summer school and pay tied to exam scores

The board accepted Dr. Venable's offer to admit county teachers to the University Summer School and set pay by the July examination: $35 a month for an average of 95 and $40 for 98.

People: Francis Preston Venable

Subject: University Summer School

The Rev. John C. Hocutt replaces Charles Maddry as county school superintendent

Maddry resigned in July 1904 to study at the Southern Baptist seminary, and the board chose his friend and former pastor John C. Hocutt to serve out the term. Hocutt stayed until 1908.

People: Charles Edward Maddry

The county counts 17 rural school libraries for white children and one for Black children

The 1905 annual statistical report found 18 rural school libraries in the county, holding 1,581 volumes in white schools and 92 in the single Black school library.

The county board builds the first room of Carr School for $300

Carr School in northwest Orange County, a gable-roofed weatherboarded schoolhouse, went up in 1908 with one room costing $300. The nomination names it among the few surviving frame schools the county built for Black children; it stands long vacant.

Thomas Wingate Andrews is elected superintendent of the Orange County schools

When Hocutt resigned to give full time to church work, the board on June 1, 1908 elected T. Wingate Andrews, a new UNC graduate and grandson of the Calvander schoolmaster Calvin Andrews, to fill the unexpired term; he took office that October. He served until 1911 and prepared the county's ten-year school report for 1900-1910.

About one in four Black farmers in Orange County own their land

State labor figures for 1910 counted 144 landowners among the county's 576 Black farmers. Most of the rest worked as laborers or sharecroppers.

Six Orange County districts levy special taxes for graded schools for white children

In 1910 six school districts taxed themselves to build and run larger graded schools, all of them for white children only, while Black schools stayed in one-room buildings.

Student YMCA members run eight Sunday schools around Chapel Hill

In 1910-11 the university YMCA organized Sunday schools at Calvander, Clark's Chapel, Williams' Chapel, Ephesus, Mount Carmel, Orange Church, Rankin's Chapel and Smith's Level, enrolling 321 pupils.

Subject: University YMCA

The county counts 25 rural primary schools for Black children, eight of them log

The school board recorded 25 rural primary schools for Black children in 1910, all but one run by a single teacher; eight were log buildings and the rest frame. White children had high schools in Hillsboro and Chapel Hill and 42 rural primary schools.

The county board auctions the sites of five abandoned schools

The Orange County Board of Education sold the grounds of the old Orange Church, Barbee, Cool Spring, Mill and Couch schools to the highest bidders, most of them neighbors of the sites, for sums between $5 and $20.

A county report finds no factory-made desks in any school for Black children

In the 1911-12 term seven of the 23 Orange County schools for Black children were log buildings. Eleven had homemade desks and the rest only benches; none had factory desks, while 28 of the 47 frame white schools did.

Eight new rural schoolhouses go up in Orange County in one school year

Lockhart's report for 1911-12 counted four new schoolhouses for white children and four for Black children, built for $4,515 in all. Seven Black schools still met in log houses, while no white school did.

Samuel Paul Lockhart becomes superintendent of the Orange County schools

Lockhart, a Bingham and UNC student from the New Hope area, took over the county schools in August 1911 and set to work with the board on new schoolhouses. He served until his cousin R. H. Claytor defeated him in 1917.

The county board agrees to pay half the cost of new schoolhouses built by local districts

At its meeting of October 10, 1911, early in Lockhart's term, the board planned new schoolhouses in several districts, the county paying half the cost and each community raising the other half.

Orange County voters approve $250,000 in road bonds

Under a 1911 local act, the county voted 919 to 831 to borrow for grading and macadamizing its roads, with a nine-member good roads commission to pick them. The bonds, sold about a year later at 5 percent for 40 years, were the county's first and left a debt not cleared until 1953.

Orange County begins agricultural extension work

The commissioners put up $300 to match a state appropriation for extension work with farmers. The county dropped its share in December 1915 and revived the work during the war.

Three students are convicted in Hillsborough in Isaac William Rand's death

At the Orange County Courthouse one of the four defendants was freed after the first testimony, and a jury of Orange County farmers found the other three guilty within a few hours. The judge gave the minimum four months with the option of hiring them out, and their families paid the fees and took them home the same day.

People: John W. Graham

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

Orange County begins registering births and deaths

The county's birth and death records are complete from October 1913, when registration began. By the 1950s the district health officer served as registrar and sent copies to the register of deeds and the state Bureau of Vital Statistics.

The Corporation Commission orders three railroad underpasses for the Durham-Greensboro highway in Orange County

Ruling on a petition from the Orange County Good Roads Commission against the Southern Railway, the Corporation Commission ordered the county to lower the Durham-Greensboro highway at three railroad crossings and the two sides to build 26-foot underpasses there. The county was to pay half to two thirds of each, and the railroad the rest, including the widening of an existing underpass.

Subject: North Carolina Railroad

About 250 county citizens meet at the Hillsboro courthouse for Community Service Week

As part of the university's Community Service Week, some 250 citizens gathered at the Orange County courthouse in Hillsboro to take up the county's needs and hear President Graham speak on community service.

People: Edward Kidder Graham

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

A. W. Clarke becomes Orange County's superintendent of roads

A 1915 act ended township road administration in Orange and put every county road under a superintendent. Clarke accepted $65 a month from March through November and $3 a day for winter work.

Mary Owen Graham is endorsed as supervisor of Orange County's canning clubs

The commissioners approved Graham, of Charlotte, to lead the county's canning clubs, the start of extension work with farm women. In 1916 they renewed $250 a year for tomato club work.

The county board re-elects Superintendent Lockhart and funds an assistant for him

The Board of Education returned Samuel P. Lockhart to office and set aside $400 to pay Mary O. Graham as his assistant.

The school board names Lula Cassidy rural supervisor and county canning agent

A week after electing Mary O. Graham supervisor, the board chose Lula Cassidy as rural supervisor and canning agent. In 1916 it put her in charge of a county-wide school commencement in Hillsboro.

The county board orders two privies built at every school

Meeting in August 1915, the board bought desks and equipment and voted to put two privies at each county school, paying half the cost and leaving the community to pay the rest.

The county road superintendent is equipped to work convicts on the roads

In 1916 the board authorized the road superintendent to buy the equipment he needed to put convicts to work. Prisoners were used on county road projects until the state took over most sentenced prisoners in 1931.

State and university educators set up a teacher-training program for Orange County

State superintendent J. Y. Joyner, rural schools chief L. C. Brogden and UNC's L. A. Williams met the county board and won approval for a 1916-17 plan of general teachers' meetings in November and March and group meetings at centers across the county, run by the UNC School of Education. Teachers were paid to attend, with a per diem and mileage for Saturday sessions.

Claytor's first report counts 42 one-teacher schools in Orange County

Claytor's 1917 report to the state listed 42 one-teacher schools, 19 white and 23 Black, with 2,569 white and 1,259 Black pupils. Nineteen Black schools had only benches and no desks.

Orange County mobilizes for World War I

Orange County organized a Council of Defense, Red Cross chapters in Chapel Hill (May 28, 1917) and Hillsborough (June 1, 1917), Liberty Loan and War Savings drives, and food conservation committees. On October 1, 1918, 650 UNC students were inducted into the Student Army Training Corps, and volunteers nursed the sick during the influenza epidemic.

The Chapel Hill Red Cross gathers country women into auxiliaries across southern Orange County

Auxiliaries of the Chapel Hill chapter formed at Bethel Church, Calvander, Antioch, Williams Chapel, Smith Level, Mount Moriah, Union Grove, Damascus, Carrboro and Orange Church, and among Chapel Hill women who could not come to the workroom. They sewed hospital shirts and refugee garments, paid for supplies by selling eggs, jelly and apples, and passed magazines and papers to families who could not buy them; Mrs. H. C. Hogan of the Calvander circle made 100 hospital bed shirts in 100 days.

Township road inspectors classify the county's roads

The inspectors the board had named in each township reported 37 miles of central highways, 62.1 miles of Class A roads and 365.2 miles of Class B roads. The same year the board began paying for bridges, pipes and road tools from general county funds.

Orange County men register on the first draft registration day

On June 5, 1917, 1,503 Orange County men registered for the draft. In Chapel Hill a Red Cross committee decorated the town with flags, pinned khaki bands on the registrants, and led a parade of the new registrants through the main streets afterward.

People: Alice Noble

The Council of Defense forms a committee to handle soldiers' business affairs

On July 9, 1917, the Orange County Council of Defense formed a Soldiers' Business Aid Committee, chaired by Frank Nash, to attend to any business a soldier wanted looked after. The Red Cross later cited it as the reason the county needed no separate civilian relief committee.

People: Frank Nash · Mack P. Efland

The Orange County Red Cross grants New Hope Church a branch

The chapter's executive committee read and granted New Hope Church's application to form a Red Cross branch on September 7, 1917, and filed Cedar Grove's certificate of organization at the same meeting. By December New Hope was sending surgical dressings to Hillsborough for shipment with Cedar Grove's.

J. Cheshire Webb is named Orange County's food administrator

On September 20, 1917, State Food Administrator Henry A. Page appointed J. Cheshire Webb of Hillsborough food administrator for Orange County, with R. A. Eubanks as administrator for Chapel Hill. The record says no mill in the county broke a Food Administration rule.

People: J. Cheshire Webb · Eugene Cunningham Branson

R. H. Claytor becomes superintendent of the Orange County schools

R. H. Claytor took office as county school superintendent in September 1917 and served until July 1947. Merging the small rural schools was one of his first goals.

Orange County women sign the food pledge at their school houses

On Saturday, October 27, 1917, committees at every school house in the county registered the women of the district and asked each to sign the Food Administration pledge. A house-to-house canvass of every housewife followed from October 29 to November 4.

People: J. Cheshire Webb · Eugene Cunningham Branson

More than 200 Orange County women register for war service

In October 1917 the Woman's Committee held the Registration of Women for Service, and more than two hundred women filled out and signed service cards.

Robert and Mollie Malone open Orange County Training School on the old Hackney campus

Principal Robert E. Malone, his wife Mollie Holmes Malone as domestic science teacher, and two other teachers began classes in academic, industrial and farm subjects at the county's new training school for Black students. Black residents had raised $3,000 toward the board's 1916 purchase of the Hackney campus on Merritt Mill Road.

Subject: Orange County Training School / Lincoln High School

A Black county committee raises $525 for the United War Work drive

In the United War Work drive, a county committee of Black residents led by Prof. R. W. Malcom, with Rev. A. E. W. Wilson for Hillsborough and Rev. J. M. Hackney as secretary in Chapel Hill, raised $525 of the county's $7,485.

Federal and state agriculture departments survey Orange County's soils

Crews from the U.S. and North Carolina departments of agriculture mapped the county's soils during the 1918 field season. E. S. Vanatta's report, published in 1921, identified twenty-three soil types.

Orange County women's committees sell $59,600 in Third Liberty Loan bonds

With Harriet M. Berry of Chapel Hill as county chairman, women organized in every township made $59,600 of the county's $99,150 in Third Liberty Loan sales, more than two-thirds of the allotment. Mrs. T. J. Wilson's Chapel Hill committee took 85 subscriptions for $18,500 and the Hillsborough committee raised $36,000.

People: Harriet Morehead Berry

The Orange County Red Cross counts 850 knitted articles and 41,396 dressings for

During 1918 the chapter and its branches at Cedar Grove, New Hope and Oaks sent 850 knitted articles to Atlanta and fourteen boxes holding 41,396 bandages and surgical dressings. The history adds that the Black auxiliary did little sewing but drew in Black members.

W. S. Roberson joins the county's legal advisory board for draft questionnaires

A legal advisory board was formed to help Orange County men fill out the government's draft questionnaires, with Major John W. Graham, Frank Nash and W. S. Roberson as members.

People: Frank Nash · John W. Graham

The county agent buys a carload of pigs to sell to farmers at cost

With extension work revived in wartime, the commissioners advanced money for County Agent Chance to buy young pigs and sell them to county residents for cash at cost. E. S. Vanatta, who came that year to make the soil survey, followed him as agent until February 1921.

The county agrees to pay for a home demonstration agent

The commissioners ordered two-thirds of an $800 salary paid for a home demonstration agent, with the school board paying the rest. The work stopped after the war and did not resume until 1935.

Subject: Home demonstration clubs

The Orange County Red Cross raises $4,294 in its second War Fund drive

A drive led by F. A. McNeer ran May 20-27, 1918, after ministers across the county preached on Red Cross Sunday, May 19. It raised $4,294.38, and the chapter sent $3,300 to national headquarters and kept about a quarter for local work.

People: John W. Graham

Jean Blue enlists as a Red Cross nurse and goes to France

Jean Blue enlisted in Unit 65 from Watts Hospital on May 27, 1918, trained at Camp Lee and in New York, and sailed for France at the start of September. At Brest she nursed soldiers with influenza and wounded men on their way home.

The Orange County Red Cross sends literature to women in outlying communities to start Red Cross work

On May 31, 1918, after accepting the Oaks branch's certificate of organization, the chapter sent Red Cross literature to Nellie Perry at Cane Creek, Mrs. Cain Roberts near St. Mary's and Mrs. Clyde Compton at Carr in hopes of organized work there. Carr became a branch that August.