Chronology

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 Henry Lloyd farm is built around a walled barnyard in Chapel Hill Township

Henry Lloyd, farming in Chapel Hill Township by 1880, probably built his farmhouse in the 1880s; the farm grew in stages, and log and frame outbuildings of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries close in a rectangular barnyard, an arrangement the survey found worth a Study List place.

The Phelps farmstead is built north of Hillsborough

The Phelps farm on NC 57 north of Hillsborough grows up in the late nineteenth century around a Triple-A I-house, with a log tenant house and one- and two-pen log barns. It is on the Study List.

The first McDade Store goes up at McDade crossroads

The first McDade Store, a two-story frame building, was put up in the 1880s at the McDade crossroads just north of Cedar Grove, where it would have stood over the small community. A second McDade store with a canopy for motorists buying gas was built across the road in the early 1920s.

Subject: McDade Store

William Cole buys the Smith plantation seat on Smith Level Road

The Smith family held its large plantation south of Carrboro until the 1880s, when William Cole bought the 1845 house. No bigger pre-war house survives in the township, and in 1992 it stood almost unchanged on 130 acres.

The commissioners call a fence-law election in Hillsborough Township

On a petition from the township, the board ordered a vote at each Hillsborough Township precinct for and against the fence law on June 10, 1882 and named the men to hold it. The result is not given; an 1885 act later put Hillsboro and three other townships under the stock law.

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.

Memorial Hall rises at UNC under Paul C. Cameron's building committee

The cornerstone of Swain Memorial Hall was laid on September 25, 1883, and the hall was dedicated on June 3, 1885, honoring President David L. Swain, faculty and the university's Confederate dead. Paul C. Cameron, president of the Alumni Association and chairman of the building committee, raised money for it and gave money himself.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle · David L. Swain · Thomas Jordan Jarvis

Subject: Memorial Hall

A Memorial Hall tablet names the eleven donors of the university's land

The trustees placed a tablet in Memorial Hall naming the eleven Orange County landowners whose gifts of land settled the university and the village at Chapel Hill. Cameron called them the sturdy Orange farmers who fixed the seat of the institution.

People: Christopher Barbee · Edmund Jones · Matthew McCauley · William McCauley · Mark Morgan

Subject: Memorial Hall

A farmstead with a center-hall house and five outbuildings is built on Mount Moriah Road

In 1885 a story-and-a-half center-hall frame house went up with five frame outbuildings, all of which survived in good condition in 1992.

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.

James H. Pratt's will leaves the Cabe farm to the family of Lucinda Harris

Pratt left the 140-acre Cabe tract and the 160-acre Jehu Brown tract to Lucinda Harris for life and then to her daughters Emma and Jane, keeping a promise to provide for the family after her husband Benton Harris died in the Civil War. The Harrises held the farm until 1942.

People: James H. Pratt

Mary Ruffin Smith dies and leaves the university a Chatham County plantation

Smith, daughter of the Orange County doctor and congressman James S. Smith, left about 1,500 acres in Chatham County to the university to educate poor students, the Francis Jones Smith Fund. She left small bequests to people formerly enslaved in her household and most of her estate to the Episcopal Church, with Kemp Battle as executor.

People: Kemp Plummer Battle · Mary Ruffin Smith

The Webb & Co. tobacco partnership in Hillsborough is dissolved

James Webb Jr., Joseph C. Webb and George C. Corbin gave notice that their tobacco manufacturing firm, Webb & Co., was dissolved, leaving the two Webbs to collect its debts and wind up its business. The firm had been making tobacco in Hillsborough since at least 1881.

People: James Webb Jr. · George C. Corbin

Cedar Grove is the busiest post office community in its township

In the early 1890s Cedar Grove, with about sixty-five people, had the most businesses in its township. It had Cedar Grove Academy, the Methodist church, a doctor named Terrell, a tanner, a carriage maker and a dry goods merchant, with Eno Presbyterian Church and Compton's and Warren's mills a short way off. The High Rock and Yanceyville roads joined and ran east-west through the village.

John Borland builds a two-story log house on his 100-acre farm

About 1890 John Borland put up a full two-story log house with half-dovetail corners. It is one of only two two-story log houses the survey found in the township.

Laws and Border post offices serve the far corners of Cedar Grove Township

In 1890 Cedar Grove Township had post offices at Cedar Grove, Laws and Border. Border, in the far southwest of the township, counted about twenty people, and Laws, in the far northeast, about twenty-five.

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 Jacobs farmhouse is built on St. Mary's Road

A two-story frame farmhouse of the Triple-A type was built in the 1890s on what the 1999 survey called the Jacobs property, where three barns and a silo also stand.

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.

Col. Davis is asked to move his military school from La Grange to the Hillsborough barracks

After Col. Davis's military school at La Grange closed over meningitis among the cadets, the paper learned that he had been asked to bring the school to Hillsborough and use the empty barracks, and urged the town to work for it.

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

The Orange County Farmers' Alliance sets up a trade exchange in Hillsborough

The Orange County Alliance, which had opened an Alliance exchange elsewhere in the county about two weeks before, rented a store building in Hillsborough for a second exchange and elected a manager; by mid-March the Hillsboro Exchange had stockholders and an office in town.

The Alliance Exchange board at Hillsboro names S. T. Forrest manager

After Mr. Andrews resigned as manager of the Farmers' Alliance Exchange at Hillsboro, its board of directors chose S. T. Forrest to fill the place.

B. C. Patton becomes postmaster at Cedar Grove

B. C. Patton, who kept a high school and academy at Cedar Grove, was named postmaster there, apparently after the post fell vacant with the death of T. C. Ellis.

Orange County's wheat crop is the poorest farmers can remember

Farmers said the 1890 wheat crop in the county was the poorest they had known, with no more than a third or half of a crop made.

The Orange County Farmers' Alliance names H. P. Jones its crop statistician

At the State Alliance president's request, county Alliance president W. C. Cole appointed Major H. P. Jones county crop statistician and asked the sub-alliances to report crop conditions to him at once and every quarter after.

The Colored Farmers' Alliance calls meetings at Chapel Hill and Hillsborough for its state lecturer

Robert Davis, secretary of the Colored Farmers' Alliance, announced that the order's state lecturer, the Rev. W. A. Pattillo, would address the public at Chapel Hill and at Hillsborough.

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.

Five Forks rivals Cedar Grove as a crossroads settlement

In 1891 the crossroads of Five Forks was probably as populous as Cedar Grove. Allen's flour and grist mill and Sharp's sawmill stood nearby, and a Dr. Murphy lived at the fork and likely kept a store. Riley School, Harmony Primitive Baptist Church and Mount Zion Church lay between Five Forks and Border.

Julian S. Carr buys Poplar Hill south of the Eno and renames the estate Occoneechee Farm

The Norwood family sold Poplar Hill, the house James Hogg had built about 1794 on the south bank of the Eno, to the Durham industrialist Julian S. Carr, who renamed the property Occoneechee Farm. Carr enlarged and altered the house over the next three decades.

Subject: Occoneechee Farm

The Farmers' State Alliance buys the old Hillsborough Military Academy grounds

The former academy property west of Hillsborough passed in 1891 to the Farmers' State Alliance, the statewide farmers' organization, which bought the land. A 1913 plat of the neighborhood labels the old barracks as the Farm Life School building.

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

E. A. Rosemond opens his warehouse at Hillsborough

The Observer says Rosemond opened his warehouse on Tuesday and that the prices paid pleased the farmers, so that Hillsborough looked likely to have a good tobacco market.

Alliance lecturer Terrell addresses Orange farmers at the court house

A Farmers' Alliance lecturer named Terrell, announced as coming from Texas, spoke for nearly two hours in the Hillsborough court house to a large audience of farmers and leading men. W. C. Cole, president of the Orange County Alliance, introduced him.

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

A dwelling about a mile and a half east of Hillsborough burns

A dwelling house about a mile and a half east of Hillsborough was destroyed by fire on a Tuesday night. It was insured for $900.

The Orange County Farmers' Alliance elects officers and endorses the sub-treasury plan

At its meeting in the court house on Friday, July 10, the Orange County Alliance chose officers for the coming term and adopted resolutions backing the sub-treasury plan and all the Alliance demands.

A new tobacco barn full of tobacco burns in Cedar Grove Township

A new tobacco barn belonging to Col. W. G. Robson of Cedar Grove Township was destroyed by fire on Saturday morning, September 12. It was full of good tobacco.

Julian S. Carr rebuilds the Occoneechee mineral spring with a marble basin and a rustic spring house

On his new Occoneechee Farm, Carr had the old mineral spring cleaned out and extended, set a marble basin in it, laid a cement floor and covered it with a rustic spring house with seats for visitors. The Orange County Observer described the finished work in September 1891.

Subject: Occoneechee Farm

Julian S. Carr nearly finishes a large stock barn at Occoneechee Farm

Carr's new stock barn at his Occoneechee plantation near Hillsboro was a brick and frame building 42 by 155 feet, with stalls for horses, mares and foals, storage for 500 tons of hay and an elevator.

Subject: Occoneechee Farm

A model sheep fold is finished at Julian S. Carr's Occoneechee Farm

The sheep house at Occoneechee Farm is described as just completed: a frame building closed on the north, east and west and open to the south, with a hay rick down the middle of the first floor, feeding troughs, separate pens for parts of the flock, and a picket-fenced yard. A trench of packed stone under the fence guards against dogs.

Subject: Occoneechee Farm

Julian S. Carr builds a fieldstone gate wall at the entrance to Occoneechee Farm

Carr put up a stone gate wall at the farm entrance, two curving walls of fieldstone gathered on the farm, one on each side of the driveway, set with round pillars capped by stacked round stones. The Durham Daily Globe reprinted the Orange County Observer's description in December 1891.

Subject: Occoneechee Farm

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.

Hard frost kills most of the fruit around Hillsborough

Cold and frost on Saturday and Sunday nights killed nearly all the fruit and badly damaged early vegetables, the Observer's local column reported.

The name Texas appears on William Spoon's map of Alamance County

William Spoon's 1893 map of Alamance County labels a road in northern Pleasant Grove Township the Texas Road and the section below it Texas, the earliest dated use of the community's name that Hazel found. The 1928 county map uses the name as well; its origin is unknown.

Walnut Grove Methodist Church dedicates its frame church

The congregation began a frame church in 1891 on land given by Anthony W. Cole, replacing the log building it had used since the 1840s, and dedicated it on October 29, 1893. The frame church served until the stone church of 1937 to 1942.

Subject: Walnut Grove Methodist Church

The Masons leave their farm and a scholarship fund to the university

Mary Elizabeth Morgan Mason, who died in July 1894 a year after her husband James Pleasant Mason, left the university about 800 acres of Morgan family land near Chapel Hill. His $1,000 gift funded the education of poor students in the names of their daughters Martha and Varina, and their portraits were hung in the university library.

Julian S. Carr's new club house at Occoneechee Farm is shown to an excursion from Raleigh

Julian S. Carr hosted students of the A. and M. College and their friends at Occoneechee Farm with a barbecue. The visitors toured his new rustic club house, with its stone fireplace, pool table, piano and a clock that played "Carolina."

Subject: Occoneechee Farm

The late William H. Jordan's home place in Cedar Grove Township is put up at auction

Under a court decree, Jennie Jordan McDade, executrix of William H. Jordan, offered his 260-acre home place at the courthouse door in Hillsborough to pay the estate's debts, subject to the life estate of his widow, Mary F. Jordan.

Chesley Foster Andrews builds a frame farmhouse near Union Grove

In 1898 Chesley Foster Andrews (1862-1944) built a frame farmhouse at 8306 Union Grove Church Road, beside a log house first owned by the Lloyds. It was redone as a bungalow in the 1920s; a tenant house and a frame and stone barn belong to the farm.

The Kirkland-Miller farmstead is built near Caldwell

The Kirkland-Miller farm on NC 57 near Caldwell dates to about 1898 and keeps a group of outbuildings the survey thought worth noting. It is on the Study List.

The name Orange Grove first appears with the Cane Creek church school

Through the 1800s the Hillsborough Recorder called the neighborhood around Cane Creek Church Rock Spring. The earliest use of the name Orange Grove the church historians found is the renaming of the church's academy as Orange Grove Academy.

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 · 18 events

People: Manly McCauley

Arch Cates's I-house goes up on what became Arthur Minnis Road

The two-story frame I-house at the Cates-Dodson-Minnis Farm was first owned by Arch Cates. It later passed to Albert Dodson and then to Albert and Lois Dodson Minnis, and was remodeled in the 1940s.

Subject: Cates-Dodson-Minnis Farm

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's number of farms falls from 2,044 to 1,967

Between the 1900 and 1910 censuses the county lost 77 farms, which the bulletin read as land gathering into fewer hands. In 1910 nine owners held 500 to 999 acres each and three held more than 1,000.

Pender Store is moved across the road at Cedar Grove

In 1900 the Pender Store building was moved to the other side of the road, where it still stands.

Southern Railway begins buying cross ties from farmers at the Carrboro depot

In the 1900s the Southern Railway began buying hand-hewn oak cross ties at the depot, where its agent graded them and paid the farmers who hauled them in from Orange and nearby counties. By the early 1920s Carrboro was among the largest tie markets in the East, and tie wagons crowded its streets into the early 1930s.

The Blackwood family settles the farm that becomes the Blackwood Brothers Dairy

From the early twentieth century the Blackwoods held a farm on Mount Carmel Church Road with a story-and-a-half house and a complete set of log and frame farm and dairy buildings.

The Carr Store is built on NC 49

A store is built at Carr on NC 49 early in the twentieth century; it was later enlarged and altered. Carr Store Road takes its name from the crossroads.

The George Washington Walker Farm is laid out on St. Mary's Road

A farm of nearly 75 acres was set up on both sides of St. Mary's Road around 1900, with a one-story house and frame barns that still stand. Its later buildings follow the county's shifts from grain to dairy, poultry and beef.

Subject: George Washington Walker Farm

The Sparrow family builds a two-story farmhouse on Old Lystra Road

Around 1900 a frame I-house was built on the Sparrow farm, reportedly around a smaller house from before the Civil War. The family had held the place from the start.

The Texas community builds Jeffries Cross Church and Martin's Chapel Baptist Church

Around the turn of the twentieth century the community built two churches on land given by Joe and Levi Jeffries and by Sam Martin, in place of the circuit riding preachers who had served the settlement before. Social life in the community turned on its churches and its school.

The Walter Hawkins farmstead with its tobacco barns takes shape near Caldwell

The Walter Hawkins farm near Caldwell is laid out around 1900 and keeps several tobacco barns the survey singled out. It is on the Study List.

The William Woods McDade House is built in the Cedar Grove area

Around 1900 a story-and-a-half house with a decorated center gable, a cutaway bay and a wraparound porch with turned posts was built near Cedar Grove. The county survey knows it as the William Woods McDade House, though William Woods McDade himself died in 1862; the 1993 survey form dates it about 1890.

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.

Cedar Grove district finishes a new $279 schoolhouse with county help

The board paid $150 from the general fund toward the new schoolhouse of Cedar Grove District No. 6, which cost $279.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Lightning burns the race track barn at Occoneechee Farm

During an electrical storm, lightning struck the "Pocahontas" or race track barn on Julian Carr's Occoneechee Farm, destroying it with its feed and farm machinery. No livestock were inside, and the loss was insured.

People: Julian S. Carr

Subject: Occoneechee Farm

Sidney W. Crabtree starts a farm on land from the Smith plantation

A 54-acre farm on Smith Level Road was formed in 1903 from part of the old Smith plantation. Its Triple-A farmhouse and six outbuildings survive, and a graveyard there is thought to hold people enslaved on the plantation.

Patterson Mill miller George Brown buys a farm on Mount Moriah Road

In 1905 George Brown, the miller at Patterson Mill, acquired the 1885 farmstead; his children still owned it in 1992.

The Oliver family takes over the Cedar Grove crossroads store

The Oliver family acquired the frame store the Allison family had built at the Cedar Grove crossroads in the 1880s. They kept it until C. H. Pender and his wife Irene Oliver took it over in the 1960s.

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.

Charlie and Sophie Minor, Black farm owners, build a pyramidal cottage on NC 54

About 1910 Charlie and Sophie Minor had a hip-roofed frame cottage with tall inside chimneys built on their farm west of Carrboro. The report uses it to show the better-off farmhouse types that appear around that year; four frame outbuildings of different dates remain.

Jesse and Allie King build a two-story house on Old Greensboro Road

After living in the log house across Sesame Road, Jesse and Allie King built a frame I-house about 1910. It was remade in the Colonial Revival style in the 1940s; frame and log outbuildings remain.

John Kenion's center-gable farmhouse is built north of Hillsborough

The Kenion House, a two-story farmhouse with a shingled front gable, pointed window heads and a bracketed porch, was built in 1910 for John Kenion, a farmer and Hillsborough banker. It stands in the Cedar Grove area.

The Freeland farmhouse and outbuildings are built on St. Mary's Road

A one-and-a-half-story Triple-A farmhouse with a wraparound porch, garages and a tractor shed went up together on a small hill above St. Mary's Road between about 1910 and 1920.

The Luther Craig farmhouse is built on Old Hillsborough Road

About 1911 an I-house was built in front of an older rear wing on the farm long known as Luther Craig's. In the 1930s a log house was brought over from a nearby farm to join its early barns.

Dr. C. M. Hughes builds a Colonial Revival house in Cedar Grove

Dr. C. M. Hughes's large two-story frame house in Cedar Grove, with a high hip roof, a cutaway bay and a columned wraparound porch, was built in 1912.

Ira Rogers builds a hip-roofed farmhouse northwest of Hillsborough

Tobacco farmer Ira Rogers built himself a plain, square, hip-roofed farmhouse northwest of Hillsborough in 1912, with tapered porch posts and grouped windows.

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.

The Cedar Grove pharmacy where Dr. C. M. Hughes practiced is moved beside his house

The early 1900s pharmacy building at the Cedar Grove crossroads, where Dr. Claude M. Hughes kept his medical practice, was moved in 1913 to the lot east of his new house so a three-story flour mill could go up on its site. The mill burned about 1931.

An I-house front is added to the Lloyd family's log house on Dairyland Road

About 1914 a two-story frame front was built onto an older log section on the Lloyd place. Lemuel and Ola Cheek owned it for most of the century and ran it as a dairy farm.

Claude and Ola Neville build a foursquare farmhouse on their dairy farm

Claude Neville, a farmer who also kept a grocery in Carrboro, and his wife Ola built a two-story frame foursquare on Old Greensboro Road. A pegged frame kitchen from an earlier house on the land still stands behind it.

Nearly three-fifths of Orange County is in forest

State forester J. S. Holmes reported that white and post oak on the poorer land yielded many railroad cross-ties each year, while second-growth pine on abandoned fields supplied most saw timber. Woods fires, mostly from carelessness, killed young trees every year.

People: John Simcox Holmes

The county sanitation campaign reaches Black residents through their preachers and churches

In the 1915 county-wide drive for better sanitation, organizers found the Black churches the only real way to reach Black families. Black congregations took lantern-slide talks on unsafe privies as a fit church concern, while some white churches thought them out of place.

People: Eugene Cunningham Branson

The old Cedar Grove one-teacher schoolhouse is moved to serve Black children

When Cedar Grove's white pupils moved to the new high school, the one-teacher schoolhouse was hauled to Baxter Thompson's land and used as a school for Black children.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

The county board buys the Annie Hughes Academy to house a Cedar Grove high school

Answering a petition from Cedar Grove residents, the board offered on May 3, 1915 to buy the old Cedar Grove Academy from Annie Hughes and on May 15 paid her $1,500 for it, deeding her the lot of the one-teacher school it closed. The new Cedar Grove High School took grades one through eleven.

People: Samuel Paul Lockhart

Subject: Hughes Academy (Cedar Grove Academy) · Cedar Grove schools

Cedar Grove voters approve a special school tax district

The board allowed Cedar Grove to call an election on a special school tax in July 1917, and the returns reported in September showed 34 votes for and 16 against. The board then set pay for each Cedar Grove high school teacher at $50 a month.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Lewis J. Johnson builds a two-story house on Shadylawn Road

Johnson built the I-house at 930 Shadylawn Road Extension, with rubble-stone chimneys and a Craftsman porch and dormer, and raised a garden and a handful of hogs, cows and chickens without farming for a living. Lilly B. Williams later owned it until her death, and it was remodeled in 1985.

Cedar Grove organizes a Red Cross branch

By August 1, 1917, a Red Cross branch had been organized at Cedar Grove and was making surgical dressings. In the fall the county chapter thanked Cedar Grove for giving it the premiums from the community fair.

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 · Robert A. Eubanks

Eugene C. Branson urges county teachers to back the food conservation drive

At a court house meeting of teachers and school committeemen called by J. C. Webb, Branson explained why food conservation mattered, and Mrs. Isaac Manning described her work in the south end of the county. Forty-two teachers attended, and the meeting laid the plan to register every woman at her school house on October 27.

People: J. Cheshire Webb

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

Farmer and lumber dealer Brodie Lloyd builds a large bungalow at Calvander

Around 1918 Brodie Lloyd, who farmed and ran a lumber business in Carrboro, had a roomy bungalow built on Old NC 86. The report ranks it among the biggest and best kept in the township.

People: Brodie Lloyd

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.

The Bivins Liner Company begins making tobacco hogshead liners in Hillsborough

Founded in 1918 as the Bivins Liner Company and later called the Hines Liner Company, the firm made the hoops that hold tobacco hogshead heads in place. It also ran a lumber and planing mill nearby.

A winter cyclone wrecks the dairy barn at Occoneechee Farm

A storm on a Friday night damaged every building on Julian Carr's Occoneechee Farm and demolished the dairy barn, killing a number of blooded cows. Carr began rebuilding at once.

People: Julian S. Carr

Subject: Occoneechee Farm

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.

Farmers' Union delegates at Schley ask that no wheat be threshed before July 15

At J. Cheshire Webb's request, the county's Farmers' Union, in convention at Schley on March 30, 1918, resolved to favor a Food Administration rule that no threshing machine start before July 15, to protect crop cultivation. Webb issued the order, and only two farmers broke it; both paid to the Red Cross.

People: J. Cheshire Webb

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 grants a branch to Carr precinct

At its August 12, 1918 meeting the chapter granted Carr precinct's petition to become a branch, its fourth after Cedar Grove, New Hope and Oaks. The same meeting heard headquarters' advice to stop giving comfort kits to men leaving for camp.

Eno Mill opens an influenza diet kitchen at West Hill school

When influenza reached the Eno Mill district, the mill opened and paid for a diet kitchen at the West Hill school for about seven weeks, run by home demonstration agent Elizabeth Cornelius. It fed as many as 150 people a day, and the mill hired nurses for the sick.

People: Charles H. Robertson

Subject: Eno Mill · Home demonstration clubs

Eugene C. Branson proposes calling the planned social science school the School of Public Welfare

Branson had urged a school of social science on Graham in 1916. In 1919, worried that "social science" sounded like socialism to North Carolinians, he proposed the name School of Public Welfare, which John Sprunt Hill endorsed, and suggested Hill endow it.

People: John Sprunt Hill · Harry Woodburn Chase · Edward Kidder Graham

Korean lespedeza is introduced on Orange County farms

By 1919 farmers had been persuaded to try Korean lespedeza and nearly a thousand acres were grown that year. The legume became the county's main hay crop and winter cover.

The Bacon farm on St. Mary's Road takes up dairying

After the First World War the owners of the Bacon Farm switched to dairying, building a large gambrel-roofed dairy barn and two frame milking parlors behind the house, which was remodeled as a bungalow in the same years.

A service station opens across from the store at Laws

In the 1920s a service station went up across the road from the late nineteenth-century store at the Laws crossroads, as the automobile shifted crossroads trade from the country store to the gas pump.

Henry and Lora Trice, a Black couple, build a farmhouse on their 36 acres

About 1920 a story-and-a-half frame farmhouse was built for Henry and Lora Trice on the farm they owned off Mount Sinai Road. It stood empty and decaying in 1992.

Log tobacco barns are built on the Tapp Farm in far northern Orange

A group of stuccoed log tobacco barns, each 18 feet square, was probably built in the 1920s on the Tapp Farm at the county's northern edge.

McDade Store No. 2 opens as a filling station at Cedar Grove

McDade Store No. 2, a small frame store with a gable-front canopy over its gas pumps, was a typical 1920s country filling station at Cedar Grove.

Subject: McDade Store

Mills own only a third of Carrboro's houses

In 1920 Carrboro had about 280 textile workers and 223 houses, and the mills owned only about a third of those houses. Most of the rest were private, many of them rentals put up by local farmers and businessmen such as Brodie Lloyd.

People: Brodie Lloyd

The Bivins brothers' tobacco basket factory is running in Hillsboro

A Hillsboro report called the Bivins brothers' basket factory a new industry doing a thriving business. It wove the large baskets used in tobacco warehouses by machine, one of few such plants in the country.

People: O. E. Bivins

The Sparrow family takes over a Blackwood farm near Mount Carmel Church Road

A farm first held by the Blackwood family passed to the Sparrows in the 1920s. It keeps a much-changed two-story house and a good group of log outbuildings.

The Walker farm on St. Mary's Road switches from grain to dairy cattle

Around 1920 the Walker family gave up grain for dairying and built a large gambrel-roofed dairy barn, milking parlors and feed barns on the St. Mary's Road farm.

Subject: George Washington Walker Farm

The boll weevil pushes southern Orange farmers from cotton to dairying

The boll weevil hit Orange County hard in the 1920s, and with cotton prices falling from over thirty cents a pound in the 1910s to ten cents by 1932, farmers in the southern part of the county turned to dairying. Silos, milking barns and gambrel-roofed barns followed in the southwest.

William Clarence Cole builds a Craftsman farmhouse on Smith Level Road

About 1920 William Clarence Cole put up a side-gabled Craftsman farmhouse with a front dormer on a tract split off from the Smith plantation. Four early outbuildings stand with it.

The Farmers' State Alliance auctions off its old academy headquarters

The Farmers' State Alliance had found the old Barracks property a burden since about 1901. On June 21, 1920 it was cut into lots and sold at auction, and John W. Hill got the parcel with the commandant's house.

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

Black clubwomen buy the Forrest farm at Efland for their home for girls

The North Carolina federation of Black women's clubs, led by Charlotte Hawkins Brown, bought the 143-acre farm of S. C. and Carrie Forrest at Efland as the site of its industrial home for Black girls. Plans for the first building were drawn that September, and the federation deeded the land to the home's trustees on August 3, 1922.

People: Charlotte Hawkins Brown

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

A freight wreck at the Occoneechee Farm siding sets a gasoline tank car burning

Three cars of a Southern freight train, one a gasoline tank car, left the track at the Occoneechee Farm siding east of Hillsboro. The tank car caught fire and burned through the night, a flour car and a lumber car burned, and passengers were transferred around the torn-up track until repairs the next afternoon.

Subject: Occoneechee Farm · North Carolina Railroad

A two-story addition turns the Hill Farm house to face a new way

In 1922 a big two-story frame wing was added to the Hill Farm house east of Hillsborough on St. Mary's Road, changing the direction the house faced. The older part, a rear ell from the late eighteenth century, became a back wing.

Subject: Hill Farm (Roland Hill House)

Julian Carr's Occoneechee Farm is sold at auction in small farms

Occoneechee Farm, divided into small farms along the Durham-Greensboro highway a mile from Hillsboro, was sold at auction with its personal property. Carr had already sold his Holstein herd to Chapel Hill dairyman C. H. Weaver.

Subject: Occoneechee Farm

Jesse Nevilles builds a cow barn and milking barn on the family farm

Bryant Nevilles's son Jesse turned the log homestead farm into a dairy, adding a gable-roofed cow barn in 1924 and a frame milking barn in 1925 that still held its machinery in 1992. His son Lacy added a concrete-block milk cooling house and two silos in the 1950s.

Community Club hires a nurse to serve Chapel Hill's Black community

The health department of the Chapel Hill Community Club engaged a Black nurse, known as Nurse Compton and formerly of Lincoln Hospital, who began on January 1, 1924, visiting homes, examining children at the Black schools and organizing clean-up campaigns. By May 1926 the town had taken over part of her salary and she worked under Health Officer Nathan.

Christmas seal money pays for tuberculosis care and a free clinic in Chapel Hill

The Community Club's seal sale committee reported that seal money had sent an Orange County man to a sanatorium and paid $450 toward the nurse working among Black residents, who inoculated 68 people for typhoid and brought 36 patients to a free tuberculosis clinic.

The state farm census records the Efland Home's first crops

The 1925 North Carolina farm census found the Efland Home's farm manager, staff and girls working 33 acres of corn, tobacco, wheat, cotton and Irish potatoes. Within a year the home was also keeping pigs, chickens and dairy cows for its own table.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

J. Cheshire Webb takes options on the Hillsborough quarry farm that supplied stone for Duke

Webb showed geologist Jasper L. Stuckey the old quarry near Hillsborough that had supplied flagstones, and at the request of Duke's business manager Frank Brown he took purchase options on the quarry farm, signed January 31, 1925. The land was bought under the option for Duke University on March 31.

Harmony School patrons protest a merger with Aycock School

A delegation from Harmony School went before the board to object to consolidating their school with the new Aycock School at Cedar Grove. The board told them no such step was planned, though Harmony was merged into Aycock six years later.

Subject: Aycock School

Patrick L. Clayton sells his farm northwest of Hillsboro to James B. Duke's agents for $4,000

The Chapel Hill Weekly reported that Patrick L. Clayton, who had paid $200 for a 70-acre farm about a mile northwest of Hillsboro twenty years earlier, had sold it to representatives of James B. Duke for $4,000 for its building stone. Architects and builders had judged the stone suitable for the new Duke University.

Subject: Duke land purchases in Orange County

The Farmers and Merchants Bank moves into a new building on North Churton Street

The Farmers and Merchants Bank moved into a new building of granite and brick on the east side of Churton Street, between the old bank building and Mitchell's hardware store. The building cost about $5,000.

Black farmers Joe B. Brooks and John W. Jones organize Jones Grove Missionary Baptist Church

African American farmers Joe Bethel Brooks and John William Jones founded the Jones Grove congregation north of Hillsboro. Its members were close to Lea's (now Lee's) Chapel Baptist Church at Cedar Grove, where the Brooks family lived.

People: Joe Bethel Brooks

Subject: Jones Grove Missionary Baptist Church

Annual benefit football games fund Chapel Hill's Black public health nurse

From 1927 a yearly football game between Black teams, sponsored by the University YMCA, raised money for the public health nurse serving Chapel Hill's Black community, a project run by the Community Club. The 1941 game, played on Fetzer Field, involved the Orange County Training School and raised $275 net.

Subject: Orange County Training School / Lincoln High School · University YMCA

The Rice farm is divided in the settlement of Robert Rice's estate

In 1927 the 130-acre farm long tied to the log house was split in settling Robert Rice's estate. The house kept a 65-acre share, later owned by his grandson Joseph A. Rice.

Subject: Paisley-Rice Log House

Joseph H. Jones deeds a quarter acre of his farm to the Jones Grove church trustees

John Jones's father, Joseph H. Jones, gave a quarter-acre of his farm to the trustees of the new Jones Grove congregation: his son John, Joe Brooks and Joe's brother William Brooks. The deed also marks the line of the Ridge Road School lot to the south.

People: Joe Bethel Brooks

Subject: Jones Grove Missionary Baptist Church

Black stonemasons build the stone walls of Rocky Ridge Farm

The curving walls of random-coursed stone that line Country Club Road, Laurel Hill Road and Laurel Hill Circle were built alongside the houses by local Black masons, among them James Blackwell and Jesse Jones.

Subject: Rocky Ridge Farm Historic District (Laurel Hill)

Don S. Matheson becomes Orange County's full-time farm agent

After years of on-and-off support for extension work, the county hired Matheson full time. Over the next quarter century he moved farmers from soil-depleting row crops toward grass and livestock.

People: Don S. Matheson

Henry A. Bowden builds a bungalow farm on Bowden Road

Around 1928 the cotton and tobacco farmer Henry A. Bowden built a frame bungalow with three frame outbuildings of the same years off Jones Ferry Road.

John Maddry builds a bungalow on his Airport Road dairy farm

Maddry put up the story-and-a-half bungalow at 1500 Airport Road in place of an older house and milked 25 cows by hand. Eleven log and frame outbuildings, some older than the house, still stood in 1992.

Robert Oscar Cate builds a bungalow and dairy barn on his farm near Chapel Hill

In 1929 Robert Oscar Cate finished a large gambrel-roofed dairy barn and milk sheds on his farm near Chapel Hill and built a story-and-a-half bungalow on the rise above them. It is a clear case of a farm turning to dairying in the 1920s.

The Efland Home's farm cuts its yearly cost per girl

The home's 1928-1929 report showed the girls working ten acres, 24 fruit trees and a small stock of mule, cows, hogs and chickens, which helped bring the cost per resident down from about $598 in 1928 to $182.50 in 1929. That year fifteen girls were paroled and eleven placed in working homes; assistant matron Margaret Cromwell taught classes and Mebane physician Thomas David Tyson came when needed.

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

County welfare superintendent notes Orange has no health officer or public health nurse

In a letter to the Chapel Hill Weekly, county welfare superintendent George H. Lawrence wrote that Orange County had no county health officer, no county health department and no public health nurse, and that little preventive health work was being done. He contrasted Orange with Vance County, which had a health officer, a hospital and a tuberculosis sanatorium.

People: George H. Lawrence

Clay Hogan builds a large dairy complex off Homestead Road

In the 1930s a notable group of frame dairy buildings went up for Clay Hogan on what is now Lake Hogan Farm Road. By 1992 the farmhouse had apparently been lost.

The Dubose estate builds Colonial Revival tenant houses near the Durham County line

In the 1930s the Dubose estate put up several Colonial Revival tenant houses along NC 54 Business just inside Orange County, joining older tenant dwellings from about 1910 and the late 1800s.

The Martin School is consolidated into Pleasant Grove Union School

The Martin School, attended almost entirely by Indian children, was merged in 1930 with several other small schools to form Pleasant Grove Union School. The change was unpopular in the community because the school would no longer be exclusively Indian, though it brought better facilities and was in time accepted.

The McClenan family builds a big gambrel-roofed dairy barn on Old Greensboro Road

In 1930 a very large gambrel-roofed barn was added to the McClenan farm, where an older log house lies inside a two-story frame farmhouse. The report rates the barn among the best of its type and uses the farm as its example of a dairy barn.

Farmers of Durham and nearby counties organize the Farmers Exchange cooperative

About 400 farmers and farm leaders formed the Farmers Exchange in March 1930 to market farm products and buy supplies at cost. John Sprunt Hill of Durham backed it, and by 1952 it served about 4,100 members in five counties including Orange.

People: John Sprunt Hill

Subject: Farmers Mutual Exchange

State health officer James M. Parrott plans a Chapel Hill training school that would also serve as Orange County's health department

Working with university officials, the State Board of Health drew up a plan for a training school for county health workers at Chapel Hill. Because Orange County had no full-time health officer, the school's director would fill that post and the county nurse, sanitary officer and health secretary would teach, but the Rockefeller Foundation could find no money for it.

People: Herman G. Baity · Frank Porter Graham

Breeze School is merged into Aycock and later becomes a tobacco pack house

On June 15, 1931 the county Board of Education merged Harmony and Breeze schools near Caldwell into Aycock School. By 1938 the Breeze building was being used to store tobacco.

Subject: Aycock School · Breeze School

Schley Grange No. 710 is chartered

Thirty residents of the Schley farming community north of Hillsborough chartered Schley Grange No. 710, one of five Orange County Granges formed in the state Grange revival of 1929 to 1931. The county board had merged Schley School into the Hillsboro school that June, and on November 2 it sold the Schley School building for $122 to Charles Wilson, who bought it for the Grange.

Subject: Schley Grange Hall

Hundreds take typhoid vaccine at Chapel Hill clinic after new cases

After several new typhoid cases were reported in late June 1932, about 600 people received typhoid vaccine at the Chapel Hill public clinic in a single day, and the Infirmary gave the treatment on any day. Town health authorities said the water supply was not the source.

People: Eric A. Abernethy · S. A. Nathan

The consolidation survey proposes moving State College's engineering and agriculture to Chapel Hill

The survey committee of George A. Works, Frank L. McVey and Guy Stanton Ford recommended moving State College from Raleigh to Chapel Hill over time, leaving a junior college at Raleigh, and moving Greensboro's professional programs other than teacher and secretarial training to Chapel Hill as well. It held that engineering and agriculture needed Chapel Hill's stronger science departments and that the state could afford only one graduate center.

A three-mile rural power line from Chapel Hill to Calvander is built with federal money

Built in 1933 as a Civil Works Administration project, the line ran three miles from Chapel Hill to Calvander, and the Hogan brothers supplied cedar poles when funds ran short. The book says it was the first rural electric line in the United States built with federal funds.

People: George H. Lawrence

Farmers pay to carry the rural power line on to Orange Grove

Soon after the federally funded line from Chapel Hill to Calvander was built in 1933, a second line paid for by local farmers' donations carried power on from Calvander to Orange Grove.

S. H. Hobbs Jr. heads UNC's Department of Rural Social Economics

Hobbs, who had taught in the department since 1916, headed it from 1933 until it merged with the Department of Sociology in 1939.

Free health examination clinic for children entering school in Chapel Hill

The Parent Teachers' Association arranged a free clinic at the school building to examine all children due to enter school that fall, with physicians from Duke Hospital and Chapel Hill dentists, and urged vaccination against smallpox, diphtheria and typhoid.

Federal drought cattle arrive at University Station under George H. Lawrence's care

Sixty-nine cows shipped by the government from the drought-stricken Middle West were unloaded at University Station and pastured on part of the old Duke farm, with more bound for pastures near Hillsboro. As county relief administrator, Lawrence had to house and feed Orange County's quota of 669.

Subject: University Station

M. C. Burt begins work as the county's agent for Black farmers

From 1935 Burt served Orange County's Black farmers as extension agent, for a time shared with Chatham County. Edwin P. Barnes became assistant county agent the same year.

The Williams family buys a 38-acre farm on Mount Carmel Church Road

In 1935 the Williams family acquired a farm whose buildings were already old: an antebellum frame hall-and-parlor house, two log outbuildings of the same age and two log tenant houses.

Black families from five northern Orange schools ask for a brick consolidated school

Parents from five schools for Black children, Cedar Grove, Carr, Harmony, Sartins and White Oak, asked the board for a new brick building to replace them. The board promised to look into it; a site near Vincent's Store for a Cedar Grove school for Black children was bought in 1946.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Matron Lula B. Henderson and farm manager Lewis Walker are hired at the Efland Home

After J. A. Lassiter's husband was let go in March 1935, the home hired Lula B. Henderson as matron and Lewis Walker to run the farm in April. Henderson's husband, a retired minister living in Chapel Hill, taught the girls under the Emergency Relief Administration's adult education program.

People: Lula B. Henderson

Subject: North Carolina Industrial Home for Colored Girls (Efland Home)

Dr. Charles Mangum outlines a proposed federally aided health district tied to UNC training

Dr. Charles S. Mangum described a proposed public health district of Orange, Person and Caswell counties, largely paid for by the U.S. Public Health Service. It would also train health officers, sanitary inspectors, public health nurses and secretaries, building on UNC's 1934 to 1935 public health administration courses.

People: Charles Staples Mangum

Temporary county health unit starts work in Orange during a typhoid outbreak

Because typhoid fever had appeared in the county, a temporary health organization, set up as part of the planned district unit, began operating in Orange County on July 1, 1935. Its staff were acting health officer Dr. G. A. Sumner (lent by the State Board of Health), acting health nurse Marie Strickland, secretary Ida Lloyd and sanitary inspector E. B. Caruthers.

Orange-Person District Health Department organized with Dr. Malcolm Rourk as health officer

Full-time public health service began in Orange County on July 1, 1935, when a temporary unit under Dr. G. H. Sumner of the State Board of Health answered a typhoid outbreak. By August the district health department for Orange and Person counties was organized as a model unit linked to UNC's public health teaching, with Dr. Malcolm Henderson Rourk as district health officer, sanitary inspector E. B. Caruthers, and a public health nurse and clerk in each county. The district officer also took over Chapel Hill's municipal health authority.

Grace E. Holcombe revives home demonstration work in Orange County

Hired jointly by Orange and Chatham counties, Holcombe organized four home demonstration clubs and nine 4-H clubs within a year. By 1941, under her successor Woodward Byars, the county had 17 home demonstration clubs.

Subject: Home demonstration clubs

S. H. Hobbs Jr. buys an Orange County farm for agricultural experiments

The rural sociologist acquired a farm in Orange County in 1936 to use for agricultural experimentation.

Dr. W. P. Richardson becomes health officer of the district serving Orange

Richardson followed Dr. M. H. Rourk, who left in February 1936, and served until Dr. O. D. Garvin replaced him in 1944.

People: William P. Richardson

Grace Beatty appointed supervising nurse of the district health unit

Acting district health officer Dr. William P. Richardson appointed Grace Beatty, who held a master's degree in public health nursing from Columbia, as supervising nurse under an enlarged program funded by Social Security money. By July 1936 the Orange-Person staff of 11 included staff nurses Agnes Tolbert in Chapel Hill and Ruth O'Briant and Lieotta Hall in Roxboro.

People: William P. Richardson

The county board applies for home economics and agriculture teachers at Hillsboro School

The board voted in April 1936 to apply for teachers of agriculture and home economics at the Hillsboro School, while seeking federal funds for new buildings and additions.

Subject: Hillsborough High School

First field training course for North Carolina public health workers held in the Orange-Person District

A month-long field training course for 29 new public health workers (14 nurses, 6 sanitary officers, 4 sanitary engineers and 5 health officers), described as the first in North Carolina, ended in Chapel Hill in early July 1936 under Dr. William P. Richardson. The Orange-Person and Durham health departments then ran as a joint field training center, and by July 1937 it had trained 109 workers.

People: William P. Richardson

Walnut Grove Methodist Church replaces its wooden church with a stone one

On May 4, 1937 the Walnut Grove congregation in northern Orange began building a rubble-stone Gothic Revival church, with buttresses and stained glass, from fieldstone that local farmers gathered, to replace its frame church of the early 1890s. The church was dedicated on April 14, 1942.

Subject: Walnut Grove Methodist Church

Farm women open the Orange County curb market in Carrboro

A curb market run by Orange County farm women opened in the former McCauley store in Carrboro, selling vegetables, fruit, chickens, eggs, sausage, preserves and canned goods. It was organized with the county home demonstration agent, with thirteen women signed on as sellers before opening.

Subject: Carrboro Farmers’ Market · Home demonstration clubs

Chatham County joins the Orange-Person Health District

District health officer Dr. William P. Richardson announced that Chatham County had joined the Orange-Person Health District, which would provide a physician, a nurse and a sanitary officer for the new county. The State Board of Health had kept a nurse in Chatham for the past year with U.S. Children's Bureau funds.

People: William P. Richardson

Archaeologists excavate the wall site believing it to be Occaneechi Town

Joffre Coe began digging a village site on a bend of the Eno at Hillsborough in 1938 in the belief that it was the town John Lawson visited in 1701, and Robert Wauchope carried the work on in 1940 and 1941 with federal funding. A state highway marker for the Occaneechi village was erected at Hillsborough in 1941. The village Coe had found was in fact an earlier settlement of about 1400 to 1600.

Piedmont Electric Membership Corporation is incorporated and energizes its first lines

Piedmont Electric, a rural electric cooperative formed under the federal Rural Electrification Administration loan program, received its North Carolina incorporation papers in 1938. In 1939 its first substation, in Hillsborough, energized lines to members' homes for the first time.

Subject: Piedmont Electric Membership Corporation

The Neuse River Soil Conservation District is formed with Orange County in it

Created in 1938 under state enabling law, the district covered Durham, Johnston, Orange, Wake and Wilson counties. Orange later had three men on its board.

The Walker farm builds cinder-block chicken houses

In the late 1930s the Walker farm moved from dairying to poultry and put up several cinder-block chicken houses in 1938. The farm turned to beef cattle in the 1960s.

Subject: George Washington Walker Farm

The Orange County Women's Market moves from Carrboro to Chapel Hill

The farm women's market begun in Carrboro the previous September reopened in the old Methodist church building at Henderson Street and Rosemary Lane, a block from the Chapel Hill post office, open on Saturdays. About twenty women sold regularly, poultry and cakes led its sales of about $120 a week, and it was run with the home demonstration agent, Grace Holcombe.

Subject: Old Methodist Church (Rosemary Street) · Home demonstration clubs

State offers the three-county district $5,900 for venereal disease control

At a meeting of county commissioners in Chapel Hill, State Board of Health executive officer Dr. Carl V. Reynolds offered the Chatham-Orange-Person district $5,900 from the Smith Reynolds Foundation fund for venereal disease control, if the district matched it. The program called for examinations and clinics to bring every infected person in the district under treatment.

John Parker becomes the first Black Orange County farmer to get a Farm Security Administration purchase loan

Under the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act, John Parker borrowed $3,915 through the Farm Security Administration to buy a 145-acre farm, the first such loan to a Black farmer in Orange County. He paid it off in about six years on a 40-year note.

Cedar Grove Methodist Church's stone building goes up

The stone church replaced earlier facilities serving the congregation. Masons laid its cornerstone in late November 1939 at the request of the pastor, S. F. Nicks.

Subject: Cedar Grove Methodist Church

Granville wilt first appears in Orange County tobacco

The bacterial disease known as Granville wilt showed up in the county's tobacco crop for the first time in 1939. Growers later turned to wilt-resistant varieties.

Soil Conservation Service work begins in Orange County

Federal soil conservationists started farm planning in the county in 1939, with R. L. Mohler as work unit conservationist. By June 1953 plans covered 1,265 farms and about 142,000 acres.

The Durham Bank and Trust Company takes over the Farmers and Merchants Bank of Hillsborough

The Durham bank acquired Hillsborough's second bank, the Farmers and Merchants Bank, in 1939. From then on it ran a single Hillsborough branch.

The county board agrees to build an agriculture building at Aycock School

Aycock principal Mrs. V. L. Warren and the school committee asked the board for a two-room brick building for agriculture classes, and the board agreed to provide it.

Subject: Aycock School

Census finds nearly half of Orange County's Black-owned farms in Cedar Grove Township

The 1940 census counted 1,753 Black and 1,671 white residents in Cedar Grove Township, the county's only township with a near-even racial balance, and about three-fourths of the township lived on farms. Nearly half of Orange County's 503 Black-owned farms were in the township, which also had the county's highest share of Black tenant farmers.

Part of Farm labor in rural Orange County · 16 events

McDade and Laws stop functioning as crossroads communities

In the 1940s the crossroads of McDade and Laws in northern Orange ceased to hold together as communities and their stores closed, while Cedar Grove, where the Pender Store stayed open, kept its identity.

Orange County tobacco growers begin farming under acreage allotments

From 1940 each grower's tobacco acreage was allotted and enforced after a referendum on compulsory control that more than 90 percent of growers backed. The book credits the controls with better quality and yields.

Registered vehicles in Orange County rise tenfold between 1940 and

Orange County had 4,500 registered vehicles in 1940, about one for every five residents, and 45,046 in 1980, about one for every 1.7. The state planners put the sharpest change in the 1940s, as cars became easier to buy and farming gave way to other work.

The 1940 census counts 2,043 farms and 11,322 farm residents in Orange County

Census figures given in the 1942 extension report put Orange County at 2,043 farms in 1940, averaging 86 acres with 23 acres in crops, a farm population of 11,322 and tobacco as the main cash crop.

The Agricultural Services Building is built on East King Street in two stages

A thirteen-bay, two-story brick Colonial Revival office building at 110 East King Street, running through to Court Street, was built in two parts: the left side before World War II and the right side after the war.

The Farmers Mutual Exchange installs a 30,000-egg electric incubator

About 1940 the Exchange put in an all-electric incubator holding 30,000 eggs, supplied by blood-tested county flocks. It sold baby chicks and gave farmers a steady market for eggs and broilers.

Subject: Farmers Mutual Exchange

UNC School of Public Health runs a Rockefeller-funded syphilis study in Orange and neighboring counties

The School of Public Health's first research project, a field epidemiological study of syphilis funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, ran from 1940 to 1950 with the state venereal disease control program in Orange, Chatham, Person and Durham counties. Project staff held clinics, lectured and traced contacts in the health departments.

Subject: UNC School of Public Health

Fitch Lumber buys the Crawford brothers' spoke plant on Lloyd Street

Walter S. and Charlie M. Crawford had made wooden wheel spokes in a sheet-metal building beside the tracks, probably built about 1930. Fitch made it a planing mill that dressed rough lumber from county sawmills, later adding a raised shavings bin that farmers drove under to load bedding for their stock.

Ruby Crews becomes the county's first home demonstration agent for Black women

An assistant agent was added in 1941 to work only with Black farm women, and Crews, later Mrs. Ruby Carraway, was the first to hold the job.

Subject: Home demonstration clubs

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.

People: William T. Mattox

Subject: Orange County poorhouse (County Home)

The livestock auction market at Hillsborough holds its first sale

The county gave the land, the town installed watering, and the Farmers Exchange built the barn for a livestock auction at Hillsborough. Its first sale was held November 6, 1941, and yearly sales grew from $150,000 to $1,100,000 by 1951.

Subject: Farmers Mutual Exchange

Orange County farm leaders divide the county's rural communities into neighborhoods for wartime work

At ten community meetings, selected farm leaders split Orange County's rural communities into neighborhoods and put forward names for neighborhood leaders, the first step in the extension service's wartime neighborhood-leader system. The report's map shows 10 communities and 39 white neighborhoods.