Chronology

Thomas Clancy advertises Lucy and her five children for sale

Pressed for money, Clancy offered a woman named Lucy and her five children, the eldest about thirteen, saying he preferred to sell the family together to a buyer in or near Hillsborough.

Dr. Edmund Strudwick builds a medical office on West King Street

Dr. Edmund Strudwick put up a one-story, two-room frame office at 139 West King Street, on the site of Edmund Fanning's law office. Dr. W. F. Strudwick later practised there and Robert Strudwick used it as a law office.

Frances Blount buys the Hawks house and the lot beside it

Walker Anderson, acting for Francis L. Hawks, sold the house to Frances Blount, who is thought to have been renting it. She also bought the neighboring lot 180 that year.

Subject: Ruffin-Roulhac House (Little Hawfields)

Frances Blount enlarges the house to a center-passage plan

Soon after buying it, Frances Blount added two rooms to the east side of the one-and-a-half-story house, turning its side-hall plan into the center-passage form it keeps today.

Subject: Ruffin-Roulhac House (Little Hawfields)

W. Anderson opens a female boarding school near Hillsborough

In 1830 W. Anderson announced Anderson's Female Boarding School within a mile of Hillsborough. It took a limited number of pupils and ran at least through 1836.

Schoolmaster William J. Bingham builds a house at Churton and Union streets

William James Bingham, then head of the Hillsborough Academy, builds a one-and-a-half-story house at the southeast corner of North Churton and East Union streets and lives there until 1845. Later owners included the Methodist church, which used it for a time as a parsonage.

Godfrey and Isabella marry at St. Matthew's

The Rev. William Mercer Green married Godfrey and Isabella, the first couple in St. Matthew's register of people of color. Their infant son Milton Alexander was baptized there in November 1835.

People: William Mercer Green

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

Mary W. Burke deeds her Queen Street house to George Johnston, keeping one room

Governor Thomas Burke's daughter Mary W. Burke sold her East Queen Street house and lot, later called Heartsease, to George Johnston for one dollar and kept the use of one room for herself. The next year Johnston gave up his claim for the same sum.

People: George Johnston

Subject: Heartsease

Orange County counts twenty-one academies

By 1832 Orange County had twenty-one academies, among them Hillsborough Academy, the Bingham school and Cedar Grove Academy, a pace of school founding somewhat ahead of the state as a whole.

The Recorder shop prints Letters on Popular Education

The Hillsborough Recorder office printed Letters on Popular Education Addressed to the People of North Carolina in 1832.

People: Dennis Heartt

Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

Archibald D. Murphey dies in Hillsborough

Archibald D. Murphey died in Hillsborough, then his home, on February 1, 1832, after years of rheumatism and debt, and was buried in the town graveyard a few feet from the door of the Presbyterian church. No monument marked his grave when the memoir in his published papers was written.

The house of tinner Josiah Turner Sr. is built on North Churton Street

The Turner house at 404 North Churton Street is built about 1833 on a five-acre lot bounded by Churton, Orange and Union streets. It appears on John L. Bailey's 1839 map and was the home of Josiah Turner Sr., a tinner, and his family.

Subject: Turner-Strudwick House

Thomas Ruffin becomes Chief Justice of North Carolina

Ruffin, elected an associate justice in 1829 after putting the state bank back in order, became Chief Justice in 1833 and held the post until he retired to his farm in 1852.

William A. Graham represents Hillsborough and then Orange County in the House of Commons

Graham was borough representative from Hillsborough in the legislatures of 1833, 1834 and 1835. After the constitutional reforms of 1835 he represented Orange County in the House of Commons in the 1836, 1838 and 1840 sessions, and he was speaker in the last two.

Witherspoon ends seventeen years as pastor at Hillsborough

Witherspoon severed his connection with the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church and moved to Camden, South Carolina. His advocacy of religious education, Sunday schools and preaching for enslaved people had strained relations with his congregation.

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

Job, later Rev. Job Berry, is baptized at St. Matthew's

Job, enslaved by George W. B. Burgwyn, was baptized at St. Matthew's Episcopal Church by William Mercer Green and confirmed the next April. As Job Berry he later led Hillsborough's first Black congregation.

People: William Mercer Green

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

Dr. Walter A. Norwood closes his medicine shop and moves to Hillsborough

Norwood gave up his Franklin Street shop and left for Hillsborough. Elisha Mitchell owned the land and building by the end of the year and soon sold them on credit to Isaac Partridge for a hotel.

Lemuel Lynch sets up as a silversmith and jeweler in Hillsborough

Lemuel Lynch, who learned his trade from William Huntington and had kept shops in Greensboro and Concord, begins working in Hillsborough, where he stayed for the rest of his life.

Samuel Hancock goes bankrupt and Dr. James Webb buys his house and the enslaved man Abram

In 1834 Samuel Hancock went bankrupt. Dr. James Webb bought the Hancocks' house and lot, their furniture and Abram, a man they enslaved, and rented all of them back to Hancock for $1 a year.

People: James Webb

Six enslaved women are baptized into Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

The Rev. S. J. Price baptized six women held by the Nash, Watters, Scott and Waddell households, and Frederick Nash and William J. Bingham received them as members. In the twenty years that followed under Robert Burwell, the church took in only one communicant of color.

People: Frederick Nash · William James Bingham · Hugh Waddell

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

Polly Burke leaves Hillsborough for Alabama

In August 1834 Mary W. Burke sold most of her household goods and moved to Greensboro, Alabama, with her niece's family, part of a wider migration of Hillsborough people to Alabama. After her nephew-in-law died there she settled in Marion, where she taught again for many years.

People: George Mulholland Johnston

A. Mickle serves as Orange County's register of deeds

Lefler and Wager's list of Orange County registers of deeds gives A. Mickle in the office from 1835 to 1849, between J. McKerall and John Laws.

Dr. James Webb builds the Presbyterian Sessions House in the Old Town Cemetery

In 1835 Dr. James Webb took a ninety-nine-year lease on the southeast corner of Hillsborough's Old Town Cemetery lot and built a frame Sessions House with a bell tower there. It served as the Presbyterian Sunday school room and later as a public library until 1934.

Subject: Old Town Cemetery, Hillsborough · Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

Elizabeth Hobbs is brought to Hillsborough in the household of Robert and Anna Burwell

When the Reverend Robert Burwell became minister of the Presbyterian church in Hillsborough, he moved his household from Virginia, bringing the enslaved Elizabeth Hobbs, later Keckly. By her own account she was nearly eighteen.

People: Elizabeth Hobbs Keckly · Robert Armistead Burwell

Orange County sends physicians William Montgomery and James S. Smith to the 1835 convention

Ten men were put forward at meetings around the county, and the voters chose two physicians, William Montgomery and James S. Smith. Each sided with the majority that abolished borough seats, which cost Hillsborough its own member in the House of Commons.

People: Thomas Ruffin · Frederick Nash

Orange County votes overwhelmingly for a constitutional convention

Orange voted 1,648 to 111 for calling a convention to reform representation, and Hillsborough, which stood to lose its borough seat, voted 228 to 23 in favor.

People: Dennis Heartt

Paul C. Cameron builds Burnside on the foundation of Thomas Ruffin's old house

Paul Cameron built the town house he named Burnside on South Cameron Street, on the stone foundation of his father-in-law Thomas Ruffin's earlier house. Enslaved workers from Cameron's Fairntosh plantation built it under his master carpenter Jack, and John Berry laid the brick.

People: John Berry · Thomas Ruffin

Subject: Burnside

Robert Burwell becomes pastor of the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

Burwell began a thirteen-year pastorate, and he and his wife opened a school for young women whose income let him serve the church on a small salary. He returned for a second term in the 1850s.

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

Slave trader George Lewis advertises in Hillsborough to buy 100 young people

Lewis, a commercial trader visiting the town, announced he would pay cash for one hundred young Black people.

St. Matthew's adds a gallery for Black worshippers under William Mercer Green

In 1835, during William Mercer Green's rectorship, a gallery was added to St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough to seat Black worshippers. Green also held monthly services at Duncan Cameron's Salem Chapel, where he gave instruction to enslaved people.

People: Duncan Cameron

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

The Rev. Ira Ellis builds Little Ayr Mount, a two-story brick house west of Hillsborough

The Rev. Ira Ellis, who bought 300 acres on the Eno west of Hillsborough in 1835, built the plain two-story brick house later called Little Ayr Mount about that time. With Ayr Mount it is one of the few masonry houses the county survey found from the early nineteenth century.

Subject: Rev. Ira Ellis House (Little Ayr Mount)

The Recorder prints a county meeting's warning to abolitionists

An Orange County meeting adopted a report warning "northern fanatics" not to stir up the enslaved and predicting lasting hostility between the sections if abolitionists pressed on. Its fourteen-man committee included Frederick Nash, William A. Graham, Hugh Waddell, John U. Kirkland, Dr. Edmund Strudwick and the paper's own editor, Dennis Heartt, as a secretary.

People: Frederick Nash · William A. Graham · Hugh Waddell · John U. Kirkland · Edmund Strudwick · Dennis Heartt

Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

John Norwood begins forty-eight years as clerk of the Hillsborough Presbyterian session

John Norwood kept the session records from 1836 to 1884, one of the two longest terms in the church's history.

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

Jones begins practicing law at Hillsborough

Jones began his legal career in Hillsborough in 1836 and practiced there until he moved his family to a cotton plantation near Rock Hill, South Carolina, in 1857. He sat in the House of Commons for the 1840, 1842, 1848 and 1850 sessions and became solicitor of the Fourth Judicial District in April 1843.

Schoolmaster William J. Bingham repeatedly beats Elizabeth Hobbs at Anna Burwell's urging

Anna Burwell had William J. Bingham, the Hillsborough schoolmaster, flog Elizabeth Hobbs over a period of weeks in an attempt to break her spirit. Her memoir says Robert Burwell also beat her, and that she was eighteen at the time.

People: Elizabeth Hobbs Keckly · Robert Armistead Burwell · William James Bingham

William Kirkland dies, leaving Ayr Mount to his widow

William Kirkland died in 1836 and left his estate to his wife, Margaret Scott Kirkland; their son John Umstead Kirkland later acquired Ayr Mount from her estate. The inventory taken after his death lists twenty enslaved people, some of whom worked at his store, tannery and other businesses in Hillsborough.

People: John U. Kirkland

Subject: Ayr Mount

Hillsborough Presbyterian Church buys the house as its manse

The church's trustees bought lots 152 and 153 in January 1836, renovated the house, and gave it to their minister, Robert Armistead Burwell, and his family, who had arrived from Virginia late the year before.

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

People: Robert Armistead Burwell

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church · Burwell School

Henry Harris, held as a suspected runaway, is charged with burning the Orange County jail

At the spring term of Superior Court the case against Henry Harris, a man of color charged with setting fire to the county jail, was moved to Caswell County for trial. He had been jailed as a runaway because he could not prove his freedom, and he escaped soon after.

Subject: Orange County jail, Hillsborough

Alexander McKenzie Kirkland subjects Elizabeth Hobbs to about four years of sexual coercion

Alexander McKenzie Kirkland, a white man from a prominent Hillsborough merchant-planter family, repeatedly sexually assaulted Elizabeth Hobbs over about four years. In her memoir she did not name him and wrote that a white man pursued her for four years.

People: Elizabeth Hobbs Keckly

Alfred Moore the younger dies and leaves Moorefields to Francis Nash Waddell

On the death of Alfred Moore the younger, Moorefields passed to his son-in-law, Francis Nash Waddell.

Subject: Moorefields

Dr. Edmund Strudwick buys Archibald Haralson's house on West Queen Street and enlarges it

Dr. Edmund Strudwick bought the house from Archibald Haralson in 1837, enlarged it, and is thought to have built the brick kitchen that still stands in the rear yard. The house became known as the Haralson-Strudwick House.

Subject: Haralson-Strudwick House and brick kitchen

Dr. James Webb builds a house around Polly Burke's log schoolhouse

About twenty years after the one-room log schoolhouse went up on his East Queen Street land, Dr. James Webb built a house around it, with the log room as its living room.

John Berry completes a stone jail at Hillsborough

Building commissioners named in 1836 planned a two-story prison forty-five by twenty-four feet at a cost of no more than $4,000, and Berry won the contract.

Subject: Orange County jail, Hillsborough

Polly Burke's Queen Street house passes to Dennis Heartt's family

On May 4, 1837, Mary W. Burke, then living in Alabama, gave Dr. James Webb power of attorney to dispose of her remaining Hillsborough property. Her East Queen Street house was sold that year to the family of Recorder editor Dennis Heartt, who named it Heartsease and added a Greek Revival wing about 1840.

People: James Webb · Dennis Heartt

Subject: Hillsborough Recorder · Heartsease

Anna Burwell opens a school for girls in Hillsborough

Anna Burwell advertised that she would open a female school in Hillsborough on July 17, 1837, teaching the usual English branches, with music available. She and her husband, the Rev. Robert Burwell, ran it in their home until 1857.

People: Robert Armistead Burwell · Margaret Anna Burwell

Subject: Burwell School

Mount Pleasant Academy, later Junto Academy, operates under Daniel W. Kerr

Daniel W. Kerr ran an academy in northern Orange County, advertised as Mount Pleasant Academy in 1837 and by 1838 as Junto Academy, twelve miles northwest of Hillsborough and six miles south of Mason Hall.

Henry H. Prout becomes minister at St. Matthew's

Henry H. Prout took charge at St. Matthew's after William Mercer Green left for Chapel Hill. The parish's unbroken run of vestry records begins the same year.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

Isaiah Spencer builds the Hillsborough inn later called the Colonial Inn

Isaiah Spencer built the two-story inn on West King Street in 1838. Known locally as Spencer's Tavern and advertised as the Orange Hotel, a name it kept for fifty years, it was later the Occoneechee Hotel, the Corbinton Inn and, from 1946, the Colonial Inn. Local lore and a 1953 plate caption put it in the eighteenth century.

Subject: Colonial Inn

James P. Clark opens Fairfield School northwest of Hillsborough

In 1838 James P. Clark gave public notice of Fairfield School, which lay six miles northwest of Hillsborough.

Elizabeth Hobbs writes to her mother from Hillsborough

Elizabeth Hobbs wrote to her mother Agnes Hobbs in Virginia asking for news of home and saying she did not expect to see her family again. She wrote that Anna Burwell planned to go to Petersburg without her and that she had been told she would belong to Elizabeth Burwell once that daughter married. She also wrote that she had been a bridesmaid at Ann Nash's wedding a week before Christmas 1837.

Part of The Burwell School and the Burwell household · 37 events

People: Anna Burwell

Frances Armistead Burwell is born to Robert and Anna Burwell of Hillsborough

Frances Armistead Burwell, called Fanny, was the fourth of the twelve children of Robert and Margaret Anna Burwell.

People: Robert Armistead Burwell · Margaret Anna Burwell

Paul Cameron sells Burnside to Cadwallader Jones Jr.

Paul Cameron sold Burnside, his three-year-old Hillsborough house, to Cadwallader Jones Jr. for $2,000. Jones sold it back to Cameron in the 1850s when he ran into money trouble.

People: Cadwallader Jones

Subject: Burnside

The Hillsborough Recorder argues against dividing Orange County

The paper held that a large county was harder for any family, town or company to control and would keep the tax rate low.

Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

Commissioners seek bids to repair the Eno bridge at Hillsborough

John U. Kirkland was one of five commissioners, with Cadwallader Jones, Edmund Strudwick, Josiah Turner and Catlett Campbell, who advertised for proposals to repair the bridge over the Eno at Hillsborough, with bids due in November.

People: Edmund Strudwick · Cadwallader Jones · Josiah Turner Jr.

Subject: Eno River road bridge, Hillsborough

Alexander Dickson becomes owner of the house later called the Alexander Dickson House

Around 1839 Alexander Dickson acquired the late-Georgian frame farmhouse of about 1790 that stood near the later junction of Interstate 85 and NC 86 outside Hillsborough. Joseph E. Johnston used it as his headquarters in 1865, and it was moved to 150 East King Street in 1983.

Subject: Alexander Dickson House (Johnston’s headquarters)

Maria L. Spear becomes principal of Hillsborough Female Seminary

After William M. Green's last announcement in 1838, the seminary's trustees named Maria L. Spear principal in 1839.

People: James Strudwick Smith · Cadwallader Jones · Hugh Waddell · Stephen Moore · William Mercer Green

A Female School House is built for the Burwells' school

As the school grew, subscribers in town paid for a 36-by-20-foot schoolhouse north of the Burwell home, built by the carpenter George A. Faucette.

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

Subject: Burwell School

A one-room log school is built beside St. Mary's Chapel

In the 1840s a one-room log schoolhouse went up next to St. Mary's Chapel. The brick St. Mary's School of 1931 was later built on the same site.

Subject: St. Mary's School

Dennis Heartt's family adds a two-story wing to Heartsease

After buying Polly Burke's Queen Street house in 1837, the family of Recorder editor Dennis Heartt named it Heartsease and built a two-story Greek Revival wing on its west side about 1840.

Subject: Heartsease

Henry Evans, a free cabinetmaker of color, buys a shop lot on Churton Street

Evans paid $265 for old lot 6 on Churton Street, across from the courthouse then being built, and made furniture there, including chancel pieces for St. Matthew's, where he was baptized in 1842. The Bailey map marks his workshop.

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough · St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

Hillsborough counts about 787 people, 333 of them enslaved

Reading the 1840 census against William Bailey's sketch map of the town in 1839, the Task Force counted about 787 people in the mapped households: 434 white, 333 enslaved and 20 free people of color. Dr. James Webb's household was the largest, and Dr. James S. Smith held the most people, 41.

People: James Webb · James Strudwick Smith

John Berry adds a rear ell to Peter Brown Ruffin's house on West King Street

Builder John Berry added at least one two-story rear ell, with a Federal-style stair typical of his work, to the 1820s house that Peter Brown Ruffin owned in the 1840s. The house's first owner is unknown.

William A. Graham of Hillsborough is elected to the United States Senate

After seven years in the House of Commons, twice as Speaker, Graham was sent to the U.S. Senate in 1840. He left when Democrats controlled the Assembly of 1842-1843.

Elizabeth Hobbs gives birth to her son George in Hillsborough

Elizabeth Hobbs gave birth to her only child, George, whose father was Alexander Kirkland. George later took the surname Kirkland.

People: George Kirkland · Elizabeth Hobbs Keckly

Moses Ashley Curtis becomes rector of St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough

Curtis, an Episcopal priest who had taught at the church school in Raleigh, accepted a call to St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough in June 1841. He did his botanical and fungus research from the town while serving the parish.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

Elizabeth Hobbs and her son are sent from Hillsborough back to Virginia

The Burwells sent Elizabeth Hobbs and her son George back to Dinwiddie County, Virginia, where she rejoined her mother in the household of Ann Burwell Garland and Hugh Garland. The Garlands later took the family to St. Louis, where she bought her freedom and George's in 1855.

People: George Kirkland · Elizabeth Hobbs Keckly

Hillsborough Literary Association forms with Dennis Heartt as secretary

A Literary Association was formed at Hillsborough in early 1842 with Frederick Nash as president; James S. Smith, Cadwallader Jones and Robert Burwell as vice presidents; Dennis Heartt as secretary; and Walter A. Norwood as treasurer. Heartt, a charter member, had helped organize it.

People: Frederick Nash · Cadwallader Jones · Robert Armistead Burwell · James Strudwick Smith

Hugh Waddell opens a school for law students in Hillsborough

In 1842 Waddell opened a school in Hillsborough to prepare young men for the bar.

William A. Graham builds a law office on his new Eno River property, Montrose

On buying the property in 1842, William A. Graham built a one-and-a-half-story frame law office there. It survives on the Montrose grounds; his son John W. Graham added a two-room rear ell around 1893.

People: John W. Graham

Subject: Montrose

William Norwood's estate lists Rebecca Ruffin and her daughters

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

People: William Norwood

Dr. James Webb is declared bankrupt and his goods are auctioned

Dr. James Webb was declared bankrupt on November 1, 1842, and his possessions were sold at public auction on December 11. His friends and neighbors bought back nearly everything offered for him and his family.

William A. Graham buys the Eno River house that became Montrose

Senator William A. Graham bought 59 acres on the Eno River east of Hillsborough from John U. Kirkland, with the house the Rev. William Mercer Green had built there, paying $3,200 plus his town residence and three lots. Graham named the place Montrose, and his son and grandson lived there after him until 1977.

People: John U. Kirkland · William Mercer Green

Subject: Montrose

James Jackson Jr. buys the Hillsborough House tavern on King Street

James Jackson Jr. bought the tavern known as Faddis's old stand, lately kept by Thomas D. Crane as the Hillsborough House, and advertised it to travelers and drovers and to people with business at the court house. He promised low charges and a bar kept apart from the house.

Nathan Hooker buys ninety-four acres on the north side of Hillsborough

Nathan Hooker bought two tracts of just over ninety-four acres on the northern edge of town. A one-room Greek Revival cottage at 120 West Corbin Street, dated about 1843, is said to be the surviving wing of his house, which later burned.

A Norwood and Tillinghast debt settlement prices enslaved people by name

To pay what was owed the Bank of Cape Fear, a settlement between J. W. Norwood and Samuel Tillinghast valued an estate at $15,433 by listing each enslaved person with a price, Eliza at $75 and Manley at $200.

Elias Dodson holds Hillsborough's first known Baptist services in the courthouse

Elias Dodson, a Virginia-born graduate of William and Mary, preached in the courthouse and is the first Baptist minister the authors could find holding services in town. When the county built a new courthouse he bought the old one for the Baptists.

Frederick Nash of Hillsborough is appointed to the North Carolina Supreme Court

Nash was named to the Supreme Court in 1844, following William Gaston's death. Eight years later his colleagues made him Chief Justice.

People: William Gaston

Orange County's William A. Graham is elected governor

Graham, the Whig nominee chosen unanimously in 1843, won the governorship in 1844 and was re-elected in 1846. He served from 1845 to 1849.

Eagle Lodge Masons lay the cornerstone of the new Orange County courthouse

Masons of Eagle Lodge, with brethren from University Lodge, laid the cornerstone of the new courthouse in Hillsborough, with Dr. James S. Smith acting as deputy grand master. The Rev. William M. Green gave the oration in the old courthouse nearby.

People: James Strudwick Smith · William Mercer Green

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough · Eagle Lodge

Frances Devereux deeds Primus to Dr. Edmund Strudwick

Five months after her husband died, Frances Devereux of Raleigh deeded Primus to Dr. Edmund Strudwick of Hillsborough. Primus later drove and gardened at the Burwell School and, after emancipation, worked at the Nash and Kollock School as Primus Smith.

People: Edmund Strudwick · Frances (Pollock) Devereux

Subject: Burwell School · Nash and Kollock School

Dennis Heartt prints The Poetical Works of George M. Horton

Dennis Heartt printed The Poetical Works of George M. Horton, the Colored Bard of North-Carolina at Hillsborough in 1845, with Horton's autobiography prefixed to the poems. It was the second book by Horton, who was still enslaved when it appeared.

People: George Moses Horton

Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

Hillsborough citizens pay to refit the academy building for the Caldwell Institute

Townspeople paid for the repair and enlargement of the Hillsborough Academy building so that the Caldwell Institute could move in from Greensboro. The older school was absorbed into the institute under Alexander Wilson.

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

Subject: Hillsborough Academy · Caldwell Institute

Josiah Turner Jr. is admitted to the bar after studying law in Hillsborough

After schooling at the Caldwell Institute in Greensboro and a year at the University of North Carolina, Josiah Turner Jr. studied law for two years in Hillsborough and was admitted to the bar in about 1845. He soon built a large practice.

Richard Mayo, a free cabinetmaker of color, buys three town lots

Richard Mayo paid $200 for three lots on Occoneechee Street between West Tryon and West Queen streets, and in 1849 gave them to Levi McCollum to settle a debt. His brother William later waited tables at the Burwell School.

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

Subject: Burwell School

The Old Orange County Courthouse is moved up Churton Street to Queen Street

After the county built a new courthouse, its commissioners advertised the old wooden courthouse for sale at the November 1845 county court, to be removed from the court square. The Baptist missionary Elias Dodson bought it, and by about 1847 it stood at the corner of Churton and Queen streets as a church. The building later became the freedmen's school and then the home of Dickerson Chapel AME Church.

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough · Dickerson Chapel AME Church

The Smith-Cole House is built for a Hillsborough planter

Built in 1845 for a Hillsborough planter, the frame house stands two stories over a center-hall plan two rooms deep and five bays across, with a chimney at each gable end and a porch on thin columns.

Thomas W. Holden, now living in Milton, offers Enoe Mills for sale

Thomas W. Holden advertised all or half of Enoe Mills, five miles below Hillsborough, for sale. The works had about 300 acres, a threshing machine, saw mill, cotton gin, two wool-carding machines, an oil mill and a corn and flour mill, with his partner J. F. Lyon on the premises.

Lemuel Lynch becomes Hillsborough's first mayor

The silversmith Lemuel Lynch takes office as the first mayor of Hillsborough, which until then had been run by town commissioners and a magistrate of police.

Caldwell Institute reopens in Hillsborough after leaving Greensboro

The Orange Presbytery's Caldwell Institute, founded at Greensboro, moved to Hillsborough and began its first session there on July 9, 1845, with Alexander Wilson as president. It used the Hillsborough Academy building and absorbed that school.

People: Alexander Wilson

Subject: Hillsborough Academy · Caldwell Institute

James S. Smith offers his estate for sale to pay his debts

In a notice dated August 19, 1845, in the Hillsborough Recorder, James S. Smith offered property he valued at not less than $35,000 to cover debts of $15,000 or $16,000, saying he would act as his own trustee and salesman. NCpedia says he went bankrupt that year and probably then moved from Hillsborough to a house on Smith Level Road outside Chapel Hill.

Witherspoon's farm Tusculum is sold at the courthouse door

Dr. Edmund Strudwick, who had long held the mortgages, bought the farm at public sale. Susan Witherspoon was allowed to stay on at Tusculum by Strudwick's provision.

People: Edmund Strudwick

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough · Tusculum (Witherspoon farm)

Andrew Mickle turns the log schoolhouse at Highlands into a house

The log school built south of the Eno around 1844 was converted to a residence, and Andrew Mickle added a three-bay, two-story side-hall section in 1846. Paul C. Cameron enlarged it again in 1857.

People: Andrew Mickle

Subject: Highlands (Paul Cameron house)

Builder John Berry enlarges a St. Mary's Road farmhouse into Sunny Side, his country home

John Berry, the Hillsborough brickmason and builder, enlarged and remodeled an older farmhouse on St. Mary's Road as a home for himself and named it Sunny Side. He kept his library there and lived there until his death in 1870.

Subject: Sunnyside (John Berry farm)

Caroline Mallett Walker conveys the Margaret Lane house to James M. Palmer

In 1846 Caroline Mary Walker conveyed the lateral-hall house at 173 West Margaret Lane, by deed of trust, to James M. Palmer. Palmer, bankrupt, gave it up in 1863, and a later owner, Tom Haise or Hayes, kept a shoemaker's shop there.

John Christmas builds new gallows at Hillsborough

The county's new gallows went up in 1846 and were moved four years later.

Lemuel Lynch is paid to repair the courthouse clock

The old town clock, in storage since the market house came down, was repaired for the new courthouse, where it still hangs in the cupola. Lemuel Lynch was paid $250 for the work and afterward $25 a year to keep it running on time.

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

Mitchell asks the Burwells to sell his wife Mary Ann with him

Mitchell, an enslaved man who had run from his owner, came to Robert Burwell asking that he and his wife Mary Ann, enslaved in the Burwell household, be sold together. He worked at the house for a week; then Burwell told him to go back to his master, and he left on February 17.

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

People: Robert Armistead Burwell

Smallpox at the Turner house sends students out of town

Anna Burwell wrote that William Turner had caught smallpox from the clothes of a brother back from medical lectures in Philadelphia. Twenty or thirty students of the Institute left town, and both Burwell boarders went home, though no second case followed.

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

Moses Ashley Curtis leaves St. Matthew's for Society Hill, South Carolina

Rector and botanist Moses Ashley Curtis moved from Hillsborough to Society Hill, South Carolina, ending his first period at St. Matthew's.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

The Moorefields estate is divided and the house goes to Augusta Moore

The Moorefields lands were divided, and the tract with the house went to Augusta, a daughter of Alfred Moore the younger. The family kept it until 1913.

Subject: Moorefields

Robert F. Morris buys the Hillsborough House from James Jackson

Robert F. Morris, who said he had kept taverns for several years, bought the Hillsborough House, lately run by James Jackson, and promised to be ready for guests by the February court. He advertised a good table and stables and a bar stocked with liquors.

Caldwell Institute enrollment peaks at 100 in Hillsborough

Under Alexander Wilson the school reached a peak enrollment of 100 students in 1848. Attendance fell back to 68 the next year, and in 1850 the trustees voted to discontinue it.

Subject: Caldwell Institute

James B. Connelly serves as rector of St. Matthew's

James B. Connelly took charge of the parish in 1848 and served until his death late in 1855.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

James Webb Jr. and his wife buy Over-the-River from the Norwoods and enlarge it

John Wall Norwood and his wife sold Over-the-River to James Webb Jr. and his wife, who added to the two-story wing. The house stayed in the family and passed to James Webb Cheshire in 1936.

Subject: Over-the-River (Norwood-Webb-Cheshire House)

Robert Burwell buys the house and has John Berry enlarge it

Burwell resigned his pulpit and bought the two lots from the church for $800 and back pay. The builder John Berry added a central hall and two rooms and turned the house to face Churton Street. A deed of trust of July 16, 1850 shows Burwell still owing Berry $2,500 and the church trustees $800, secured on the lots and on enslaved members of the household.

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

People: Robert Armistead Burwell · John Berry

Subject: Burwell School · Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

Sarah Kollock becomes the Burwell School's teacher of French and drawing

Sarah Kollock, one of the Burwell School's first pupils, had helped teach the younger children and in 1848 became its full-time teacher of French and drawing. By September 1851 Molly Burwell had taken her place and she was in Oxford.

Subject: Burwell School

William Whitted advertises Lochiel for sale

William Whitted offered Lochiel, his place a mile northwest of Hillsborough, for sale: an eleven-room house with barn, ice house and kitchen on 205 acres, with 140 more acres to the northeast. The notice ran in the Recorder into early 1851.

Subject: Lochiel

A free man is jailed in Hillsborough for giving his free papers to an enslaved man

The 1850 census taker listed the town jail's inmates with their charges. John McAndless, a free laborer of 22, was held for "giving his free papers to a slave".

Subject: Orange County jail, Hillsborough

Builder John Berry holds 44 enslaved people, most working in his building trade

By 1850 the Hillsborough brick mason and builder John Berry held 44 enslaved people, most of them working with him in masonry and construction. Some, including his head carpenter Joseph Nichols, stayed with him after emancipation, and much of the carpentry in Berry's buildings after 1840 was likely Nichols's.

People: John Berry

Caldwell Institute closes in Hillsborough

The Caldwell Institute ended in 1850 after five years in Hillsborough.

Subject: Hillsborough Academy · Caldwell Institute

English landscape designer Thomas Paxton lays out the Montrose grounds for Mrs. William A. Graham

The terraced landscape at Montrose, running down to the Eno, was first shaped in the 1850s by the English landscape architect Thomas Paxton, working under the direction of Mrs. William A. Graham.

Subject: Montrose

Ira Ellis's mill, later Hall's Mill, is working on the Eno west of Hillsborough

A mill stands on the Eno west of Hillsborough by the middle of the nineteenth century, part of the Rev. Ira Ellis's home place; it took the name Hall's Mill after Nelson P. Hall acquired the Ellis house and land. Only its stone dam, a stone foundation and the trace of the race survived.

Subject: Rev. Ira Ellis House (Little Ayr Mount)

Orange County residents put up $100,000 for the North Carolina Railroad

Orange County people pledged $100,000 in 1850 toward building the North Carolina Railroad, planned to cross the state from Goldsboro through Hillsborough to Charlotte. Its first rails went down at Greensboro in 1851.

Subject: North Carolina Railroad

President Fillmore makes William A. Graham Secretary of the Navy

Graham, who had declined missions to Spain and Russia in 1849, led the Navy Department from 1850. His department reorganized the coast survey and the officer corps and sent the Perry expedition to Japan and an exploring party to the Amazon.

The 1850 census finds Dennis Heartt's printers and apprentices living at Heartsease

The 1850 census listed editor Dennis Heartt's household at Heartsease with his two daughters, his son Edwin with his wife and small daughter, two young printers, and four boys aged eleven to eighteen entered as students who were probably apprentices at the Hillsborough Recorder.

People: Dennis Heartt

Subject: Heartsease

The county court moves the gallows to Gallows Hill

By court order the gallows went back to the old site known as Gallows Hill on the town commons in western Hillsborough.

The old Burwell schoolroom is said to be moved to West Orange Street during John Berry's work on the Burwell School

The west wing of the bungalow at 114 West Orange Street is reputed to be the old Burwell schoolroom, moved there in 1850 while John Berry was renovating the Burwell School. The house around it dates from 1922.

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

People: John Berry

Subject: Burwell School

Robert Burwell pledges Mary Ann and her children against his building debts

A deed of trust set out Burwell's debts of $2,500 to the builder John Berry and $800 to the Presbyterian trustees, and offered as security the enslaved seamstress Mary Ann, her four children and any children born to her, and a girl named Ann.

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

People: Robert Armistead Burwell · John Berry · Thomas Webb

Frederick Strudwick graduates and begins practising law in Hillsborough

Frederick Nash Strudwick, born in Hillsborough on 27 June 1833 and schooled there, graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1851 and then began a law practice in Hillsborough.

Hillsborough Academy is revived under Benjamin Huske and Ralph Graves

After the Caldwell Institute closed, Benjamin R. Huske and Ralph Henry Graves revived the Hillsborough Academy, which ran until 1858.

People: Ralph Henry Graves (1851-1889)

Subject: Hillsborough Academy · Caldwell Institute

Job Berry and Billy Payne begin the congregation that became Dickerson Chapel

Dickerson Chapel AME Church dates its founding to 1851, when Job Berry, an enslaved painter and its first pastor, began gathering the congregation with Rev. Billy (William) Payne, enslaved by Dr. Edmund Strudwick. With state law barring Black preachers, they met in homes; the congregation moved into the old courthouse on Queen Street in 1866.

Subject: Dickerson Chapel AME Church · Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

The Whigs nominate William A. Graham for vice president

Graham ran on the Whig ticket with General Winfield Scott in 1852. The ticket lost.

Webb and Douglass finish a cotton factory on Little River

Webb and Douglass had finished building a cotton mill on Little River, some thirteen miles east of Hillsborough, by February 1852, and machinery for 1,000 spindles was on its way. Later owners kept it running, for a time as a rope works, until about the 1920s.

John W. Carr sits as a justice of the county court

Carr was one of five justices holding the February 1852 term of the Orange County court, which elected a Board of Superintendents of Common Schools and set the county tax.

People: John U. Kirkland · William Nelson

Nathan Hooker's executor advertises his land and town lots for sale

O. Hooker, executor of the late Nathan Hooker, gave notice of a sale on November 24, 1852 at Hooker's former residence: a large tract south of town, Lots 84 and part of 85 in Hillsborough, and a hundred-acre tract half a mile north of town, with furniture, a buggy and cows.

The new Hillsborough Baptist church joins the Beulah Association

On organizing, the Baptist congregation in Hillsborough entered the Beulah Association. It later moved to the Mount Zion Association, formed at Mount Moriah Church.

Thomas Blount Hill buys the Phillips place and makes it the BelleVue villa

Thomas Blount Hill of Halifax County buys the East Tryon Street estate and adds a west wing, a three-story central tower and wide porches, turning the old house into an Italianate villa he names BelleVue. It passed to his daughter Mary Alice and her husband Joseph Cheshire Webb, and in the 1980s opened as the Hillsborough House Inn.

Subject: BelleVue (Phillips-Hill-Webb House)

The Hillsborough Recorder calls for a plank road from Hillsborough to Milton

An editorial regretted that no one had asked the last legislature to charter a company to build a plank road from Hillsborough to Milton by way of Roxboro or Yanceyville. It hoped a stock company would form under the general act of 1850-51 while a charter was sought.

Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

Witherspoon dies at Tusculum and is buried in the Old Town Cemetery

He died penniless at the Tusculum farmhouse on the thirty-seventh anniversary of the organization of the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church. His funeral was held in that church and he was buried nearby in the Nash-Strudwick plot of the Old Town Cemetery, where the congregation and townspeople paid for the obelisk over his grave.

Subject: Old Town Cemetery, Hillsborough · Hillsborough Presbyterian Church · Tusculum (Witherspoon farm)

First Baptist Church of Hillsborough is organized in the old courthouse

The First Baptist Church was organized in Hillsborough and met in the former 1790 courthouse building, now Dickerson Chapel, until 1862, while it raised its own church building on a lot acquired between 1854 and 1860.

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough · Dickerson Chapel AME Church

Hillsborough Presbyterian Church sells the people it held in trust for the Witherspoons

People once held by John Knox Witherspoon had passed to the church in trust for the care of his ailing daughter. The session refused a sale in August 1852, but after Witherspoon's death it agreed, and part of the money went to Mary Witherspoon. The names of those sold are not recorded.

People: John Knox Witherspoon

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

Judge John L. Bailey buys the Norwood house south of the Eno and names it Eno Lodge

Superior court judge John Lancaster Bailey bought the house above the Eno from Joseph C. Norwood, probably added the rear ell and north bay, and called it Eno Lodge. He lived there until about the start of the Civil War, when he moved to Buncombe County.

Subject: Eno Lodge

Peter Brown Ruffin buys the land that became Margaret Lane Cemetery

According to the Alliance for Historic Hillsborough, Peter Brown Ruffin, owner of Occoneechee Farm, bought the land now called Margaret Lane Cemetery as a burial ground for people enslaved by him and his neighbor Cadwalader Jones. Plaques placed in 1987 date burials there from before 1852, and it remained a burial ground for Black residents of Hillsborough until 1931.

Subject: Margaret Lane Cemetery · Occoneechee Farm

Ralph Graves sells the West King Street lot later the Parks-Richmond House to John J. Freeland

In 1854 Ralph Graves, husband of Emma Taylor, sold Lot 18 on West King Street, for many years the home of clerk of court John Taylor, to John J. Freeland. Elbert H. and Emily Pogue owned it from the 1870s.

The Baptists buy W. J. Freeland's lot for a new church

The congregation bought a two-acre lot from W. J. Freeland running from Margaret Lane along Wake Street to King Street, where its present church stands.

The Evans families leave Hillsborough for Oberlin, Ohio

Squeezed by laws that stripped free people of color of the vote, the right to preach and schooling, the cabinetmakers Henry and Wilson Bruce Evans took their families to Oberlin, where their sister Delilah Copeland had settled in 1843. Both brothers were jailed there for their part in the 1858 Oberlin-Wellington rescue of a man taken as a fugitive.

Hillsborough Baptists call their first pastor

Three months after organizing, the congregation called Rev. A. Jones Jr. as its first pastor, and he accepted. The church counted 29 pastors in its first hundred years.

Thomas Ruffin deeds St. Matthew's Church the land he had given by word around

Thomas Ruffin's deed of April 10, 1854 formally conveyed 1 1/3 acres to St. Matthew's Church, land he had given verbally around 1820. The tract was later enlarged for the church, parish house and walled cemetery.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

Mary Burwell marries Frederick Nash Strudwick

Mary Susan Burwell, one of her mother's first pupils and later a teacher at the school, married the neighbor Frederick Nash Strudwick in Hillsborough, with the Rev. F. K. Nash officiating, joining two families who lived a town lot apart.

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

People: Frederick N. Strudwick

Hillsborough elects a Know Nothing slate in its town elections

In the 1855 municipal election Hillsborough voters chose a Nativist (American Party) ticket. The same year the county's congressional vote went to the Know Nothing candidate.

John and Louisa Turner inherit the Jackson farm on the Eno

Louisa Jackson Turner and her husband received the 140-acre Jackson farm outside Hillsborough, with its log and frame homeplace, from her widowed mother Mary Jackson. By 1860 the Turners farmed 713 acres on four tracts.

Subject: Jacob Jackson Farm (Maple Hill)

The King-Richards-Johnston House is built on West King Street

The one-and-a-half-story frame house at 131 West King Street, dated by Bellinger to about 1855, was a boarding house by 1894. Owners of the property over the years included Abner Nash, William Courtney, Jehu Whitted, William D. Murphy, Henry Richards and Mayor Ben G. Johnston.

The legislature charters four plank road companies through Orange County

The 1855 charters were for roads from Chapel Hill to Morrisville and to Durhamsville, from Hillsborough to Chapel Hill, and from Hillsborough to Milton, with capital from $20,000 to $150,000. The book could not say which, if any, were built.

People: Charles Phillips · Edmund Strudwick · Andrew Mickle

Thomas Webb serves as Orange County's clerk and master in equity

Thomas Webb signed notices as clerk and master of the Court of Equity for Orange County, at his office in Hillsborough, from at least 1855 into 1862.

Dr. James Webb dies in Hillsborough

Dr. James Webb died in Hillsborough on Saturday morning, February 17, 1855, aged 81, after an illness of several years. The Recorder praised his integrity and charity, and he was buried with his wife in the Webb-Long plot of the Old Town Cemetery.

Subject: Old Town Cemetery, Hillsborough

Aunt Fariby saves Jane from burning

Jane, a young enslaved servant at the Burwell School, caught fire. Anna Burwell wrote that she would have burned to death but for Aunt Fariby, who saved her life.

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

Subject: Burwell School

William McCauley takes charge of the Hillsborough House

William McCauley took over the Hillsborough House, the inn northeast of the court house long known as Faddis' Hotel. He repaired the buildings, bought new furniture and said he had retired from other business to run it.

Paul C. Cameron repurchases Burnside and moves back to Hillsborough

Paul and Anne Ruffin Cameron left Fairntosh in 1856, bought back Burnside, the Hillsborough house where they had first lived after their 1832 marriage, and moved back to town.

Subject: Burnside

The first through trains run on the finished North Carolina Railroad, with mail trains at Hillsborough

The North Carolina Railroad was finished on January 29, 1856, when the last rail was laid about four and a half miles west of Greensboro. Two days later the regular mail and passenger trains made their first through run from Charlotte to Goldsboro, with a westbound train due at Hillsborough each morning and an eastbound one before dawn, replacing the coach connection that had carried the Burwells' letters to their daughter Fanny in New York.

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

Subject: North Carolina Railroad

The Burwells resolve to sell their cook Hannah

Hannah, who had come from Virginia with the family and cooked for the school, had been drinking heavily through 1855. Anna Burwell wrote to her daughter Fanny that she had made up her mind: Hannah would be sent to Richmond to be sold.

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

People: Robert Armistead Burwell

Subject: Burwell School

Fanny Burwell dies aboard the steamer Jamestown as her parents bring her home to Hillsborough

Fanny Burwell had gone to New York to complete her music education, but fell ill with erysipelas in early March. Her mother went north to nurse her, and she died at dawn on the steamer Jamestown between New York and Norfolk with both parents beside her, in her eighteenth year; her body was brought home to Hillsborough for burial.

People: Robert Armistead Burwell · Margaret Anna Burwell

Anne Call Cameron, piano teacher to Burwell School students, dies

A widow known as Nancy, she gave piano lessons at the Burwell School to help pay for the care of her daughter Anna McKenzie Kirkland, whose illness followed her husband's death in 1843. She died in Hillsborough in June 1856.

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

Subject: Burwell School

A Black child and then a student die of illness at the Burwell School

Writing to her mother, the student Lizzie Glass mentioned a small Black boy who had died at the school the previous day, at a time when Nannie Burwell and three of the Burwell children lay sick. Within a few weeks Lizzie Glass herself died at the school.

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

Subject: Burwell School

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

An octagonal brick ice house is built for Burnside

A mostly underground octagonal brick ice house with a conical shingled roof was built for Burnside, the Cameron family estate on South Cameron Street; the brickwork is said to be John Berry's. It stands in the woods south of Cameron Park Elementary School and was restored around 2002.

People: John Berry

Subject: Burnside

Burwell School closes as the Burwells move to Charlotte

The Burwells closed their Hillsborough school in 1857, the same year they took charge of a girls' school in Charlotte.

Part of The Burwell School and the Burwell household · 37 events

People: Robert Armistead Burwell · Margaret Anna Burwell

Subject: Burwell School

Paul C. Cameron enlarges Highlands, the former log schoolhouse south of the Eno

Paul C. Cameron added two bays to Highlands, giving it the center-hall plan it keeps. The house had begun about 1844 as a log school and was made a dwelling by Andrew Mickle in 1846.

People: Andrew Mickle

Subject: Highlands (Paul Cameron house)

Paul Cameron brings English gardener Thomas A. Adams to plant the Burnside grounds

Paul Cameron hired Thomas A. Adams, a landscape gardener from Chester, England, to plant the twenty-acre front yard of Burnside with trees ordered from Parsons and Co. of Long Island. The grounds became known as Cameron Park, and many of the trees still stand.

Subject: Burnside

Pride Jones has John Berry enlarge Sans Souci

After inheriting Sans Souci from Dr. William Cain in 1857, Dr. Pride Jones has builder John Berry renovate the house, adding the rear dining room and stair, the full-width front porch and the one-story wings.

People: Pride Jones

Subject: Sans Souci

Thomas Ruffin buys a West Tryon Street house for his widowed daughter Catherine Roulhac

About 1857 Chief Justice Thomas Ruffin bought the house at 143 West Tryon Street, built around 1840, for his widowed daughter Catherine Ruffin Roulhac, who named it Laburnum Cottage. After her death in 1880 it passed to her daughter Annie Roulhac and then to the Hamilton family, whose children included the historian J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton.

Subject: Roulhac-Hamilton House (Laburnum Cottage)

Moses Ashley Curtis returns to St. Matthew's in Hillsborough

After about ten years at Society Hill, S.C., Curtis came back to St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough in February 1857, and stayed until his death in 1872; he was buried in the churchyard.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

William Cain dies and leaves Sans Souci to his son-in-law Pride Jones

William Cain, who built Sans Souci as his town house and was married to a sister of Chief Justice Thomas Ruffin, died and willed the house he had formerly lived in to his son-in-law, Pride Jones.

People: Pride Jones

Subject: Sans Souci

Alves, an enslaved man sentenced to death, is baptized at St. Matthew's

St. Matthew's register records the baptism of Alves, "a slave under sentence of death," with James Waddell as witness.

Subject: St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church

Charles Tew chooses a site west of Hillsborough for a military academy

In late July 1858 Charles C. Tew, with Moses A. Curtis and A. S. Galliard, searched Hillsborough for a school site and settled on a 40-acre tract about a mile and a half west of town near the new North Carolina Railroad. They engaged the Columbia architect John A. Kay, and local builders John Berry and Henry Richards built the barracks and commandant's house.

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

People: John Berry · Moses Ashley Curtis

Subject: North Carolina Railroad · Hillsborough Military Academy

Frederick Nash dies in Hillsborough and is buried in the Old Town Cemetery

Nash fell ill returning from a synod meeting at New Bern and died in December 1858 at his Hillsborough home, while serving as chief justice of the state supreme court. He was buried in the Hillsborough Old Town Cemetery.

Subject: Old Town Cemetery, Hillsborough

Masons lay a cornerstone at the Hillsborough Military Academy

A delegation from Eagle Lodge took part in a Masonic cornerstone ceremony at the Hillsborough Military Academy in 1859.

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy · Eagle Lodge

The Nash and Kollock School turns the old Nash law office into a music room

After Chief Justice Frederick Nash died, his daughters Sally and Maria Nash and their cousin Sarah Kollock began holding their school's music lessons in his former law office on Margaret Lane.

People: Sarah Kollock

Subject: Nash and Kollock School · Nash Law Office

The legislature creates North Carolina's first Board of Medical Examiners

In 1859 the state set up its first Board of Medical Examiners by law. The book credits the urging of Hillsborough's Dr. Edmund Strudwick.

People: Edmund Strudwick

The Hillsborough Military Academy commandant's house is ready to live in

The academy's neo-Gothic commandant's house, with turrets and crenellations along the roofline, was far enough along to be occupied by March 1859, though interior work may have continued for years.

People: John Berry

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

Corporators organize the Hillsborough Savings Institution

The corporators of the Hillsborough Savings Institution, among them Thomas Webb, William A. Graham, James F. Cain and Pride Jones, met in the county court clerk's office on April 1, 1859, adopted the charter and appointed Webb and others to open subscription books. By December 1860 Webb was its cashier.

People: William A. Graham · Pride Jones

Hillsborough Methodist Church builds its church

The Hillsborough Methodist congregation, organized about 1807, bought its lot on April 4, 1859, and John Berry built the church, which was to be dedicated on Sunday, October 6, 1861. The war held up the finishing and the building was not paid for until 1874. Lefler and Wager counted 200 seats, and it was still the congregation's church in 1953.

Subject: Hillsborough Methodist Church

Nash and Kollock School for young ladies opens in Hillsborough

After Chief Justice Frederick Nash died in 1858, his daughters Sarah and Maria Nash and their cousin Sarah Kollock opened a select boarding and day school for girls in the Nash home.

People: Sarah Kollock

Subject: Nash and Kollock School

Brick quarters for enslaved people are built at the Mangum House on St. Mary's Road

Around 1860 two four-bay brick buildings, likely quarters for enslaved people, and a brick smokehouse were built to serve the Priestly Mangum House on St. Mary's Road. The house later burned, and the Ruffin-Hill House went up near its site in 1877-1878; the quarters still stand at 311 and 313 St. Mary's Road.

Subject: Ruffin-Hill House

First Baptist Church of Hillsborough builds its church

Seven years after organizing in the old courthouse, the First Baptist Church of Hillsborough began its brick church about 1860, to a design by William Percival. The congregation met in the courthouse until 1862 and the war stalled the work; John Berry took over from the first builder, D. Kistler, and finished it. The Baptist State Convention met in the newly completed church in the fall of 1868, when Rev. Thomas H. Pritchard of Raleigh preached the dedication sermon.

People: William A. Graham

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

Hillsborough counts 945 residents

Even with the railroad, the town hardly grew in the 1850s: about 900 people in 1850 and 945 at the end of the decade.

Webb and Whitted's plug tobacco factory is Hillsborough's largest works

The firm made plug tobacco in Hillsborough with 15 workers, the biggest manufacturing concern in present Orange County in the 1860 census.

Walter Clark enters Colonel Tew's military academy in Hillsborough

Walter Clark, then fourteen, enrolled at Colonel C. C. Tew's Military Academy in Hillsborough. He left for Confederate service after the war began.

People: Charles Courtenay Tew

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

George Attmore Sparrow is a cadet at the Hillsborough Military Academy

Sparrow, the teenage son of the Washington lawyer Thomas Sparrow, was enrolled as a cadet at the Hillsborough Military Academy in 1861 and 1862. He wrote home to his father from the academy through that period.

People: Thomas Sparrow

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

Hillsborough Methodists refuse to give their church bell to be cast into Confederate cannon

When Confederate authorities, short of cannon, asked the Hillsborough Methodist Church for its bell to melt down, the congregation turned them down.

Subject: Hillsborough Methodist Church

T. M. Jordan preaches to enslaved people in the Baptist church basement

Rev. T. M. Jordan held services for enslaved people of Hillsborough in the basement of the Baptist church and married and baptized many Black members. One night his hearers gave him so much Confederate money that he carried it home in a handkerchief.

William H. S. Burgwyn enrolls as a cadet at the Hillsborough Military Academy

Later in 1861 Burgwyn entered the Hillsborough Military Academy as a cadet. By the autumn he had been appointed drill master of the camp of instruction near Raleigh, and he was then elected a lieutenant in the Thirty-fifth North Carolina Regiment.

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

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

A courthouse meeting in Hillsborough calls for a secession convention

Ten days after Fort Sumter, a large crowd from across the county met at the courthouse. With Dr. Edmund Strudwick presiding and Dennis Heartt as secretary, it adopted resolutions asking the legislature to call a convention at once to pass an ordinance of secession.

People: Edmund Strudwick · Dennis Heartt

Subject: Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough

The Orange County court sets aside $50,000 for soldiers' families

Recognizing that many volunteers were men of small means, the county court appropriated $50,000 to support their families. The fund lasted until late in the war.

Presiding elder William Barringer dedicates the new Methodist church in Hillsborough

The brick church that Capt. John Berry built on the Tryon Street lot bought in 1859 was dedicated by William Barringer, presiding elder of the Raleigh District. The first sermon in it was preached by Jesse A. Cunninggim.

People: John Berry

Subject: Hillsborough Methodist Church

Eagle Lodge's rooftop observatory is taken down and a hipped roof built

In 1862 the glassed-in observatory on the roof of the Masonic hall, said to have predated President Caldwell's 1831 observatory at the university, was removed and the present hipped roof built.

Subject: Eagle Lodge

George Attmore Sparrow leaves the Hillsborough academy to join the Confederate army

Writing from the academy on 21 July 1862, Sparrow told his father he had approval for his discharge and would leave with other cadets when the session ended on 31 July. He was in camp with the Army of the Pamlico by 1863.

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

People: Thomas Sparrow

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

William A. Graham's house at Montrose burns

The house the Grahams had enlarged at Montrose burned in 1862, and the family moved to a house on West Tryon Street. Only the law office and outbuildings were left on the land.

Subject: Montrose

Hillsborough Savings Institution stockholders vote to stop paying interest

At a called meeting on August 9, 1862, stockholders holding 512 shares resolved to pay no interest on deposit certificates after September 16 and to settle all certificates by then. Cashier John U. Kirkland published the notice.

People: John U. Kirkland

The Baptists sell their old courthouse church to George Bishop of New Bern

Trustees H. C. Strowd, John Cheek and William Ward sold the old Baptist church lot at Churton and Queen streets, part of town lot 80, to George Bishop of New Bern for $750. Bishop later resold it to Philadelphia Friends working for freedpeople, and it became the home of Dickerson's Chapel.

Subject: Dickerson Chapel AME Church

The Collins family buys the former Burwell School and calls it the Beehive

Members of the Collins family of Somerset Place, who had left Union-held eastern North Carolina, paid Robert Burwell $3,500 for the house and four lots. By 1863 about forty family members and enslaved servants lived there, and the family named it the Beehive.

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

People: Robert Armistead Burwell

Subject: Burwell School

Hillsborough meeting resolves to erect a monument to Col. Charles C. Tew

A Hillsborough meeting chaired by M. E. Manly resolved to raise a monument to Col. Tew, killed at Sharpsburg, at or near the front of his Military Academy, and named Dr. Edmund Strudwick, Dr. Pride Jones and Thomas Webb to collect funds and build it.

People: Charles Courtenay Tew · Edmund Strudwick · Pride Jones

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy