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Orange County Indexed

Chronology

Key events from Orange County history: 100 highlights to start, then the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, each connected to the index. A storyline gathers many dated events into one history, such as the Regulator crisis.

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416 dated events and 4 storylines match your filters.

Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 401–420 of 420, 200 to a page.Back to highlights

Entries

  1. Recent decades · 1976–2026

  2. 2020s
  3. Appointment, election or service · Orange County Governor Cooper appoints Joal Broun a district court judge for Orange and Chatham counties

    Broun was appointed to the District 15B seat vacated by Judge Beverly Scarlett. She was then director of the lobbying compliance division at the North Carolina Department of the Secretary of State.

  4. Appointment, election or service · Orange County Joal Broun is sworn in as a district court judge

    Secretary of State Elaine Marshall administered the oath to Broun, who left her post as the department's lobbying compliance division director and gave up her school board seat to take the judgeship.

  5. Publication, speech or performance · Chapel Hill The history and race commission holds a public webinar on the Unsung Founders Memorial

    The Commission on History, Race and a Way Forward opened a two-part webinar series, Unsung Founders Memorial: Past and Present, with members of the Class of 2002 committee and statements from artist Do Ho Suh.

  6. Naming or commemoration · Hortense McClinton Residence Hall, UNC, Chapel Hill UNC renames Aycock Residence Hall for Hortense McClinton

    On the chancellor's recommendation the trustees voted to put McClinton's name on the residence hall that had carried Governor Charles B. Aycock's name until it was removed in July 2020. The Carr Building became the Henry Owl Building the same day.

  7. Award or honor · Chapel Hill Danita Mason-Hogans receives a national fellowship for a critical oral history of Chapel Hill and UNC

    The Oral History Association named her one of eleven year-long fellows funded by a National Endowment for the Humanities grant. Her project is a critical oral history of Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina.

  8. Naming or commemoration · Hortense McClinton Residence Hall, UNC, Chapel Hill Hortense McClinton Residence Hall is dedicated

    UNC dedicated Hortense McClinton Residence Hall and the Henry Owl Building in a ceremony, and the School of Social Work held a dinner for McClinton, then 103, that launched a legacy scholarship in her name.

  9. Competition or sporting achievement · Chapel Hill UNC women’s lacrosse wins the 2022 NCAA national championship

    UNC won the 2022 NCAA women’s lacrosse championship.

  10. Competition or sporting achievement · Chapel Hill UNC field hockey wins the 2022 NCAA national championship

    UNC won the 2022 NCAA field hockey title.

  11. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill Karen Shelton announces her retirement as UNC field hockey coach

    Shelton retired after 42 seasons with a record of 745 wins, 172 losses and 9 ties and 10 NCAA championships, the last won by an unbeaten 2022 team. She is the winningest coach in the sport's history.

  12. Appointment, election or service · Chapel Hill Erin Matson succeeds Karen Shelton as UNC field hockey coach

    UNC named Matson, who had graduated a month earlier after playing on four championship teams, the fifth head coach in program history and only the second since the early 1980s.

  13. Competition or sporting achievement · Dorrance Field, Chapel Hill Jenny Levy wins her 400th game at Dorrance Field

    UNC beat Boston College 16 to 5 at Dorrance Field for Levy's 400th career victory, all of them at Carolina, in her 28th season. She was the sixth head coach in any division of the sport to reach 400 wins.

  14. Competition or sporting achievement · Chapel Hill UNC women’s tennis wins the 2023 NCAA national championship

    UNC won the NCAA women’s team tennis championship.

  15. Competition or sporting achievement · Chapel Hill UNC field hockey wins the 2023 NCAA national championship

    UNC won the 2023 NCAA field hockey title.

  16. Property or economic transaction · Wilson Library, UNC-Chapel Hill UNC Libraries endows the Jacquelyn Dowd Hall Fellowship

    An endowment from John Powell created a UNC University Libraries fellowship in Hall's name for graduate students researching the American South, with preference for projects using oral history sources.

  17. Naming or commemoration · Carrboro Merge Records marks 35 years with four shows at Cat's Cradle

    Merge celebrated its 35th anniversary with four shows at Cat's Cradle in Carrboro, the club that had held its earlier anniversary festivals, in the same year the label was named to the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame.

  18. Competition or sporting achievement · Cary, North Carolina; UNC–Chapel Hill team UNC women’s soccer wins the 2024 NCAA national championship

    UNC defeated Wake Forest, 1–0, in the national final.

  19. Competition or sporting achievement · Chapel Hill UNC women’s lacrosse wins the 2025 NCAA national championship

    UNC won the 2025 NCAA women’s lacrosse championship.

  20. Appointment, election or service · Carrboro Randee Haven-O'Donnell announces she will not seek reelection to the Carrboro Town Council

    Ending twenty years on the town's governing board, Haven-O'Donnell said she was encouraging new voices and would turn to organizing and advocacy on reproductive rights, tenants' rights, stormwater, water quality and PFAS pollution. Chapelboro noted that during her service the council approved the South Green development, a community safety task force and greenway projects.

  21. Naming or commemoration · Burwell School, Hillsborough The Burwell School is renamed the Elizabeth Keckly Center at the Burwell School

    The Burwell School Historic Site in Hillsborough took the name the Elizabeth Keckly Center at the Burwell School in late August 2026, honoring the woman the Burwells held in slavery in the house from 1835. Site director Elizabeth Hays said the aim was to hold the site's histories together.

  22. Naming or commemoration · UNC-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill UNC says a new residence hall will be named Jackson Hall for Blyden and Roberta Jackson

    UNC-Chapel Hill announced that one of two new residence halls, to be built on the site of the former Jackson Hall that housed undergraduate admissions, will be named Jackson Hall for Blyden and Roberta Jackson. The two halls will add about 730 beds.

Suggest a correction to an entry →

A dated event is a fact, filed on the page of the subject it belongs to: a person, a place, a theme, or a named event or history. Pages are subjects, with their own works and sources; the Place, community, or institution filter also gathers the institutions that recur in the entries without a page of their own. The page opens on the highlights; a search or any filter looks through every dated event and storyline, and each filter’s counts say how many entries choosing it would show alongside the others. A storyline is a longer history that gathers related dated events, and each storyline’s page lists its own. Counts give dated events and storylines separately. Dates come from the sources named on the cards and from the index’s event pages; where sources disagree, the card follows the county records. Entries marked approximate or needing research say so on the card; the rest were checked against the source named on it. The correction link under the entries opens the contact form; name the entry and its date and the Friends will check the source. Suggest an event →

Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 2, 2026.

Two mice reading back to back against a leaf, with the hand-lettered words Friends of the Orange County Public Library
Illustration by Caldecott Medalist Matthew Cordell, gifted to the Friends 2026