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Orange County Indexed

Chronology

Key events from Orange County history: 100 highlights to start, then the full chronology of 9,006 dated events and 77 storylines, each connected to the index. A storyline gathers many dated events into one history, such as the Regulator crisis. Browse all 77 storylines. Every entry names its source. See all 667 sources.

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12 dated events match your filters.

Heather Fearnbach, Troy M. and Roberta C. Andrews House, National Register nomination (draft, 2026).Open the sourceAll sources

Searched the full chronology of 9,006 dated events and 77 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–12.Back to highlights

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12 dated events
1928Early twentieth century
  1. Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
  2. Mason Toney Strayhorn and his grandson Alfred Barbee finish a stone dam across Morgan Creek

    Construction or physical change · Morgan Creek near University Lake, south of Carrboro

    Toney Strayhorn, a formerly enslaved Carrboro mason and preacher, completed a thirty-foot-wide stone dam spanning Morgan Creek near University Lake with his grandson Alfred Barbee, whose first masonry job it was. Alfred and his brother Willis Barbee went on to build walls, dams and chimneys around Chapel Hill and Carrboro for sixty years.

    People: Toney Strayhorn · Alfred David Barbee Sr.

  3. Civil rights era · 1945–1975
  4. Mason Alfred Barbee builds his own house on Jones Ferry Road

    Construction or physical change · Jones Ferry Road, Carrboro

    After working at the Carrboro munitions plant during the war, the African American mason Alfred Barbee spent three years building his own house on Jones Ferry Road near the Strayhorn family homes, using his carpentry as well as his masonry skills.

    People: Alfred David Barbee Sr.

  5. Franc Sidler meets Troy and Robin Andrews on their farm and sketches a house for it

    Life event · Andrews farm (Bolin Brook Farm), Bolin Brook Farm Road, Calvander (Chapel Hill vicinity)

    In the summer of 1954 the Swiss architect Franc Sidler, a guest of anthropologists renting a small house on the Andrews farm, met Troy and Robin Andrews there and drew a floor plan for a house they might build later. The sketch grew into the house finished on the farm in 1967.

    People: Roberta C. Andrews · Troy Monroe Andrews

    Subject: Bolin Brook Farm (Troy and Roberta Andrews House)

  6. Doris and James Field begin plans for the Timbercrest subdivision

    Construction or physical change · Timbercrest subdivision, Timberly Drive, northeast of Chapel Hill

    Doris Gates Field and James MacDonald Field started planning Timbercrest, a subdivision on a thirty-seven-acre tract northeast of Chapel Hill, in February 1958, and kept five and a half acres of it for their own Modernist house.

  7. Architect Wade Williams builds a Wright-influenced house for himself on Whitfield Road

    Construction or physical change · Mary Louise and Richard Wade Williams Jr. House, 4707 Whitfield Road, northeast of Chapel Hill

    Durham architect R. Wade Williams designed a flat-roofed Modernist house with exposed-aggregate block walls and dark-red board siding for himself and his wife, kitchen designer Mary Louise Gunter Williams, on an eighteen-acre wooded tract northeast of Chapel Hill. Her parents helped pay for it.

  8. The Field-Robbins House goes up on Timberly Drive

    Construction or physical change · Field-Robbins House, 4911 Timberly Drive, Timbercrest, northeast of Chapel Hill

    Doris and James Field built a Modernist house of contrasting materials and varied roof levels on their Timbercrest land in 1961 but lost it after defaulting on the mortgage. Dermatologist Jack Robbins and nurse Catherine Robbins bought it in August 1962, finished the interior and lived there the rest of their lives.

  9. Troy and Robin Andrews return to the farm and enlarge the old Lloyd log house

    Construction or physical change · Lloyd log house, 501 Bolin Brook Farm Road, Calvander (Chapel Hill vicinity)

    After Troy Andrews retired in 1961 and inherited the farm with his sister Nita, he and Robin moved back and renovated and enlarged the early nineteenth-century hewn log house built for the Lloyd family, living there while they planned their new house.

    People: Roberta C. Andrews · Troy Monroe Andrews

    Subject: Bolin Brook Farm (Troy and Roberta Andrews House)

  10. Black masons build Troy and Roberta Andrews's Sidler-designed house on the family farm

    Construction or physical change · Troy and Roberta Andrews House, 600 Bolin Brook Farm Road, Calvander (Chapel Hill vicinity)

    Working from plans by Swiss architect Franc Sidler, a former Frank Lloyd Wright apprentice, builder Carl Ellington and the African American masons Willis, Alfred Sr. and Alfred Jr. Barbee raised the Andrews House from stone gathered on the farm, starting in 1965 and finishing in 1967. It is Sidler's only building in the United States and one of the few architect-designed Modernist houses in rural Orange County.

    People: Roberta C. Andrews · Alfred David Barbee Sr. · Troy Monroe Andrews

    Subject: Bolin Brook Farm (Troy and Roberta Andrews House)

  11. Jon Condoret designs a Modernist house for Drs. Jerome and Jacqueline Harris

    Construction or physical change · Jacqueline and Jerome S. Harris House, 1701 Pleasant Green Road, northeast of Hillsborough

    Chapel Hill architect Jon Andre Condoret, an Algerian-born graduate of the Ecole Speciale d'Architecture, designed an L-shaped brick and cedar house with clerestory windows for Duke physicians Jerome and Jacqueline Harris on a wooded tract of nearly fifty acres northeast of Hillsborough.

  12. Robin Andrews chairs the Orange County Bicentennial Steering Committee

    Orange County

    Roberta (Robin) Andrews chaired Orange County's steering committee for the national Bicentennial. She also raised money to restore the Burwell School in Hillsborough.

    Subject: Burwell School

  13. Recent decades · 1976–2026
  14. The Emily Dickinson Centennial Conference holds sessions at Bolin Brook Farm

    Publication, speech or performance · Troy and Roberta Andrews House, 600 Bolin Brook Farm Road, Calvander (Chapel Hill vicinity)

    Sessions of the Emily Dickinson Centennial Conference met at Bolin Brook Farm, the Andrews home near Calvander, in April 1986. The Andrewses often opened the property to meetings and house tours.

    People: Roberta C. Andrews

    Subject: Bolin Brook Farm (Troy and Roberta Andrews House)

  15. The Earnhardt family gives Triangle Land Conservancy an easement on the Andrews farm

    Property or economic transaction · Bolin Brook Farm, Bolin Brook Farm Road and Union Grove Church Road, Calvander (Chapel Hill vicinity)

    Jean and John Earnhardt, Troy and Robin Andrews's daughter and son-in-law, and their sons' families donated a conservation easement to Triangle Land Conservancy in March 1998, protecting 120 acres of the old Andrews farm around Bolin Creek from development.

    Subject: Bolin Brook Farm (Troy and Roberta Andrews House)

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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 4, 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