Chronology

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1. Recent decades · 1976–2026

2. cast 2007, put up by 2008
   Naming or commemoration · Hillsborough A state highway marker for Billy Strayhorn goes up in Hillsborough

   The North Carolina Office of Archives and History put up marker G-125 on South Churton Street. It calls Strayhorn a jazz composer and pianist who wrote Take the A Train for the Duke Ellington Orchestra and points a quarter mile west to his boyhood home site.

3. 2015
   Naming or commemoration · Hillsborough Hillsborough votes to remove "Confederate Memorial" lettering from the former library

   The 1934 public library building on North Churton Street, home of the Orange County Historical Museum since 1983, still carried part of its "Confederate Memorial Library 1934" sign. After museum leaders asked in June 2015 to take the words down, saying some Black residents felt unwelcome, the Hillsborough Board of Commissioners voted that year to remove the sign from the pediment.

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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.