Chronology

Orange County tax lists record Bunch, Gibson and Collins families as mulatto

Several Orange County tax lists of the 1750s class families named Bunch, Gibson and Collins as mulatto, and Jeremiah and Henry Bunch took land grants near the Eno. The term then covered many people of mixed descent, and Hazel argues some of these families may have been Indian people who never left the region.

William Chavis of Granville County sells 320 acres on the Haw River

William Chavis of Granville County, who held land beside the Saponi settlement on William Eaton's land and appears to have been of part Indian descent, sold Joseph Pritchit 320 acres on both sides of the Haw River from a 1751 grant. Hazel notes the tract lay near where Saponi families would settle about twenty years later.

Jacob Jeffries of the Texas community makes his will

The will of Jacob Jeffries, one of the first heads of household on the 1787 tax list, was witnessed by David Haitcock, and one of his daughters married into the Guy family. Hazel reads such ties among the Jeffries, Haitcock, Guy and Whitmore families as the marks of a single community that married within itself.

Jeffries and other Texas community families move to Ohio and Indiana

From the 1820s to the 1840s a number of families left the Texas community for Greene County, Ohio, and some went on to Rush and Whitley counties in Indiana. There members of the Jeffries family won three court cases between 1842 and 1869 over whether, as people of Indian descent, they could vote.

Texas community families leave Orange for Sugar Fork in Macon County

In the 1820s, after the Cherokee cession opened the land, a group of Guy, Whitmore, Jeffries and Gibson families from the Texas community moved to the mountains and formed the Sugar Fork settlement in Macon County. It stayed distinct for many years; letters of 1869 and 1872 to the Indian Office described its people as Catawba who had come from Orange County.

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.

Forest Hazel publishes his study of the Occaneechi-Saponi Texas community

Southern Indian Studies printed Forest Hazel's account of the Occaneechi from Occaneechi Town on the Eno in 1701 to the Texas community of his own day, tying the excavated village near Hillsborough to living Indian families. Hazel had begun the research in 1984 from land, court, marriage, census and military records and from family oral histories.

Part of Occaneechi Town and the Great Trading Path · 51 events

Goetha C. Whitmore, one of the oldest Occaneechi elders, dies at 97

Goetha C. Whitmore of Alamance County died at 97. He remembered his grandfather Andrew Whitmore speaking a language other than English, which his father translated for him, and his memory underlay much of Forest Hazel's history of the Texas community, which Hazel dedicated to him.

Part of Occaneechi Town and the Great Trading Path · 51 events