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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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4 dated events match your filters.

Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–4.Back to highlights

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4 dated events
1799Revolution and early republic
  1. Revolution and early republic · 1775–1799
  2. Samuel Chinny buys the East Tryon Street land later called BelleVue

    Property or economic transaction · Phillips-Hill-Webb House (BelleVue), 209 East Tryon Street, Hillsborough

    Samuel Chinny bought land at the east edge of town that had first belonged to James Hogg, and probably built the house that became the eastern part of the Phillips-Hill-Webb House; a deed of 1801 mentions a house on the lot.

    Subject: BelleVue (Phillips-Hill-Webb House)

  3. Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
  4. Saddler James Phillips builds a brick kitchen on the school-house lot on East Tryon Street

    Construction or physical change · 209 East Tryon Street, Hillsborough

    James Phillips, a Hillsborough saddler, buys the old school-house lot at the east edge of town and builds a two-room brick kitchen beside the house, where he lives until 1847. The kitchen, with his name scratched in a window pane, still stands beside BelleVue.

    Subject: BelleVue (Phillips-Hill-Webb House)

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

    Construction or physical change · BelleVue (Phillips-Hill-Webb House), 209 East Tryon Street, Hillsborough

    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)

  6. Recent decades · 1976–2026
  7. The Phillips-Hill-Webb House opens as the Hillsborough House Inn

    Founding or opening · Phillips-Hill-Webb House (BelleVue), 209 East Tryon Street, Hillsborough

    BelleVue, the Phillips-Hill-Webb House on East Tryon Street, began operating as a bed-and-breakfast called the Hillsborough House Inn.

    Subject: BelleVue (Phillips-Hill-Webb 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 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