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Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–32.Back to highlights
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Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
- 1810s
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Dr. James Webb deeds land for Polly Burke's log schoolhouse
On November 6, 1817, Dr. James Webb deeded to his neighbor Mary W. Burke a strip of his lot on East Queen Street, where a log schoolhouse was built for her to teach the Webb children. Known as Miss Polly Burke's School, it took neighborhood children from about 1818 to 1834 and is cited as a forerunner of the Burwell School.
- 1820s
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Tavern keeper William Adams builds the house that became the Burwell School
William Adams, a Hillsborough tavern keeper and businessman, builds a two-story house with two rooms on each floor facing West Union Street in 1821. Those rooms survive as the south rooms of the Burwell School.
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William H. Adams buys the lots that became the Burwell School site
Hillsborough sold lots in the old North Town Commons pasture, advertising the town as a healthy place to live and to school children. In November 1821 William H. Adams took the deed for lots 152 and 153, an acre each, for $216.
- 1830s
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Hillsborough Presbyterian Church buys the house as its manse
The church's trustees bought lots 152 and 153 in January 1836, renovated the house, and gave it to their minister, Robert Armistead Burwell, and his family, who had arrived from Virginia late the year before.
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Burwell School for young women operates
Robert and Margaret Anna Burwell operated their Hillsborough school for girls from 1837 to 1857.
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The Burwell School and the Burwell household
Anna Burwell opened a school for girls in Hillsborough in 1837 that ran until the family moved to Charlotte in 1857. In the same household Elizabeth Hobbs, later Elizabeth Keckly, was enslaved from 1835, beaten at Anna Burwell’s urging and subjected to years of sexual coercion before being sent back to Virginia in 1842; she bought her freedom in 1855.
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Anna Burwell opens a school for girls in Hillsborough
Anna Burwell advertised that she would open a female school in Hillsborough on July 17, 1837, teaching the usual English branches, with music available. She and her husband, the Rev. Robert Burwell, ran it in their home until 1857.
- 1840s
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A Female School House is built for the Burwells' school
As the school grew, subscribers in town paid for a 36-by-20-foot schoolhouse north of the Burwell home, built by the carpenter George A. Faucette.
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Frances Devereux deeds Primus to Dr. Edmund Strudwick
Five months after her husband died, Frances Devereux of Raleigh deeded Primus to Dr. Edmund Strudwick of Hillsborough. Primus later drove and gardened at the Burwell School and, after emancipation, worked at the Nash and Kollock School as Primus Smith.
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Richard Mayo, a free cabinetmaker of color, buys three town lots
Richard Mayo paid $200 for three lots on Occoneechee Street between West Tryon and West Queen streets, and in 1849 gave them to Levi McCollum to settle a debt. His brother William later waited tables at the Burwell School.
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Robert Burwell buys the house and has John Berry enlarge it
Burwell resigned his pulpit and bought the two lots from the church for $800 and back pay. The builder John Berry added a central hall and two rooms and turned the house to face Churton Street. A deed of trust of July 16, 1850 shows Burwell still owing Berry $2,500 and the church trustees $800, secured on the lots and on enslaved members of the household.
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Sarah Kollock becomes the Burwell School's teacher of French and drawing
Sarah Kollock, one of the Burwell School's first pupils, had helped teach the younger children and in 1848 became its full-time teacher of French and drawing. By September 1851 Molly Burwell had taken her place and she was in Oxford.
- 1850s
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The old Burwell schoolroom is said to be moved to West Orange Street during John Berry's work on the Burwell School
The west wing of the bungalow at 114 West Orange Street is reputed to be the old Burwell schoolroom, moved there in 1850 while John Berry was renovating the Burwell School. The house around it dates from 1922.
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Aunt Fariby saves Jane from burning
Jane, a young enslaved servant at the Burwell School, caught fire. Anna Burwell wrote that she would have burned to death but for Aunt Fariby, who saved her life.
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The Burwells resolve to sell their cook Hannah
Hannah, who had come from Virginia with the family and cooked for the school, had been drinking heavily through 1855. Anna Burwell wrote to her daughter Fanny that she had made up her mind: Hannah would be sent to Richmond to be sold.
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Anne Call Cameron, piano teacher to Burwell School students, dies
A widow known as Nancy, she gave piano lessons at the Burwell School to help pay for the care of her daughter Anna McKenzie Kirkland, whose illness followed her husband's death in 1843. She died in Hillsborough in June 1856.
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A Black child and then a student die of illness at the Burwell School
Writing to her mother, the student Lizzie Glass mentioned a small Black boy who had died at the school the previous day, at a time when Nannie Burwell and three of the Burwell children lay sick. Within a few weeks Lizzie Glass herself died at the school.
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Burwell School closes as the Burwells move to Charlotte
The Burwells closed their Hillsborough school in 1857, the same year they took charge of a girls' school in Charlotte.
- 1860s
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The Collins family buys the former Burwell School and calls it the Beehive
Members of the Collins family of Somerset Place, who had left Union-held eastern North Carolina, paid Robert Burwell $3,500 for the house and four lots. By 1863 about forty family members and enslaved servants lived there, and the family named it the Beehive.
Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
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The Collins women sell their shares of the Beehive to Dr. Thomas D. Warren
After the war the Collins relatives who had lived at the Beehive left Hillsborough, and the women sold their shares of the house to Dr. Thomas D. Warren, who had married Elizabeth Alethea Collins.
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Peter and Diannah Benton acquire land south of Hillsborough
A deed from Frances Thompson conveyed land half a mile south of town, where the Chatham and Chapel Hill roads divided (today Mayo Street and Orange Grove Road), to Peter Benton, his wife Diannah and Jimmy Thompson. Peter Benton, a free man, had gardened at the Burwell School in 1855.
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The sheriff auctions the former Burwell School to David C. Parks
Dr. Thomas D. Warren was deep in local debt, and the Orange County sheriff sold the house at auction to David C. Parks for $600. Parks and his brother Charles traded the property between them for the next quarter century.
- 1880s
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David S. Payne marries Eliza Mayo
The marriage joined two Black Hillsborough families tied to the Burwell School: Eliza was a granddaughter of the school's laundress Eliza Chavious, and David was the son of Bettie Payne and a grandson of Rev. William Payne, a founder of Dickerson Chapel.
- 1890s
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Jule Gilmer Korner remodels the former Burwell School
In the 1890s the old Burwell School house was remodeled by Jule Gilmer Korner of Kernersville, who gave it a bracketed cornice, a sawnwork porch, a new hall stair and new mantels, including a marble one in the parlor. Several of the older mantels were lost in the work, which was done for an owner thought to be Mrs. Charles M. Parks.
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Dr. John S. Spurgeon buys the former Burwell School
The dentist paid Charles Parks $2,500 for lots 152 and 153. The Spurgeons, whose household included Carrie Waitt Spurgeon, daughter of a Burwell student, lived there for about seventy years and added electricity and plumbing.
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
- 1960s
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Mary Claire Engstrom chairs the Historic Hillsborough Commission
Mary Claire Engstrom chaired the Historic Hillsborough Commission, a state-appointed body created in 1963, from 1964 to 1966 and again from 1976 to 1983. Her research files for the commission and other projects cover deeds, cemeteries, mills, inns, Quaker settlements and schools such as the Hillsborough Academy and the Burwell School.
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The Historic Hillsborough Commission buys the Burwell School
The commission bought the house from the Spurgeon children and began restoring it to look as it had after the 1848 enlargement.
- 1970s
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Burwell School is listed in the National Register
On September 15, 1970 the National Park Service listed Burwell School in Hillsborough in the National Register of Historic Places.
Recent decades · 1976–2026
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The Burwell School opens to visitors
The restored house has been open to visitors every year since 1977.
- 2010s
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Burwell School Historic Site marks the bicentennial of Elizabeth Keckly
Through 2018 the Burwell School Historic Site in Hillsborough marked the 200th anniversary of Keckly's birth with an exhibition that included an original copy of her memoir and a replica of a purple velvet dress she made, sewn by local seamstress Karen DeSombre.
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Hillsborough holds a celebration of Billy Strayhorn
A day of events called A Celebration of Billy Strayhorn began at the historical marker on South Churton Street and ran on at the Orange County Main Library and the Burwell School Historic Site. Mayor Tom Stevens, the musician Yahyah Corbett, the choreographer David Rousseve, the Duke professor Thomas DeFrantz and the puppeteer Jeghetto took part.
- 2020s
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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.
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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 1, 2026.
