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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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17 dated events match your filters.

Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–17.Back to highlights

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17 dated events
1910Early twentieth century
  1. Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
  2. The county board builds a new school for white children at Efland

    Construction or physical change · Efland

    The board sought a state loan of $750 for a new Efland building, chose a three-acre lot of Jordan land south of the railroad, and had the superintendent hire carpenters while patrons supplied the framing and free hauling from West Hillsboro depot. It paid Mary W. Jordan $246 for the land in 1911 and sold the old Efland schoolhouse to J. R. Riley for $50 in February 1912.

    Subject: Efland schools

  3. The county board buys 2.46 acres from Mary E. Jordan for an Efland school

    Property or economic transaction · Efland

    Early in Lockhart's term the board bought 2.46 acres at Efland from Mrs. Mary E. Jordan, paying $246, as the site for the Efland School.

    Subject: Efland schools

  4. Efland gets a three-teacher Rosenwald school for Black children

    Founding or opening · Efland

    Efland's three-teacher Rosenwald school for Black children went up in 1924-25 (Rosenwald budget year 1924-25) at a cost of $4,810: $900 from the Rosenwald Fund, $200 from Black residents and $3,710 in public money. The county board put the $501 from its August 4, 1924 sale of the old Efland school toward it and inspected the building while it was under way that October.

    Subject: Efland schools

  5. The county board moves $30,000 in building money to Efland and sets the order of its new schools

    Law, policy or court · Orange County

    The board shifted $15,000 each from the White Cross and Caldwell building funds to Efland, reasoning that Efland had the greater need, a local tax with an eight-month term, and a paved road for school trucks. It then fixed the building order as Efland, White Cross, Orange County Training School, Orange Grove and Caldwell.

    Subject: Orange County Training School / Lincoln High School · Efland schools

  6. A new consolidated school for white children is built at Efland

    Construction or physical change · Efland

    The board let the Efland contract to A. R. Davis for $21,388, with steam heat by Dermott of Durham, placed the school east of the highway and made the contractor replace inferior brick. The board inspected and accepted the building in March 1925, and John Efland paid $1,135 for the old white schoolhouse.

    Subject: Efland schools

  7. A Superior Court judge rules against the county school board in the Efland School site dispute

    Law, policy or court · Efland School site, Efland

    The county board of education had gone to court against Thomas Forrest and James O. Webb over the acre-and-a-fraction Efland School site. At a hearing in Graham the judge ruled against the board, which told its lawyers to appeal to the state Supreme Court.

    Subject: Efland schools

  8. Parents turn back a plan to merge the Aycock, Efland and Hillsboro schools

    Protest or organizing · Orange County

    A large crowd of parents appeared before the board to fight a plan that would have folded the Aycock, Efland and Hillsboro schools into one. The opposition was strong enough that the board dropped the plan, which returned in 1963 as Orange High School.

    Subject: Orange High School · Aycock School · Efland schools · Hillsborough High School

  9. Civil rights era · 1945–1975
  10. The county board ends high school classes at Efland

    Closing or ending · Efland

    The board voted to discontinue Efland High School and send its students to Aycock and Hillsboro, leaving Efland an elementary school.

    Subject: Aycock School · Efland schools

  11. Efland Elementary School sets up the county schools' first centralized library

    Founding or opening · Efland

    Under supervisor Cora Paul Bomar, Efland Elementary turned two empty classrooms into one library: local men took out the partition, painted and built shelves, Bomar classified the books, and Mrs. Turner Forrest, one of the teachers, ran it as teacher-librarian. When Irene Pender took over in 1951 it was still the only centralized library in the county schools.

    Subject: Efland schools

  12. Superintendent Proffit's $1 million school bond pays for a new Efland school for Black children and county lunchrooms

    Construction or physical change · Orange County

    The $1,000,000 school bond passed under Superintendent Glenn T. Proffit paid for grounds and a building for the Efland school for Black children, an addition to Hillsboro High School, and lunchrooms at Aycock, Efland, West Hillsborough and White Cross. It also bought a cannery and gymnasium at Aycock and a remodeling and auditorium at Caldwell.

    Subject: Efland schools · Aycock School · Hillsborough High School

  13. The county board buys the Morrow land for Efland-Cheeks, a new school for Black children

    Founding or opening · Efland

    The board decided to buy the Morrow land for a new school for Black children in the Efland district, named Efland-Cheeks.

    Subject: Efland schools

  14. The last three schools for Black children near Efland are consolidated at Efland-Cheeks

    Founding or opening · Efland

    In the 1952-53 school year the three remaining small schools for Black children in the Efland area were merged into Efland-Cheeks School, completing the consolidation of the county's Black schools begun the year before.

    Subject: Efland schools

  15. Efland-Cheeks School gets its first addition

    Construction or physical change · Efland-Cheeks School, Efland

    An addition went up in 1959 on the north side of the 1952 Efland-Cheeks School, which Archie Royal Davis had designed for Black children in western Orange County. A modern wing larger than the original school followed around 1980.

    People: Archie Royal Davis

    Subject: Efland schools

  16. Two federally funded kindergartens operate at the Efland schools

    Founding or opening · Efland

    A federal research grant was paying for two public kindergartens in the county, one at Efland Elementary and one at Efland-Cheeks, the Black school. The board limited them to five-year-olds living in the Efland district.

    Subject: Efland schools

  17. Orange County Schools open kindergarten classes and extend them to every five-year-old

    Founding or opening · Orange County

    Kindergarten began in the county schools with the 1969-70 reorganization, housed at Central Elementary and Efland-Cheeks. By the end of Superintendent Williams's term in 1977 it had grown from a partial program to one serving all five-year-olds.

    Subject: Central High and Central Elementary, Hillsborough · Efland schools

  18. Orange County Schools regroup pupils by grade across the Hillsborough schools to complete integration

    Law, policy or court · Hillsborough

    For 1969-70 the county put all its pupils outside the Efland area into Hillsborough schools, each serving set grades: kindergarten at Central Elementary, grades 1-2 at Cameron Park, 3-4 at Central, 5-6 at the old Orange Junior High, 7-9 at a new Orange Junior High and 10-12 at Orange High. Efland-Cheeks took kindergarten through third grade and Efland Elementary grades 4-6, and Aycock, Cedar Grove and West Hillsborough dropped out as separate schools.

    Subject: Orange High School · Central High and Central Elementary, Hillsborough · Efland schools · Cameron Park School · Cedar Grove schools · Aycock School

  19. Recent decades · 1976–2026
  20. Efland-Cheeks pupils use the old Cedar Grove School while their school is enlarged

    Construction or physical change · Cedar Grove School, 5800 NC 86 North, Cedar Grove

    Under county ownership the former Cedar Grove School served several purposes, among them holding Efland-Cheeks School students until an addition to their own building was finished in 1978.

    Subject: Cedar Grove schools · Efland schools

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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 1, 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