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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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Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–20.Back to highlights

Entries

  1. Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899

  2. Founding or opening · University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Students found the Order of Gimghoul after hearing the Dromgoole story

    Five undergraduates founded a secret society after hearing university president Kemp Battle tell the Dromgoole story. They first called it the Order of Dromgoole and later shortened the name to Gimghoul.

  3. Construction or physical change · 523 East Rosemary Street (Rosemary Lane at Boundary Street), Chapel Hill The Order of Gimghouls builds its first lodge on Rosemary Lane

    The Gimghouls, a junior-class order at the university, were building their own lodge in the spring of 1898 on a lot at Rosemary Lane and Boundary Street. By late 1899 the order was holding dances in the new lodge.

  4. Early twentieth century · 1900–1944

  5. Property or economic transaction · Gimghoul neighborhood, Chapel Hill The Order of Gimghouls buys a 95-acre tract east of campus

    The land took in the Prospect Point overlook prized by 1880s member Edward Wray Martin, who had dreamed of a stone castle there. The order traded about a third of it to the university, sold 35 acres, kept a wooded site for the castle and developed the rest as the Glandon subdivision, now the Gimghoul neighborhood.

  6. Construction or physical change · 208 Glandon Drive, Gimghoul, Chapel Hill Anatomy professor Wesley George builds a Colonial Revival cottage in Gimghoul

    George Watts Carr of Durham designed Wesley George's small front-gabled, shingled house with an entrance portico at 208 Glandon Drive, a sign of the Colonial Revival taking over the Gimghoul neighborhood after its first Craftsman houses.

  7. Law, policy or court · Gimghoul neighborhood, Chapel Hill The Order of Gimghouls plats its Chapel Hill subdivision with racial deed restrictions

    The Junior Order of Gimghouls subdivided its land east of campus into house lots, with a plat recorded in Orange County Plat Book 1, page 51. The original deed covenants carried the racial restrictions standard for the period, along with setbacks and a requirement that the order review house plans.

  8. Construction or physical change · 105 Ridge Lane, Gimghoul, Chapel Hill Commerce dean Dudley D. Carroll and Eleanor Carroll build a house on Ridge Lane in Gimghoul

    Dudley DeWitt Carroll, dean of UNC's commerce school, and his wife Eleanor Elliott Carroll had a Chatham County contractor named Barber build a two-story Colonial Revival house with a garage on Ridge Lane, among the first houses in the new Gimghoul subdivision.

  9. Construction or physical change · 246 Glandon Drive, Chapel Hill Daniel L. Grant, UNC's first alumni secretary, builds a house on Glandon Drive

    Daniel L. Grant, the first secretary of the UNC Alumni Association, builds a two-story Colonial Revival house in the new Gimghoul subdivision, one of the five houses finished there in 1924.

  10. Construction or physical change · 106 Ridge Lane, Gimghoul, Chapel Hill University architect Thomas C. Atwood builds a duplex on Ridge Lane for his firm's workers

    Thomas C. Atwood, supervising architect for the 1920s campus building program, built a one-story frame duplex in the Gimghoul subdivision to house employees of Atwood and Nash. It stayed a duplex until the 1970s, when it became a single-family house.

  11. Construction or physical change · 733 Gimghoul Road, Chapel Hill W. E. Atkins of the Atwood and Nash firm builds a Craftsman cottage on Gimghoul Road

    W. E. Atkins, who worked for the university architects Atwood and Nash, has a Chatham County contractor named Barber build a one-and-a-half-story Craftsman cottage, said to be the first house on Gimghoul Road. He soon sold it to economics professor Earl Peacock.

  12. Construction or physical change · 232 Glandon Drive, Chapel Hill Engineering professor Ralph Trimble and his wife Hazel move into their new Gimghoul house

    Ralph M. Trimble, the UNC engineering professor who surveyed the lots of the Gimghoul subdivision, and his wife Hazel move into one of its first houses, built by contractor Charlie Martindale on Glandon Drive.

  13. Property or economic transaction · 523 East Rosemary Street (Rosemary Lane at Boundary Street), Chapel Hill The Gimghouls sell their old lodge lot on Rosemary Lane

    W. S. Roberson bought the Gimghouls' lot at Rosemary Lane and Boundary Street, with the old lodge to stand until the order finished its new building at Piney Prospect. The old lodge had been torn down by July 1926, and John Lasley's family had moved into a new house on the lot by that September.

  14. Construction or physical change · 723 Gimghoul Road, Chapel Hill Charles Martindale builds a bungalow in the Gimghoul colony for attorney L. J. Phipps

    Contractor Charles Martindale nears completion of a Craftsman bungalow in the Gimghoul colony for Chapel Hill attorney L. J. Phipps and his wife Vivian. Its floor-length windows and front terrace are noted in later surveys.

  15. Construction or physical change · Gimghoul Castle, 746 Gimghoul Road, Chapel Hill The Order of Gimghouls begins building its castle

    Work on the Gimghouls' castle off the end of Gimghoul Road began in 1925: some 1,300 tons of stone were hauled to the site, stonemasons came from the Waldensian settlement at Valdese, and Chapel Hill builder Charlie Lee Martindale was general contractor. The order held its first gathering there in May 1926.

  16. Construction or physical change · Gimghoul Castle, Chapel Hill The Order of Gimghoul completes its castle at Piney Prospect

    The Order of Gimghoul completed a gothic castle at Piney Prospect, the spot where legend placed Dromgoole's fatal duel and burial.

  17. Property or economic transaction · 704 Gimghoul Road, Chapel Hill Professor Ernest R. Groves buys the Marshall house in the Gimghoul colony

    Ernest R. Groves, newly come to UNC's school of public welfare, buys the Marshall house in the Gimghoul colony. He and his wife Gladys Groves, both writers on marriage and the family, lived there into the 1930s and added a small stone library.

  18. Construction or physical change · 698 Gimghoul Road, Gimghoul, Chapel Hill A Cape Cod house is built at 698 Gimghoul Road

    The story-and-a-half house with gabled dormers and a stone end chimney, dated to about 1939, sits at the head of the south side of Gimghoul Road.

  19. Construction or physical change · 739 Gimghoul Road, Chapel Hill Architect William Van Sprinkle designs a brick house on Gimghoul Road for Benjamin Edkins

    The two-story brick Colonial Revival house with a one-story side wing at 739 Gimghoul Road was built for salesman Benjamin Edkins and his wife to a design by Durham architect William Van Sprinkle.

  20. Recent decades · 1976–2026

  21. Closing or ending · 232 Glandon Drive, Chapel Hill The Trimble house, one of the first in the Gimghoul subdivision, is torn down

    The 1924 house built for Ralph and Hazel Trimble on Glandon Drive, one of the first in the Gimghoul subdivision, is demolished, leaving a vacant lot.

  22. Naming or commemoration · Gimghoul, Chapel Hill The Gimghoul neighborhood joins the Study List

    The National Register Advisory Committee placed the Gimghoul neighborhood in Chapel Hill as a historic district on North Carolina's Study List, its list of properties likely to qualify for the National Register.

  23. Naming or commemoration · Gimghoul Neighborhood Historic District, Chapel Hill The Gimghoul Neighborhood Historic District is listed in the National Register

    On August 5, 1993 the National Park Service listed the Gimghoul Neighborhood Historic District in Chapel Hill in the National Register of Historic Places.

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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