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Entries
Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
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Charles Tew chooses a site west of Hillsborough for a military academy
In late July 1858 Charles C. Tew, with Moses A. Curtis and A. S. Galliard, searched Hillsborough for a school site and settled on a 40-acre tract about a mile and a half west of town near the new North Carolina Railroad. They engaged the Columbia architect John A. Kay, and local builders John Berry and Henry Richards built the barracks and commandant's house.
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Masons lay a cornerstone at the Hillsborough Military Academy
A delegation from Eagle Lodge took part in a Masonic cornerstone ceremony at the Hillsborough Military Academy in 1859.
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Hillsborough Military Academy opens
Charles C. Tew, then superintendent of the South Carolina military academy at Columbia, opened the Hillsborough Military Academy on January 12, 1859, holding its first classes in the Hillsborough Academy building. Its neo-Gothic barracks west of town, built to house 125 cadets, was finished in September 1860.
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The Hillsborough Military Academy commandant's house is ready to live in
The academy's neo-Gothic commandant's house, with turrets and crenellations along the roofline, was far enough along to be occupied by March 1859, though interior work may have continued for years.
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Walter Clark enters Colonel Tew's military academy in Hillsborough
Walter Clark, then fourteen, enrolled at Colonel C. C. Tew's Military Academy in Hillsborough. He left for Confederate service after the war began.
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George Attmore Sparrow is a cadet at the Hillsborough Military Academy
Sparrow, the teenage son of the Washington lawyer Thomas Sparrow, was enrolled as a cadet at the Hillsborough Military Academy in 1861 and 1862. He wrote home to his father from the academy through that period.
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William H. S. Burgwyn enrolls as a cadet at the Hillsborough Military Academy
Later in 1861 Burgwyn entered the Hillsborough Military Academy as a cadet. By the autumn he had been appointed drill master of the camp of instruction near Raleigh, and he was then elected a lieutenant in the Thirty-fifth North Carolina Regiment.
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George Attmore Sparrow leaves the Hillsborough academy to join the Confederate army
Writing from the academy on 21 July 1862, Sparrow told his father he had approval for his discharge and would leave with other cadets when the session ended on 31 July. He was in camp with the Army of the Pamlico by 1863.
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Hillsborough meeting resolves to erect a monument to Col. Charles C. Tew
A Hillsborough meeting chaired by M. E. Manly resolved to raise a monument to Col. Tew, killed at Sharpsburg, at or near the front of his Military Academy, and named Dr. Edmund Strudwick, Dr. Pride Jones and Thomas Webb to collect funds and build it.
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Hillsborough Military Academy sends its cadets home at the end of the Civil War
The academy, reopened in 1862 under Maj. William Gordon after Tew left for the war, dismissed its students in May 1865 after the surrender at Bennett Place. Raleigh Edward Colston reopened the campus in 1866 as the North Carolina Polytechnic and Military Institute.
Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
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General Colston takes charge of the reopened Hillsborough Military Academy
After closing at the end of the war, the academy reopened with General R. C. Colston as superintendent. In 1868 he signed a lease with Col. Tew's widow to live in the superintendent's house, but his family later moved to Wilmington.
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Paul C. Cameron buys the Hillsborough Military Academy at public sale
Two years after Elizabeth Tew's death in 1870, the academy property was sold at public auction to Paul C. Cameron. His heirs sold it to the Farmers' State Alliance in 1891.
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The Farmers' State Alliance buys the old Hillsborough Military Academy grounds
The former academy property west of Hillsborough passed in 1891 to the Farmers' State Alliance, the statewide farmers' organization, which bought the land. A 1913 plat of the neighborhood labels the old barracks as the Farm Life School building.
Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
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The Farmers' State Alliance auctions off its old academy headquarters
The Farmers' State Alliance had found the old Barracks property a burden since about 1901. On June 21, 1920 it was cut into lots and sold at auction, and John W. Hill got the parcel with the commandant's house.
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Parts of the old academy land are subdivided as Oak Ridge and the Murray property
Portions of the Alliance tract were laid out as the Oak Ridge Development in 1923 and as the Murray property in 1924. Together they make up the west end of West Hillsborough.
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The Historic American Buildings Survey records the academy barracks
By the Depression the empty Barracks of the old military academy sheltered homeless families. In 1937 the Historic American Buildings Survey measured and photographed it, a year before it was torn down.
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The Hillsborough Military Academy's brick barracks are torn down
The academy's three-story brick barracks, later used by the Farm Life School, were dismantled in 1938. Only the Commandant's House and a frame dining hall survive, with parts of the barracks foundation in the woods south of the hall.
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
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Lucius and Nellie Cheshire buy and restore the Commandant's House
Eula Cole, who had bought the house from John W. Hill's estate in 1938, sold it in 1965 to Lucius and Nellie Cheshire. By 1972 they had restored it to excellent condition.
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The former Military Academy dining hall is turned into a church
The one-story board-and-batten building beside Barracks Road, thought to be a surviving piece of the long frame service building that stood behind the barracks, became a church building in 1965.
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The Commandant's House is listed in the National Register
The castellated brick house built for the Hillsborough Military Academy's commandant, the academy's only major surviving building, was entered in the National Register of Historic Places.
Recent decades · 1976–2026
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The survey proposes adding the Military Academy dining hall and grounds to the Commandant's House listing
The report recommended the academy's surviving frame dining hall on Barracks Road, left out of the Commandant's House nomination, for the Study List as an expansion of that listing, with about 21.5 acres over three parcels. The land keeps the barracks foundation, old tree lines and a daffodil-lined path, and the Office of State Archaeology judged it likely to hold remains of the school. The National Register Advisory Committee added the dining hall and site to the Study List on October 12, 2017.
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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.
