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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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16 dated events match your filters.

Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–16.Back to highlights

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16 dated events
1820Antebellum and Civil War
  1. Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
  2. The Hillsborough Recorder begins publication

    Founding or opening · Hillsborough

    Dennis Heartt began publishing the weekly Hillsborough Recorder in February 1820, at three dollars a year. The paper ran until 1879, and its surviving issues are a main record of nineteenth-century Hillsborough and Orange County.

    Part of The Hillsborough Recorder begins publication, 1820

    People: Dennis Heartt

    Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

  3. The Hillsborough Recorder calls slavery a misfortune and urges colonization

    Publication, speech or performance · Hillsborough

    Editor Dennis Heartt wrote that slavery harmed the state but argued against freeing people to remain in North Carolina. He proposed sending free Black people to Africa at public expense and asked the legislature to act.

    People: Dennis Heartt

    Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

  4. The Hillsborough Recorder shop prints The Discipline of Friends and A Solemn Address to Youth

    Publication, speech or performance · Hillsborough

    Besides the weekly paper, Dennis Heartt's Recorder office printed pamphlets. Two surviving titles from 1823 are The Discipline of Friends, for Quaker use, and A Solemn Address to Youth.

    People: Dennis Heartt

    Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

  5. William W. Holden serves as an apprentice printer at the Hillsborough Recorder

    Life event · Hillsborough

    At about age ten Holden was apprenticed as a printer's devil to Dennis Heartt, editor of the Hillsborough Recorder, who was responsible for his early education and political views. He struck out on his own at about sixteen, working first for the Milton Chronicle.

    People: Dennis Heartt

    Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

  6. The Recorder prints a county meeting's warning to abolitionists

    Publication, speech or performance · Hillsborough

    An Orange County meeting adopted a report warning "northern fanatics" not to stir up the enslaved and predicting lasting hostility between the sections if abolitionists pressed on. Its fourteen-man committee included Frederick Nash, William A. Graham, Hugh Waddell, John U. Kirkland, Dr. Edmund Strudwick and the paper's own editor, Dennis Heartt, as a secretary.

    People: Frederick Nash · William A. Graham · Hugh Waddell · John U. Kirkland · Edmund Strudwick · Dennis Heartt

    Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

  7. Polly Burke's Queen Street house passes to Dennis Heartt's family

    Property or economic transaction · Hillsborough, Heartsease (East Queen Street)

    On May 4, 1837, Mary W. Burke, then living in Alabama, gave Dr. James Webb power of attorney to dispose of her remaining Hillsborough property. Her East Queen Street house was sold that year to the family of Recorder editor Dennis Heartt, who named it Heartsease and added a Greek Revival wing about 1840.

    People: James Webb · Dennis Heartt

    Subject: Hillsborough Recorder · Heartsease

  8. The Hillsborough Recorder argues against dividing Orange County

    Publication, speech or performance · Hillsborough

    The paper held that a large county was harder for any family, town or company to control and would keep the tax rate low.

    Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

  9. Dennis Heartt prints The Poetical Works of George M. Horton

    Publication, speech or performance · Hillsborough

    Dennis Heartt printed The Poetical Works of George M. Horton, the Colored Bard of North-Carolina at Hillsborough in 1845, with Horton's autobiography prefixed to the poems. It was the second book by Horton, who was still enslaved when it appeared.

    People: George Moses Horton

    Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

  10. The Hillsborough Recorder calls for a plank road from Hillsborough to Milton

    Publication, speech or performance · Hillsborough

    An editorial regretted that no one had asked the last legislature to charter a company to build a plank road from Hillsborough to Milton by way of Roxboro or Yanceyville. It hoped a stock company would form under the general act of 1850-51 while a charter was sought.

    Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

  11. Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
  12. Dennis Heartt gives up the Hillsborough Recorder after nearly fifty years

    Appointment, election or service · Hillsborough

    In the Recorder of January 11, 1869, Dennis Heartt announced that his connection with the paper would end with that number, thirteen months short of fifty years after its first issue. An 1899 history of the paper says he sold it to Capt. C. N. B. Evans of the Milton Chronicle.

    Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

  13. John D. Cameron becomes editor and publisher of the Recorder

    Property or economic transaction · Hillsborough

    John Donald Cameron took over the Recorder from the Evans family, who kept only their Milton Chronicle. His masthead in January 1879 read 'J. D. Cameron, Editor and Proprietor', New Series Vol. 7, Old Series Vol. 58.

    Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

  14. John D. Cameron moves the Recorder from Hillsborough to Durham, ending fifty-nine years of publication in the county seat

    Closing or ending · Hillsborough

    Cameron carried the paper fifteen miles east to the tobacco town, where it continued as the Durham Recorder, published every Wednesday. The last issue under the Hillsborough title in the digitized run is March 5, 1879; the first Durham issue there is July 2, 1879.

    Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

  15. The revived Hillsboro Recorder moves Dennis Heartt's old press into its office

    Construction or physical change · Hillsboro Recorder office, Hillsborough

    The new Hillsboro Recorder reported that it had just moved the press and some wood type Dennis Heartt brought from Connecticut for the first Recorder of 1820 out of a Hillsborough cellar, where they had sat since 1867, and into its own office.

    People: Dennis Heartt · Frederick N. Strudwick

    Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

  16. Frederick Strudwick co-owns and edits the Hillsborough Recorder

    Appointment, election or service · Hillsborough

    On 11 August 1887 Strudwick and C. E. Parish became co-owners and editors of the Hillsborough Recorder. Their first issue promised a firm and conservative stand on matters of public welfare and a thoroughly Democratic line in politics. Strudwick left the paper after the issue of 8 March 1888.

    Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

  17. Fire destroys the Parish and Berry buildings and the Recorder printing office in Hillsborough

    Disaster or outbreak · Parish building and Berry building, downtown Hillsborough

    A fire before dawn burned Postmaster Harry L. Parish's brick building, which held the post office, his store and the Hillsboro Recorder's printing office, then spread to the three-story Berry building next door. The Recorder lost its press, type and subscription books.

    Subject: Hillsborough Recorder

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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