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Orange County Indexed

Chronology

Key events from Orange County history: 100 highlights to start, expand to see all 1,473 dated entries and where they connect to the index.

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A town matches the place recorded for each entry.

The News of Orange County: 2 dated entries from the full dataset. Back to the highlights →

  1. Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
  2. The Chapel Hill News, forerunner of The News of Orange County, begins publicationPublication · Hillsborough

    The weekly that became The News of Orange County began in Chapel Hill in October 1893 as The Chapel Hill News. Renamed The News, it moved to Hillsboro between 1936 and 1941 and took the title The News of Orange County in 1944. The paper still dates its founding to 1893.

  3. Recent decades · 1976–2026
  4. The News of Orange merges with the Mebane EnterpriseBusiness merger · Hillsborough and Mebane

    Womack Publishing announced on January 3, 2024, that its weeklies The News of Orange County and the Mebane Enterprise would merge at the end of January. The combined paper, with a section for Mebane, covers Mebane, Hillsborough and Efland from the News of Orange office in Hillsborough, and the Mebane office closed.

The other dated entries wait behind a subject, a place, an era, a month, or the All dated entries switch, and each storyline’s page carries its own component entries. 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. Each card’s “Correct this” link opens the contact form with the entry already named. 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 September 14, 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