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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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8 dated events match your filters.

Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–8.Back to highlights

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8 dated events
1754Colonial and Regulator years
  1. Colonial and Regulator years · 1680–1774
  2. The burying ground beside the town church lot is laid out

    Founding or opening · Old Town Cemetery, beside the Presbyterian Church, Hillsborough

    The cemetery next to the site of the present Presbyterian church, later called the Old Town Cemetery, was laid out in 1754, the year the town itself was laid off.

    Subject: Old Town Cemetery, Hillsborough

  3. Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
  4. Dr. James Webb builds the Presbyterian Sessions House in the Old Town Cemetery

    Construction or physical change · Hillsborough, Old Town Cemetery

    In 1835 Dr. James Webb took a ninety-nine-year lease on the southeast corner of Hillsborough's Old Town Cemetery lot and built a frame Sessions House with a bell tower there. It served as the Presbyterian Sunday school room and later as a public library until 1934.

    Subject: Old Town Cemetery, Hillsborough · Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

  5. Witherspoon dies at Tusculum and is buried in the Old Town Cemetery

    Life event · Hillsborough

    He died penniless at the Tusculum farmhouse on the thirty-seventh anniversary of the organization of the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church. His funeral was held in that church and he was buried nearby in the Nash-Strudwick plot of the Old Town Cemetery, where the congregation and townspeople paid for the obelisk over his grave.

    Subject: Old Town Cemetery, Hillsborough · Hillsborough Presbyterian Church · Tusculum (Witherspoon farm)

  6. Dr. James Webb dies in Hillsborough

    Life event · Hillsborough, Old Town Cemetery

    Dr. James Webb died in Hillsborough on Saturday morning, February 17, 1855, aged 81, after an illness of several years. The Recorder praised his integrity and charity, and he was buried with his wife in the Webb-Long plot of the Old Town Cemetery.

    Subject: Old Town Cemetery, Hillsborough

  7. Frederick Nash dies in Hillsborough and is buried in the Old Town Cemetery

    Life event · Hillsborough

    Nash fell ill returning from a synod meeting at New Bern and died in December 1858 at his Hillsborough home, while serving as chief justice of the state supreme court. He was buried in the Hillsborough Old Town Cemetery.

    Subject: Old Town Cemetery, Hillsborough

  8. Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
  9. William A. Graham dies and is buried at Hillsborough

    Life event · Hillsborough

    Graham died unexpectedly at Saratoga Springs, New York, on 11 August 1875, where he had gone for a meeting of the Virginia and Maryland arbitration commission. He was buried in the cemetery adjacent to the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church. He had been elected a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1875 but died before it assembled.

    Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church · Old Town Cemetery, Hillsborough

  10. William Hooper's remains are taken from Hillsborough to Guilford Courthouse battleground

    Naming or commemoration · Old Town Cemetery, behind the Presbyterian Church, Hillsborough

    The remains of William Hooper, signer of the Declaration of Independence, were removed from his grave in Hillsborough's town cemetery and reburied at the Guilford Courthouse battleground near Greensboro. His original gravestone was left in the Hillsborough cemetery, on ground that had been his garden east of the house.

    Subject: Old Town Cemetery, Hillsborough

  11. Recent decades · 1976–2026
  12. Hillsborough's Old Town Cemetery joins the Study List

    Naming or commemoration · Old Town Cemetery, Hillsborough

    The National Register Advisory Committee placed Hillsborough's Old Town Cemetery behind the Presbyterian church on North Carolina's Study List, its list of properties likely to qualify for the National Register.

    Subject: Old Town Cemetery, Hillsborough

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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