Search and filters
Search and filters · 1 active
47 dated events match your filters.
Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–47.Back to highlights
Entries
Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
- 1840s
-
Julian Shakespeare Carr, later Carrboro's namesake, is born in Chapel Hill
Julian S. Carr was born in Chapel Hill on October 12, 1845, the son of the Franklin Street merchant John Wesley Carr, and later studied at the university. He built tobacco, banking and textile fortunes in Durham, and his Durham Hosiery Mills went on to own both Carrboro mills; the town took his name in 1913.
Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
- 1870s
-
Robert F. Hoke obtains a charter for the Chapel Hill Iron Mountain Railroad
While the university was closed, Robert F. Hoke, owner of an iron mine north of Chapel Hill, obtained a state charter for a railroad to carry ore from Iron Mountain to the North Carolina Railroad.
-
The railroad is rechartered as the State University Railroad
The legislature rechartered the stalled iron-mine line as the State University Railroad, shifting its purpose to a rail link for the university, with UNC president Kemp P. Battle working alongside Hoke to raise funds.
- 1880s
-
Jack Brim, a Black blacksmith, and then Bennie F. Ray open smithies at West End
As the settlement around the depot and Lloyd's mills grew in the later 1880s, Jack Brim, an African American blacksmith, opened a shop at West End, and Bennie F. Ray opened a second smithy after him. Ray's shop was still working north and east of the depot in the early 1910s.
-
Robert F. Hoke raises subscriptions to run the railroad toward Chapel Hill
When iron prices rose in 1880 and shipping ore to Pennsylvania furnaces paid, Gen. Robert F. Hoke, who owned most of Iron Mountain north of Chapel Hill, began organizing the branch line from University Station. His Iron Mountain Company put up $6,000, the largest single pledge, and Julian S. Carr was among the other subscribers.
-
Ruffin Cheek and then Hiram Stone open West End's first general stores
Ruffin Cheek, followed by Hiram Stone, opened grocery and general merchandise stores at West End in the 1880s. The book counts their stores, east of the railroad spur on what became East Main Street, as the start of Carrboro's business district.
-
Railroad service reaches West End
The first passenger train on the University Railroad left Chapel Hill on Monday, February 6, 1882, and ran through University Station to Raleigh. The line ended about a mile west of the village at West End, where a boxcar served as the depot, and the settlement that became Carrboro grew up around it.
-
Julia Spencer drives a last spike to celebrate the finished University railroad
Chapel Hill celebrated the completed State University Railroad with speeches and the driving of the last spikes, one by Julia J. Spencer, daughter of Cornelia Phillips Spencer, and one by the railroad's agent, J. G. Cooley. Passenger trains had been running to the West End terminus since February.
-
Thomas Lloyd and William Pritchard build a grist mill and cotton gin at the West End depot
Thomas F. Lloyd, a Confederate veteran, and his partner William Pritchard built a steam-powered grist mill and cotton gin in a two-story frame building just north of the railroad depot at West End in 1883. Farmers from southern Orange County brought grain and cotton there, and Lloyd bought out Pritchard's share in 1886.
-
Thomas F. Lloyd buys out his partner and adds a flour mill by the depot
Lloyd bought William Pritchard's share of the steam grist mill and cotton gin the two had built north of the station in 1883, and had a flour mill built on the property.
- 1890s
-
Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten was born on Lloyd Street in what became Carrboro
Elizabeth Nevills, later known as Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten, was born near the railroad tracks on what is now Lloyd Street in Carrboro. As a child she wrote “Freight Train,” which Folkways released on record in 1958 and which carried her into the folk revival.
-
Brodie Lloyd builds a rental house on Oak Avenue before the Alberta mill opens
The house at 307 Oak Avenue is one of very few in Carrboro older than the Alberta Cotton Mill and among the first investment houses of Brodie Lloyd, Thomas F. Lloyd's cousin; once the mill opened it was rented to its workers. Carpenter Thomas Clark and later his daughter and her husband, knitter Ben Williams, lived there from the 1920s.
-
Thomas F. Lloyd builds the Alberta Cotton Mill
Lloyd built the Alberta Cotton Mill beside the railroad in West End in 1898 and 1899, the brick mill that later became Durham Hosiery Mill No. 4 and then Carr Mill Mall.
-
Thomas F. Lloyd builds twelve houses for Alberta Cotton Mill workers
On the mill tract east and northeast of the new Alberta Cotton Mill, Lloyd put up a dozen one-story frame houses for his hands. A house of the same period built for Alberta workers still stands at 105 Short Street.
Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1900s
-
A frame depot replaces the box car that had served West End as a station
From 1882 a box car had been the passenger depot at West End. In 1900 a one-story frame depot was built a few yards north of the later station; after the 1913 station opened it became a freight shed, and a new freight house had replaced it by 1925.
-
Four mill houses go up on Shelton Street for Bill Lloyd
Bill Lloyd, a cousin of Alberta Cotton Mill owner Thomas F. Lloyd, had four identical one-story houses built to rent to the mill's workers. Each had two front doors so family members on different shifts could come and go; carpenter Thomas Clark, brought from Cane Creek by the Lloyds, built number 107.
-
The state charters the Blanche Hosiery Mills Company at West End
The secretary of state issued a charter to the Blanche Hosiery Mills Company, formed by W. R. Lloyd, T. J. Hogan, John Lloyd and W. E. Lindsay to make hosiery. The company began on $6,500 in stock, with leave to raise it to $15,000.
-
The Blanche Hosiery Company builds its own knitting mill near the West End depot
After more than a year in the upper story of Tom Lloyd's cotton mill, the Blanche Hosiery Company put up a $1,500 building of its own near the depot and planned to move in about July 1. The owners said Lloyd charged too much for power.
-
Baptists organize Union Chapel in West End
On land Thomas Lloyd deeded for churches, Baptists and Methodists shared a small Weaver Street building on alternate Sundays, and the Baptists organized as Union Chapel with seventeen charter members; the congregation became Venable Baptist in 1911 and Carrboro Baptist in 1914.
-
Elizabeth Cotten composes Freight Train
At about age eleven, growing up near the railroad tracks in the settlement that became Carrboro, Elizabeth Cotten wrote "Freight Train." She played a right-handed guitar upside down, and the song became a folk standard after Folkways released her recording in 1958.
-
Julian Carr's Durham Hosiery Mills buys the Alberta Mill
In early February 1909 Julian S. Carr and his sons closed a deal for both the Alberta Cotton Mill that Thomas F. Lloyd had built at West End and the Blanche Hosiery Mill, to change hands on April 1 and run together as Durham Hosiery Mills' Mill No. 4. The deeds were recorded in March.
- 1910s
-
Carrboro Methodist Church is organized
Methodists in the mill village that became Carrboro organized a church in 1910 with W. A. Stanbury as first pastor.
-
Carrboro businessman Miles Andrews builds a frame house on East Main Street
Miles Andrews, a Carrboro businessman and farmer, builds a one-story, hip-roofed frame house in the 100 block of East Main Street and lives there for many years. It was the only frame building on the block to survive the 1924 fire.
-
Mill houses go up for the Lloyd Manufacturing Company's workers
One-story frame houses with front porches were built between 1910 and 1915 as worker housing for the Thomas F. Lloyd Manufacturing Company; 25 of them form the Thomas F. Lloyd Historic District on the National Register.
-
Lloyd organizes a second mill company and builds a yarn mill
Thomas F. Lloyd organized the Thomas F. Lloyd Manufacturing Company in February 1910 and built a second mill across Main Street from the Alberta mill in 1910 and 1911 to spin cotton yarn.
-
Venable is incorporated
The General Assembly incorporated the mill settlement west of Chapel Hill as the Town of Venable in an act ratified March 3, 1911, naming William H. Parker mayor and T. N. Mann, J. F. Ragan, T. A. Ray and J. F. Partin commissioners until the first election. The town, named for UNC president Francis P. Venable, became Carrboro in 1913.
-
Thomas F. Lloyd, founder of Carrboro's first two mills, dies
Thomas F. Lloyd died in May 1911, close to the time his second mill, a one-story brick yarn mill a block south of the Alberta mill, was finished. A Confederate veteran with no schooling, he had built the gin, grist mill and flour mill by the depot before starting the Alberta mill in 1898.
-
Durham Hosiery Mills nearly doubles Mill No. 4
In 1912 the company added a two-story extension to the west end of the old Alberta mill, enlarged the one-story south wing as an office with a hooded entrance, and put up a new power house northeast of the reservoir. Orders for cotton hosiery had outgrown the building.
-
A new wood-frame railroad station is built in Carrboro
The depot that still stands beside Carr Mill was built around 1913, replacing the earlier West End stop that had drawn settlement to the end of the line.
-
Venable is renamed Carrboro
A 1913 act of the General Assembly changed the name of the Town of Venable to Carrboro. Julian S. Carr, owner of the local mill since 1909, had asked UNC president Francis Venable's consent in January 1913, and the town's own history says Carr agreed to supply the community with electricity.
-
The Lloyd yarn mill becomes Durham Hosiery Mill No. 7
The Thomas F. Lloyd Manufacturing Company mill was sold to Durham Hosiery Mills, which ran it as Mill No. 7 alongside Mill No. 4, the former Alberta mill.
-
The Lloyd grist mill burns and is rebuilt in brick
The original wood-frame grist mill buildings burned in 1916 and were replaced by the brick mill that survives on B Street; lightning gutted its interior in 1921.
-
W. H. Parker serves as Carrboro's first listed mayor
W. H. Parker heads the list of Carrboro mayors in 1917, four years after the mill town of Venable took the name Carrboro. He served again from 1937 to 1941.
- 1920s
-
Fitch-Riggs Lumber Company buys Andrews and Lloyd's Carrboro lumber business
In 1923 the Mebane firm Fitch-Riggs took over Andrews and Lloyd, a small Carrboro lumber business with one employee, and R. Bernice Fitch ran the Carrboro plant. It traded as Fitch-Riggs Lumber Co. into 1925 and as Fitch Lumber Co. by 1927, and by 1953 it was Carrboro's oldest small concern, with 20 men, a planing mill and a coal yard.
-
Carrboro Baptist Church completes its brick church at Greensboro and Main
The mill-town congregation borrowed $50,000 to build a brick church at the corner of Greensboro and Main streets, paying off the debt in 1942; the building is now the Town's Century Center.
-
Fire on East Main Street in Carrboro leads to brick rebuilding
Early on December 3, 1924, a fire that started in Lueco Lloyd's boarding house burned five frame buildings on East Main Street in Carrboro before it was stopped at Marks's brick store. By late December Lloyd was preparing to put up two brick stores on the site, and the rebuilt block was brick.
- 1930s
-
Durham Hosiery closes Mill No. 4, the former Alberta mill
Durham Hosiery Mills stopped operations at Mill No. 4 in 1930 as the Depression cut into the hosiery business.
-
Passenger trains stop running on the University Railroad
Mixed passenger service on the ten-mile line between University Station and Carrboro ended as car ownership spread and roads improved, leaving the line to freight.
-
Durham Hosiery closes its last Carrboro mill
Durham Hosiery Mills dissolved its business at Mill No. 7 in June 1938 and laid off the workers, ending the company's operations in Carrboro.
- 1940s
-
A wartime munitions plant opens in the former Mill No. 7
National Munitions Corporation converted the empty Mill No. 7 on Roberson Street into a shell-loading plant that pressed tetryl pellets for Navy anti-aircraft ammunition, growing from about 126 workers to more than 500; an explosion hit its pellet houses on September 6, 1942.
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
-
The former Alberta mill reopens as Carrboro Woolen Mills
After fifteen idle years the modernized Mill No. 4 building reopened as Carrboro Woolen Mills, which ran until the early 1960s.
- 1970s
-
Residents campaign to save Carrboro's former textile mill from demolition
In 1974 the Carrboro Board of Aldermen decided the vacant former Alberta mill should be demolished to make way for a modern shopping center. Residents led by Frances Shetley petitioned against it, the owner agreed not to tear it down, and the complex was nominated for the National Register in June 1975.
Recent decades · 1976–2026
-
The idle Carrboro depot is converted into The Station
Lee Epting and Mike Macomson finished renovating the disused depot in 1976 after two years of negotiations, reopening it as The Station restaurant, later a music venue.
-
The Alberta Mill complex is listed on the National Register
The mill, the railroad depot and the brick grist mill were listed together on the National Register of Historic Places, a year after the 1975 nomination made during the fight over demolishing the mill.
- 1980s
-
The Carrboro Commercial Historic District is listed in the National Register
On June 20, 1985 the National Park Service listed the Carrboro Commercial Historic District in Carrboro in the National Register of Historic Places.
-
The Thomas F. Lloyd Historic District is listed in the National Register
On August 14, 1986 the National Park Service listed the Thomas F. Lloyd Historic District in Carrboro in the National Register of Historic Places.
- 2020s
-
Carrboro backs a study of turning the old University Railroad line into a greenway
The Town Council unanimously approved an agreement to study converting the 11-mile rail corridor, which still carries coal to UNC's cogeneration plant, into a multi-use trail once the plant stops using coal.
Suggest a correction to an entry →
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.
