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1. Colonial and Regulator years · 1680–1774

2. late 1770
   Protest or organizing · Hillsborough Hillsborough officials and merchants pledge to defend one another after the riot

   Just after the September 1770 riot, Francis Nash, Edmund Fanning, Alexander Martin, Thomas Henderson, Jesse Benton, William Johnston, Adlai Osborne and others formed an association for mutual aid and protection. Many members lived too far apart to help one another in a sudden emergency.

3. September 22, 1770
   Protest or organizing · Hillsborough James Hunter presents a Regulator petition to Judge Henderson on the first day of the Hillsborough court

   On Saturday, the first day of the September 1770 Hillsborough superior court, James Hunter presented Judge Richard Henderson with a petition signed by many Regulators. Henderson put off his answer until Monday, the day the Regulators crowded the courtroom and broke up the court.

4. September 24–25, 1770
   Protest or organizing · Hillsborough Regulators disrupt the Hillsborough Superior Court

   About 150 Regulators crowded the Hillsborough Superior Court, beat the lawyer John Williams, Edmund Fanning and others, and forced Judge Richard Henderson to adjourn; he fled that night. The next day the crowd tore down Fanning's house and wrote mocking judgments on the court docket.

5. September 25, 1770
   Violence or armed conflict · Hillsborough Regulators pull down and plunder Edmund Fanning's house in Hillsborough

   The morning after the court broke up and Judge Henderson slipped out of town, the Regulators went to Fanning's house, smashed the furniture, emptied the cellar, carried his papers into the street and left the house almost demolished. Witnesses also heard them drink damnation to King George and success to the Pretender.

6. September 30, 1770
   Protest or organizing · Hillsborough Hillsborough's leading men write to Governor Tryon for protection after the riot

   James Watson, Francis Nash, Thomas Hart, Robert Lytle, William Johnston, James Thackston and James Monro wrote from Hillsborough describing the Regulators' insolence at the superior court, said they stood hourly in danger of their lives and estates, and asked Tryon to adopt whatever measures he judged proper.

7. October 18, 1770
   Law, policy or court · New Bern (Council Chamber) Tryon's Council orders a proclamation against the Hillsborough rioters and defers the Assembly

   Meeting at New Bern on the Hillsborough dispatches, the Council heard the Attorney General's opinion that pulling down Fanning's house and the assaults amounted to a riot, and ordered a proclamation requiring every justice of the peace to pursue the persons who assembled at Hillsborough on September 24 and 25. It advised putting off the Assembly to November 30.

8. December 20, 1770
   Law, policy or court · New Bern The Assembly expels Orange County's member Herman Husband and the Council orders his arrest

   The House of Assembly resolved that Husband, a principal promoter of the late riots in Orange County and publisher of a seditious letter printed over James Hunter's name, be expelled. The same day the Council unanimously advised his arrest and the Chief Justice issued a warrant; he lay in the New Bern jail until a grand jury found no bill on February 8, 1771.

9. January 15, 1771
   Law, policy or court · New Bern The Assembly passes the Johnston Riot Act against the Regulators

   Named for its author Samuel Johnston, the law let riot cases be tried in any county, outlawed anyone who resisted or evaded arrest, and allowed the governor to use troops against the Regulators. The Crown later condemned parts of it.

10. March 15, 1771
    Law, policy or court · New Bern A special court at New Bern presents and indicts Husband, Hunter, Butler and Howell for the Hillsborough riot

    Sitting under Chief Justice Martin Howard with Maurice Moore and Richard Henderson, the special court of oyer and terminer at New Bern received a grand jury presentment against the Regulators who in September last 'broke up that Court' at Hillsborough, and returned indictments for riot against Herman Husband, James Hunter, William Butler and Rednap Howell among others.

11. 1772
    Law, policy or court · Hillsborough At Governor Martin's urging, Edmund Fanning drops his riot damage suits

    After the matter was raised with Governor Martin in March 1772, he urged Fanning, by then surveyor general of New York, to drop his suits over the destruction of his Hillsborough property, and Fanning had them discontinued, leaving his 1,500 pound claim to the Assembly. The House refused to pay it in March 1773.

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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 2, 2026.