Orange County Indexed · Worked research guide
Isaiah Spencer and the inn later called the Colonial Inn
Use an entry in Orange County Indexed to locate a newspaper issue, then read the original page. A dated notice can provide firmer evidence than a story repeated decades later, but its wording still needs careful interpretation.
Features used in this guide: The chronology · Search Indexed Records
Ask: What was Isaiah Spencer offering in Hillsborough in the autumn of 1838? Open the site page for the Colonial Inn and, under In the chronology, find the entry Isaiah Spencer builds the Hillsborough inn later called the Colonial Inn. Among its sources is a notice in the Hillsborough Recorder of 25 October 1838, page 3. Write down that citation before searching.
Follow the newspaper link from the entry. Check the masthead, issue date, and page number. Find the notice headed Orange Hotel in the page image, enlarging it as needed. Searchable text is useful for locating passages, but broken columns and misread letters can change the wording. On this page the searchable text turns most of Spencer's notice into nonsense; only the image can be read.
If you want related coverage, search for Spencer with a narrow date range; the notice is signed Isaiah H. Spencer, so a search for Isaiah Spencer as a phrase can miss it. Try the business name Orange Hotel, and Spencer's Tavern, the name the 2014 documentation says was used locally. Search Hillsboro as well as Hillsborough. Begin with one distinctive term; adding several words may exclude a useful notice. Browse adjacent issues when text searching fails.
Distinguish the newspaper's publication date (25 October) from the date printed at the foot of the notice (October 17). Note whether it offers a building for sale or rent, announces an opening, or describes work still underway. Spencer's notice says the establishment is now open to travelers and regular boarders, and that he had erected the building especially for a hotel. Advertisements can repeat across issues, so a later printing is not necessarily a new event; the "tf" after the date usually marked a notice to run until cancelled.
Compare the notice with the Colonial Inn entry in the 2014 Hillsborough historic district documentation, section 7, page 78. It dates the inn to about 1838, says Isaiah Spencer built it, and credits the date to Mrs. Engstrom's reading of the evidence, set against local lore that the inn was built in 1759. It does not name the records behind that reading. Ask whether that evidence includes the same notice, another contemporary record, or the building itself. Two descriptions based on one source are not two independent confirmations.
A starting conclusion is that the inn's 1838 date has support in the historic district documentation and in Spencer's own notice, dated 17 October 1838, which says he had erected the building for a hotel and that it was now open. Establishing when construction began or the exact day the hotel opened requires wording that specifically supports that claim.
Keep the issue date, page, notice heading, and stable link with your notes. For another story, use this same sequence: the entry in the index, the original issue, nearby coverage, and a second type of source. OCPL's Local History Liaison can help with newspaper holdings and searches.
