William Few

Life and Orange County connections

Storylines this person is part of, in date order. Each has its own page.

Dated events connected with this person, in date order. See these 9 dated events in the chronology →

1. 1760 William Few attends a school opened in his Eno neighborhood A schoolteacher came to the Few family's neighborhood on the Eno in 1760 to teach local children, and William Few Jr. attended. He later recalled the school with pleasure. Place: Eno River · Also named: William Few Jr.Search the index · Eno River Association: The History of Few's Ford
2. 1764–1768 The county town becomes a courthouse village of stores, ordinaries and public buildings William Few recalled that in 1764 the town was the metropolis of the county, where the courts were held and all public business done, a village of thirty or forty inhabitants with two or three small stores and two or three ordinary taverns, and that Scottish merchants then opened stores of European goods and a church, courthouse and jail were built. Claude Joseph Sauthier's 1768 plan of the town marks Canby's Ordinary, Nunn's Ordinary, McNair's Store, the market house, the first courthouse and the second jail. People: William Few Place: Hillsborough · Also named: Claude Joseph SauthierSearch the index · Orange County Historical Museum (Churton Street): 1768
3. 1763 or 1764 William Few moves his family to a farm a mile from town and keeps a tavern Few bought 200 acres near the town, later called the Kirkland place, and moved his family there from their mill farm lower down the Eno. He kept a tavern at the house while the family still ran the mill. Place: Kirkland place, near HillsboroughSearch the index · Nash, Hillsboro, Colonial and Revolutionary (1903), p. 92
4. 1767 William Few takes over management of a second family farm near Hillsborough In 1767 William Few Sr. bought another farm about seven miles from Hillsborough, and his son William, then nineteen, took over its management. Place: Orange County · Also named: William Few Sr.Search the index · NCpedia: Few, William, Jr.
5. September 1768 William Few and John Butler stand surety for the Regulator William Butler At the September 1768 court in Hillsborough, William Few, who sympathized with the reforms but took no part in the agitation, and John Butler, who opposed the Regulation, went on the bond of John's brother William Butler, one of the most active Regulators. People: William Few, John Butler, William Butler (Regulator) Place: HillsboroughInternet Archive: Archibald Henderson, ed., "Hermon Husband's Continuation of the Impartial Relation", North Carolina Historical Review 18 (1941), p. 78
6. April or June 1770 William Few conveys his home place near Hillsborough to John Butler In debt and weighing a move to Georgia, Few deeded the Kirkland place east of town to his friend John Butler, sheriff that year. Butler in turn sold the tract to the Scottish merchant Ralph MacNair on July 23, 1771. People: John Butler, Ralph McNair Place: Kirkland place, near Hillsborough · Also named: Ralph MacNairSearch the index · Nash, Hillsboro, Colonial and Revolutionary (1903), p. 93 · Also: Internet Archive: Archibald Henderson, ed.
7. 1771 William Few moves his family from Orange County to Georgia Pressed by lawsuits after he had gone surety for several people, William Few sold much of his property and moved his family to Georgia, leaving his son William to settle his affairs. The same year his son James was executed after Alamance and Tryon's army ruined the family's crops; the colonial assembly later compensated Few for the loss. People: William Few, James Few Place: Orange County · Also named: William Few Jr.Internet Archive: Archibald Henderson, ed., "Hermon Husband's Continuation of the Impartial Relation", North Carolina Historical Review 18 (1941), p. 78
8. June 1771 Governor Tryon's army turns its horses onto the Few farm's crops Back at Hillsborough in mid-June 1771 after the Battle of Alamance, Governor William Tryon's army turned its horses onto the wheat, barley and oats of the Few farm a mile east of town, where William Few Sr. had given bond for Regulator leaders. The family left for Georgia that winter. People: William Tryon Place: Eno River · Also named: William Few Sr.Search the index · Nash, Hillsboro, Colonial and Revolutionary (1903), Appendix C, p. 94 · Also: NCpedia: Few, William, Jr.; Colonial and State Records of North Carolina, vol. 8, pp. 574-600: Tryon's order book in the campaign against the Regulators
9. December 19, 1922 Trinity's William P. Few proposes a joint medical school with UNC After the trustees' site committee split on December 16, Few met the committee at the governor's mansion and offered a four-year school with two years at Chapel Hill and two in Durham near Watts Hospital, backed by $1 million from each side and a Trinity endowment. Morrison endorsed it that night, but Baptist protest over church and state killed it within weeks. People: Harry Woodburn Chase, Isaac Hall Manning, Cameron Morrison Place: Governor's Mansion, Raleigh · Also mentions: Watts HospitalSearch the index · Howard E. Covington Jr., Fire and Stone: The Making of the University of North Carolina under Presidents Edward Kidder Graham and Harry Woodburn Chase (2018), pp. 251-255