Local figure
Governor William Tryon led the army that defeated the Regulators at Alamance on May 16, 1771. At Hillsborough in June 1771 twelve Regulators were condemned for high treason; Tryon pardoned six and ordered the other six hanged there on June 19, among them Benjamin Merrill, Captain Messer, Robert Matear and James Pugh.
Source: NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources: Regulators Hanged (G-23)
1729–1788 as the Library of Congress records it · Library of Congress authority record ↗
142 indexed works are connected with this person, and the index includes one work by William Tryon.
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Proclamation issued by Governor William Tryon on 3 October 1768, on two images, during the Regulator crisis in Orange County. Hillsborough is among the places it concerns.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
George Micklejohn's sermon on the duty of subjection to the civil powers, preached at Hillsborough in Orange County on Sunday, September 25, 1768, before Governor William Tryon and the troops he had raised against the Regulators. The full title calls the rising the late insurrection. Online reproduction of the original, 15 pages plus one unnumbered page.
Why this is here: Their name appears in the record.
Governor Josiah Martin's numbered dispatches 21 through 24 to the Earl of Dartmouth, with copies of North Carolina legislation enclosed, reproduced by Adam Matthew Digital in 2019 from Colonial Office file CO 5/303 part 2. Subjects include finance and currency, debt and the courts, judges' wages, the council and assembly, voting and taxes, oaths, litigation, sheriffs, inheritance, prisoners, Irish settlers, customs, quitrents, land grants, surveying and mortgages. Names include Arthur Dobbs, William Dry, Willie Jones, John Rutherford and Wills Hill, Earl of Hillsborough.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the NC State record: Tryon, William.
Numbered dispatches 59 through 67 from Governor William Tryon to the Earl of Hillsborough, with enclosures about the Regulators, whose protests broke into riot at Hillsborough in 1770. Reproduced by Adam Matthew Digital in 2019 from Colonial Office CO 5/302. The papers touch on the council and assembly, naval stores and trade, oaths, militia and provincial troops, judges, sheriffs and juries, voting, currency, Cherokee affairs, clergy, quitrents and land, and name officials such as Richard Caswell, Richard Henderson, Maurice Moore and Hugh Waddell.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the NC State record: Tryon, William.
Governor William Tryon's correspondence with the Earl of Hillsborough for the months from October 1768 to May 1769, just after Tryon marched militia to Hillsborough to protect the court from the Regulators. Adam Matthew Digital reproduced the file, Colonial Office CO 5/301, in 2019. Topics include legislation, Anglican clergy, soldiers' wages, sheriffs, land and quitrents, trade and currency, taxes and education, the Catawba and the boundary line, roads, a murder case, punishment and prison, and people such as Richard Caswell, James Hasell and John Rutherford.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the NC State record: Tryon, William.
Letters from Governor William Tryon to the Lords Commissioners in London, with enclosed legislation and the accounts of the ship Brigantine Fox, reproduced by Adam Matthew Digital in 2019 from Colonial Office file CO 5/300. They show the range of a governor's business: council appointments, judges and courts, assembly acts, cotton manufacturing, poverty, naval stores, rice, tobacco and indigo, currency, the Tuscarora, education, marriage, debt and customs. Hillsborough is among the places named, and people include William Johnston, Richard Henderson, Cornelius Harnett and Samuel Strudwick.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the Duke record: Tryon, William.
Samuel A. Ashe's eight volume set of North Carolina biographies, published by C.L. Van Noppen from 1905 and running from the colonial period forward. The sketches take in governors, judges and public men, among them William Tryon, Frederick Nash, Richard Henderson and Matt W. Ransom. Genealogists use the set as a name source for families across the state, Orange County included.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the NC Cardinal record: Tryon, William, 1729-1788.
Governor Josiah Martin wrote to the Earl of Dartmouth in 1773 about putting the province's public business in better order and about the resignation of John Bungwin from office, with appointments, customs, trade and the colony's finances in the same file. James Hasell and William Tryon are named. Orange County enters through the Earl of Hillsborough, whose title the county seat took.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the NC State record: Tryon, William.
Dispatches of 1773 from Governor Josiah Martin to the Earl of Dartmouth, enclosing copies of petitions and acts. The topics range widely: dissenting clergy and marriage, courts and debt, land sales, a church building, indigo, prisons, bridges, epidemics and schooling. Charlotte, Salisbury, Halifax and Wilmington are among the places. The Orange County thread is the Earl of Hillsborough's name, which the town carries.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the Duke record: Tryon, William.
Four North Carolina acts come before the king in this 1773 set of representations, along with the establishment of a post office, the disallowing of Queen's College at Charlotte Town, and added instructions to the governor. Riot and law and order, Presbyterian marriage, fines and seizures all figure. Josiah Martin, Bamber Gascoyne and Soame Jenyns are named. The Earl of Hillsborough gives the county link.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the Duke record: Tryon, William.
Josiah Martin, then governor of North Carolina, corresponded with the Earl of Hillsborough in 1772 about quitrents, recently issued land patents, and the muster return of officers and men garrisoning Fort Johnston on the Cape Fear. Land speculation, marriage licences and tobacco also come up. The Orange County link is the Earl's title, borrowed for the county seat. Filed at CO 5/315.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the NC State record: Tryon, William.
Governor Josiah Martin's correspondence with the Earl of Hillsborough in 1772, taking in instructions for trade, an embargo laid on wheat and grain, and crime in the province. Companion letters in the file deal with pardons for convicts, a vessel detained by the Spanish at Veracruz, legislation for the trial of pirates and a new tax on liquors. The Orange County link is the Earl's name, carried by Hillsborough.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the NC State record: Tryon, William.
Thomas Hutchinson's 1772 dispatches to the Earl of Hillsborough, written from Massachusetts Bay and covering local government, colonial disaffection, judges, juries and trials, charters and boundaries. Lord William Campbell, William Tryon and Josiah Martin appear, with Boston, Cambridge and Providence among the places. The Orange County connection is the earl for whom Hillsborough was named.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the Duke record: Tryon, William.
Books in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection whose titles, catalog subjects, or descriptions match this person. The Friends’ recommended starting points are labelled.
The letters and papers of William Tryon, royal governor of North Carolina until 1771, edited by William S. Powell in two volumes, 1758 to 1767 and 1768 to 1818. They cover the Regulator troubles, from the riots at Hillsborough, the Orange County seat, to the battle of Alamance in 1771 and the hangings that followed. Tryon, builder of the New Bern palace, later governed New York. Division of Archives and History, 1980; indexed.
Dated events connected with this person: sixteen of 51, the highlights and a sample of the rest spread across the years, in date order. See all 51 dated events in the chronology →
Orange County farmers first organized in 1766 to question county officers about taxes and fees, a Sandy Creek effort that Herman Husband led and that lapsed in 1767. In early 1768 a new association, soon called the Regulation, pledged to pay no taxes or fees beyond what the law allowed.
Part of The Regulator crisis, 1766–1771 · 90 events
People: Herman Husband · Edmund Fanning · William Tryon
Joseph Maddock, a Quaker who had run the grist mill on the Eno west of Hillsborough since 1755, sold it to Thomas Hart, a friend of Governor William Tryon, who built it up with a sawmill, oil mill, fulling mill, distillery, tannery and other works. This is the mill, known as Hart's Mill, that a British guard held in February 1781.
People: Thomas Hart · William Tryon
The petition, Advertisement Number Nine, carried 474 names, 31 of them written in German. Tryon told the Regulators to give up their name and pay their taxes, but he also warned officers against excess fees and had the lawful fees published.
People: James Hunter · William Tryon · Rednap Howell
A week after their letter was delivered, eight principal Regulators met Tryon in Hillsborough and asked that their grievances be settled by a committee reviewing the county's tax accounts. Tryon refused, telling them the law was the only channel for redress, and the next day sent a letter to the inhabitants south of the Haw.
Part of The Regulator crisis, 1766–1771 · 90 events
People: William Tryon
Tryon reached Hillsborough on September 19 with 195 Rowan and 310 Mecklenburg volunteers, and two days later 699 Orange and 120 Granville militia joined them. With gentlemen volunteers, artillery and officers the force came to 1,461 men, a quarter of the Assembly among its officers.
People: William Tryon · Edmund Fanning · Thomas Lloyd (died 1792) · Thomas Hart
The day after the Regulators dispersed, Tryon sent a body of troops to seize the men he most wanted. Some gave themselves up and others resisted, but all who were taken were soon let go because no true bill could be found against them.
People: William Tryon
Each was fined 25 pounds and given three months in jail, but Tryon soon freed the prisoners and put off collecting their fines for three months.
People: William Tryon · Samuel Devinney
Subject: Orange County jail, Hillsborough
The Assembly that met in November 1768 first proposed 30,000 pounds in paper to pay the militia gathered at Hillsborough and other debts; after the governor and upper house objected it passed a 20,000 pound issue that was not legal tender. Tryon said he signed it because the militia would not turn out again unpaid.
People: William Tryon
Hillsborough became a borough, with its own member in the Assembly, and a chartered market town. Edmund Fanning sat for the new borough when the Assembly met at New Bern that December.
People: Edmund Fanning
On his expedition against the Regulators, Governor William Tryon bought supplies at McNair's Hillsborough store, including Delft bowls and gilt tin cups.
People: William Tryon
Hart accepted Governor Tryon's offer to victual the militia raised to suppress the Regulators, on the terms on which he had supplied the troops at Hillsborough in 1768. His department covered nearly a thousand men from eleven counties including Orange.
People: William Tryon
Leaving Hillsborough on May 11, Tryon stopped on Sunday at Colonel Mebane's for divine service, then marched to the Haw River, where 23 mounted men under Captain Bullock joined as his only cavalry. He ordered his troops not to take property and reached Alamance Creek on May 14.
Part of The Regulator crisis, 1766–1771 · 90 events
People: William Tryon
Governor William Tryon's militia defeated the Regulators at Alamance. James Few, captured on the field, was hanged at Tryon's camp the next day.
Part of The Regulator crisis, 1766–1771 · 90 events
People: William Tryon · Herman Husband · Robert Palmer · James Few
Five days after the battle the army marched to Sandy Creek, the home district of Husband and many Regulators, and stayed a week, taking supplies from the people and giving them the oath of allegiance. It moved west on May 29.
Part of The Regulator crisis, 1766–1771 · 90 events
People: William Tryon
The army came back on June 14 and the next day marched through town with drums beating and oak sprigs in their hats before camping a mile east. The special court of oyer and terminer, opened May 30 and adjourned to await the prisoners, then resumed and tried fourteen men for treason.
Part of The Regulator crisis, 1766–1771 · 90 events
People: William Tryon · Martin Howard · Richard Henderson · Maurice Moore
Writing from Fort George in New York, Tryon named the six men convicted of high treason at the Hillsborough court in June whose executions he had suspended at the army officers' request, James Stewart, James Emmerson, William Brown, Forester Mercer, James Copeland and Harmon Cox, and repeated his request that the King grant them a free pardon.
Part of The Regulator crisis, 1766–1771 · 90 events
People: William Tryon
Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows them all.
Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange and OpenStreetMap; town and community pins mark the middle of their mapped buildings.
People named in the same dated entries as William Tryon, those sharing the most entries first. Each line links one of the shared entries in the chronology, where its source is cited. A shared entry shows these people in the same event, not how well they knew each other.
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Searched with the Library of Congress heading Tryon, William, 1729-1788, which helps separate this person from others with the same name. The historical records searches look for the name as written, so they can turn up other people with the same name. Each link opens that catalog’s own results in a new tab. The Friends have not reviewed what they return.
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Picture: Portrait reputedly of William Tryon. Public domain
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