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Orange County

Formed in 1752 from parts of Bladen, Granville and Johnston counties and named for William of Orange, with Hillsborough as its seat from 1754. Its first bounds were far larger: Chatham, Wake, Guilford, Caswell, Alamance and Durham counties were all formed in whole or in part from Orange.

Source: NCpedia: Orange County

9,276 works about Orange County are indexed here. 176 held at OCPL →

Common subjects in works about Orange County

UNC & Campus LifeSchools & EducationWars & Military ServicePolitics & GovernmentFamilies, Land & GenealogyBlack Life & Civil RightsLaw, Courts & JusticeColonial Orange County
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Storylines about Orange County, in date order. Each has its own page.

StorylineOccaneechi Town and the Great Trading Path1680–2024 · 63 events · Occaneechi Town on the Eno, occupied from about 1680 to 1710, was where John Lawson stopped in 1701 on the trading path that ran from Virginia to the Catawba. Archaeologists located the village at the Fredricks site in 1983, and the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, recognized by the state in 2002, rebuilt a replica village there and dedicated a highway marker in 2024. StorylineSt. Matthew's Parish and Hillsborough's old church, 1752–18241752–1824 · 26 events · From 1752 St. Matthew's Parish was Orange County's established Anglican church, with chapels at New Hope and St. Mary's and, from about 1768, a church in Hillsborough. Its rector, George Micklejohn, preached to Tryon's troops in 1768 and stayed loyal to the Crown in 1776. Its church served as an army hospital, an academy and the meeting place of the 1788 convention, and in 1797 the Assembly ordered the ruinous building sold. Episcopal worship came back through St. Jude's and St. Mary's in 1818 and 1819, and in 1824 the reorganized parish left the old lot to the Presbyterians. StorylineThe sheriff and the taxes: Orange County's sheriffs, 1752–17771752–1777 · 19 events · In colonial Orange County the sheriff collected the taxes, and how sheriffs and their deputies collected them became a grievance that fed the Regulation. The governor chose sheriffs from names the county court sent him, beginning with Alexander Mebane, who returned 1,113 tithables for 1752 and 1753. Thomas Hart's short account and the Assembly bill excusing him from taxes, deputies' seizures of deer skins and livestock, and Tyree Harris's extra charge on late payers came before the 1768 depositions and the rescue of a seized horse at Hillsborough. Regulators whipped Sheriff John Lea in 1769. In 1777 the first court under statehood named Mebane's son sheriff. StorylineHugh McAden, Henry Pattillo and the first Presbyterian congregations, 1753–17901753–1790 · 19 events · Orange County's Presbyterian settlers had congregations before they had ministers. Hugh McAden preached on the Eno and at the Hawfields in 1755 and 1756, and the settlements asked Hanover Presbytery for preachers, but none came regularly until Henry Pattillo became pastor of the Hawfields, Eno and Little River churches in 1765. Pattillo and his fellow ministers condemned the Regulators in 1768 and he preached to Tryon's troops; in 1770 they formed Orange Presbytery, which first met at Hawfields. In 1775 the Provincial Congress sent Pattillo to win former Regulators to the American cause, and about 1790 the old Pattillo field was split into two pastoral charges. StorylineOrange County's militia in the Revolution, 1775–17791775–1779 · 17 events · Orange County had to field a Revolutionary militia in a district the Council of Safety thought full of disaffected persons. The Provincial Congress named the county's officers in 1775, and in February 1776 Orange men held Cross Creek while Nathaniel Rochester took about 500 retreating Loyalists prisoner. In April 1776 the congress split the militia into Northern and Southern regiments under John Butler and James Saunders. Asked for 500 men against the Cherokee, Orange met a quota of 300. By 1778 the county owed the state's troops 73 hats and 146 pairs of shoes, and in 1779 Hillsborough became an army depot as Orange militia fought at Stono Ferry. StorylineThe test of allegiance in Orange County, 1775–17821775–1782 · 9 events · During the Revolution, Orange County's new authorities sorted friends from enemies by an oath of allegiance. In 1775 the Provincial Congress at Hillsborough tried persuasion with former Regulators and people of scruple. By 1777 the county court was jailing a man who refused the oath and ordering merchants who had traded with Britain to swear or leave within sixty days. Magistrates tendered the oath district by district in 1778, Loyalist property was inventoried, and in 1782 the Assembly named a commissioner of confiscated estates for the Hillsborough District.
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StorylineMothers and the county court’s bindings, 1777–18681777–1868 · 38 events · The apprentice records show mothers acting for their children against the county court's power to bind them out. In 1777 the court returned Michael Riley to his mother, Mary Manakin. Mothers left without support asked the court to bind their children to masters they named, and free Black women did the same; in 1836 Jemima Mitchell set terms for her son's binding. Others went to law: Sarah Rickets's attorney won a writ of habeas corpus for her daughter in 1795. The court bound some children to their own mothers and returned others to them, and in 1868 it rescinded the binding of Calvin Godfrey because he was working for wages paid to his mother. StorylineThe Hawfields, Cross Roads, Eno and Little River churches, 1780–18211780–1821 · 16 events · Between 1780 and 1821 the Presbyterian churches of western Orange split into two pastoral charges and went through the revival that began at Cross Roads. Hawfields moved west about 1780, Cross Roads was gathered from its neighbors, and about 1790 Hawfields and Cross Roads took one pastor while Eno and Little River took another. Opponents of James McGready burned his pulpit at Stony Creek in 1796. Under William D. Paisley, pastor from 1801, a Cross Roads communion in March 1801 set off what a 1966 article calls the Great Revival in the state, and crowds camped at Hawfields. Paisley also kept a grammar school before leaving in 1818. StorylineNaming the father: bastardy bonds and support awards in the county court, 1784–18181784–1818 · 34 events · When a single woman in Orange County had a child, the bastardy law aimed to keep the child from becoming a charge on the county: the man she named as father gave a bond and could be ordered to pay support, called the usual allowance of £27 by 1796. From 1784 to 1818 the county court took these bonds, set awards, sent for men who resisted and let juries decide when a man denied it. Some women gave the bond themselves, mothers sued to collect, the court sometimes paid others to keep a child, and some named men married the mother within days. StorylineThe county patrol, 1787–18291787–1829 · 14 events · From 1787 the Orange County court named patrols to watch the movements of enslaved people: patrols for Hillsborough, for the county's districts and, in 1799, for the neighborhood of the University. From at least 1807 the patrols were paid with a tax on each Black poll, and committees of justices drafted rules for them in 1809 and 1813. The court also licensed some enslaved men to carry guns on their owners' land, on the motions of men such as Richard Bennehan and Duncan Cameron, and twice ordered patrollers to give back guns they had taken. In 1829 Chapel Hill's first town ordinance set up a town patrol, and the county was still levying its patrol tax on Black polls. StorylineThe Revill family and the county court, 1790–18331790–1833 · 14 events · Across three generations the county court bound out the children of the Revill family, a free family of color, to masters as apprentices. Between 1790 and 1803 it bound Revill children to Robert Neil, Andrew Brooks, William F. Strudwick, Jesse Rice and William Cain; Charity was bound before she was three. In 1812 it bound Charity's daughter Susannah, fifteen months old, to Robert Eaton. When Eaton sold his claim on her in 1826, she won a writ of habeas corpus, and Judge Thomas Ruffin ruled the sale void, holding that an apprentice could not be sold without the court's leave. The bindings went on into 1833. StorylineFriends meetings and children born outside marriage, 1799–18281799–1828 · 7 events · The Friends meetings at Cane Creek and Spring held members to account for children born outside marriage, sometimes after the same cases had come before the county justices. In 1799 the Cane Creek women disowned Elizabeth Wells, who had named the father to Orange justices in October 1798, and in April 1803 accepted her written acknowledgment. The Spring women issued a testimony against Rachel Jackson in 1800, and Cane Creek one against Miriam Lamb in 1805. In December 1816 the Spring meeting disowned James Jackson after he was lawfully charged as a father. The disownings of Anna E. Culbertson in 1825 and Elizabeth Marshall in June 1828 close the run. StorylineThe Great Revival in Orange County, 1800–18051800–1805 · 5 events · In 1800 a great camp-meeting revival was held at New Hope: people came from long distances and camped on the church grounds for days, and the revival spread into other neighborhoods. In 1801 William D. Paisley took charge of the Hawfields and Cross Roads Presbyterian churches near present Mebane. At a general communion at Cross Roads in March 1801, before a large crowd, the congregation broke into the outcries and physical frenzy of the western camp meetings just as an ordinary service was ending, and the ministers present let the demonstration run its course. A 1966 article in the North Carolina Historical Review dates the start of the Great Revival in North Carolina from this meeting. The revival reached Hawfields, where people from long distances camped on the church grounds in their wagons for several days. The Hawfields church historian credits Paisley with organizing that meeting, and Foote and the 1966 article call it the first camp meeting in North Carolina, though the accounts differ on its date. At New Hope, D. I. Craig thought the revival did much to prompt the building of a third church. It went up in 1805 with a high pulpit at the west end and a gallery at the east end for Black worshippers, and it stood until fire destroyed it in 1862. StorylineBinding out: the county court and its apprentices' masters, 1801–18211801–1821 · 7 events · Binding a child out made a master responsible for the child's food, clothing, schooling and trade, and the Orange County court kept the power to take the child back. From 1801 it required every child to be bound out to be produced in court, and in 1807 it wrote reading, writing and ciphering into three bindings. Between 1812 and 1825 it heard sworn complaints that masters failed to clothe, feed or lodge their apprentices or beat them, summoned the masters to show cause, and cancelled or rescinded indentures. StorylineThe Whittaker children and the county court, 1812–18181812–1818 · 4 events · In November 1812 the county court ordered the sheriff to take two children of color named Whittaker from James Thompson, son of Thomas, keep them safely and bring them to the next term. In February 1813 it bound them out: John Whittaker, a boy of about five, to James Forsyth to learn farming, and Nancy Whittaker, about eight, to Polley Comb to learn spinning, each until coming of age. A binding made the master responsible for the child's food, clothing and trade, and the court kept the power to take the child back. In February 1817 the court summoned Forsyth to bring John into the next court and show cause why his indenture should not be cancelled, and the sheriff was to take a bond of £250 from Forsyth, void if he produced the boy. In February 1818 the court cancelled Nancy's indenture to Polley Comb, describing her as a free girl of color about thirteen, and bound her instead to Henry Thompson Jr. until she came of age, to learn spinning. StorylineZedekiah Husbands, from bound boy to master, 1813–18371813–1837 · 6 events · Bound out as an apprentice by the county court, Zedekiah Husbands became a millwright and had to fight that court for his nephew. The court bound him to Joseph Woody in 1813 and, now calling him a boy of color, to John Crawford in 1817. In 1833 it bound his nephew Daniel Burnett to John Jones; Husbands petitioned the Superior Court, Judge William Norwood halted the binding, and in 1834 the court bound Daniel to him. Jones later swore he had been told the court refused Husbands the boy because he was a man of color. Mark Chilton found Husbands one of very few people of color to own land in the county before the Civil War. StorylineRunaway apprentice notices, 1821–18671821–1867 · 19 events · From the 1820s masters placed notices in the Hillsborough Recorder and other papers when apprentices bound to them by the county court ran away. The notices gave the runaway's name and age, forbade anyone to harbor or employ them, and offered rewards, many of them five cents or a single cent, sometimes with 'no thanks' added; a few offered more, five dollars in 1837 for Ruffin Chavers, a boy of color, and ten dollars in 1862 for John Reeves, a trained tailor. Several of the runaways were youths of color, girls as well as boys, and many were nearly grown. In 1863 James M. Clark advertised an apprentice who had left while Clark was in the army, and in 1867 Thomas J. Anderson advertised for Joe Anderson, a Black bound boy of about fourteen. Each notice is the master's claim. StorylineOrange County and the 1835 constitutional convention, 1822–18351822–1835 · 11 events · Reforming the state constitution threatened Hillsborough's borough seat, the town's own member in the House of Commons, yet Orange pressed for reform. Toasts at Hillsborough in 1822 and 1823 said the constitution needed mending, and in 1823 a county meeting named four delegates, Thomas Ruffin among them, to a reform meeting at Raleigh; voters elected all four. In April 1835 Orange voted 1,648 to 111 for a convention, and Hillsborough itself voted 228 to 23 in favor. Candidates were pressed on the 32nd article, the religious test for office. At Raleigh, James S. Smith moved to abolish borough seats entirely and lost 61 to 67, but Hillsborough lost its member. Orange voters approved the amendments that November. StorylineJacksonians and Whigs in Orange County, 1824–18391824–1839 · 12 events · Orange County voted for Andrew Jackson in 1824 and by a wide margin in 1828, but by the late 1830s Whigs and Van Buren men were contesting its seats. Willie P. Mangum, chosen senator in 1830 as a Jacksonian, broke with Jackson over the removal of the bank deposits, and an Orange meeting approved his course in 1834. In 1836, after many county leaders broke with Jackson, supporters of Hugh L. White and of Martin Van Buren held rival meetings at the Hillsborough court house, and Orange went for Van Buren. Van Buren men took three Orange seats from the Whigs in 1838, and in 1839 Orange favored Dr. William Montgomery for Congress over the Whig George W. Haywood. StorylineTemperance and the liquor question in Orange County, 1825–18591825–1859 · 14 events · Treating voters with liquor, and the liquor trade itself, drew organized opposition in Orange County from 1825 to 1859. In 1825 a court house meeting declared treating injurious to morality, and about 1827 the university trustees won a law against distilling or selling liquor at or near Chapel Hill. Temperance societies spread from 1829; by 1834 the Hawfields and Cross Roads society counted 437 members, and at least nine or ten distilleries had stopped. In 1841 Hillsborough men formed a Washington Temperance Society. In 1854 the county voted against the liquor 'Reform' question, but the 1855 Revised Code barred liquor sales within two miles of Chapel Hill, and in 1859 the village banned traveling liquor sellers. StorylineThe Mayo children and the county court, 1828–18531828–1853 · 7 events · Again and again the county court bound out the children of the Mayo family, a free family of color, as apprentices, moving them from master to master. In 1835 it bound four Mayho children to three men, then in February 1836 rescinded those orders and bound all four to their mother, Elizabeth Mayho. It bound William Mayho to a cabinetmaker in 1843 and moved Samuel Mayhoe to Josiah Turner Sr. in 1850, and in 1851 it bound James and William Mayo to Dr. Edmund Strudwick, who was to hire them out to support their blind grandfather, Manuel. In 1853, with Strudwick and Henry Crabtree both claiming James's services, the court found him 21 and discharged him from his indentures. StorylineInternal improvements and the 1833 Hillsborough railroad convention, 1828–18371828–1837 · 16 events · From 1828 Orange County leaders pressed for river navigation and, above all, a central railroad through the state. That year James Mebane brought a flour boat down the Haw from Murphey's Mills, and a meeting with Joseph Caldwell giving the address urged a central railroad. The 1833 convention at Hillsborough chose Thomas Ruffin president, called for a Roanoke and Yadkin Rail Road and adopted Willie P. Mangum's report that the state should pay two-fifths of any work for which private citizens secured three-fifths. By August 1834 every Orange candidate for the Assembly had declared for the central railroad, and in 1837 Cadwallader Jones of Hillsborough was named to the Board of Internal Improvement. StorylineOrange County's common schools, 1840–18531840–1853 · 12 events · When the federal census of 1840 counted 6,463 Orange County children between five and twenty, fewer than 500 of them were enrolled in school. After county voters accepted the 1839 school law, the county court levied a school tax and the county was laid off in districts. A common school opened in the Hawfield district near Gravelly Hill in May 1840, and the Recorder urged the other districts to follow. By the 1844-45 term 57 common schools taught only white children. In 1850 Samuel Wellwood Hughes was appointed to what NCpedia calls the first Orange County board to examine teachers, and the earliest written record of the schools, for 1853, showed 2,507 of 4,447 children attending. StorylineThe Log Cabin campaign in Orange County, 1840–18411840–1841 · 11 events · In 1840 Orange County's Whigs and Democratic Republicans contested both the presidential race and the county's seats in the legislature. In August Orange elected Willie P. Mangum, William A. Graham and two other Whigs, with the Democratic Republican Cadwallader Jones Jr. taking the fourth seat, and the Recorder declared Orange a Whig county. In September Mangum and Democratic Senator Bedford Brown debated for two days at Hillsborough's Masonic Hall, and Chapel Hill held a Whig log cabin festival, though the University faculty asked the candidates not to speak there. In November the county gave Harrison a majority of 191 over Van Buren, and William A. Graham went on to the U.S. Senate. StorylineWhigs, Democrats and Know Nothings in Orange County, 1841–18591841–1859 · 16 events · Orange County's elections from 1841 to 1859 were often close, as Whigs, Democrats and for a time the Know Nothings contested the county. In 1841 Orange narrowly backed the Whig James S. Smith for Congress, though the Democrat Romulus M. Saunders won the district. In 1844 the county elected its whole Whig ticket and gave its own William A. Graham a majority for governor. A tied 1848 state Senate race, broken by the sheriff's casting vote, ended in a new election. Orange backed Graham's 1852 run for vice president, voted for the Know Nothing, or American, candidate for Congress in 1855 and went Democratic in 1856. In December 1859 a Whig and Opposition meeting denounced John Brown's raid. StorylineDividing Orange: the fight that made Alamance County, 1842–18511842–1851 · 16 events · From 1842 to 1849 Orange County fought over division and over a tax for a new courthouse that western voters saw as a move to fix the county seat and block division. In 1842 a meeting at the High Falls of Haw River resolved to keep petitioning for a central division, and voters rejected one. After the county court laid an $8,000 courthouse tax in 1844, meetings called the tax unjust, but voters rejected division again, by 292 votes. In 1849 a bill introduced by Giles Mebane created Alamance County west of a line nine miles west of Hillsborough, Orange voters approved it on April 19, and the new county's court first met on June 4. StorylineOrange County and the Mexican War, 1846–18481846–1848 · 8 events · Orange County raised a volunteer company for the war with Mexico, only to see it divided among other companies at the regiment's camp because it was still short of full strength. In 1846, 110 men enrolled at a Hawfields Regiment muster, and the volunteers later elected John Cameron captain. In January 1847 townspeople gave the Orange Volunteers a dinner at the Hillsborough House, and the company, accepted as Company I of the North Carolina Regiment, marched for Wilmington. At Smithville in February it was broken up, leaving Cameron without a command, though Orange men served on in the regiment in Mexico. In August 1848 about five hundred people attended a Chapel Hill dinner for the returning volunteers. StorylineRailroads through Orange, 1849–19091849–1909 · 118 events · Orange County residents put up $100,000 toward the North Carolina Railroad, a line built partly by enslaved workers that reached Hillsborough in April 1855, with through trains early in 1856. The Hillsborough depot shipped flour, tobacco and bacon, a depot on the Orange-Alamance line gave rise to Mebanesville, and state convicts built the University Railroad from University Station, which brought trains to West End in 1882. From 1901 came new bridges over the Eno, a train that killed two Caswell County farmers in 1903 and a fire that destroyed the Hillsborough depot that November. In 1905 a legislative committee killed a bill that would have let the University Railroad be abandoned. StorylineFarm labor in rural Orange County1859–2022 · 29 events · Tobacco spread from Washington Duke’s turn to the crop in 1859, and after emancipation many freedpeople worked the land as tenants and sharecroppers; the 1930 census counted tenants on about a third of the county’s farms. Farm Security Administration loans reached Black farmers from 1938, tenancy fell sharply in the 1950s, and by 2022 the census counted 36 migrant workers on the county’s farms. StorylineBuilding the public schools, 1868–19201868–1920 · 231 events · After the Civil War Orange County organized its public schools by township and district, with separate schools for Black and white children under local school committees. In the 1880s and 1890s the county board formed new districts and counted its log and frame schoolhouses; after 1900 districts voted local taxes for graded schools for white children, eight rural schoolhouses went up in one school year, and a 1918–19 survey found white teachers earning a median $50 a month and Black teachers $35. StorylineRacial-terror lynchings in Orange County1869–1898 · 41 events · Six people are documented as lynched in Orange County: Washington Morrow, Thomas Jefferson Morrow, Daniel Morrow, Wright Malone and Cyrus Guy in 1869, and Manly McCauley in 1898. Sworn testimony before Congress in 1871 gives the same count for 1869, four men hanged and one shot (Josiah Turner Jr.), or five Black men killed (constable W. G. Turrentine), though names differ: the Senate committee's list and two Orange witnesses name a man called Wood, hanged east of Hillsborough, and two sources a William Guy, who may be Cyrus Guy. In September 2022 the county commissioners apologized for racial-terror lynchings and approved markers, citing five cases without naming the victims. StorylineKirk-Holden War connections, 1870October 1869–March 1871 · 49 events · Governor Holden named Orange County in his October 1869 warning about Klan violence, Hillsborough men were named in a Klan plot against Senator T. M. Shoffner, and Kirk's militia arrested Josiah Turner Jr. at Hillsborough in August 1870. Orange men Frederick N. Strudwick, William A. Graham and John W. Graham then helped bring, prosecute and decide Holden's impeachment. StorylineThe Grange in Orange County, 1873–19481873–1948 · 6 events · The Patrons of Husbandry, or Grange, took root in Orange County twice. James Means of Concord organized the Eno Grange at Cedar Grove in December 1873, and in October 1874 delegates of seven Granges organized a county council with John K. Hughes as master. A state Grange revival from 1929 to 1931 produced five Orange chapters, among them Schley Grange No. 710. Schley and Fairfield made their halls out of abandoned schoolhouses, and the chapters met every two weeks with women and children as members. A Grange was organized at New Hope in 1946, and in 1948 W. Kerr Scott, the Democratic nominee for governor and a former State Grange master, spoke to the county's Granges. StorylineBuilding the State University Railroad, 1879–18831879–1883 · 29 events · Chapel Hill's railroad to University Station was graded by state convicts; a guard shot one dead as he ran, and an overseer was charged with cruelly whipping another, a Black convict named Fries, who died. A coroner's jury found other causes, and Battle wrote that the solicitor found no ground to prosecute. In 1879 the legislature had rechartered a stalled iron-mine line as the State University Railroad, and in January 1880 the stockholders adopted Kemp P. Battle's resolution to run it from Chapel Hill to University Station, and the directors elected him president. The first passenger train left Chapel Hill in February 1882, and by July mail ran on the line. StorylineProhibition and the liquor question, 1879–18921879–1892 · 13 events · Between 1879 and 1892 the sale of liquor in Orange County was argued over in the legislature, at the polls, before town and county boards and in court. In 1879 the legislature widened the ban on selling liquor around the university to four miles. Before the 1881 statewide prohibition vote, supporters organized the county under Rev. N. H. Cobb, with every minister, white and Black, a vice president. In 1882 Anderson Hill ran for the House as an Independent Prohibition candidate. Hillsborough's town board refused liquor licenses in 1890 and 1891, but the county commissioners licensed John U. Smith, and the town's suit against him was compromised and dismissed in 1892. StorylineOrange County party politics and Sheriff Hughes, 1880–18881880–1888 · 13 events · In the 1880s Orange County voters kept returning Sheriff John K. Hughes, even in years they voted Democratic for president. Hughes was first elected in 1880, when independents ran against the Democratic ticket. In 1882 the Republican county convention endorsed the Liberal coalition ticket and Hughes's re-election; Zebulon B. Vance spoke nearly three hours against the coalition, but the Republican Isaac R. Strayhorn led the Senate race and the Liberal James A. Cheek won a House seat by seven votes. In 1884 Orange went for Cleveland and still returned Hughes, and in 1886 the Republican-backed Hughes won by more than 1,100 votes. In 1888 the Democrats left the sheriff's race to Hughes, who won as an independent. StorylineThe stock law and the end of open range, 1881–18871881–1887 · 10 events · From 1881 to 1888 Orange County argued over whether to keep the open range, with farmers fencing their crops against roaming livestock, or adopt a stock law, which made owners keep their animals penned. Little River Township voted for the old fence system in 1881, and two Black leaders, Alfred Holmes and Lewis Jenkins, spoke for a no-fence law in 1884. An 1885 act barred cattle from running at large in four townships and let Chapel Hill Township adopt the stock law. Its voters rejected the law 415 to 104 that November, but in 1887, on a petition of 383 freeholders, the commissioners put it in force there from 1888, without an election or a fence tax. StorylineThe county schools under Superintendent James L. Currie, 1882–18891882–1889 · 27 events · Orange County's Black public schools ran far shorter terms than its white schools, and Black teachers and parents pressed for more. In 1882 the Rev. James L. Currie of Chapel Hill became county superintendent. In 1884 Black teachers petitioned for a summer institute, which Currie conducted, and formed a county teachers' association. The Board of Education formed under an 1885 law funded an institute for Black teachers. Currie's 1887 report showed white schools averaging close to nine weeks and Black schools under four and a half, with Black women teachers paid $17 a month against $24 for white women. In 1888 the board tabled a petition from Cool Spring's Black parents for Black committeemen, and in 1889 Currie resigned. StorylineThe Farmers' Alliance in Orange County, 1887–18951887–1895 · 16 events · Orange County farmers began organizing in 1887 and within a year had joined the Farmers' Alliance. Bingham Township farmers formed a club at Oaks that June, and in September an Orange County Club organized under Alex. McIver, though small attendance soon led it to put off a farmers' institute. After the Alliance's state organizer spoke at Hillsborough in March 1888, chapters formed quickly, and on May 18 delegates created the County Alliance under Sheriff John Knox Hughes. It opened an exchange in Hillsborough in 1890 and in 1891 endorsed the sub-treasury plan and all the Alliance demands. In 1893 a county committee called a bill to repeal the State Alliance charter a scheme to destroy the order. StorylineWorking the county roads: the road tax fights, 1891–18991891–1899 · 8 events · From 1891 to 1899 Orange County's commissioners and justices fought over how to keep up the public roads: with a road tax under an alternative system, or with the labor owed by local men. In 1891 a joint session voted 13 to 2 for the alternative system and a tax of 7 cents on the $100. In 1893 the justices voted to end it, and after two standoffs the commissioners gave way and the tax ended. A special road law adopted in 1896 let each township choose labor or a road tax, and in 1899 the commissioners levied no road tax and went back to set days of work from every man liable to road duty. StorylineThe People's Party and fusion in Orange County, 1892–18981892–1898 · 13 events · The People's Party, whose platform a large Hillsborough gathering adopted in March 1892, joined with the Republicans to sweep Orange County in 1894 and with the Democrats to win it in 1896. In 1892 the Democratic county convention barred two delegates for standing on the St. Louis platform, and the Populists voted to put up a full county ticket. In November 1894 Republicans and Populists won everything but sheriff and register of deeds, which the Democrats kept by 58 and seven votes. In 1896 Orange Democrats and Populists fused on a county ticket that won in full, with the Populist Albert H. Holmes going to the House. In 1898 Orange Populists endorsed a union of the silver forces. StorylineSmallpox and the county's first pest house, 1899–19001899–1900 · 5 events · With no pest house, a building for isolating contagious patients, Orange County had to quarantine each smallpox patient at home when the disease came in 1899 and 1900. In 1899 Hillsborough quarantined itself against an outbreak in Alamance County. In 1900 a University medical student caught smallpox and recovered, and in February Postmaster J. Clyde Cheek of Hillsborough was found to have it; his house was cut off, everyone there was vaccinated, and no other town case followed. Cases then turned up among Black workmen building a telephone line. On Dr. C. D. Jones's advice, the commissioners bought 15 acres that had belonged to William Wheaton, a Black landowner, and ordered a two-room pest house built at once. StorylineOrange County's party politics under the suffrage amendment, 1900–19081900–1908 · 7 events · In July 1900 Charles B. Aycock spoke for the suffrage amendment at a White Supremacy rally in Hillsborough. The amendment lost in Orange by a handful of votes and the opposing state ticket carried the county by a few votes, but Democrats won the legislative seats and county offices. Under the amendment, men who had not paid their poll tax could not vote, and by May 1902 Sheriff John K. Hughes reported 375 white and 500 Black men unpaid for 1901. The county elected the whole Democratic ticket in 1904, and in 1906 every Democrat won. In 1908 Orange went for Taft and sent the Republican Thomas E. Sparrow to the House over Samuel M. Gattis. StorylineProhibition and the blockaders in Orange County, 1901–19301901–1930 · 22 events · Hillsborough's fight over its saloons gave way to a long struggle against illegal stills across Orange County. In 1903 the town elected a board chosen mostly on the prohibition ticket, which refused every saloon license, and the barrooms closed that June. In 1905 the county commissioners refused the licenses a new town board recommended, and the town voted against liquor dispensaries. The county voted against state prohibition in 1908, though the state carried it, and in 1919 Orange's representative voted against ratifying national prohibition. Blockading, the illegal distilling of whiskey, went on: in 1920 Louis Graves wrote in the New Republic that Orange had the largest distilling operations in the state, and officers kept capturing stills through 1930. StorylineLocal school taxes come to Orange County, 1903–19091903–1909 · 10 events · Between 1903 and 1910 Orange County's school districts voted one by one on whether to tax themselves for better schools, and the votes went both ways. Caldwell District approved a local tax for a rural graded school in 1903, while Elm Grove rejected one that October. After a 1904 election the Mebane district followed, and in 1905 the commissioners levied special school taxes in both. In 1907 Superintendent John C. Hocutt said he meant to campaign for local taxes. In 1908 the Hillsboro district defeated a school tax while Fairfield carried one, and in 1909 the legislature created the Chapel Hill Graded School District with a special tax. By 1910 special school taxes were collected in six districts. StorylineThe county road bonds of 1911–19121911–1912 · 6 events · Orange County's first bonds, $250,000 to build roads, passed narrowly in 1912 and left a debt not cleared until 1953. Support built through 1911, with delegates to a state good roads convention and a talk to farmers by State Geologist Joseph Hyde Pratt, but the commissioners put off a bond election until spring. In February 1912 a Chapel Hill meeting named a citizens' committee to work for the bonds, and on March 19 the county voted 919 to 831 to borrow the money, with a good roads commission to pick the roads. Work waited while Frank Nash made up a case on the county road law for the state Supreme Court. The bonds sold about a year after the vote. StorylineHighways through Orange County, 1911–19241911–1924 · 17 events · Hillsboro fought to be on the Central Highway, and between 1911 and 1924 hard roads were built across Orange County. In 1911 Hillsboro, joined by delegations from Durham and Mebane, pressed its claim, and the trustees chose the route by way of Hillsboro and Mebane. In 1919 the commissioners let the national highway across the county. The 1921 Highway Act, championed by Harriet Morehead Berry of Hillsborough, paid for a state network whose Central Highway ran through the town. The state bridged the Eno at Hillsboro in 1922, and the Durham-Hillsboro highway opened in 1924, after paving had sent traffic through Chapel Hill and onto a private detour whose owner charged drivers. StorylineSouthern Power and electric service, 1911–19191911–1919 · 4 events · By June 1911 Duke's Southern Power Company had carried its line of towers across Orange County, and within a few years it had a generating plant in the county and was bringing electric power to its mills. In 1915 the company built a coal-fired steam plant beside the Eno near University Station as a backup for its hydroelectric stations, and by July 1916, with flooding shutting the river stations, it was sending current as far as Charlotte. That October the company surveyed a line to Carrboro to power the mills and light the town. In West Hillsborough the steam-driven Bellevue mill ran partly on electricity by 1919 and completely by the mid-1920s. StorylineThe 1915 sanitary survey of Orange County1915 · 6 events · At the county's request, U.S. Public Health Service doctors began a house-to-house sanitary survey of Orange County in early May 1915, and in seven weeks they visited 1,650 homes and held public health meetings. Hillsboro required a sanitary privy at every home in town, and women formed the Orange County Sanitation League. Organizers found the Black churches the only real way to reach Black families, and Black congregations took lantern-slide talks on unsafe privies as a fit church concern, while some white churches thought them out of place. In November the county commissioners praised the doctors' work, and the Board of Education urged every school committee to build two sanitary privies. StorylineThe 1915 road law and the county road supervisor, 1915–19171915–1917 · 10 events · In 1915 Senator Frank Nash's act directed the Orange County commissioners to spend the road tax on the roads of the county at large rather than township by township, and to elect a county supervisor of roads. A. W. Clarke became superintendent of roads that March. In 1916 the county placed the Chapel Hill to Durham road and the road from Carrboro to the Alamance line under the federal engineer and authorized the superintendent to buy equipment to work convicts on the roads. By 1917 inspectors counted 37 miles of central highways and many more miles of Class A and Class B roads, and the commissioners were ordering straightening, bridge work and a sand-clay road. StorylineRepublicans take the Orange County courthouse, 1916–19171916–1917 · 3 events · In November 1916 Orange County elected a full Republican ticket, by the News's account for the first time in the memory of the oldest residents, and a fight over county offices followed. Charles G. Rosemond became sheriff in place of the Democrat R. D. Bain, and by December both men claimed the right to collect the 1916 taxes. Rosemond's side won a temporary order stopping Bain's collections, arguing that putting the sheriff on salary had ended the commission plan, while Bain held that he had given bond for those taxes. In January 1917 the new commissioners moved to remove the superintendent of the county home, and the News reported they had asked two Democrats to give up their offices. StorylineConsolidation and desegregation in the Orange County Schools1917–1968 · 180 events · In 1917 Orange County ran 42 one-teacher schools. From 1919 its board closed small schools and merged them into larger ones such as Aycock and Efland, ordering its first buses in 1924 and selling the closed schoolhouses, while keeping separate schools for Black and white pupils. Sixty-six Black parents petitioned against segregated schools in 1964; the county answered with freedom of choice until 1968, when Central High students marched and the county schools integrated. StorylineLiberty Loans in Orange County, 1917–19191917–1919 · 9 events · Orange County passed its allotments in the later Liberty Loan drives of 1917 to 1919, and women's committees raised much of the money. Hillsborough banker Paul C. Collins chaired the county men's committee for all four loans. For the second, a women's committee under Mrs. James H. Webb raised $79,800. In the third, with Harriet M. Berry as county chairman, women organized in every township made $59,600 of the county's $99,150 in sales. Influenza called off a Liberty Day meeting in 1918, but Orange passed its fourth-loan allotment, and a committee of Black residents in Hillsborough Township raised $1,350 from 27 Black subscribers. In May 1919 the county passed its Victory Liberty Loan allotment too. StorylineOrange County in the First World War, 1917–19191917–1919 · 117 events · Orange County organized for the war in 1917. A county Red Cross chapter under John W. Graham, with branches and auxiliaries in Chapel Hill, Hillsborough, rural communities and Black churches, knitted for soldiers and shipped relief clothing; women's committees sold Liberty bonds; and the university's students drilled and in 1918 came under the Students' Army Training Corps. The county's war record lists 23 Orange County servicemen who died. StorylineOrange County’s first draft, 19171917 · 8 events · Orange County's part in the first draft of 1917 ran from a festive registration day to the departure of seven picked men in September. On June 5, 1917, 1,503 Orange County men registered, and Chapel Hill led its registrants in a parade. The county's share of the first draft was 141 men. At a benefit for the Damascus school an entertainer billed as Uncle Josh said the government could not force anyone to leave the country to fight. The county exemption board summoned the first 400 men drawn, then picked seven to leave for Camp Jackson, South Carolina. On Labor Day the county gave its drafted men a dinner for white men and a separate dinner for Black men. StorylineOrange County's welfare superintendents, 1919–19611919–1961 · 7 events · Orange County's welfare department began under the school superintendent and worked for years with little staff. After a 1919 law required every county to have a welfare board, the commissioners and school board made school superintendent R. H. Claytor the first welfare superintendent. George H. Lawrence became the first full-time superintendent in 1928 and for years worked with only a part-time clerk. In 1954 Annie Strowd resigned weeks after the commissioners refused her department's requests for pay raises and a casework supervisor. Her successor, Jane Parker, left in 1956 for a Durham agency and returned in 1957 after the commissioners raised the salary. She retired in 1961, and Mrs. Creighton Bunn was superintendent by March. StorylineBig farms sold in small tracts, 1919–19231919–1923 · 3 events · Between 1919 and 1923 three big Orange County farms were broken up and sold at auction in smaller tracts. On July 12, 1919 the 508-acre Williams-Snipes farm near Carrboro sold in tracts laid off by a Greensboro realty company, and Professor H. H. Williams of the University bought most of it. That October the New Hope Valley tobacco farm east of Chapel Hill, owned by Maynard Mangum of Durham, was auctioned as sixteen farms and brought $98,260.70. On November 22, 1923 Julian Carr's Occoneechee Farm near Hillsboro was sold at auction in small farms along the Durham-Greensboro highway, with its personal property; Carr had already sold his Holstein herd to Chapel Hill dairyman C. H. Weaver. StorylineConsolidating the rural schools and hauling the children, 1919–19261919–1926 · 32 events · Between 1919 and 1926 Orange County closed many of its small country schools and began carrying the children by truck and bus to larger ones. The Chapel Hill Graded School had a Ford truck for country children by 1919, and in 1923 superintendent Claytor began folding the county's one- and two-teacher schools into larger ones. The county board set an order for new buildings at Efland, White Cross, the Orange County Training School, Orange Grove and Caldwell, ordered its first school buses in 1924 and sold the emptied schoolhouses. By April 1926 the county had put up seven brick consolidated schools since 1922, including the Orange County Training School for Black pupils, and ran 24 buses. StorylineDairying and clean milk around Chapel Hill, 1920–19321920–1932 · 8 events · Falling cotton prices and the boll weevil turned farmers in southern Orange County to dairying in the 1920s, and the price of Chapel Hill's milk twice went before citizens' committees. After the high school's agriculture teacher helped 37 farmers buy purebred Jersey cattle, they formed a breeders' club. By 1927 C. H. Weaver had built a pasteurizing plant at his Oak Grove Dairy, and a government inspector tested more than 400 cows for tuberculosis. When the dairymen together raised milk from 15 to 20 cents a quart in 1928, wide protest brought agreement on 17 1/2 cents. In 1932 a second committee recommended 12 1/2 cents, though the aldermen set no price. StorylineSchool dental clinics in Orange County, 1920–19401920–1940 · 7 events · From 1920 to 1940 Orange County schoolchildren received free or reduced-fee dental care through clinics backed by the State Board of Health, civic clubs and the Red Cross. In January 1920 state school dentist A. M. Schultz treated 75 children free at Chapel Hill High School, then set up a county clinic at Hillsboro. From about 1928 Dr. J. P. Jones ran a clinic for Chapel Hill school children for the Kiwanis Club. By May 1935 a clinic at the Chapel Hill school for Black children had treated 340 children, with Black residents raising $100 of its cost. From 1936 Dr. I. A. Daves of the State Board of Health toured the county's Black schools, reaching every one by 1940. StorylineCounty school finance and the special tax districts, 1923–19241923–1924 · 5 events · In 1923 Orange County began its first round of school consolidation and, for the first time by Lefler and Wager's account, funded its school deficits with bonds. Robert Hume Claytor folded one- and two-teacher schools into larger ones and sought local tax elections. In August the commissioners voted six percent bonds to pay debts the Board of Education had run up to keep a six-month term, and called school tax elections in the Carrboro district and part of Cedar Grove Township. In April 1924 the county board moved building money to Efland, which had a local tax, an eight-month term and a paved road for school trucks, and put it first in the building order. StorylineBreeding and testing the county's dairy cattle and poultry, 1923–19271923–1927 · 10 events · In 1923 the Bank of Chapel Hill backed the Chapel Hill high school's purebred Jersey program, and that fall Jersey owners in the southern half of the county formed a breeders' club. Federal inspectors found no tuberculosis in the town's dairy herds that summer, a result the Weekly credited to the town's testing rule. In 1924 the first county poultry show formed a poultry breeders' association, and in 1925 the Lloyds' large incubator at Sunnyside began hatching farmers' eggs. That year the county joined the federal and state campaign to rid its cattle of tuberculosis and Chapel Hill began grading its dairies under the state milk ordinance, and in 1927 a federal inspector tested more than 400 cows in the town's dairies. StorylineSelling the county’s farm produce, 1923–19261923–1926 · 9 events · Cream routes run by the Chapel Hill school's agriculture department grew from about 20 pounds of sour cream a week in 1922 to more than 500 in the spring of 1924, all of it sold to the Burlington creamery, and in March 1924 the agriculture teacher R. P. Harris shipped pure-bred eggs out of the county, the first such sale, the Weekly said. That fall the county commissioners paid a driver and the school board lent a revolving fund for a farmers' marketing truck, which sold $2,402 of poultry, eggs, butter and other produce in October. In 1926 the county's sweet cream and poultry producers reported a net profit of $5,151 for six months, and farms around Chapel Hill were supplying much of the cream for Durham's ice cream companies. StorylineThe county home for the aged and infirm, 1924–19411924–1941 · 8 events · Grand juries urged Orange County to replace its county home for the aged and infirm, far from the county seat, and the home closed in 1941 once most of its residents qualified for old age assistance. In 1924 a grand jury asked for a modern home on the highway nearer Hillsboro, and in August 1928 another condemned the buildings as unfit for human habitation. That October George Lawrence described them in the Chapel Hill Weekly: two narrow brick buildings north of Efland, heated by fireplaces and lit by kerosene, with no plumbing. At the closing the last residents were boarded with relatives and friends at county expense, and on October 4, 1941 the county auctioned the home and its farm. StorylineTown and county budgets and tax rates, 1925–19321925–1932 · 16 events · What a Chapel Hill taxpayer paid in town and county taxes together fell from $2.69 on $100 of valuation in 1926 to $2.22 in 1932. In January 1926 the Orange County rate was $1.34, up from 90 cents in 1922, and the aldermen held the town rate at $1.38 through 1928; new state school and highway aid helped lower the county rate in 1929. From July 1, 1931 the state took over Orange's roads, which county accountant G. W. Ray said wiped out the county's 25-cent road tax, and that July the aldermen cut town employees' pay 10 percent. In 1932 the aldermen adopted a smaller town budget and the commissioners set the county rate at 80 cents. StorylineThe Orange County Civic Association, 19281928 · 3 events · On February 10, 1928 citizens from around Orange County formed the Orange County Civic Association, a nonpartisan group to gather and publish facts about county government, with E. C. Branson as chairman and Paul W. Wager as secretary. In March the association looked into the cost of school buses, hearing that the county had paid $37,828 for buses since 1922; members split between cutting bus service and improving the roads that wrecked the buses. In April it took up the roads themselves, agreeing that they were in poor shape and that the year's $42,000 for maintenance was spread too thin over about 800 miles. Commissioners proposed classing the roads by traffic. StorylineOrange County in the 1928 election and the new county board, 1928–19291928–1929 · 8 events · Herbert Hoover carried Orange County over Alfred E. Smith in November 1928, 2,564 to 1,800, though Chapel Hill went for Smith and Carrboro for Hoover. When the defeated Republican congressional candidate, Junius Harden, charged that hundreds of students had voted illegally in Chapel Hill, officials of both parties said the student voters were legally qualified. W. T. Sloan was elected sheriff, and for the first time, the Weekly noted, all three county commissioners came from the Chapel Hill end of the county. Chairman George Johnston, sworn in at his bedside, resigned because of illness; John Hanner, appointed in his place, became chairman in January 1929, and Johnston died on January 13. StorylineSoil conservation in Orange County, 1929–19391929–1939 · 4 events · In July 1935 the federal Soil Erosion Service estimated that erosion had cost Orange County the value of 26,300 acres. Work against it had begun in January 1929, when the new farm agent, Don S. Matheson, held a terracing school for 25 farmers (terraces are low ridges run level across a slope to slow runoff). The county commissioners then bought a Diesel-powered terracing outfit and rented it to farmers, and by the end of October it had terraced 836 acres on 54 farms. In February 1939 county voters approved joining the Neuse River Soil Conservation District, and federal farm planning began that year. By June 1953 plans covered 1,265 farms and about 142,000 acres. StorylineRelief in Orange County as the Depression deepens, 1929–19331929–1933 · 47 events · When the Depression began, Orange County had no health department, no public health nurse and no hospital of its own, and welfare superintendent George H. Lawrence's list of families in dire need grew from 30 to about 60 by December 1929. The commissioners matched private gifts for an emergency health fund, and the Kiwanis Club, the King's Daughters and the Daily Tar Heel took up relief. In 1930 the county said its funds could not meet emergency relief, and Chapel Hill set up an unemployment committee under Howard W. Odum. In September 1932 the commissioners, short of money, cut off county relief to every family with an able-bodied man, and federal relief allotments began that October. StorylineOrange County's property revaluations, 1930–19631930–1963 · 13 events · Orange County passed over a general revaluation of property for taxes in 1937 and postponed one in 1945, and when it hired professional appraisers, the county's valuation rose by about 89 percent. Assessors were appointed in 1930 for a 1931 revaluation. In 1937 the commissioners chose a review of the tax lists instead of a general revaluation, and in 1945 the wartime labor shortage postponed another. In 1947 a board of assessors inspected nearly every tract, and the valuation was raised. In 1952 the commissioners hired the J. M. Cleminshaw Company to revalue all property at market value, and some 40 citizens protested its values in 1954. In 1963 Associated Surveys of Greensboro began the next ten-year revaluation. StorylineAdult literacy classes in Orange County, 1931–19391931–1939 · 5 events · In 1939 the county's adult education council counted 530 white and 1,106 Black adults in Orange who could not read and write, and night classes had been working to reach them since 1931. They grew from a two-week course in Chapel Hill in July 1931, taught by Eva Edgerton of the High Point night schools, whose students started the Carrboro Night School for Adults. In the year to December 1939 the council held classes for 637 adult students in Carrboro, the McFarland community and around Hillsborough. By November 1939 Black adults met weekly at Rock Hill Baptist Church, taught by volunteers from the Orange County Training School, though the congregation had no money to heat the building. StorylineRural electrification and Piedmont Electric, 1933–19641933–1964 · 40 events · Rural power in Orange County began in 1933 with a three-mile federally funded line from Chapel Hill to Calvander, carried on to Orange Grove with farmers' donations. The Piedmont Electric Membership Corporation, a cooperative formed under the Rural Electrification Administration, was incorporated in 1938 and energized its first lines from a Hillsborough substation in 1939. It took bids for 150 miles of new lines in 1945, had 1,271 members in 1947, when its manager reckoned that 65 percent of Orange farms had electricity, and built its Hillsborough headquarters in 1949 with an REA loan; by 1953 it ran about 1,100 miles of line. At its silver anniversary meeting in June 1964 Piedmont Electric reported 6,300 members in six counties, against 356 in three counties in 1939. StorylineBeer, repeal and the 1933 liquor vote1933 · 5 events · In 1933 Chapel Hill and Orange County split over alcohol. Restaurants in Chapel Hill, where a law had barred alcohol within four miles of the University since the early 1800s, began selling legal beer on May 1, and the county issued 18 retail beer licenses, 10 of them in Chapel Hill. That fall advocates of repealing the 18th Amendment nominated Collier Cobb Jr. for Orange's one seat in the state convention, and the dry forces named J. J. Ward. On November 7 Orange voted 1,169 to 807 against a convention. Chapel Hill was the only precinct for repeal, while Carrboro voted heavily against. The state went dry by a wide margin, so the convention was never held. StorylineThe New Deal in Orange County, 1933–19361933–1936 · 25 events · Families asking relief in Orange County peaked at 900 in March 1933; from that summer federal programs reached the county, which had to share their cost. George H. Lawrence ran Civil Works projects that by December 1 employed more than 200 men, and 851 Orange farmers were under federal AAA contracts. Cuts in relief money halted work projects in 1934 and 1935, and Orange was merged into a five-county relief district run from Durham. The Works Progress Administration then gave jobs to all but 24 of the families on the old relief list. By December 1936 Lawrence said any able-bodied man who tried could get work, and the need that remained was among widows, orphans, the old and the sick. StorylineThe Civil Works Administration in Orange County, 1933–19341933–1934 · 12 events · In November 1933 the county relief director, George H. Lawrence, took charge of the new Civil Works Administration in Orange County, and by December 1 more than 200 men were at work on University and other projects. Crews rebuilt Hillsborough's courthouse square with stone from the old jail, began the Confederate Memorial Library, worked on Chapel Hill's streets and sidewalks, straightened Bolin's Creek and painted county schools. In February 1934 orders from Raleigh cut the county's force from 766 to 375 in nine days, dropping county road and school projects. On March 31 the Civil Works Administration went out of existence, leaving Lawrence only a few relief men to keep Chapel Hill's streets and the University's rebuilt tennis courts going. StorylineOrange County’s PWA school building program, 1935–19361935–1936 · 29 events · In 1935 Orange County sought Public Works Administration money for school buildings, with the government to grant 45 per cent, and the size of the county's own share decided how much got built. A $471,000 application was approved, but the commissioners limited the county's share to $150,000, cutting the program to $272,000. When bids ran above estimates they raised the share to $190,000 and cut the new Hillsboro school for Black children and the Training School addition. The school board kept the Training School on its site despite a petition from some of Chapel Hill's Black residents. By May 1936 ten projects were under way, and the new Chapel Hill high school opened in October 1936. StorylineHome demonstration and 4-H clubs in Orange County, 1935–19391935–1939 · 7 events · Home demonstration work, the teaching of homemaking to farm women and girls by a county agent, began in Orange in September 1935, when no county school but Hillsboro's taught home economics. Grace Holcombe, hired jointly by Orange and Chatham counties, led it. That month women of New Hope and Blackwood Station organized what the Weekly called the county's first club, and Fairfield women the second. Holcombe organized girls' 4-H clubs that fall, and by May 1936 there were seven clubs with 106 members and ten girls' 4-H clubs with 231. The boys' 4-H clubs were reorganized in 1938, Woodward Byars succeeded Holcombe by 1939, and by 1941 the county had 17 home demonstration clubs. StorylineOrange County’s elections of 1936, 1938 and 19401936–1940 · 10 events · In the 1936 Democratic primary for governor Orange County stood by its native son, A. H. (Sandy) Graham, giving him 2,754 votes to 817 for Ralph McDonald and 230 for Clyde Hoey. In the July runoff the county went for Hoey, and B. J. Howard of Chapel Hill won the runoff for the state House. In 1938 Carl T. Durham became the Democratic nominee for Congress, the county executive committee voted 7 to 6 for Collier Cobb Jr. to take Durham's place on the commissioners ticket, and every Democrat on the county ticket won by a wide margin. In 1940 three Chapel Hill candidates entered the Democratic primary for the House, and the election board chose to re-list voters. StorylineSocial Security comes to Orange County, 1937–19381937–1938 · 12 events · The new state social security law brought Orange County its first old-age assistance checks in 1937, and a higher county tax rate to pay for them. The law required a full-time welfare superintendent in every county, and W. T. Mattox succeeded George H. Lawrence, who would not leave the University faculty. The new Board of Public Welfare, with C. A. McDade as a Black member, announced that old-age assistance would go only to those in need. The county budget added a welfare fund that included federal and state money, and in August the county delivered its first checks, to 29 people, and raised its tax rate 7 cents for the new payments, the Weekly reported. StorylineCurb markets and community canneries, 1937–19611937–1961 · 17 events · Orange County farm women opened a curb market in Carrboro in September 1937 with the county home demonstration agent and moved it to Chapel Hill the next January. Government-sponsored community canneries, where families came to can meats and vegetables, opened at White Cross in 1943 and at the Hillsborough school in 1944. The women's market's sellers took in $30,280 in its seventh year and $40,004 in its eighth, and in May 1945 Black farm families opened the Orange County Negro Curb Market on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. Another cannery was being finished at Aycock School in 1947. The Chapel Hill women's market, in the old church building on North Columbia Street by 1954, marked its twentieth anniversary in October 1957. In August 1961 the market's 16 sellers from the county home demonstration clubs moved into a new block building beside Brady McLennan's Durham Road restaurant. StorylineChapel Hill and Orange County tax rates, 1938–19451938–1945 · 8 events · Welfare costs and lost revenue pushed the Orange County tax rate up in 1938, and it came down again later. In July 1938 the commissioners raised the county rate from 95 cents to $1 on the $100, as the welfare fund rose to meet Social Security requirements and revenue from intangibles, now taxed by the state, fell; with the town rate held, a Chapel Hill owner paid $2.65. In 1942 the commissioners cut the county rate to 95 cents, a cut the Weekly credited mainly to a rise in total assessments, and a Chapel Hill owner's combined rate fell to $2.50. The county rate was set at 88 cents in 1943 and kept there in 1944 and 1945. StorylineABC stores and liquor by the drink in Orange County, 1938–19781938–1978 · 35 events · After Orange County voters turned down ABC (Alcoholic Beverage Control) liquor stores in 1938, efforts to bring the question back failed for years; in 1955 the commissioners refused the Chapel Hill PTA's request for a countywide vote. In September 1958, on petitions with 1,049 names, the board set the county's first liquor vote since 1938. Despite a dry campaign through the churches, the county voted for the stores on February 3, 1959, carried by the Chapel Hill precincts and by Hillsboro. Stores opened in 1959 and 1961, and in 1964 the ABC board voted for a second Chapel Hill-area store over opposition from university officials, ministers and the Carrboro town board. The state board turned down the West Rosemary Street site chosen for it in January 1965. Orange County voted for liquor by the drink in a 1973 statewide referendum that failed, and when a 1978 state law allowed a local vote, the county approved mixed drinks; Chapel Hill restaurants began serving them that November. StorylineOrange County’s home front in the Second World War1940–1946 · 151 events · From 1940 to 1945 Orange County was drawn into the Second World War. Red Cross women sewed garments for Britain and later made surgical dressings, a record 2,507 of them in Hillsborough on D-Day. The draft board sent men into the Army from 1940, and by late October 1945 it counted 3,110 drafted. Farm families, schools and civic clubs pledged or sold war bonds and gathered scrap, and the county more than doubled its quota in the Seventh War Loan. Carrboro's munitions plant loaded shells for the Navy, and German prisoners of war worked Orange farms in 1945. The county marked V-E Day quietly, while Chapel Hill celebrated the end of the war with Japan on Franklin Street. StorylineSelective service in Orange County, 1940–19461940–1946 · 17 events · Orange County's draft board, named by Governor Clyde Hoey in October 1940, had drafted 3,110 men by the fall of 1945. On October 16, 1940 more than 3,800 men registered across the county, 368 of them at Chapel Hill's Black Elks Lodge. Nine volunteers more than filled the county's 1940 call, and in December three of them went to Fort Bragg, the men the Weekly called the county's first soldiers in the new draft. In April 1944, after new rules ended many farm deferments, the board sent 302 men for preinduction examinations, its largest group yet. In January 1946 Governor R. Gregg Cherry honored Garland O. Reitzel, A. C. Pickard and S. W. Hughes for their service. StorylineRed Cross war fund drives in Orange County, 1941–19451941–1945 · 6 events · Orange County's Red Cross war fund drives started slowly after Pearl Harbor and ended above their goals. In December 1941 Chapel Hill chapter leaders pledged to raise the community's $3,000 share of the national war fund, but gifts came slowly, and in March the paper warned the town might fall short. The separate Orange County chapter met its quota early. In Hillsborough, John B. Midgett led drives that passed their quotas in 1943 and 1944, his canvass reaching the Black residential and rural sections and the mills. In 1945 both chapters passed their quotas, Chapel Hill's reaching $15,413.59 against a $13,300 goal, with gifts from the Navy Pre-Flight School and from the Carrboro munitions plant and its workers. StorylineOrange County's war loan drives, 1942–19451942–1945 · 12 events · From farm families pledging a pig or an acre of crops in 1942 to the Victory Loan of 1945, Orange County kept buying war bonds, and it passed its quota in each drive from the Fourth War Loan on. In 1942 rural families pledged $50,000 in bonds and stamps for the year. The Fourth War Loan of 1944, under county chairman J. Maryon Saunders of Chapel Hill, passed its $540,000 quota by mid-February, helped by a $25,000 county investment, though E bond sales lagged. The county went over in the Fifth and Sixth loans, and in 1945 the Seventh closed at $1,308,000 against a $574,000 quota. Saunders counted $6,120,000 in bonds bought in the seven drives he led. StorylineShort wartime school days, 1943–19441943–1944 · 3 events · Wartime farm work shaped Orange County's school hours in 1943 and 1944. In August 1943 Superintendent R. H. Claytor announced that most county schools would run from 8:15 to 1:15 for the first six weeks so children could help on farms. Chapel Hill's schools ran a wartime short day from 8 to 1. In November, 99 of 160 parents favored a day from 8:40 to 2, but on November 16 the Chapel Hill school board put an 8:45 to 3:15 schedule into effect, against most parents' wishes. By May 1944 all Orange County schools had gone on a short schedule, after young farmers were drafted and heavy spring rains delayed the crop year. StorylineVeterans’ organizations in Orange County, 1943–19581943–1958 · 29 events · Between 1943 and 1958 Orange County's veterans organized posts in each town, and Black veterans formed their own, in Chapel Hill in 1944 and in Hillsboro in 1947. Chapel Hill's American Legion post drew many protests in 1943 for a traveling carnival with a strip act and gambling games, and editor Louis Graves, a Legion member, criticized the post. Hillsborough veterans organized Post No. 85 in 1944. After the war came a Carrboro Legion post, the county's first two Veterans of Foreign Wars posts, a Marine Corps League post and a county veterans' service office. In 1955 Chapel Hill's Paul Robertson became the Legion's state commander, and in 1958 fire gutted Hillsboro's Legion hut, which reopened in 1959. StorylinePolio and vaccination1944–1964 · 29 events · Polio closed the county’s schools in 1944 and 1948, the University pool in 1950 and two UNC football games in 1952, and the county’s polio chapter bought iron lungs. The first Salk vaccinations reached first and second graders in 1955, and more than 25,000 residents took the Sabin oral vaccine on one Sunday in 1964. StorylineSchools and a new courthouse: the county bonds, 1947–19541947–1954 · 65 events · In 1947 Orange County's commissioners and school board put a $1,045,000 bond issue for school buildings, a county office building and a remodeled courthouse before the voters, who turned down all three questions on June 10. In October 1948 the two boards named a fifteen-member citizens' committee to study the county's needs. Its February 1949 report, hearings on every school's needs, and grand juries that condemned the courthouse led to a vote on November 22, 1949 that approved $1.25 million in bonds for new and enlarged schools and a new courthouse. Masons laid the new courthouse's cornerstone in October 1953, and it opened on October 4, 1954. StorylinePaving the rural roads, 1949June–December 1949 · 17 events · On June 4, 1949 Orange County voters approved Governor Kerr Scott's $200 million secondary road bonds, 2,450 to 1,743, though the Hillsboro precinct voted them down. In September a mass meeting called by the Pomona Grange set up a countywide steering committee and township committees to choose the roads to be paved. The Highway Commission let the first two Orange paving contracts in October, and in December highway commissioner James A. Barnwell chose 42.9 miles for the first phase and the county commissioners endorsed ten projects totaling 39.7 miles. StorylineFire protection for the countryside, 1951–19641951–1964 · 17 events · When Chapel Hill's fire department stopped answering most calls outside town in January 1951, people in the countryside began arranging fire protection of their own. Rural residents around Hillsboro, whose truck already stayed near town, formed the Orange Fire Protective Association, raised money by memberships and had a truck by March 1951, crewed by the town's volunteer firemen. Carrboro offered contracts to property owners around town in 1954. Around Chapel Hill, voters approved a tax-supported fire district 188 to 9 in 1955, and in 1956 Chapel Hill agreed to protect the district in return for its fire tax. In 1964 the county set up an Orange Fire Commission to regulate the departments receiving county aid. StorylineThe Rural Progress Program and its successors, 1951–19591951–1959 · 21 events · Orange County joined the state Rural Progress campaign in September 1951, aiming to add $1,000 to each farm family's income and to improve every home and community. County workers enlisted more than 100 white neighborhood leaders and Black captains to survey farm families, and Lincoln High's agriculture department began the program among Black families around Chapel Hill. Separate prize nights for white and Black farm families followed each year. Orange was named the state's County of the Year in December 1953 and won the division for Black families in February 1954. Successor programs followed in 1955 and 1957, and Cedar Grove won the silver loving cup for Black families in 1957 and 1958. StorylineThe five-member county board, 1953–19561953–1956 · 8 events · In January 1953 rural residents brought petitions with about 940 names asking that the county commissioners and the board of education each be enlarged from three to five members. After a heated hearing on February 2 the commissioners voted 2 to 1 to ask for a five-member board elected at large, without the one-per-township rule the petitioners wanted, and the General Assembly passed the local act that March. The first primary for five seats came in May 1954, voters filled the enlarged board that November, and the first five-member board took office on December 6, 1954, electing R. J. M. Hobbs chairman. In 1956 the commissioners asked the legislature to limit the board to two members from any one township, and after protests from Chapel Hill speakers and the League of Women Voters they reaffirmed the request that November. StorylineChoosing Orange County's sheriff, 1954–19861954–1986 · 12 events · In 1954 Odell H. Clayton won a Democratic runoff to succeed Sheriff S. T. Latta, and when he died in office in 1959 the commissioners appointed his deputy C. D. (Buck) Knight. Knight faced challengers in 1974 and 1978, when the Daily Tar Heel called Harriet B. Alford the first woman candidate for sheriff. In 1982 Chapel Hill detective captain Lindy Pendergrass won the runoff to succeed him, and the county honored Knight after 23 years as sheriff. Pendergrass was re-elected in 1986 over the only Republican in any county race. StorylineThe 1956 school bonds and what they built, 1955–19581955–1958 · 14 events · In 1955 commissioners' chairman R. J. M. Hobbs asked the county and Chapel Hill school boards to plan for a large bond election, and the board called a vote on $2 million in school bonds, divided among the county schools, Carrboro and the Chapel Hill unit. At the February 1956 hearing two Hillsboro men objected, citing the uncertainty left by the Supreme Court's school decision; Remus J. Smith Sr. answered that the classrooms would be needed even if segregation ended. Voters approved the bonds on March 27, 1956. The county board put a new Carrboro school first and that fall adopted a $1.17 million building program, and contracts for work from Carrboro to Efland followed through 1958. StorylineInterstate 85 comes to northern Orange County, 1955–19621955–1962 · 22 events · Rebuilding US 70 to interstate standards through northern Orange County meant a road that would bypass Efland, Hillsboro and University Station, and at a 1957 hearing landowners on the new route and businesses on old Highway 70 protested. In 1956 the Highway Commission had decided to rebuild the road as a limited-access highway, with the new federal road act paying 90 percent, and federal officials approved a route south of Hillsboro. Contracts for the stretch south of Hillsboro were let in November 1957. Near the new Interstate 85 James Freeland built a motel, the General Sherman Restaurant and the county's fourth ABC store, a government liquor store, in 1960 and 1961, and in 1962 the Dixie Motor Inn. StorylineThe Pearsall Plan in Orange County, 1956–19611956–1961 · 6 events · In 1956 Chapel Hill's five precincts voted down the Pearsall Plan, apparently the only small community in the state to do so, while Orange County as a whole approved it 3,359 to 1,784. The amendment allowed local votes to close schools and tuition grants for private schools to avoid integration. Former state senator Irving Carlyle attacked it at a University forum, and school board member Clarence D. Jones called the tuition grants unfair, while Representative John W. Umstead backed it, saying it kept the question away from extremists on both sides. In 1961 the Chapel Hill school board recommended a tuition grant for a Carrboro parent's two daughters, which the News called the state's first formal application. StorylineOrange County’s first county-wide zoning plan, 1960–19671960–1967 · 5 events · A plan to zone Orange County's rural areas, begun in 1960 when Granges and other groups petitioned the commissioners, drew protests at eight community meetings, loudest in Eno Township, where residents gave commissioners chairman Donald Stanford rough treatment. In February 1962 opponents met at Palmer's Grove to hear Durham attorney Blackwell Brogden, whom they had engaged, speak against zoning outside Hillsboro. That March the county Planning Board agreed to review and simplify the whole ordinance, and the Orange County Farm Bureau's directors opposed it 'in its present form', with president Oscar Compton objecting to its sign limits for farm produce and its lot sizes. In 1967 the county adopted a zoning ordinance for Chapel Hill Township. StorylineCane Creek Reservoir and Bingham Township1961 to 1989 · 65 events · From the first engineering studies of 1961 to the filling of the reservoir in 1989: OWASA's Cane Creek Reservoir, the watershed land purchases, and the Bingham Township farm families displaced. StorylineSpeaker Ban controversy, 1962–19681962–1968 · 60 events · In October 1962 the Division Three area of the state American Legion, meeting in Chapel Hill, endorsed a Chapel Hill post resolution by Col. Henry E. Royall asking for an investigation of possible leftist influences on the UNC campus. The General Assembly passed the Speaker Ban on June 26, 1963, barring known Communists and people who had pleaded the Fifth Amendment from speaking on state campuses. In March 1966 Frank Wilkinson and Herbert Aptheker spoke to UNC students from the Franklin Street side of the wall, and a federal court struck the law down on February 19, 1968. StorylineOrange County’s House seat changes hands, 19631963 · 6 events · Orange County lost its member of the General Assembly twice in 1963. John W. Umstead Jr. was ill from the first day of the session and stepped down by mid-March, and the county Democratic Executive Committee unanimously chose Recorder's Court judge L. J. Phipps to succeed him. Phipps took the oath on March 18. On June 22 the state American Legion elected him department commander, and because the Legion barred its commander from elective office he gave up the House seat, leaving Orange without a representative. On September 3 the county executive committee nominated Edwin J. Hamlin, publisher of the News of Orange County, by 28 to 27, and Governor Terry Sanford appointed him on September 10. StorylineThe Klan in Orange County, 1964–19881964–1988 · 10 events · Between 1964 and 1968 the Ku Klux Klan held rallies with cross burnings east of Chapel Hill and near Hillsborough, called a night rally beside Interstate 85 and gathered off Highway 54 west of Carrboro. In 1965 a House committee named the Sportsman's Lakeside Lodge as the Klan organization in Orange County, and the sheriff reported three recent Klan meetings in the county. That December Congressman Charles Weltner urged an audience of about 1,700 in Memorial Hall to stop supporting the Klan. In 1987 Klan members marched on Franklin Street beside numerous protesters, and in 1988 about 50 marched through Hillsborough and rallied at the courthouse before a crowd of hecklers. StorylineOrange County’s antipoverty program and JOCCA, 1964–19821964–1982 · 9 events · Orange County's antipoverty program began in 1964 with a slow start for Community Action, Inc., a proposed privately financed biracial corporation meant to work on Chapel Hill's racial and economic problems. In April the county commissioners, while saying they favored its aims, put off endorsing it over objections to the makeup of its 18-member board. By mid-May the commissioners and the Chapel Hill aldermen had named members, and in June Carrboro's commissioners voted 3 to 2 to take part. In September the county commissioners unanimously created an Economic Opportunity Act advisory committee to plan a county program and seek federal funds, and in October they named its fifteen members. Joint Orange-Chatham Community Action (JOCCA), created in 1966, set up a rural health service that began in 1970, and Gloria Williams directed JOCCA in the 1980s and 1990s. StorylineOrange County's school and water bonds, 1966–19671966–1967 · 3 events · In the fall of 1966 the Orange County commissioners postponed a $3 million school bond election, expecting it to fail, and a $650,000 water and sewer bond vote was moved to December. In 1967 voters approved $3 million in school bonds, $1 million for the county schools and $2 million for Chapel Hill's. StorylineHealth care across language and immigration1967–2024 · 13 events · From the student-run SHAC clinic of 1967 to UNC’s interpreter services, the CAMPOS program and the Center for Latino Health of 2008, care for the county’s newcomers has grown with its languages, and the health department was serving clients in almost 20 languages by 2014. El Futuro’s bilingual mental health work in Carrboro and the refugee wellness program of 2015 carry it on. StorylineProtecting the water-supply watersheds, 1968–19901968–1990 · 27 events · Chapel Hill asked the county in 1968 to limit building on the University Lake watershed, and in 1973 county officials heard warnings that dense building there would pollute it. In 1981 the county commissioners restricted subdivisions in the University Lake and Upper Eno watersheds. Carrboro amended its land use ordinance to protect University Lake in 1983, and in 1984 the county took comment on protected areas around University Lake and the proposed Cane Creek watershed. From 1986 the Amberly subdivision tested the watershed rules: Carrboro annexed and zoned it in 1987 over a residents' suit, OWASA halted new water and sewer lines into the watershed, and in 1989 the state refused a permit for the subdivision's private sewage plant. In 1990 the county eased its interim lot rule for the University Lake watershed, and about 300 people came to a hearing on permanent limits that landowners opposed. StorylineFiber Industries and New Hope Creek, 19691969 · 4 events · In the summer of 1969 Fiber Industries asked Orange County to rezone 450 acres near New Hope Creek for a $100 million plant. Chapel Hill's aldermen called the site unfortunate, and UNC and Duke scientists warned of pollution, but the county planning board recommended the rezoning. The company withdrew its request in August, and commissioners chairman Carl Smith blamed its opponents, among them Mayor Howard Lee. StorylineObscenity prosecutions and PHE, from Carrboro to Hillsborough, 1971–19941971–1994 · 18 events · In 1971 an Adam & Eve contraceptive shop opened on Columbia Street, which the Daily Tar Heel called the first of its kind in the country. In 1986 District Attorney Carl Fox issued guidelines under the state's new obscenity law, and a federal-state task force raided PHE Inc., the Adam and Eve mail-order company west of Carrboro. In 1990 the company sued the Justice Department over threatened prosecutions in several places at once, and a federal judge barred multiple indictments. Postal inspectors raided PHE again in 1992; no charges were filed. In 1993 Hillsborough's Board of Adjustment refused PHE's move to town, but a judge cleared it, PHE settled its federal case, and it moved into its Hillsborough building in 1994. StorylineChoosing the I-40 route through Orange County, 1971–19891971–1989 · 17 events · Federal highway officials favored a route for Interstate 40 through Orange County in 1971. Chapel Hill's aldermen opposed the route proposed in 1973 and in 1974 resolved to join ECOS in a possible suit, and in 1976 county planners favored carrying I-40 traffic on I-85 instead. After the state approved a route through southern Orange County in 1977, the towns and county sued in 1978; Chapel Hill withdrew and a judge dismissed the suit in 1979, and the county appealed. The interstate through the county, named for Harriet Morehead Berry in 1986, was finished south of Hillsborough in 1988. Gov. Jim Martin opened its first section, between U.S. 15-501 and New Hope Church Road, that September, and in 1989 Chapel Hill put money toward landscaping the new interchanges. StorylineOrange County landfill campaign1972 to 2013 · 69 events · The Eubanks Road landfill opened beside the Rogers Road community in 1972; four decades of expansions, lawsuits and the neighborhood's demands ended with its closure in 2013. StorylineCable television in Orange County, 1972–19941972–1994 · 46 events · Chapel Hill adopted a cable television ordinance in 1972, and Alert Cable TV began serving Hillsborough in 1974. Carrboro's aldermen first approved an Alert franchise in 1975, but after delays over utility poles and sites refused for its equipment, service there began only in August 1979. That November Chapel Hill gave its franchise to Village Cable, and the county moved toward a cable ordinance and advisory committee of its own. Village Cable began serving Chapel Hill in 1980 and won the franchise for most of rural Orange County, and in the years after the town disputed its rates, its adult channels and its stock gift to its foundation. In 1984 Carrboro gave Alert Cable a 15-year franchise with a ban on obscene programs. In 1985 Chapel Hill let Village Cable raise its rates 10 percent a year, and in 1986 the Village Companies sold it to Carolina Cable. In 1992 Chapel Hill named a cable advisory committee and opened its review of Carolina Cable's franchise, which ran to 1994, with a hearing on residents' complaints. Cablevision took over Chapel Hill's service in 1992; in 1993 and 1994 both towns sought federal authority over its rates while Chapel Hill bargained over a franchise renewal amid residents' complaints. StorylineFlora Garrett, Richard Whitted and the county board, 1972–19841972–1984 · 12 events · In 1972 Orange County voters elected Flo Garrett, the first woman elected to the Board of Commissioners, and Richard E. Whitted, its first Black member. After the 1974 election the board chose Garrett as chairman and Whitted as vice chairman and replaced the county attorney, and in 1976 Whitted became the board's first Black chair. That year voters returned Whitted and elected Donald Willhoit, who had won a Democratic runoff. Whitted and Willhoit were re-elected in 1980, and Whitted left the board in 1984 after 12 years. StorylineTaxing the University’s property, 1974–19801974–1980 · 12 events · After a change in state law, Orange County, Chapel Hill and Carrboro began assessing University property not used for teaching in 1974 and 1975, among it the Carolina Inn, Horace Williams Airport and the University's utilities, and the University appealed. In January 1979 the state Property Tax Commission held only about $3 million of it taxable. In June a Superior Court judge ruled that the University owed taxes on about $17.6 million, including its former utilities, but held the airport exempt. In July 1980 the N.C. Supreme Court held that state property could not be taxed whatever its use, ending the six-year effort. StorylineRestricting smoking in Orange County and at UNC, 1975–19941975–1994 · 16 events · UNC's School of Public Health banned smoking in its classrooms in 1975, but after a student vote for a classroom ban Chancellor N. Ferebee Taylor left the matter to the faculty. In 1988 Orange County, the city schools and Carrboro restricted smoking by their employees, and a UNC library and the journalism school went smoke-free in 1989 and 1990. In October 1991 Chapel Hill adopted an ordinance restricting smoking in public places, University buildings included. Before a state cutoff in October 1993 the county board of health, Chapel Hill, Carrboro and UNC all adopted smoking rules, and in 1994 UNC barred smoking in Kenan Stadium's seats. StorylineChapel Hill's planning area, the joint planning agreement, the rural buffer and Southern Village, 1976–19931976–1993 · 29 events · In 1976 Chapel Hill asked Orange County to enlarge the town's planning district, and in 1978 it sought to extend the district north of the airport. County residents and the county planning board opposed the move, and the commissioners offered a smaller area if the town allowed mobile homes there. The town asked for more in 1979, then for legislation, and the two boards deadlocked that March. From 1980 the towns, the county and OWASA worked toward joint planning: Chapel Hill adopted an agreement in 1981 and a joint planning area with the county in 1983, and the three governments signed the Joint Planning Agreement, with its Rural Buffer, in 1987. Carrboro joined the joint planning process in 1986, and both towns adopted the agreement in October 1987 after hearings at which many residents objected. From December 1987 the leaders of the towns and the county met together, and in 1988 Chapel Hill endorsed an Orange County Assembly of Local Governments. In 1992 Chapel Hill sent its plan for the southern area back for affordable housing rules, and the three governments agreed at a joint hearing to amend the joint land use plan for part of it. In July 1993 the council approved Southern Village, a 312-acre community for 1,388 homes off U.S. 15-501. StorylineTown elections and bond votes, 1979–19891979–1989 · 73 events · In November 1979 Chapel Hill elected Joe Nassif mayor over council members Robert Epting and Gerry Cohen and Harold Foster, returned outgoing Mayor James Wallace and two incumbents to the Town Council and added Joe Straley. Its voters approved a fire station bond but rejected a downtown parking deck and the Ridgefield open space purchase. Carrboro re-elected Mayor Robert Drakeford, Hillsborough brought back Fred Cates as mayor, and county voters defeated a $20.4 million bond package, schools included. In 1981 the new Association for a Better Carrboro took three aldermen's seats from the Carrboro Community Coalition while Mayor Drakeford won a third term, and Chapel Hill voters unseated council members Bill Thorpe and Joe Herzenberg. In 1983 Jim Porto was elected Carrboro's mayor as ABC candidates won every aldermen's seat, Chapel Hill re-elected Mayor Nassif and returned Thorpe to the council, and Hillsborough Mayor Lucius Cheshire, beaten by Frank Sheffield, resigned early. In 1985 former mayor Jim Wallace won the office back in a race he called a quasi-referendum on Rosemary Square, and in 1986 Chapel Hill voters approved $11.8 million in bonds, a new library among them. In 1987 Jonathan Howes was elected mayor, Joe Herzenberg won a council seat and Eleanor Kinnaird unseated Carrboro Mayor Jim Porto. In 1989 Howes and Kinnaird were re-elected, and Hillsborough elected Horace Johnson, by the Daily Tar Heel's account its first Black mayor. StorylineOWASA’s quarry reservoir, 1979–19911979–1991 · 5 events · OWASA leased a stone quarry on N.C. 54 in 1979 as a drought reserve, drew on it when University Lake fell in the 1980 drought, and bought the old American Stone Company quarry in 1981. Vandals drained 10 million gallons from it in 1986. In 1991 neighbors objected to a joint application by American Stone and OWASA to expand the company's quarry into a future reservoir of about 3 billion gallons. StorylineCommunity development block grants in Chapel Hill, Carrboro and the county, 1981–19841981–1984 · 8 events · In 1981 HUD approved a $1 million block grant for Orange County's North Fairview community. Under the state-administered grants that followed, the state turned down Chapel Hill's 1982 application because the Housing Authority had been slow to spend earlier money, then in 1983 funded sewer lines and paving in University Heights and a Carrboro business loan. In 1984 Chapel Hill planned for a new federal entitlement grant and Carrboro applied to rebuild the Lloyd and Broad Street area. StorylineCrimestoppers in Orange County, 1981–19931981–1993 · 4 events · Chapel Hill started a Crimestoppers program in 1981, paying rewards for anonymous tips to the police. Orange County Crimestoppers began publicizing one unsolved crime a week in 1984. In 1993, saying many in southern Orange County felt the county line was not theirs, organizers opened Chapel Hill-Carrboro Crimestoppers, a confidential tip line of its own. StorylineOrange County's half-cent sales tax, school bonds and impact tax, 1983–19891983–1989 · 12 events · In 1983 the Orange County commissioners named a task force on school building needs and the new half-cent local sales tax. After a public hearing in March 1984 they adopted the tax 3 to 2 that April, setting aside at least 80 percent of the money for school buildings, and in November they backed a school bond chiefly to replace Stanback Middle School. In 1988 voters approved a $30 million bond package, $22 million of it for school buildings, and in 1989 the county sold the first $11.8 million. That April the commissioners withdrew a proposed impact tax on new building for more study after Hillsborough asked to be left out. StorylineHabitat for Humanity of Orange County, 1984–19961984–1996 · 15 events · Habitat for Humanity of Orange County grew from an ecumenical effort begun at Binkley Baptist Church in 1982 and was incorporated in 1984. Its first house went up at Chestnut Oaks, on land given by Access Inc., and in 1987 it finished a home for a Carrboro family the Daily Tar Heel called the first in the county to receive its help. Visiting Soviet students helped raise a house in 1989. In 1991 Habitat raised its 18th house, hired its first paid coordinator and began a Street of Hope at Chestnut Oaks with state and county money, and in 1992 a campus drive began for a house for a UNC staff member. In 1994 it dedicated its 30th house and broke ground for one built entirely by women, and in 1996 two authors signed books to fund another. StorylineAnswering AIDS in Orange County and at UNC, 1985–19941985–1994 · 30 events · Orange County reported one AIDS case in 1985, and in 1986 UNC adopted a policy against excluding people with AIDS and began education programs. In 1987 the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board voted not to bar children with AIDS from school. UNC put condom machines in its buildings in 1989, and that fall a task force dropped a plan for a house for AIDS patients on Taylor Street, saying it first had to incorporate. The AIDS Task Force incorporated in 1990 to open a home for people with AIDS, and a 1991 state grant formed a seven-county HIV care consortium. In 1992 the AIDS Service Agency of Orange County bought a Culbreth Road site for such a house, then applied for one in Carrboro after HUD rejected it. After two years and three applications HUD funded the Carrboro house in September 1993, and the Orange Community Residence went up in 1994. StorylineAffordable homeownership in Chapel Hill and Orange County, 1986–19921986–1992 · 19 events · In 1986 a citizens' task force told Chapel Hill that moderate-income housing could be built at no cost to taxpayers. The town's Tandler project on Legion and Merritt Mill roads, approved in 1987, sold small houses with deferred town second mortgages, made Chapel Hill a federal demonstration city, and by 1989 housed 26 families. Chapel Hill joined a Triangle housing fund, Carrboro formed its own task force, and in 1991 the county created the Orange Community Housing Corporation. In 1992 the town sped review of the corporation's 20 Asheton Hill houses on Erwin Road but delayed the $200,000 it sought for its Erwin Village homes. StorylineOpposing the Shearon Harris nuclear plant, 19861986 · 8 events · In 1986 opposition to the Shearon Harris nuclear plant reached Orange County's elections and town boards. Two challengers who had spoken against the plant unseated county commissioners in the June runoff, and Chapel Hill and Orange County passed resolutions asking that it be converted to another fuel. Restaurants and writers held benefits, students formed a campus chapter of the Coalition for Alternatives to Shearon Harris, and opponents held a vigil when the plant was granted a low-power license in October. StorylineRecycling in Orange County and at UNC, 1986–19941986–1994 · 34 events · Recycling at UNC began with a student pilot in 1986, and curbside pickup began in Chapel Hill and Carrboro in 1988. From 1989 UNC had a recycling office and the county program grew to apartments, drop-off sites, plastics and magazines, though mixed-paper collections stopped twice for lack of a market. The program and UNC's office both won state awards, and Chapel Hill tried weekly pickup from roll-out carts. In 1993 curbside pickup added cans and plastic jugs and UNC began paying departments to buy recycled paper, and by 1994 the county took cardboard at every drop-off site, though a glutted market stopped unmixed paper at University Mall. StorylineOrange County’s civil rights ordinance, 1987–19941987–1994 · 13 events · Orange County's Human Relations Commission, formed in 1987, drafted a civil rights ordinance by 1991, and in 1993 Sen. Howard Lee introduced a bill to let the county enforce one. After residents objected to its threatening-speech clause, the commissioners dropped it. They adopted the ordinance in June 1994 without the sexual-orientation clause gay and lesbian residents sought, and Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Hillsborough brought it into their towns that fall. StorylineOWASA, Chatham County and the Cane Creek water sale, 1988–19921988–1992 · 7 events · In 1988 Chapel Hill asked OWASA to hold off selling Cane Creek Reservoir water to Chatham County until the town and the county agreed on growth planning. In September the Town Council agreed not to annex in Chatham before December 1989 and endorsed the sale, but the OWASA board voted down the council's amendments, and Chatham then rejected the agreement. In November the Orange-Chatham Joint Planning Commission agreed on courtesy reviews of development plans. In 1992 Chatham County asked the Orange County Assembly of Governments to let it buy OWASA water for homes in northern Chatham, and the assembly sent the question back to its member governments. StorylineThe animal research debate at UNC, 1988–19911988–1991 · 5 events · In December 1988 members of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals went to UNC's animal holding farm in western Orange County and alleged mistreatment, which the School of Medicine denied. In 1989 the student group SETA sued to open the University's animal research records, and graduate students formed a coalition to defend research. UNC opened its holding areas to a student tour in 1990, and in January 1991 the N.C. Court of Appeals ordered records released. StorylineSearching for a new county landfill site, 1989–19921989–1992 · 17 events · With the Eubanks Road landfill due to fill by 1997, Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Orange County began searching in 1989 for a new site. A citizens' committee named 15 areas in 1991 and cut them to four, drawing protests over Duke Forest and Eubanks Road and hearings of hundreds of residents. In May 1992 engineers got the go-ahead to drill test holes at the four sites. StorylineLatino migration to Carrboro and Chapel Hill1990 to present · 32 events · Latin American families began arriving in Carrboro and Chapel Hill in the 1990s: the neighborhoods and workplaces that received them, and the institutions they built. StorylineLight rail for the Triangle, 1990–20191990–2019 · 4 events · In January and February 1990 the Chapel Hill Town Council, the Carrboro aldermen and the Orange County commissioners backed studies of a Triangle light rail line on existing tracks, pressed by the Durham group Save the Water as cheaper than new highways and kinder to watersheds. In March 2019 GoTriangle stopped planning the Durham-Orange light rail line after Duke University declined to sign needed agreements, and the county ended its work on it. StorylineOrange County in the 1990 election1990 · 9 events · In 1990 Democrats Alice Gordon, Stephen Halkiotis and Verla Insko won three open seats on the Orange County Board of Commissioners. Registration drives signed up thousands of new voters during the Senate race between Jesse Helms and Harvey Gantt, and UNC's campus precincts gave Gantt 84 percent of their vote. Chapel Hill voters narrowly turned down a $3 million library bond. StorylineOrange County in the 1992 election1992 · 14 events · In the 1992 Democratic primary Margaret Pollard finished less than 500 votes behind state senator Howard Lee, and that fall students registered thousands of new voters and Bill Clinton and Al Gore rallied about 2,200 people in Hillsborough. On November 3 turnout reached 67.8 percent, voters approved a $52 million school bond, and commissioners Moses Carey and Don Willhoit and the county's legislators were re-elected. StorylineOrange County in the 1994 election1993–1994 · 11 events · In 1994 Orange County Democrats Alice Gordon, Stephen Halkiotis and newcomer Bill Crowther won the three open county commissioner seats, and Sheriff Lindy Pendergrass won a fourth term. In the Republican wave Sen. Howard Lee lost his state Senate seat and Rep. David Price lost the 4th District though Orange County backed him. Voters also turned down a $5 million farmland preservation bond. StorylineBurmese and Karen refugee communities2005 to present · 23 events · Refugee families from Burma began resettling in Chapel Hill and Carrboro in 2005: the schools, gardens and congregations that grew with them. StorylineCOVID-19 in Orange County, 2020–20222020 to 2022 · 32 events · From the first cases in March 2020 to the last emergency measures in 2022: closures, remote school, the health department's response, mutual aid, and the pandemic's unequal weight.

A selection of 12 events from Orange County’s 3,127 chronology entries, including highlights and examples from different years. See all 3,127 dated events in the chronology →

  1. Herman Husband, the Regulators’ pamphleteer, was born Herman Husband was born in Cecil County, Maryland, to an Anglican family and later became a Quaker. He settled at Sandy Creek, then in Orange County and now in Randolph County, where he reprinted and circulated political pamphlets and became a leading voice of the protest against county officers. People: Herman Husband Also mentions: Sandy CreekSearch the index · Documenting the American South: John Spencer Bassett, The Regulators of North Carolina (1765-1771) (1894), "The Leaders"
  2. Battle of Alamance 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. People: William Tryon, Herman Husband, Robert Palmer, James FewNCpedia
  3. Indian families from Virginia settle the Texas community in northern Orange County Charles Whitmore, Jesse Whitmore and Jacob Jeffries appear on the Orange County return used for the 1790 federal census, which was compiled from a tax list of 1787. Families of the same names had moved southwest from Greensville County in Virginia, and by 1820 the settlement later called Texas, or Pleasant Grove, was intact, with the Corn and Jeffries families holding tracts of several hundred acres. Also named: Charles Whitmore, Jesse Whitmore, Jacob Jeffries · Also mentions: Pleasant GroveExcavating Occaneechi Town (UNC Press): Post-Revolutionary War
  4. The county tax list counts 36 white polls and 82 taxable enslaved people in Hillsborough town Orange County's 1790 tax list returned 2,272 polls and 406,106 acres across its eight districts, with a separate list for Hillsborough town showing 36 white polls against 82 black polls. William Hooper was charged for 22 of them, John Taylor for 10 and Francis Childs for 5. People: William Hooper, Walter Alves Also named: John Taylor, Francis ChildsDocumenting the American South: List of taxpayers in Orange County in 1790
  5. Thomas Ruffin issues the State v. Mann decision Thomas Ruffin of Hillsborough, newly seated on the North Carolina Supreme Court, wrote the opinion in State v. Mann, overturning the conviction of John Mann of Edenton for shooting Lydia, an enslaved woman he had hired, as she fled a whipping. Ruffin held that a master's power must be absolute, and abolitionists later cited the ruling widely. People: Thomas Ruffin, Lydia Also named: John MannAfrican American Intellectual History Society, Black Perspectives: Sally Greene, State v. Mann: Lydia's Journey (February 23, 2022)
  6. Census counts tenants on about a third of Orange County farms Tenants operated 643 of 1,870 Orange County farms in 1930 (34.4 percent), 718 of 1,956 in 1935 (36.7 percent) and 687 of 2,043 in 1940 (33.6 percent). Of the 1940 tenants, 514 were share tenants and croppers. Also mentions: Orange County farmsUS Census of Agriculture 1940: North Carolina County Table II, farms by tenure of operator
  7. District health department holds midwife classes across Orange County Classes for midwives were held at Efland and Hillsboro and began for those in and near Chapel Hill at the health department offices, with attendance required before a permit to practice would be issued. Health officer W. P. Richardson said 17 percent of births in the county were attended by midwives, against 31 percent statewide. People: William P. RichardsonSearch the index · The Chapel Hill Weekly, August 21, 1936, p. 5 (classes for midwives)
  8. Hyconeechee Regional Library is established The three county library systems incorporated as one region to enlarge book collections, run a shared bookmobile and provide trained supervision. The regional board held its second meeting on September 13, 1948 at the Confederate Memorial Library in Hillsboro, with Sydney Green of Orange County as president and Mrs. Douglas Davis as regional librarian. Also named: Sydney Green, Mrs. Douglas Davis · Also mentions: Confederate Memorial LibraryThe News of Orange County (Hillsborough), September 23, 1948, p. 1
  9. Friends of the Orange County Public Library is founded Residents organized the Friends of the Orange County Public Library on November 5, 1981, to raise money and advocate for a county library preparing to move into larger quarters in Hillsborough. The group incorporated on May 3, 1982, and the IRS recognized it as a 501(c)(3) charity in June 1983. Also mentions: Orange County Public LibraryProPublica Nonprofit Explorer: Friends of the Orange County Public Library Inc
  10. Hurricane Fran strikes Orange County Hurricane Fran came ashore on the night of September 5, 1996 and crossed to the Triangle overnight. In Chapel Hill winds topped 70 mph, falling trees caused about 29,000 power outages and UNC cancelled classes, and the Eno at Hillsborough hit a record flow. No one in Orange County was killed.The Daily Tar Heel: front page, September 9, 1996
  11. Refugees from Burma begin arriving in Orange County in larger numbers All 55 refugee direct arrivals recorded in Orange County in fiscal year 2006-2007 came from Burma. A second resettlement agency, the Triangle office of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, opened.UNC Latino Migration Project: Building Integrated Communities in Chapel Hill, NC: Community Perspectives and Recommendations for Local Government (August 2018)
  12. Orange County's clerk of superior court is honored for work in guardianship law Kleinschmidt received the Isabella Award at the National Probate Judges Conference for his contributions to guardianship and probate law. The award is named for judge Isabella Horton Grant and goes to people whose leadership improves guardianship laws, court administration and practice. People: Mark KleinschmidtSearch the index · North Carolina Judicial Branch: Orange County Clerk Mark Kleinschmidt Honored Nationally for Leadership in Guardianship Law

See all 3,127 dated events in the chronology →

The county’s shape through time

Orange County as the legislature drew and redrew it, from the vast county of 1752 to the county of today. Choose a date to see its outline then; the dashed lines are its other shapes.

County outlines: Atlas of Historical County Boundaries, The Newberry Library. Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors.

Maps of Orange County

Dated maps that show this place, oldest first: town plans, county, road and soil maps, fire insurance sheets and the U.S. Geological Survey’s topographic maps, each linked to the library or archive that holds it. The USGS maps are free to download.

  1. A Plan of the Camp and Battle of Alamance, the 16th May 1771. Between the Provincials of North Carolina, Commanded by His Excellency Governor Tryon. and Rebels who styled themselves Regulators. Survey'd and Drawn by C. J. Sauthier. DPLA
  2. Map of Orange County UNC
  3. Property maps of the North Carolina Railroad. No. 3. DPLA
  4. The North Carolina Railroad Map, Book 3 Durham
  5. Map of Orange County, N.C. UNC
  6. Map showing rural free delivery route no. 3 from Chapel Hill, Orange County, N.C. UNC
  7. Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Hillsboro, Orange County, North Carolina. Library of Congress Digital Collections
  8. A map of Orange County, N.C. UNC
  9. Orange County soil map (map, Chapel Hill Historical Society) CH Historical Society
  10. Soil map, North Carolina, Orange County sheet Duke
  11. Topography, Chapel Hill and vicinity, Orange County, North Carolina. UNC
  12. Rosemary Street Residence for Dr. J.B. Bullitt Basement Plan DigitalNC
Show 10 more maps
  1. Soil Survey of Orange County NC Cardinal
  2. School map, Orange County, North Carolina. UNC
  3. Map of Orange County, North Carolina UNC
  4. Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Chapel Hill, Orange County, North Carolina. Library of Congress Digital Collections
  5. North Carolina County Road Survey of Orange County DPLA
  6. Forest cover map of the New Hope Creek Division-Duke Forest : July 1, 1931. Duke
  7. North Carolina County Road Survey of Orange County DPLA
  8. Map of Orange County, N.C. : 1939 UNC
  9. An atlas for Orange County, North Carolina UNC
  10. Aerial Survey of Orange County (map, Chapel Hill Historical Society) CH Historical Society

Indexed works

Works about Orange County from library and archive catalogs. The most widely held appear first; novels are not shown here. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.

Filter these works by material or period. Counts refer to works, not individual copies. A work may appear under more than one period.

Material

Periodicals 2,491Histories 1,795Photographs & portraits 1,467Letters & correspondence 455Reports 421other types 2,513

Period

Colonial era (to 1775) 7617th century 8618th century 606Revolution (1775–1783) 35619th century 847Civil War (1861–1865) 46120th century 1,003World War II era 80

Widely held

To Free A Family

Nathans, Sydney · 2012 · Harvard University Press

Sydney Nathans's biography of Mary Walker, an enslaved woman from Orange County who escaped to the North in the mid nineteenth century and spent the following decades in Cambridge, Massachusetts, working to free the family she had left behind. Chapter titles trace her flight, her years among Northern friends, a rescue plot, a long silence, and the reunion that gives the book its close. Published 2012 by Harvard University Press, 330 pages with 20 pages of plates, illustrations and maps.

Included because: Catalog heading in the UNC record: North Carolina -- Orange County.

Reviewed in Choice Reviews Online (2012), Civil War Book Review (2012).

✓ Held at OCPL · BIO WALKER NAT NC Cardinal UNC Duke NC State NCCU Durham Chapel Hill PL Library of Congress Davidson Methodist Wingate UNCSA

Miss Mary's Money

Jones, H. G. · 2014 · McFarland & Co.

H. G. Jones follows the fortune of Mary Ruffin Smith (1814-1885), the unmarried heiress whose Orange and Chatham County lands passed at her death to the University of North Carolina and the Episcopal Church. Chapters profile her grandfather Francis Jones, then trace the bequest through a quarrel among Episcopalians over Price Creek, the Chapel of the Cross and the university's buildings. A December 1885 New York Times report called the gift money; Jones shows it was land. Published by McFarland in 2014, 231 pages.

Included because: Catalog heading in the UNC record: North Carolina -- Orange County.

✓ Held at OCPL NC Cardinal UNC Duke NC State NCCU Durham Library of Congress Wake Forest Davidson Methodist CH Historical Society

The Pelican Guide to Hillsborough, Historic Orange County, North Carolina

Dula, Lucile Noell · 1989

Lucile Noell Dula's guidebook to Hillsborough and its historic buildings, published by Pelican in 1989. It pairs a tour of the town with notes on its history, in 128 illustrated pages with a bibliography. Part of the Wall Local History Collection.

Included because: Catalog heading in the CH Historical Society record: Orange County (N.C.) -- History.

✓ Held at OCPL · 917.565 DUL or NC 917.565 DUL NC Cardinal UNC Duke NC State Durham Chapel Hill PL Library of Congress Wake Forest CH Historical Society

Kinship and Neighborhood in a Southern Community

Kenzer, Robert C. · 1987 · University of Tennessee Press

Robert C. Kenzer's study of kinship and neighborhood in Orange County between 1849 and 1881, the decades before and after the Civil War, tracing family ties and neighborhood networks through the county's records. Published by the University of Tennessee Press in 1987, 251 pages with illustrations, maps, portraits and a bibliography. Topics include kinship, neighborhoods and social conditions in the county in the nineteenth century.

Included because: Catalog heading in the UNC record: North Carolina -- Orange County.

Reviewed in Choice Reviews Online (1988), Journal of American History (1988), The American Historical Review (1989), The Journal of Southern History (1989), Civil War history (1989), Journal of Social History (1989).

✓ Held at OCPL · NC 306.097 KEN NC Cardinal UNC Duke NC State Durham Library of Congress Wake Forest Davidson CH Historical Society

Horace Williams

Winston, Sr., Robert Watson · 1942 · The University of North Carolina press

Robert Watson Winston's biography of Henry Horace Williams (1858-1940), who taught philosophy at the University of North Carolina for half a century, subtitled gadfly of Chapel Hill. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1942, 309 pages with frontispiece and portraits; this copy is autographed. Topics include educators in Chapel Hill and the university's history.

Included because: The record names this place alongside a heading for the county or its towns.

Reviewed in Social Forces (1943).

✓ Held at OCPL · NC BIO WILLIAMS WIN UNC Duke NC State NC Cardinal Durham Chapel Hill PL NCCU Library of Congress

The Age of Orange: Political and Intellectual Leadership in North Carolina, 1752-1861

Blackwelder, Ruth · 1961

Ruth Blackwelder's study of political and intellectual leadership in Orange County and North Carolina from 1752 to 1861, published in Charlotte by W. Loftin in 1961. Topics include state politics and government, intellectual life before the Civil War, and county genealogy. It runs 216 pages with illustrations and a bibliography. Part of the Wall Local History Collection.

Included because: Catalog heading in the DPLA record: Orange County (N.C.).

✓ Held at OCPL · NC 975.656 BLACKWEL UNC Durham Library of Congress Davidson DPLA CH Historical Society NC Cardinal
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Hillsboro, Colonial and Revolutionary

Nash, Frank · 1953

Francis Nash's history of Hillsborough in colonial and Revolutionary times, first published in 1903 and reprinted in 1953 by Edwards & Broughton with an index and a sketch of the author. Topics include the Regulator Insurrection of 1766 to 1771, the Revolution and local genealogy.

Included because: Catalog heading in the UNC record: North Carolina -- Orange County.

✓ Held at OCPL · NC 975.656 NAS NC Cardinal UNC Durham Library of Congress Wake Forest Davidson DPLA

Ribbons of Color Along the Eno River

2021

Collected first-hand and second-hand stories from the Eno River valley as told from the standpoint of African Americans and Native people who have lived along the river in Orange and Durham counties, from prehistory to the present day. Issued by the Eno River Association in Durham as volume 10, number 2 of the Eno Journal, 2021, 106 pages with illustrations.

Included because: Catalog heading in the UNC record: North Carolina -- Orange County.

✓ Held at OCPL · NC 975.656 RIBBONS NC Cardinal UNC Duke Durham Chapel Hill PL CH Historical Society

Recently indexed: Adolphus Williamson Mangum : memorial address delivered in the chapel of the university, Sunday, May 31st, 1891 (1891) · Catalogue, &c of the University of North Carolina [1834-1835] (1834) · Dr. James Phillips (1882) · Giles Mebane (1900) · Gordon Gray : a collection of mounted clippings chiefly from North Carolina newspapers through 1971 [sic] (1947) · Gordon Gray : a collection of mounted clippings chiefly from North Carolina newspapers through 1975 (1947)

Search all 9,276 indexed works →

Start at OCPL

Books in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection whose titles, catalog subjects, or descriptions match this place. The Friends’ recommended starting points are labelled.

  • Start here · NC 975.656 NOR The History of Orange County: Part I Nash, Frank · 1910

    Frank Nash's History of Orange County, Part I, as it appeared in the North Carolina Booklet for October 1910 (volume 10, number 2), published in Raleigh by the North Carolina Society, Daughters of the Revolution. This copy is detached from the periodical and runs from page 55 to page 113. An early narrative history of the county.

  • Foundational · NC 975.656 MCB An Orange County Childhood McBroom, Ruth Gates · 1983

    Ruth Gates McBroom's memoir of growing up in Orange County, N.C., a personal account of family life, manners and customs in the county as one family remembered them. Published in 1983 by B. Holloway, 80 pages with portraits.

  • Foundational · NC 975.656 ORA Orange County--1752-1952 1953

    Hugh Talmage Lefler and Paul W. Wager's history of Orange County across its first two centuries, 1752 to 1952, prepared for the county's bicentennial. It covers government and politics, biography and the county's families, and doubles as a genealogical reference. Published in Chapel Hill by the Orange Printshop in 1953, 389 pages with illustrations and an index; this copy is a later reprint.

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  • Start here · NC 664.72 ORANGE Orange County, North Carolina, Mill Records (1782-1859) 2010

    Images of the Orange County mill petitions, 1782 to 1859, compiled by Stewart E. Dunaway from originals in the North Carolina Archives and issued in a revised edition dated July 18, 2010 that draws in his Paterson Mill research. The 218 pages carry facsimiles of the petitions with partial transcriptions and maps. Petitions to build or keep a gristmill went before the county court and name the petitioner and the stream.

  • Foundational · NC 975.656 ORANGE Working for A Living: A Special Exhibit by the Orange County Historical Museum, March-December 2024 Orange County Historical Museum (N.C.) · 2024

    Exhibit publication from the Orange County Historical Museum for its special exhibit on working life, shown in Hillsborough from March to December 2024 and concerned with the county's trades and industrial arts. Produced by the museum in 2024, it documents Orange County and Hillsborough history through the work people did.

  • Foundational · NC 306.363 SCARLETT Sheer Resilience : An Untold Story of A Free Community of Color in Orange County, N.C Scarlett, Beverly A. · 2024

    Beverly A. Scarlett's 2024 study of a free community of color in nineteenth-century Orange County, drawing on apprenticeship and freedmen's records among other county sources.

  • Foundational · NC 975.656 BOLDUC African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties: An Oral History Bolduc, Jean · 2016

    Jean Bolduc's 2016 collection of interviews with African American residents of Durham and Orange counties, presented as short biographies. The subjects are Floyd McKissick (1922-1991), the first African American admitted to UNC's law school, Walter Jackson, Brenda Stephens, Nate Davis, poet Jaki Shelton Green, Jackie Wagstaff, Diane Wright and Michelle Johnson, with a closing chapter on the Ku Klux Klan. 125 pages with illustrations.

  • Foundational · NC 305.409 WHE Where My Feet Have Taken Me: A Collection of Short Stories by Women and Girls Living in Orange County, NC 2005

    A collection of short stories written by women and girls living in Orange County, N.C., published in 2005 for Women's History Month.

  • Foundational · 975.656 RYAN Orange County Trio: Hillsborough, Chapel Hill, and Carrboro, North Carolina, Histories and Tour Guides Ryan, Elizabeth Shreve · 2004

    Elizabeth Shreve Ryan's combined histories and tour guides for Hillsborough, Chapel Hill and Carrboro, the three towns of Orange County, with the University of North Carolina treated alongside Chapel Hill. Each town gets a narrative history and a tour of its streets and buildings. Published by Chapel Hill Press in 2004, 369 pages with illustrations and maps.

Research sources

Sources and research tools for this place. Research guide: Find records across changing county boundaries.

Background 5

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National Register files

Historic sites, markers, and maps 5

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Records of the time 17

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Collections and databases 5

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  • NC LIVE: prepared search for Orange County Library card Search NC LIVE for this subject and Orange County. You can change the search terms. Sign in through your North Carolina library to access the materials.

Local help 6

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Background reading at OCPL

Books from OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection that provide broader context. They may not discuss Orange County directly.

  • Background reading · Rebecca Wall Collection William Churton, Colonial Surveyor of North Carolina (1711-1768) Dunaway, Stewart E. · 2004

    William Churton, surveyor for Earl Granville, came to the colonies around 1749 and in 1754 laid out the town that became Hillsborough, the Orange County seat. Stewart E. Dunaway's life history of him follows his surveying career and his family, illustrated with maps and facsimiles and closing with a bibliography and an index. Published by the author in Hillsborough in 2017 through Lulu; 166 pages.

    Subjects in the OCPL catalog record: Churton, William, 1710-1767; Churton family; Surveyors -- North Carolina -- Biography OCPL call number: NC 929.2 DUNAWAY
  • Background reading · Rebecca Wall Collection The Descendants of Matthew McCauley Neville, David Lindsay · 2001 Subjects in the OCPL catalog record: McCauley family; Neville family; Lloyd family OCPL call number: NC 929.209 NEV
  • Background reading · Rebecca Wall Collection Revolutionary Leaders of North Carolina Connor, R. D. W. · 1971

    Lectures on North Carolina's Revolutionary generation that R. D. W. Connor gave at the State Normal and Industrial College in the spring of 1913. A survey of the colony and state from 1765 to 1790 is followed by studies of four leaders: John Harvey, Cornelius Harnett, Richard Caswell and Samuel Johnston. Published in 1916 as the college's Historical Publications no. 2; reprinted in 1971, 125 pages.

    Subjects in the Library of Congress catalog record: North Carolina -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783; Harvey, John, 1725?-1775; Harnett, Cornelius, 1723-1781 OCPL call number: NC 920 CON
  • Background reading · Rebecca Wall Collection Sherman's March Through the Carolinas Barrett, John Gilchrist · 1956

    General William T. Sherman's three-month march through South and North Carolina in 1865 and its effect on the people in its path, in an account by John G. Barrett. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1956; 325 pages with maps on the endpapers and a bibliography of nearly thirty pages. Barrett taught history at the Virginia Military Institute.

    Subjects in the Library of Congress catalog record: Sherman, William T (William Tecumseh), 1820-1891; Sherman's March through the Carolinas OCPL call number: NC 973.73 BAR

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Related themes

UNC & Campus Life →Schools & Education →Wars & Military Service →Politics & Government →Families, Land & Genealogy →Black Life & Civil Rights →

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Illustration by Caldecott Medalist Matthew Cordell, gifted to the Friends 2026