West Hillsborough

Charles Tew chooses a site west of Hillsborough for a military academy

In late July 1858 Charles C. Tew, with Moses A. Curtis and A. S. Galliard, searched Hillsborough for a school site and settled on a 40-acre tract about a mile and a half west of town near the new North Carolina Railroad. They engaged the Columbia architect John A. Kay, and local builders John Berry and Henry Richards built the barracks and commandant's house.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

People: John Berry · Moses Ashley Curtis

Subject: North Carolina Railroad · Hillsborough Military Academy

George Attmore Sparrow leaves the Hillsborough academy to join the Confederate army

Writing from the academy on 21 July 1862, Sparrow told his father he had approval for his discharge and would leave with other cadets when the session ended on 31 July. He was in camp with the Army of the Pamlico by 1863.

Part of Orange County during the Civil War, 1861–1865 · 42 events

People: Thomas Sparrow

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

Eno Cotton Mill begins production

Yarn production started late in the year.

Subject: Eno Mill

The school board divides the Hillsboro district and orders a two-teacher school at West Hill

The board split the Hillsboro district and ordered a school with two teachers built at West Hill, the mill section west of town.

Shepperd Strudwick builds the Bellevue cotton mill on South Nash Street

The Bellevue Manufacturing Company's mill went up in 1909 west of South Nash Street, a short way beyond the town line of the day, backed by local investors and staffed by people leaving farm work. By 1912 it ran 5,000 spindles and 200 narrow looms.

Subject: Bellevue Mill

R. B. Mason's land west of the Bellevue mill is platted as the West Hill Property

To meet the need for workers' housing near the two mills, Mason's holdings were laid out in 1913 as a grid of roughly equal lots, bounded by the Bellevue mill village, Eno Street and the railroad, West Hill Street, and Mount Willing Road (later King Street). Most houses there went up from the 1920s to the 1940s, and the section beyond West Hill Avenue was platted in the 1930s.

Subject: Bellevue Mill

Eno Mill opens an influenza diet kitchen at West Hill school

When influenza reached the Eno Mill district, the mill opened and paid for a diet kitchen at the West Hill school for about seven weeks, run by home demonstration agent Elizabeth Cornelius. It fed as many as 150 people a day, and the mill hired nurses for the sick.

Subject: Eno Mill · Home demonstration clubs

The Paul Riley House is built on Riley Avenue in West Hillsborough

The Paul Riley House, a one-story frame bungalow with a shed dormer and tapered porch posts, was built at Riley Avenue and Eno Street. The Rileys were among the leading West Hillsborough families, and the Paul Riley Store went up nearby on Eno Street about 1942.

The Weldon Riley House is built on Eno Street

The one-and-a-half-story bungalow at 811 Eno Street, with a gabled dormer, knee brackets and a wide engaged porch, is judged the best Craftsman house in West Hillsborough.

The Paul Riley Store is built on Eno Street

A one-story brick store with a stepped parapet and inset entrance went up at 907 Eno Street, carrying the West End commercial style farther west. A longtime resident recalled it, with the nearby Methodist church, as a center of childhood life in West Hillsborough.

A bus route begins running through West Hillsborough

Until 1948, when a bus line started running through its streets, mill families without cars had no easy way to reach downtown Hillsborough, nearly a mile away, or the rest of the county.

The Hillsboro Building and Loan Association opens its first office building on Calvin Street

After 37 years of meeting in stores and a depot office, the association held an open house for its own one-story Colonial-style brick office on Calvin Street in West Hillsboro, built with a fireproof vault.

Subject: Hillsboro Building and Loan (Savings and Loan)

Fire destroys the old West Hillsboro School, then a mill-owned apartment house

About 11:30 on a Monday night the three-story frame building that had been the West Hillsboro School, later made into 13 apartments, burned to the ground. A taxi driver saw the flames and woke the five people inside, who escaped.

Subject: West End Graded School (West Hillsborough School)

The former Military Academy dining hall is turned into a church

The one-story board-and-batten building beside Barracks Road, thought to be a surviving piece of the long frame service building that stood behind the barracks, became a church building in 1965.

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy

Eno Mill closes

Textile production ended at the Hillsborough plant.

Subject: Eno Mill

The survey proposes adding the Military Academy dining hall and grounds to the Commandant's House listing

The report recommended the academy's surviving frame dining hall on Barracks Road, left out of the Commandant's House nomination, for the Study List as an expansion of that listing, with about 21.5 acres over three parcels. The land keeps the barracks foundation, old tree lines and a daffodil-lined path, and the Office of State Archaeology judged it likely to hold remains of the school. The National Register Advisory Committee added the dining hall and site to the Study List on October 12, 2017.

Subject: Hillsborough Military Academy