Orange County Indexed
Historical records
Search historic Orange County deeds, court minutes, wills, tax lists and records naming enslaved people.
New to these records? The guide Use the historical records explains what each collection holds, how they link to one another, and how to take what you find to the microfilm, books and databases at the library.
More research guides: Trace a family through historical records · Research a house or property
Historic deeds
22,729 deeds · the Register of Orange and Deed Books 1 to 42 · 1752 to the 1870s
Mark Chilton’s published abstract of every deed in the county’s first 42 deed books: land, town lots, mills, bills of sale, deeds of trust, bonds and marriage settlements. Search by name, place, creek or citation; each deed links to its page image at the Register of Deeds.
County court minutes
19,310 entries · 222 court terms · 1752–1818 so far
The business of the county Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions, item by item: deeds acknowledged or proved in court, wills proved, estates settled, children bound into service or apprenticeship, roads, taverns, suits and county orders. Each entry is our summary of a published transcription, with the names and roles recorded in the source. Where a deed has been identified, the court entry links to its deed record.
Wills
2,189 wills and papers · Will Books A to H · 1752 to 1893
Who left what to whom: every will and other paper in the county’s first six will books, to 1850, with the family, executors and witnesses each names, land and goods, and the enslaved people bequeathed or freed, from Ruth Herndon Shields’s abstracts; and the wills of 1850 to 1893 as Mark Chilton’s index lists them. Wills proved in court link to the court minutes.
Tax lists
4,710 entries · 18 lists · 1755 to 1790
Every taxpayer in the county: in 1790 with acres, white and Black polls, stud horses and carriage wheels, as printed in The State Records of North Carolina; in 1780 and 1781 with the value of each household’s taxable property, land, horses, cattle and the enslaved people held, from Ransom McBride’s transcription; in 1779 with the value of each taxpayer’s property; and in 1755, the county’s first surviving list, with each household’s white and Black tithables and the enslaved people it names. The lists of 1755 and 1779 are our own reading of the manuscripts in the State Archives. The nearest thing to household lists of the county in the years of the court minutes and the early deed books.
Enslaved people in Orange County records
2,018 records · 5,287 name appearances · 906 marriages registered in 1866
Every person named in the county’s records of the sale and transfer of enslaved people, 1754 to 1867, with their ages and the family ties each record states, and the couples who registered their marriages after emancipation.
Other record collections
- The Orange County Register of Deeds holds the page images of every deed book, with its own search of its indexes.
- People Not Property, UNC Greensboro’s catalog of slave deeds across North Carolina, lists the people named in each deed it holds.
- The chronology draws on court minutes, newspapers and county histories, each entry citing its source.
