Storyline · 1821–1857
Orange County farmers organized agricultural societies repeatedly between 1821 and 1857. The Cane Creek Agricultural Society, reporting in 1821 that the county's wheat crop had largely failed, asked farmers to report their improvements and trials. A county society formed at Hillsborough in 1822, with Duncan Cameron as president, offered premiums and planned a cattle show, and in 1841 a grand jury proposed another. In 1853 the Orange County Society for the Promotion of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts was organized under Paul C. Cameron. At its first fair, in 1854, Cameron predicted that the coming railroad would shake farmers out of their old habits. The society bought fair grounds near the depot in 1856 and held fairs through 1857.
In August 1821 the Cane Creek Agricultural Society reported that Orange County's wheat crop had largely failed and asked farmers to report their improvements and trials to it. On March 20, 1822, during superior court week, a meeting at Hillsborough organized a county agricultural society, which offered premiums for the largest crops on reclaimed land and in July elected Duncan Cameron president. In March 1823 it offered premiums in inscribed silver plate and resolved to hold a cattle show, an exhibition of domestic manufactures and a plowing match in Hillsborough that November. In March 1841 the grand jury of Orange Superior Court drafted a constitution for a new county society and asked farmers to adopt it. On August 23, 1853 farmers and mechanics at the courthouse organized the Orange County Society for the Promotion of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts, with Paul C. Cameron as president. Its first fair, on October 26 and 27, 1854, drew 81 entries, and Cameron spoke for two hours, predicting that the coming railroad would shake farmers and businesses out of their old habits. In 1856 the society bought fair grounds near the railroad depot. It held its second, third and fourth fairs in 1855, 1856 and 1857, and at the 1857 fair the Recorder reported 55 bushels of corn and 1,100 pounds of tobacco grown on an acre.
Every statement above comes from these dated entries in the chronology. Each links to its source.
Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first.
People with a page of their own whom the dated events above name, those named most often first.
No indexed work is about this storyline itself yet. These are about the sites and people its dated events name, those named most often first, so they may discuss the storyline only in part. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.
Personal and political papers of Willie Person Mangum, the Whig senator from Orange County, together with papers of Arthur Mangum and Charity Alston Cain Mangum. Correspondents include Daniel Webster, William A. Graham, David L. Swain, John Chavis and Abraham Lincoln, and other topics include plantations at Hillsborough, the estate called Walnut Hill, state politics, agriculture and education.
Jean Bradley Anderson's family history of the Kirklands, the Scottish family who built Ayr Mount, the plantation house that still stands outside Hillsborough. Beginning with a 1696 marriage in Lochfergus, Scotland, the account centers on William Kirkland, born 1768, who came to North Carolina from Scotland, married Margaret Blain Scott in 1792 and established the family at Ayr Mount, and it follows their descendants. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1991, 241 pages plus 22 pages of plates, with maps.
John L. Sanders writing on Ayr Mount, the house built for William Kirkland on the Eno River near Hillsborough. Printed as an offprint from the May 1989 issue of The Magazine Antiques, with a bibliography on page 13. Covering historic buildings in Orange County and Kirkland himself, who lived from 1768 to 1836, it is a compact account of one of the county's landmark houses.
William Kirkland, a Scottish merchant and investor, built Ayr Mount in Hillsborough. His portrait was photographed at the house on 6 April 2002 for the North Carolina ECHO project.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Merchant account books of John U. Kirkland (1802-1879), covering 1829 to 1867, in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 405. The volumes concern nineteenth century Hillsborough commerce and the leather trade, including two firms Kirkland was tied to: Cain and Kirkland, and William Kirkland and Son of Hillsborough.
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.
Jean Bradley Anderson's history of the Bennehan and Cameron families and their plantations, Stagville and Fairntosh, on lands that lay in Orange County until Durham County was formed from it in 1881. Published by the Historic Preservation Society of Durham in 1985, the book follows plantation life and ownership across several generations, with genealogical tables, a map, portraits, a bibliography and an index; 227 pages plus plates.
Reviewed in South Atlantic Quarterly (1987).
Sydney Nathans's history of a Black community in Hale County, Alabama, whose founders were enslaved people sent there before the Civil War from the Cameron family's plantations in Orange County, North Carolina. Instead of following the Great Migration out of the South, this group stayed, moved from bondage to owning the land they had worked, and held onto it across generations. Published 2017, 342 pages with plates and maps; this is the e-book edition.
Reviewed in Journal of American History (2017), Journal of Social History (2017), London review of books (2017), The Journal of the Civil War Era (2018), The Journal of Southern History (2018), Environmental History (2018), The Alabama review (2019), The Oral History Review (2019), The Register - Kentucky Historical Society/The register of the Kentucky Historical Society (2020).
Herbert G. Gutman's 1976 history of African American families from 1750 to 1925, published by Pantheon Books in New York, 664 pages with 38 leaves of plates. Its Orange County connection is the Bennehan and Cameron family plantations, Stagville and Fairntosh: the book discusses the people enslaved by Richard Bennehan (1743-1825) and the Camerons, and follows family ties among them under slavery and after emancipation. Subjects include African American families and enslaved persons in Orange County.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (1977), The William and Mary Quarterly (1977), The American Historical Review (1977), Journal of American History (1977), The History Teacher (1977), Political Science Quarterly (1977), Journal of Black Psychology (1978), Journal of Social History (1978), Civil War history (1978), Signs (1978).
Rachel Frankel's Duke University honors paper of 1984 on the Couch tract in the Durham Division of Duke Forest, a history of agricultural land use from 1750 to 1950. The Couch family, family farms and rural land use in Orange County are its subjects. A photocopied typescript, 97 leaves with maps and a bibliography.
Evan P. Bennett returns to the photographs Marion Post Wolcott made in 1939 in Cedar Grove, a Black farming neighborhood in northern Orange County that she documented for the federal resettlement program. Published in 2025 by the Historical Research Office in Raleigh, pages 384 to 406, with illustrations and portraits. Topics include rural African Americans in the Cedar Grove township and photographers in the state.
A tour guidebook prepared for the 2016 Vernacular Architecture Forum conference in Durham, leading visitors through buildings in Orange and Caswell counties. It takes in the architecture of the bright leaf tobacco economy and the work of Thomas Day, the free Black cabinetmaker of Caswell County who worked in the middle of the nineteenth century.
Joe Liles's interviews with longtime residents of Fish Dam Road, an old rural road in Durham County, recorded in 2004, with subjects tied to both Durham and Orange counties. The interviewees are Charles Scott Harkey, Mary Scarlett Jones, Boyce Link and John Scarlett, all born between 1912 and 1920, and the topics include country life, the road's history and the Duke Power Company.
Richard L. Bushman looks at the county court of Orange County and the farmers who came before it between 1750 and 1776, a period that in this county included the Regulator insurrection of 1766 to 1771. Published in 2001 as pages 388 to 413 of a larger volume. Topics include courts, farmers and eighteenth century law in the county.
AlexSandra Lett's family history and memoir of country life around a Lee County store, subtitled Lett's set a spell at the country store. Published in 2000, it includes anecdotes of the Lett family and of Sanford and Lee County, North Carolina.
Megan Elizabeth Greene's 1998 study of smoking pipes recovered from three Native American communities in the North Carolina Piedmont dating between about 1400 and 1700. The evidence includes material excavated at Hillsborough in Orange County. The study also concerns tobacco use among Indigenous peoples of North America. Bibliography on leaves 35 to 36.
Bradley J. Lambert's study of the fiddler Joe Thompson and the Black communities of the rural Piedmont, covering music and daily life in Orange County in the early twentieth century. Seventy-seven leaves with a bibliography, completed in 1998. Topics include African American musicians in the county and African American history there.
Each dated event above names its source, the place to start. For finding more on an event across newspapers, records and histories, see the research guide Follow an event across several accounts. Ask at the North Carolina Room of the Orange County Public Library for help with local sources.
Friends of the Orange County Public Library. “Agricultural societies and fairs in Orange County, 1821–1857.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/agricultural-societies-storyline-1821/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
