Storyline · 1801–1821
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failed to clothe, feed or lodge their apprentices or beat them, summoned the masters to show cause, and cancelled or rescinded indentures.
Binding a child out as an apprentice placed the child with a master until coming of age; the master owed food, clothing, schooling and a trade, and the court could take the child back. On February 26, 1801 the Orange County court ordered that every child to be bound out must be produced in court. In May 1803, told that Jeremiah Izzard had left his family for more than a year, it bound his son Anderson to James Paine to learn farming. On February 26, 1807 it wrote schooling into three bindings: Benjamin Underwood was to learn to write and cipher to the rule of three with joiner Allen Jones, Sarah Little, twelve, to read and write with William Lindley, and Anderson Izzard, nearly ten, to get a year's schooling and a set of tools from blacksmith Thomas Pleasant.
The court also heard complaints against masters. In February 1812 Sarah Patton swore that Luke Peacock, to whom her son Hemelius had been bound in 1810, failed to clothe him and beat him, and that November the court cancelled the indenture. In 1816 it placed Emily Underhill with her guardian, John Taylor Jr., until the next term and summoned her master, Charles Partin, to show cause; in 1817 it summoned Absalom Harvey after William Finley swore he did not clothe, feed and lodge Hugh Finley. In 1821 it ordered Reuben Barbee to produce Charles Ashley, about 12, or go to jail, and in February 1825 rescinded the boy's indenture.
Every statement above comes from these dated entries in the chronology. Each links to its source.
No indexed work is about this storyline itself yet. These are the most widely held histories of the theme it is filed under, so they may not discuss it. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.
Rick Jackson's true crime history of Chapel Hill, published by The History Press in 2023, in 28 short chapters. Cases include the Efland bank robbery, the execution of John Henry Breeze, the unsolved murder of Suellen Evans, the killing at the Internationalist Bookstore and the death of Eve Carson.
Albert Coates's own account of the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina, which he founded, subtitled 'out of a classroom in Chapel Hill' and published in 1981. The 303 pages trace the institute's history and its role in educating North Carolina's public officials.
Kemp Plummer Battle's memoir, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1945, 296 pages with plates and portraits. Battle, a lawyer, state treasurer and president of the university from 1876 to 1891, recalls North Carolina manners, customs and public life across the nineteenth century, with Chapel Hill and the university's reopening after Reconstruction at the center.
Reviewed in Journal of American History (1946), The Journal of Southern History (1946).
William J. Billingsley's history of the Speaker Ban Law, the 1963 North Carolina statute that barred known Communists from speaking on state campuses, and the fight over it at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. The subtitle sets the scope: race, politics and the public university in sixties North Carolina. It treats academic freedom, anti-communist movements and free speech in the state. University of Georgia Press, 1999, 308 pages with eight pages of plates.
Reviewed in Academe (2000), The American Historical Review (2001), The Journal of Southern History (2001), Journal of American History (2001), The Journal of Politics (2001).
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.
Howard E. Covington Jr.'s biography of Albert Coates (1896-1989), the law professor who founded the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina and led it through its early years. Topics include Coates as a law teacher and the institute's history as a center for the study of public administration in Chapel Hill. Published in 2010 by the University Library at Chapel Hill, 322 pages with 32 pages of plates.
Jean Bolduc's collection of oral history interviews with Black residents of Durham and Orange counties, published by The History Press in 2016, 125 pages with photographs and portraits. The narrators are the poet Jaki Shelton Green, civil rights lawyer Floyd McKissick, Walter Jackson, Nate Davis, Brenda Stephens, Diane Wright, Jackie Wagstaff and Michelle Johnson, and a closing chapter deals with the Ku Klux Klan. The interviews document Black life and race relations in the two counties across the twentieth century.
Abstracts of the minutes of Orange County's Inferior Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions for 1777 to 1788, the county court of justices of the peace in the Revolutionary years. The abstracts name the people who came before the court. First published in Charlotte in 1966 and later reprinted from Greenville, South Carolina, in three paginated sections with a map.
David Cook collects the grim side of the Eno River's past in Orange and Durham counties: ghost stories, crimes, train wrecks and accidents, including the hanging of rebels near the river in 1771, a sawmill accident said to have started a run of hauntings, and a dance one Valentine's Day that ended badly. Published by The History Press in 2025, 141 pages with illustrations.
Rosalind Rosenberg's 2017 biography of Pauli Murray (1910-1985), lawyer, poet and Episcopal priest, raised in Durham. Its six parts follow a Southern childhood, the move to New York, the 1938 application to the University of North Carolina that was refused because Murray was Black (the chapter is titled 'Members of your race are not admitted'), law school and the coining of the phrase Jane Crow, the Cold War years, the push toward 'an NAACP for women', and a late-life ordination. 494 pages with portraits.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (2018).
Deed transcripts for the town lots of Chapel Hill and adjoining land from 1790 to the 1930s, compiled by Stewart E. Dunaway. Each transcript keeps only the working facts: grantor and grantee, price, acreage and the metes and bounds of the parcel. Self-published in 2014 as Issue 1G, 702 pages with maps and facsimiles.
Nora Gaskin's short true account of a murder investigation in 1960s Chapel Hill and the judicial error that followed, centered on Frank Rinaldi (1929 to 2009). Published in 2013 by Lystra Books, 52 pages with references.
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. “Binding out: the county court and its apprentices' masters, 1801–1821.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/binding-out-masters-storyline-1801/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
