Storyline · 1891–1923
By 1896 Julian S. Carr's Occoneechee Farm held nearly all of the registered cattle and hogs that put Orange first in the state's register of blooded stock. The Durham industrialist bought Poplar Hill, the house James Hogg had built about 1794 on the Eno, in 1891 and renamed it. He gave the Norwood Mineral Spring a marble basin and spring house and built a large stock barn, a gate wall and a model sheep fold. The State Dairymen's Association met there in 1896, and a Farmers' Institute in 1906 drew several hundred people. Wind, lightning and a 1918 storm destroyed barns, and Carr rebuilt. On November 22, 1923 the farm was sold at auction in small farms.
In 1891 the Norwood family sold Poplar Hill, the house James Hogg had built about 1794 on the south bank of the Eno, to the Durham industrialist Julian S. Carr, who renamed it Occoneechee Farm. That July the state experiment station certified an analysis of the farm's spring, better known as the Norwood Mineral Spring, and by September Carr had given it a marble basin and a rustic spring house. By the end of 1891 he had nearly finished a brick and frame stock barn 42 by 155 feet, built a fieldstone gate wall at the entrance and completed a model sheep fold. In June 1894 thirty to forty carpenters and painters were at work there, and in May 1895 Carr showed students of the A. and M. College his new rustic club house. The State Dairymen's Association met on the farm in February 1896, and that September the state's register of blooded stock ranked Orange first for registered cattle and hogs, nearly all of them Carr's. Wind blew down a hay barn in 1896, lightning burned the race track barn in 1902, and a January 1918 storm demolished the dairy barn; Carr began rebuilding at once. Several hundred people came to a Farmers' Institute there in 1906. On November 22, 1923 the farm was sold at auction in small farms.
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. The map shows them all.
Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange, Orange County GIS, OpenStreetMap and a few other published sources named on each site’s page; town and community pins show approximate locations.
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.
Poster by Bob Goldstein from 2020 arguing that Carrboro should stop carrying the name of Julian Shakespeare Carr, and proposing Cottenboro after the musician Elizabeth Cotten. A single sheet measuring 30 by 31 centimeters. Topics include Carr, Cotten and the question of the town's name, placing the poster with the local debate over commemoration.
Special stand-alone issue of the Carrboro Citizen published in April 2011 for the town's hundredth anniversary, with Robert Dickson as publisher. Its stories range from profiles of residents going about their day to a piece on Julian Shakespeare Carr, the industrialist for whom Carrboro is named.
Four leaves printed out in 2020, in which James V. Porto, Jr. gives his opinion on changing the name of Carrboro. The piece is signed at the end by Jim Porto. Subjects include the town name itself and Julian Shakespeare Carr, the man the town is named for. Part of UNC's North Carolina Collection.
Papers of Julian Shakespeare Carr, 1892 to 1923, a Durham industrialist in tobacco, textiles and banking, a Methodist active in Sunday schools, and a figure in the finances of the university at Chapel Hill. They also cover Confederate veterans, race relations, white supremacy campaigns, and the Chapel Hill war memorial by John A. Wilson known as Silent Sam. Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 141.
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. “Julian S. Carr's Occoneechee Farm, 1891–1923.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/carr-occoneechee-farm-storyline-1891/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
