In early June 1887 Bingham Township farmers organized a farmers' club at Oaks, with Alex. McIver as president. Clubs followed that August at Fairfield Church and in Little River Township. After a mass meeting on July 30 addressed by Kemp P. Battle, farmers at the court house on September 17 organized the Orange County Club with McIver as president and twenty-nine members, but in October, given the small attendance, the club put off forming a farmers' institute. In March 1888 Col. G. B. Pickett of Texas, state organizer of the Farmers' Alliance, spoke at Hillsborough to what the Recorder reported was a small crowd, and farmers at Cane Creek in Bingham Township formed an Alliance. Three more chapters organized in a single week in late April, and on May 18 delegates formed the County Alliance with Sheriff John Knox Hughes as president. In March 1890 the County Alliance opened its second exchange, in Hillsborough, with S. T. Forrest as manager by April. In July 1891 it endorsed the sub-treasury plan (a proposal for federal warehouses where farmers could store crops and borrow against them) and all the Alliance demands, and in April 1893 a committee called the legislature's bill to repeal the State Alliance charter a scheme to destroy the order. That July the Hillsboro Exchange became an incorporated company under O. J. Forrest. Thomas F. Lloyd bought the Alliance store at Chapel Hill in 1894, and in January 1895 S. T. Forrest withdrew from the Hillsboro Exchange.
Further reading
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.
Background on Farms & Rural Life · the most widely held histories of the theme this storyline is filed under; they may not discuss it
Miss Mary's Money
Jones, H. G. · 2014 · McFarland & Co.
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.
Piedmont Plantation: The Bennehan-Cameron Family and Lands in North Carolina
Anderson, Jean Bradley · 1985 · Historic Preservation Society of Durham
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).
A Mind to Stay: White Plantation, Black Homeland
Nathans, Sydney · 2017
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).
The Black family in slavery and freedom, 1750-1925
Gutman, Herbert G. (Herbert George), 1928-1985 · 1976 · Pantheon Books
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).
The Couch tract of the Durham division of the Duke Forest: a history of agricultural land-use patterns, 1750-1950
Frankel, Rachel · 1984 · Rachel Frankel (attributed)
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.
Cedar Grove, 1939 : revisiting Marion Post's photos of a Black rural neighborhood
Bennett, Evan P. · 2025 · Historical Research Office, Office of Archives and History
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.
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Bright leaf culture and Thomas Day : Orange and Caswell counties
Vernacular Architecture Forum (U.S.). Conference (2016 : Durham, N.C.) · 2016 · Vernacular Architecture Forum
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.
Interviews With Residents on Fish Dam Road
Liles, Joe · 2004
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.
Farmers in court : Orange County, North Carolina, 1750-1776
Bushman, Richard L. · 2001
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.
A Timeless Place
Lett, AlexSandra · 2000
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.
An archaeological analysis of smoking pipes from three Indian communities on the North Carolina Piedmont, AD 1400 to 1700
Greene, Megan Elizabeth · 1998
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.
Joe Thompson's Orange County : the music and history of early twentieth century African Americans in rural Piedmont North Carolina
Lambert, Bradley J. · 1998
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.
