Storyline · 1775–1778
During the Revolution the Hillsborough merchant William Johnston apparently produced gunpowder, lead and rifle flints at his Snow Hill plantation northeast of the town. In 1776 Nathaniel Rochester was named to a commission to set up a gun factory near Hillsborough and led a wagon train to Philadelphia to get iron for it. On April 24, 1776 the Provincial Congress told three commissioners in each district to set up a public works for muskets and bayonets, gather gunsmiths and pay no more than 5 pounds a gun, and for Hillsborough District it named Johnston, Thomas Burke and Ambrose Ramsey, with up to 1,000 pounds to spend. On November 14, 1777 a notice in the North Carolina Gazette announced a newly built paper mill near Hillsborough and asked households to save linen rags for it. John Hogan owned the mill, a mile and a half northeast of town. In 1778 the Continental officer Absalom Tatom took charge of the state's arsenal at Hillsborough as assistant quartermaster. That summer the gun factory shut down: its shop sat beside a creek on Burke's land about two miles northeast of town, and a dry summer left the creek too low to drive its wheel. The drought slowed the paper mill as well, and the Assembly gave Hogan more time to earn the state's premium for paper.
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.
Issue of Eno, the journal of the Eno River Association, published in 2001 and devoted to the Little River, the Eno tributary that runs along the Orange and Durham county line. Pieces cover the country above the Little River Reservoir, lore of the colonial Trading Path near the river, the eighteenth-century entrepreneur William Johnston, and the river's plants from Lewis's heartleaf to yellow-flowered trillium. 72 pages with illustrations.
John Sayle Watterson's biography of Thomas Burke, the Irish-born Hillsborough lawyer who sat in the Continental Congress and served as governor of North Carolina during the Revolution, published by University Press of America in 1980. Topics include the state's politics and government from 1775 to 1783 and the Continental Congress. 288 pages with maps.
Reviewed in Journal of American History (1980), The Journal of Southern History (1981).
Stewart E. Dunaway's account of the Battle of Lindley's Mill, fought in September 1781 after the Loyalist David Fanning raided Hillsborough and carried off Governor Thomas Burke. Burke, Fanning and the Lindley family, whose mill gave the fight its name, are the people at its center, with the Revolutionary campaigns in North Carolina as the frame. Published in 2009.
Governor Alexander Martin's correspondence from his second administration, 12 January to 27 November 1792, with some items from 1791, in 121 images. Oliver Wolcott Jr. is among the writers. Matters include taxation, tobacco, liquor, military pensions, debts and the army's clothing accounts, with William Blount, Benjamin Hawkins, Richard Caswell and Hillsborough named.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
April 1791 letters of Governor Alexander Martin, eight images, including correspondence from Abishai Thomas. Martin was elected governor six times. Hillsborough and Orange County figure in the month's business.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Cleo Greer Hogan and Charles Edward Hogan's genealogy of the descendants of Colonel John Hogan (about 1745-1792) and Mary Lloyd Hogan of Orange County, North Carolina, and Montgomery County, Tennessee. Self-published in 1998 in one illustrated volume with various pagings, it follows the family from the Orange County Piedmont to Tennessee.
Stewart E. Dunaway's history of the two mills George Johnston built on New Hope Creek in Orange County, the first in 1793 and the second in 1820, the earlier of which he sold to the Englishman William Robson. Self-published in 2010, 256 pages with illustrations, maps and facsimiles. Topics include gristmills in Orange County and the Blackwood, Johnston, Robinson and Robson families, so the volume serves both mill history and genealogy.
Jennifer Fleischner's double biography of Mary Todd Lincoln and Elizabeth Keckley, the dressmaker who had been enslaved, including years in Hillsborough, before buying her freedom and becoming the First Lady's confidante. Published by Broadway Books in New York in 2003, 372 pages with illustrations and a map. Topics include enslaved women in Hillsborough and the United States, dressmakers and women's friendships in the nineteenth century.
Stewart E. Dunaway's 2010 study of Patterson Mill, a gristmill site on New Hope Creek where Orange County meets Chatham County. The book pairs a short genealogy of the Patterson family with a close survey of what remains of the mill on land now inside Duke Forest, supported by maps, facsimile documents and illustrations across 176 pages. Self-published in a second issue dated October 10, 2010.
Albert N. Link's early history of Research Triangle Park, published in 1995 by the Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina. Topics include research parks, research institutes and industrial research in the state, with the park's own history at the center. 149 pages with illustrations and maps.
Albert N. Link's history of the Research Triangle Park, the research park founded to draw on the universities at Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh, published in 2002 by the Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina in 278 pages with illustrations. Topics include research parks, research institutes and industrial research in North Carolina and the history of the park itself.
Beverly A. Scarlett's 2024 study of a free community of color in nineteenth-century Orange County, drawing on apprenticeship and freedmen's records among other county sources.
Exhibit publication from the Orange County Historical Museum for its special exhibit on working life, shown in Hillsborough from March to December 2024 and concerned with the county's trades and industrial arts. Produced by the museum in 2024, it documents Orange County and Hillsborough history through the work people did.
Hsi-Chu Bolick's 2010 account of the East Asian collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, printed as an article running from page 280 to page 292 with illustrations and portraits. Topics include East Asian libraries in Chapel Hill, library resources for East Asia, and the university's cooperation with Duke in building the collection.
Mark Chilton's short account of the water mills that once stood on Bolin and Morgan creeks in Orange County, prepared to accompany a talk given to the Chapel Hill Historical Society on January 27, 2008. Seven unnumbered pages with a folded plate, color illustrations and a map.
Account of student protest in 1960s Chapel Hill, published by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2007 with illustrations. It draws together the civil rights movement and segregation in the town, discrimination in restaurants, academic freedom and university autonomy, protest against the Vietnam War, Students for a Democratic Society and the Black Student Movement on campus.
Sara Regan Lachenman's 2005 thesis on how the people living in Carrboro's company built housing altered it to suit themselves. It takes up domestic architecture, working class housing and the social side of the textile industry in the town, with 158 pages of text and illustrations.
Tanya Smith Brice studies how North Carolina's juvenile justice system treated African American girls between 1890 and 1930, naming among its institutions the North Carolina Industrial School for Negro Girls at Efland in Orange County. Health and hygiene, juvenile delinquency and the state's social conditions are among its subjects. A 2003 typescript of 89 leaves with a bibliography on the closing pages.
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. “Guns, powder and paper at Hillsborough, 1775–1778.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/guns-powder-paper-storyline-1775/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
