Storyline · 1901–1930
Hillsborough's fight over its saloons gave way to a long struggle against illegal stills across Orange County. In 1903 the town elected a board chosen mostly on the prohibition ticket, which refused every saloon license, and the barrooms closed that June. In 1905 the county commissioners refused the licenses a new town board recommended, and the town voted against liquor dispensaries. The county voted against state prohibition in 1908, though the state carried it, and in 1919 Orange's representative voted against ratifying national prohibition. Blockading, the illegal distilling of whiskey, went on: in 1920 Louis Graves wrote in the New Republic that Orange had the largest distilling operations in the state, and officers kept capturing stills through 1930.
In March 1901 the General Assembly amended Hillsborough's charter, cutting the town board from seven members to five and fixing the town liquor license at $100 a year, and on May 30 Mayor Norwood broke a two-to-two tie to license the town's three saloons for another year. After federal revenue officers seized a still near University Station in September 1902, Hillsborough on May 5, 1903 elected Joseph A. Harris mayor and a board chosen mostly on the prohibition ticket, which the Observer reported as the first time that ticket had carried the town; the board refused every saloon license, and the barrooms closed on the night of June 30, 1903. In November 1904 federal officers raided two Hillsborough places after a letter signed "Reform" charged that blind tigers, illegal liquor sellers, were selling whiskey in town.
In May 1905 voters chose a town board expected to license barrooms, but on June 6 the county commissioners, after petitions from across the county, refused the licenses the town board had recommended, Chairman McAdams breaking the tie. On August 14, 1905 Hillsborough voted 45 to 41 against establishing liquor dispensaries. On April 20, 1908 former governor Charles B. Aycock spoke for state prohibition in the Hillsborough courthouse, and the Rev. Charles E. Maddry of Greensboro then organized an Orange County Anti-Saloon League with Frank Nash as chairman and Nathan W. Brown as secretary. On May 26 the county voted against state prohibition by 314 out of 1,538 votes cast, though the state carried it.
In June 1910 someone carried a captured still out of the Hillsboro jail the night it was locked there, and in August 1911 the commissioners watched two large stills taken by the sheriff's officers cut up. On January 13, 1919 Orange's representative, Lueco Lloyd, was one of ten House members who voted against ratifying national prohibition. By January 1920 the Rev. S. W. Oldham was leading a campaign for enforcement of the liquor laws, and N. W. Brown wrote to the News that the county's name for blockading, the illegal distilling of whiskey, was as bad as any mountain county's. That year Louis Graves wrote in the New Republic that Orange had the largest distilling operations in the state.
On September 1, 1924 the commissioners watched eight large stills captured by Sheriff L. B. Lloyd cut up in the courthouse yard. In the six months to December 31, 1925 the Chapel Hill police made 59 raids for liquor-law violations, captured 11 complete stills and destroyed 11,800 gallons of mash, and the town had just bought a Ford car to speed its raids on stills in the countryside. In late August 1927 federal prohibition officer Charles G. Rosamond captured two stills with a combined capacity of 300 gallons in the Little River section, the second near a settlement called Egypt.
In March 1929 Sheriff W. T. Sloan's deputies took 16 stills and 16,590 gallons of beer, and on July 27, 1930 three of his deputies came on a 25-gallon copper still by the Eno River, whose operators swam the river and escaped; the Weekly added that in the past twelve months the sheriff's force had captured 107 stills and destroyed more than 100,000 gallons of mash.
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.
Account from 1768 for the cost of guarding one prisoner in the jail, a document from the Regulator troubles in Orange County, when backcountry settlers rose against royal officials they accused of extortionate fees and false records. Two images.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
House bills of 13 December 1796, among them a rejected bill for a district jail in the town of Hillsborough and a bill for separate elections and general musters in Orange County. Others concern inspectors, clearing the Yadkin River, and sheriffs. Thirty images.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
A bill of December 7, 1771 proposing a public jail and a jailer's house at Hillsborough for the Hillsborough District, four images among the bills of the colonial assembly session of November and December 1771 in the State Archives of North Carolina.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
University Station, the rail junction on the line serving Chapel Hill, in two undated prints: five men beside the engine and a car, and the station building with a crowd gathered in front.
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. “Prohibition and the blockaders in Orange County, 1901–1930.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/prohibition-blockaders-storyline-1905/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
