Storyline · 1930–1963
Orange County passed over a general revaluation of property for taxes in 1937 and postponed one in 1945, and when it hired professional appraisers, the county's valuation rose by about 89 percent. Assessors were appointed in 1930 for a 1931 revaluation. In 1937 the commissioners chose a review of the tax lists instead of a general revaluation, and in 1945 the wartime labor shortage postponed another. In 1947 a board of assessors inspected nearly every tract, and the valuation was raised. In 1952 the commissioners hired the J. M. Cleminshaw Company to revalue all property at market value, and some 40 citizens protested its values in 1954. In 1963 Associated Surveys of Greensboro began the next ten-year revaluation.
By December 12, 1930 Gilbert Ray, Orange County auditor and tax supervisor, had appointed assessors in every township for the revaluation of all property required in 1931, among them P. L. Burch, W. H. Ray and George Howe for Chapel Hill; assessments three years earlier had been set at about 55 to 60 percent of value. In January 1937 the commissioners decided against a general revaluation, judging that a competent one would cost around $2,000, and proposed instead a board to value buildings put up since the last revaluation and to hear special complaints. Under a special act of the 1937 legislature allowing a review of the tax lists in place of the general revaluation then due, they named D. D. Carroll, E. L. Lockhart and Ben F. Wilson as assessors, who chose Carroll chairman on April 9 and set a hearing in every township between April 19 and May 6.
In December 1944 commissioners' chairman Collier Cobb Jr. told the Chapel Hill aldermen the county would raise the valuation of plainly under-valued property, but in February 1945 the commissioners postponed the scheduled revaluation for two years because of the wartime labor shortage. In 1947 a three-man board of assessors inspected nearly every tract, and from June 25 to August 11 the commissioners heard complaints as the board of equalization and review. County accountant Ira A. Ward's final figures showed the valuation raised from $18,828,912 to $25,245,043, and that fall's tax rate was 3 cents lower.
In 1952 the commissioners turned to professional appraisers, and on November 10 they hired the J. M. Cleminshaw Company for $44,000 to $47,900 to revalue all county property at market value as of January 1, 1953, advised by a Board of Tax Assessors named that April. In March 1954 some 40 citizens protested the firm's values at the first session of the Board of Equalization and Review, and in June the new valuation stood at $69,875,317 against $37,931,453 the year before, an increase of about 89 percent. In the last week of 1963 Associated Surveys of Greensboro, holding a $52,000 contract for the ten-year revaluation, began interviewing owners in Chapel Hill Township, with new values to apply to 1965 taxes.
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.
Collier Cobb Jr. of Chapel Hill, interviewed in 1974 for the Chapel Hill Historical Society. There is no summary of the conversation. Oral history cassette, Audiovisual Materials Collection, CHHS.012.
Minutes and committee files of the University of North Carolina System Board of Trustees from 1932 to 1972, 1,937 items in 2.4 linear feet, University Archives collection 40002, with a master microfilm made by the university library in 1999. Topics include campus buildings and planning, the design and construction of North Carolina Memorial Hospital, and trustees including Gordon Gray and George Watts Hill.
Biography of William C. Friday, president of the University of North Carolina system, by historian William A. Link, published by UNC Press in 1995 with the subtitle power, purpose, and American higher education. It covers Friday's career and the history of the university at Chapel Hill and statewide. Part of the Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection.
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.
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).
Julian M. Pleasants and Augustus M. Burns III on the 1950 Democratic Senate primary in North Carolina, in which Frank Porter Graham, the former president of the University of North Carolina, lost to Willis Smith after a campaign marked by race-baiting. Primaries, elections and race relations in the state are its subjects. Published by UNC Press in 1990, 356 pages with illustrations.
Reviewed in Choice Reviews Online (1991), The American Historical Review (1991), Journal of American History (1991), The Journal of Southern History (1992).
Ruth Blackwelder's study of political and intellectual leadership in Orange County and North Carolina from 1752 to 1861, published in Charlotte by W. Loftin in 1961. Topics include state politics and government, intellectual life before the Civil War, and county genealogy. It runs 216 pages with illustrations and a bibliography. Part of the Wall Local History Collection.
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.
Warren Ashby's biography of Frank Porter Graham (1886-1972), president of the University of North Carolina from 1930 to 1949 and later a United States senator. Published by Blair in 1981, x and 386 pages with sixteen leaves of plates and a bibliography.
Reviewed in The American Historical Review (1981), Journal of American History (1981).
Hugh Talmage Lefler and Paul W. Wager's history of Orange County across its first two centuries, 1752 to 1952, prepared for the county's bicentennial. It covers government and politics, biography and the county's families, and doubles as a genealogical reference. Published in Chapel Hill by the Orange Printshop in 1953, 389 pages with illustrations and an index; this copy is a later reprint.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (1954).
Michael Thomas Smith's biography of Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick, the University of North Carolina chemistry professor dismissed in 1856 after he declared support for the antislavery presidential candidate John C. Fremont. Published by University of Delaware Press in 2003, 216 pages with illustrations. Topics include abolitionists and dissenters in North Carolina, the antislavery movement in the state, and the university's biography before 1962.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (2005).
The papers of Willie Person Mangum, 1792 to 1861, a lawyer, judge and United States senator from the part of Orange County that later became Durham County. Five volumes of correspondence published by the State Department of Archives and History beginning in 1950, arranged by date from 1807 to 1894, with illustrations, portraits and folding maps. A source for antebellum North Carolina and national politics, the Whig Party and the Mangum family.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (1951), Journal of American History (1951), The Journal of Southern History (1953), Journal of American History (1953), The Journal of Southern History (1954), The Journal of Southern History (1955), The Journal of Southern History (1957), Journal of American History (1957), The American Historical Review (1957).
Address by Bishop Joseph Blount Cheshire at St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough on 24 August 1924, marking the parish's hundredth anniversary. Printed in Durham in 1925 at the vestry's order, with a foreword by the rector. Cheshire discusses George Micklejohn, William Mercer Green and Moses Ashley Curtis.
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. “Orange County's property revaluations, 1930–1963.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/property-revaluations-storyline-1944/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
