Storyline · 1775–1779
Orange County had to field a Revolutionary militia in a district the Council of Safety thought full of disaffected persons. The Provincial Congress named the county's officers in 1775, and in February 1776 Orange men held Cross Creek while Nathaniel Rochester took about 500 retreating Loyalists prisoner. In April 1776 the congress split the militia into Northern and Southern regiments under John Butler and James Saunders. Asked for 500 men against the Cherokee, Orange met a quota of 300. By 1778 the county owed the state's troops 73 hats and 146 pairs of shoes, and in 1779 Hillsborough became an army depot as Orange militia fought at Stono Ferry.
In August or September 1775 the Provincial Congress called on Orange to raise three companies of minutemen and named James Thackston colonel of minutemen for the Hillsborough district. For the county militia it named John Hogan colonel, John Butler lieutenant colonel, William Moore first major and Nathaniel Rochester second major, and on September 9 it commissioned Butler, whom it had also put on the district committee of safety. In February 1776 militia bound east against Donald MacDonald's Loyalists gathered at Hillsborough, and Thackston's Orange contingent held Cross Creek, now Fayetteville, denying the Loyalists a refuge. The Orange men did not fight at Moore's Creek Bridge on February 27, but by Rochester's own account Thackston sent him with two companies of infantry and one of cavalry on an all-night march of twenty miles to Devo's Ferry, where he met about 500 men retreating from the battle and took them prisoner. Short of provisions, he let all but about 50, whom MacDonald had made officers, go home on oath not to bear arms again, and turned the 50 over to Colonel Alexander Martin at Cross Creek.
Sitting at Halifax, the congress let Hogan give up his command on April 13, 1776. On April 19 it named Butler and John Atkinson the county's commissioners to take in arms seized from the Tories, buy serviceable guns and have broken ones repaired, each county drawing an advance of 300 pounds. On April 22 it split the militia into two equal regiments along an east-west line the county court had already run, with Butler colonel of the Southern Regiment and Rochester its lieutenant colonel, and James Saunders colonel of the Northern Regiment with Moore as lieutenant colonel. On May 7 it ordered foot soldiers drafted in proportion from each regiment of the Hillsborough and Salisbury brigades, unless enough volunteered, to hold Cross Creek, and on May 14 it sent the money for the Orange militia's claims through Rochester, who was to pay each officer on the allowed pay roll. That summer, when General Griffith Rutherford asked for troops from the Hillsborough brigade for his expedition against the Cherokee, the Council of Safety refused because of the many disaffected persons in the district, which Connor counts among the signs of Loyalist feeling that summer. Orange was asked for 500 men for the campaign and could not raise them; the quota was cut to 300, which was met, and Major Hugh Tinnin and Captains William Williams and William Murray went, with Jacob Albright as drummer.
At its May 1777 term the county court told the Hillsborough District jailer to take in any Continental soldiers a justice of the peace arrested as deserters. In August it made James Empey give security, with Robert Baker and William Armstrong as sureties at fifty pounds each, for his good behavior and for not recruiting men in North Carolina for another state; the sureties stood to lose that money if he broke the bond. In the spring of 1778 an act passed at New Bern set Orange's share of supplies for soldiers in the field at 73 hats, 306 yards of linen, 146 yards of wool, 146 pairs of shoes and 146 pairs of stockings. As the war moved south in 1779 Hillsborough became a collection and storage point for army supplies, and the governor split his time between Halifax and Hillsborough. Supplies for the militia sent to aid South Carolina were collected there and a regiment of light horse under General Allen Jones assembled there, and on June 20 Orange militia under John Butler, now a general, took part in Benjamin Lincoln's attack on the British at Stono Ferry.
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.
House joint resolutions from the session of April 21 to June 3, 1784 at Hillsborough, 193 images of resolutions, petitions and depositions. They range from a replacement certificate for John Hogan and claims by auditors and veterans to courts-martial, Cherokee affairs, taxation and the Continental Congress.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Committee reports and papers of the North Carolina General Assembly from 19 April to 2 May 1783, in 84 images. Petitions came from John Fleetwood of Wayne County and David Dodd of Duplin County, with reports on the militia law and on the claim of Basel Smith. Hillsborough, confiscations, prisoners of war and Continental Army pay also figure in the session.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Senate joint resolutions of 8 and 9 February 1781, 24 images, on tax gatherers in counties without treasurers, a rejected resolution for Samuel Ashe, a rejected allowance for corn supplied to the army, and an order sending Brigadier General John Butler to raise some or all of the Hillsborough District militia.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Miscellaneous statements, certificates and a protest laid before the North Carolina General Assembly in April and May 1780, in twelve images. Topics include militia, prisoners of war, the ships Rainbow and Sally, pork for the army and county jails, with Orange among the counties named.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Governor William Tryon's council met at Hillsborough on 13 August 1768, and this file gathers its minutes together with replies to the insurgents from governors and settlers. People named include Tryon, James Hunter, William Butler and Tyree Harris, and subjects include rebellion, treason, taxes and civil disturbance. The setting is Orange County itself. Reference CO 5/312.
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.
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.
Anne R. Keene's history of the Cloudbusters, the baseball team of the Navy Pre-Flight School at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill during the Second World War, on which Ted Williams played in 1943. The chapters move from a batboy's trunk of keepsakes through the pre-flight training program to the players' lives after the war, and Keene's own family is part of the story. Published by Sports Publishing in New York in 2018, 340 pages with sixteen pages of plates.
William Edward Fitch's account of the Regulator movement and the Battle of Alamance of 1771, which his subtitle calls the first battle of the American Revolution, published by Neale in 1905 in a second edition. Hillsborough, the Orange County seat, was the scene of the Regulators' 1770 courthouse riot and of the hangings that followed Alamance. 307 pages with nine leaves of plates, folding maps and a portrait.
Ernest Dollar examines the mental toll of the Civil War's last weeks in North Carolina on Confederate and Union soldiers and on civilians, using letters, diaries and later accounts. After chapters on each group, the narrative follows the days from April 10 to early May 1865 as Sherman's army moved through the central counties, Chapel Hill and Hillsborough among them; an epilogue considers how the trauma colored later memory of the conflict's end. Published 2022, 265 pages.
Reviewed in Civil War Book Review (2023).
A congregational history of New Hope Presbyterian Church in Orange County, written by Barbara A. Murphy and published in 2006 by Chapel Hill Press. Chapters take up the five successive church buildings, the land itself, the ministers who served, the cemeteries, members who went to war, the church's organization, its music, gifts and memorials, and its outreach to the surrounding community. It also covers Presbyterian experience of the Civil War. 126 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Alex Albright's history of the B-1 band, the group of Black musicians drawn largely from students and graduates of North Carolina A&T who became the first Black sailors of the modern Navy to serve above the rank of messman, and the first of more than a hundred Black Navy bands in wartime. The band was posted to the Navy Pre-Flight School at Chapel Hill, the book's Orange County link. Published by R.A. Fountain in 2013, 194 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Numbered dispatches 59 through 67 from Governor William Tryon to the Earl of Hillsborough, with enclosures about the Regulators, whose protests broke into riot at Hillsborough in 1770. Reproduced by Adam Matthew Digital in 2019 from Colonial Office CO 5/302. The papers touch on the council and assembly, naval stores and trade, oaths, militia and provincial troops, judges, sheriffs and juries, voting, currency, Cherokee affairs, clergy, quitrents and land, and name officials such as Richard Caswell, Richard Henderson, Maurice Moore and Hugh Waddell.
Governor William Tryon's correspondence with the Earl of Hillsborough for the months from October 1768 to May 1769, just after Tryon marched militia to Hillsborough to protect the court from the Regulators. Adam Matthew Digital reproduced the file, Colonial Office CO 5/301, in 2019. Topics include legislation, Anglican clergy, soldiers' wages, sheriffs, land and quitrents, trade and currency, taxes and education, the Catawba and the boundary line, roads, a murder case, punishment and prison, and people such as Richard Caswell, James Hasell and John Rutherford.
Letters from Governor William Tryon to the Lords Commissioners in London, with enclosed legislation and the accounts of the ship Brigantine Fox, reproduced by Adam Matthew Digital in 2019 from Colonial Office file CO 5/300. They show the range of a governor's business: council appointments, judges and courts, assembly acts, cotton manufacturing, poverty, naval stores, rice, tobacco and indigo, currency, the Tuscarora, education, marriage, debt and customs. Hillsborough is among the places named, and people include William Johnston, Richard Henderson, Cornelius Harnett and Samuel Strudwick.
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.
Stewart E. Dunaway's transcription of letters exchanged between Jesse Benton and Thomas Hart from 1780 to 1790, concerning Hart's affairs at Hartford, his place at Hillsborough. The letters concern the economic and social conditions of Hillsborough in the eighteenth century and the Revolution in North Carolina. Self-published through lulu.com in 2009, 68 pages with illustrations and facsimiles, and part of the library's Wall Local History Collection.
Suzy Barile's account of Eleanor Hope Swain, daughter of the University of North Carolina's president, and Smith D. Atkins, the Union general whose troops occupied Chapel Hill in April 1865; the two married later that year. Published by Eno in Hillsborough in 2009, 237 pages with illustrations and portraits.
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 militia in the Revolution, 1775–1779.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/revolution-militia-storyline-1775/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
