Storyline · 1752–1777
In colonial Orange County the sheriff collected the taxes, and how sheriffs and their deputies collected them became a grievance that fed the Regulation. The governor chose sheriffs from names the county court sent him, beginning with Alexander Mebane, who returned 1,113 tithables for 1752 and 1753. Thomas Hart's short account and the Assembly bill excusing him from taxes, deputies' seizures of deer skins and livestock, and Tyree Harris's extra charge on late payers came before the 1768 depositions and the rescue of a seized horse at Hillsborough. Regulators whipped Sheriff John Lea in 1769. In 1777 the first court under statehood named Mebane's son sheriff.
When the county court first met at John Gray's house near the Eno on September 9, 1752, Alexander Mebane sat as sheriff, and the justices laid a poll tax of one shilling on each tithable. The sheriff collected the county's taxes, and Mebane returned 1,113 tithables for 1752 and 1753. The governor appointed each new sheriff from three names the court sent him. In December 1753 the justices gave John Gray 10 votes, Lawrence Thompson 8 and James Dickey 6, and Gray was appointed; in 1755 Thompson received the appointment. In 1763 Governor Arthur Dobbs appointed Gray's son-in-law, Thomas Hart, who served two years. On November 20, 1764 the Assembly passed a bill excusing Hart and others from paying taxes, which the Regulators did not forget, and in May 1765 it found his account short because he had not collected the poll tax. Hart settled, and a 1770 petition called him the only sheriff that ever settled.
William Nunn was sheriff in 1765, when a deputy, Charles Appa Crumby, carried off John McVay's eight deer skins, worth four to five pounds, for a levy of ten or twelve shillings. In 1768 Orange farmers swore scores of depositions accusing Nunn and his deputies of seizing deer skins, livestock, a gun and cloth. Early that year Sheriff Tyree Harris, under a new act requiring sheriffs to sit at five places to receive taxes, posted notice that late payers would owe him two shillings eightpence extra; Herman Husband said the notice helped stir up the Regulators. On April 8 Regulators rode into Hillsborough and took back a horse the sheriff had seized for an unpaid levy. In August the new sheriff, John Lea, brought them Governor William Tryon's demand for a 1,000 pound bond, and in October Harris reported the Regulators willing to pay their taxes. Regulators whipped Lea in 1769. The Regulator leader William Butler was a county tax collector from 1768 and a deputy sheriff in 1770, and that October a Regulator petition named Sheriff John Butler one of only two officials charging fair fees.
About 1773 Orange citizens petitioned their assemblyman, Hart, for laws to regulate taxes and require proper bonds of sheriffs, and some of the legislation he introduced passed. In May 1777 the first county court under the new state named Alexander Mebane Jr., son of the first sheriff, the first sheriff under statehood and county treasurer.
Every statement above comes from these dated entries in the chronology. Each links to its source.
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.
Reports and papers of the House Committee of Privileges and Elections for the 1783 session at Hillsborough, including depositions on disputed elections in Washington, Bladen, Rutherford and Beaufort counties. John Gray Blount, William Blount and Landon Carter appear. 62 images.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Letters sent to the governor in 1768 concerning rebellious and civil disturbances in Orange County and other provinces. Edmund Fanning, Francis Nash, William Butler, Peter Craven and James Hasell are named, with Hillsborough, Brunswick, Halifax and Wilmington as places and riot, militia, warrants and troop movements as topics. Cited to Colonial Office volume CO 5/312, North Carolina correspondence of the Secretary of State, 1768 to 1769.
Senate bills of 14 December 1793, 15 images: one to divide Beaufort County, another to repeal the relief act for militiamen disabled by wounds and for widows and orphans of those who died in service. Courthouses, marriage law and prisons also appear, and Hillsborough is among the places tied to the session.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Gray family papers, roughly 650 items in a linear foot and a half running from 1722 to 1879 and heaviest after 1846, in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC. Account books sit among the correspondence. Topics include lawyers in eighteenth and nineteenth century North Carolina, fisheries, family social life, and students at the Bingham School in Orange County and at Wesleyan Female College in Murfreesboro.
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.
History of Maddock's Mill at Hillsborough and of its owners Thomas Hart, Rev. James Frazier, Jesse Benton and Catlett Campbell. Stewart E. Dunaway published it in 2022 through Lulu, 174 pages with illustrations, maps and facsimiles, appending Benton and Hart family histories.
Letters written between 1780 and 1790 by Jesse Benton, a lawyer at Hillsborough, to Thomas Hart, the owner of the Hartford mill complex, edited by Stewart Dunaway and published in 2009. Sixty eight pages with illustrations, facsimiles and a plan. The correspondence falls in the Revolutionary and early federal years.
Stewart E. Dunaway's earlier compilation of the Jesse Benton papers from Hartford at Hillsborough, covering 1780 to 1790, self-published in 1991, 68 pages with illustrations. Alongside the correspondence of Benton and Thomas Hart, it covers the Revolutionary War campaigns in North Carolina, including the battles of Hart's Mill and Lindley's Mill in 1781, both fought in what was then Orange County. Dunaway reissued the letters in 2009.
Marjoleine Kars's history of the Regulator Rebellion of 1766 to 1771, the backcountry uprising against corrupt county officials that ended at the Battle of Alamance. Hillsborough, the Orange County seat, was a center of the Regulators' protests and the scene of their 1770 court riot. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2002, 286 pages with illustrations and maps.
Reviewed in The Journal of Interdisciplinary History (2003).
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.
Annie Sutton Cameron's short account of Hillsborough during the Regulator uprising of 1766 to 1771, when backcountry farmers protested colonial officials and courts and Hillsborough, as the seat of Orange County, stood at the center of the conflict. Published by the Orange County Historical Museum in Hillsborough in 1964, 36 pages with illustrations.
Carole Watterson Troxler's history of the Regulator movement in Piedmont North Carolina, from land speculation and backcountry resentment through Herman Husband and the Sandy Creek network to the petitions, court proceedings and rioting in Hillsborough and Salisbury, the Battle of Alamance in 1771 and the movement's afterlife in the Revolution. An appendix compiles names in a Regulator context. Published by the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources in 2011, 221 pages with illustrations, maps and an index.
Documentary history of the Regulator movement of 1766 to 1771, the backcountry protest against corrupt county officials that centered on Hillsborough and ended at the Battle of Alamance, compiled by William S. Powell, James K. Huhta and Thomas J. Farnham. The volume prints primary sources from 1759 to 1776. Published by the State Department of Archives and History in 1971, xxxix and 626 pages with illustrations.
Reviewed in The American Historical Review (1972), The Journal of Southern History (1972).
Herbert Snipes Turner's history of Hawfields Presbyterian Church and its community from 1738 to 1960. Hawfields lies in what is now Alamance County, land that was part of Orange County until 1849, and the book gives a place to Henry Pattillo, the congregation's eighteenth-century minister. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1962, 297 pages with illustrations.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (1963).
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.
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.
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.
Dispatches from Josiah Martin, the last royal governor of North Carolina, to Wills Hill, Earl of Hillsborough, the secretary of state for the colonies for whom the Orange County seat is named, and to the Lords Commissioners in London. Adam Matthew Digital reproduced the file, Colonial Office CO 5/303 part 1, in 2019. Topics include women, medicine and health, land grants, the courts and litigation, German and Protestant migration to the frontier, the Regulators, riot and treason, salt and alcohol imports, Spanish shipping and crime.
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.
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. “The sheriff and the taxes: Orange County's sheriffs, 1752–1777.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/sheriffs-taxes-storyline-1752/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
