Storyline · 1881–1887
From 1881 to 1888 Orange County argued over whether to keep the open range, with farmers fencing their crops against roaming livestock, or adopt a stock law, which made owners keep their animals penned. Little River Township voted for the old fence system in 1881, and two Black leaders, Alfred Holmes and Lewis Jenkins, spoke for a no-fence law in 1884. An 1885 act barred cattle from running at large in four townships and let Chapel Hill Township adopt the stock law. Its voters rejected the law 415 to 104 that November, but in 1887, on a petition of 383 freeholders, the commissioners put it in force there from 1888, without an election or a fence tax.
In a fence-law election on March 12, 1881, Little River Township voters favoring the old fence system outvoted the stock-law side by a large majority, keeping the open range. In May 1882 the county commissioners called a fence-law vote in Hillsborough Township. At the Republican county convention on April 26, 1884, two Black leaders, Alfred Holmes and Lewis Jenkins, spoke for a no-fence law. An 1885 act barred cattle from running at large in Cedar Grove, Little River, Hillsboro and Bingham townships, to be fenced from a special tax, and let Chapel Hill Township adopt the stock law on a petition of three-fourths of its freeholders. When Senator Augustus W. Graham and Representative Charles W. Johnston reported to the voters at the court house on March 31, the crowd was divided on the fence law. On September 7 the commissioners levied 20 cents on each $100 of real estate in the four townships to build the fence. On November 17 Chapel Hill Township voters rejected the stock law, 415 to 104, and two days later the commissioners ordered the line fence around that township finished. In February 1887 they ordered a stock-law district east, north and south of Chapel Hill, and on October 3, on a petition of 383 freeholders, they put the stock law in force in all of Chapel Hill Township from January 1, 1888, without an election or a fence tax.
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.
Matthew Atwater's family Bible records cover 1823 to 1904. Part of the Bible Records series at the State Archives of North Carolina, compiled by the Division of Archives and History. The material concerns Matthew and Emily Atwater and the Atwater family, with connections to Orange County.
H. G. Jones follows the fortune of Mary Ruffin Smith (1814-1885), the unmarried heiress whose Orange and Chatham County lands passed at her death to the University of North Carolina and the Episcopal Church. Chapters profile her grandfather Francis Jones, then trace the bequest through a quarrel among Episcopalians over Price Creek, the Chapel of the Cross and the university's buildings. A December 1885 New York Times report called the gift money; Jones shows it was land. Published by McFarland in 2014, 231 pages.
Jean Bradley Anderson's history of the Bennehan and Cameron families and their plantations, Stagville and Fairntosh, on lands that lay in Orange County until Durham County was formed from it in 1881. Published by the Historic Preservation Society of Durham in 1985, the book follows plantation life and ownership across several generations, with genealogical tables, a map, portraits, a bibliography and an index; 227 pages plus plates.
Reviewed in South Atlantic Quarterly (1987).
Sydney Nathans's history of a Black community in Hale County, Alabama, whose founders were enslaved people sent there before the Civil War from the Cameron family's plantations in Orange County, North Carolina. Instead of following the Great Migration out of the South, this group stayed, moved from bondage to owning the land they had worked, and held onto it across generations. Published 2017, 342 pages with plates and maps; this is the e-book edition.
Reviewed in Journal of American History (2017), Journal of Social History (2017), London review of books (2017), The Journal of the Civil War Era (2018), The Journal of Southern History (2018), Environmental History (2018), The Alabama review (2019), The Oral History Review (2019), The Register - Kentucky Historical Society/The register of the Kentucky Historical Society (2020).
Herbert G. Gutman's 1976 history of African American families from 1750 to 1925, published by Pantheon Books in New York, 664 pages with 38 leaves of plates. Its Orange County connection is the Bennehan and Cameron family plantations, Stagville and Fairntosh: the book discusses the people enslaved by Richard Bennehan (1743-1825) and the Camerons, and follows family ties among them under slavery and after emancipation. Subjects include African American families and enslaved persons in Orange County.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (1977), The William and Mary Quarterly (1977), The American Historical Review (1977), Journal of American History (1977), The History Teacher (1977), Political Science Quarterly (1977), Journal of Black Psychology (1978), Journal of Social History (1978), Civil War history (1978), Signs (1978).
Rachel Frankel's Duke University honors paper of 1984 on the Couch tract in the Durham Division of Duke Forest, a history of agricultural land use from 1750 to 1950. The Couch family, family farms and rural land use in Orange County are its subjects. A photocopied typescript, 97 leaves with maps and a bibliography.
Evan P. Bennett returns to the photographs Marion Post Wolcott made in 1939 in Cedar Grove, a Black farming neighborhood in northern Orange County that she documented for the federal resettlement program. Published in 2025 by the Historical Research Office in Raleigh, pages 384 to 406, with illustrations and portraits. Topics include rural African Americans in the Cedar Grove township and photographers in the state.
A tour guidebook prepared for the 2016 Vernacular Architecture Forum conference in Durham, leading visitors through buildings in Orange and Caswell counties. It takes in the architecture of the bright leaf tobacco economy and the work of Thomas Day, the free Black cabinetmaker of Caswell County who worked in the middle of the nineteenth century.
Joe Liles's interviews with longtime residents of Fish Dam Road, an old rural road in Durham County, recorded in 2004, with subjects tied to both Durham and Orange counties. The interviewees are Charles Scott Harkey, Mary Scarlett Jones, Boyce Link and John Scarlett, all born between 1912 and 1920, and the topics include country life, the road's history and the Duke Power Company.
Richard L. Bushman looks at the county court of Orange County and the farmers who came before it between 1750 and 1776, a period that in this county included the Regulator insurrection of 1766 to 1771. Published in 2001 as pages 388 to 413 of a larger volume. Topics include courts, farmers and eighteenth century law in the county.
AlexSandra Lett's family history and memoir of country life around a Lee County store, subtitled Lett's set a spell at the country store. Published in 2000, it includes anecdotes of the Lett family and of Sanford and Lee County, North Carolina.
Megan Elizabeth Greene's 1998 study of smoking pipes recovered from three Native American communities in the North Carolina Piedmont dating between about 1400 and 1700. The evidence includes material excavated at Hillsborough in Orange County. The study also concerns tobacco use among Indigenous peoples of North America. Bibliography on leaves 35 to 36.
Bradley J. Lambert's study of the fiddler Joe Thompson and the Black communities of the rural Piedmont, covering music and daily life in Orange County in the early twentieth century. Seventy-seven leaves with a bibliography, completed in 1998. Topics include African American musicians in the county and African American history there.
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 stock law and the end of open range, 1881–1887.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/stock-law-storyline-1881/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
