Storyline · 1902–1909
Shepperd Strudwick, who brought his family back to Hillsborough about 1902, stood at the head of one new enterprise after another. Ralph Adams Cram designed his new house at the corner of Churton and Union. In 1904 a new Business Men's Association elected him president, and he became president of the Bellevue Manufacturing Company, a cotton mill in west Hillsborough. In 1905 voters made him a town commissioner on a ticket understood to favor licensing barrooms. In 1907 the new Hillsboro Clay Manufacturing Company chose him president and treasurer for a brick plant, and by 1909 the Observer listed him at the head of the clay company and the Bellevue mill.
Shepperd Strudwick, a Hillsborough native, brought his family back to the town about 1902, when his son Clement was two. In 1903 he bought the Methodists' Churton Street parsonage lot to build a residence, and the 1831 William J. Bingham House was moved down East Union Street to clear the corner of Churton and Union for his house. Ralph Adams Cram drew the design, and the house was finished about 1908. In April 1904 the Bank of Orange was chartered. In June a new Business Men's Association elected Strudwick president and Paul C. Collins secretary, and in July a citizens' association that included Strudwick gave the town three gasoline street lamps. On October 13 the Bellevue Manufacturing Company, a cotton mill in west Hillsborough, was incorporated with Strudwick as president, and in 1905 he bought Allen Ruffin's land north of the mill site. That May voters made him a town commissioner on a ticket understood to favor licensing barrooms. In January 1907 the new Hillsboro Clay Manufacturing Company chose him president and treasurer for a brick plant east of town, and in February a township meeting seeking a road bond vote named him, Ruffin and C. D. Jones to handle the sale of the bonds. By February 1909 the Observer listed him at the head of the clay company as well as the Bellevue mill.
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 the 2 with a known location.
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.
Evelyn P. Lloyd assembled a slide show called 'The Strudwicks: A family of artists', about 130 items in a linear foot and a half made between the 1950s and the 1970s, in the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives at UNC, P0119. The pictures are set in Hillsborough and feature four Strudwicks: Shepperd the elder and the younger, Clement Read and Edmund.
Edward G. Danziger's memoir of love and cooking, published by J. F. Blair in 1967. Danziger (1893 to 1972) ran Danziger's Old World Restaurant in Chapel Hill, and the book tells his life as a restaurateur in the town.
William M. Rohe's history of Research Triangle Park and the region around it, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2011. Topics include regional planning and the economic and social conditions of the Research Triangle Park region, one corner of which is Chapel Hill and the university. 298 pages with illustrations and maps.
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).
Orvin Lee Shiflett's biography of William Terry Couch, 1901 to 1988, the editor who built up UNC Press at Chapel Hill over four decades in publishing, with a subtitle that calls his career a lightning rod for controversy. Chapters treat culture in the South, a case history in book publishing, objectivity and social science and 'The Sainted Book Burners'. It bears on scholarly publishing and university presses in the twentieth century. McFarland, 2015, 268 pages with illustrations.
Albert N. Link's early history of Research Triangle Park, published in 1995 by the Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina. Topics include research parks, research institutes and industrial research in the state, with the park's own history at the center. 149 pages with illustrations and maps.
Annette Marie Council's book about her family and Mama Dip's Country Kitchen, the Chapel Hill restaurant, published by NP Press in 2005. Subjects include African Americans in Chapel Hill, the restaurant's history and family biography. Fourteen introductory pages and 223 pages of text with illustrations, part local history and part family account.
Albert N. Link's history of the Research Triangle Park, the research park founded to draw on the universities at Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh, published in 2002 by the Research Triangle Foundation of North Carolina in 278 pages with illustrations. Topics include research parks, research institutes and industrial research in North Carolina and the history of the park itself.
Charles X. Larrabee's history of the Research Triangle Institute over its first thirty one years, published in 1991. Topics include research institutes and research parks in North Carolina and the history of Research Triangle Park, the research district that lies between Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh.
Alex Sayf Cummings's 2020 book on the knowledge economy of the Research Triangle, technology research and the history of Research Triangle Park. Chapel Hill and its university form one corner of the Triangle.
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.
Account of student protest in 1960s Chapel Hill, published by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2007 with illustrations. It draws together the civil rights movement and segregation in the town, discrimination in restaurants, academic freedom and university autonomy, protest against the Vietnam War, Students for a Democratic Society and the Black Student Movement on campus.
Maxine Freeland's biography of James John Freeland (1918-1999), a Hillsborough man of the twentieth century, compiled in 1999.
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. “Shepperd Strudwick and Hillsborough's new enterprises, 1902–1909.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/strudwick-enterprises-storyline-1902/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
