Storyline · 1841–1859
Orange County's elections from 1841 to 1859 were often close, as Whigs, Democrats and for a time the Know Nothings contested the county. In 1841 Orange narrowly backed the Whig James S. Smith for Congress, though the Democrat Romulus M. Saunders won the district. In 1844 the county elected its whole Whig ticket and gave its own William A. Graham a majority for governor. A tied 1848 state Senate race, broken by the sheriff's casting vote, ended in a new election. Orange backed Graham's 1852 run for vice president, voted for the Know Nothing, or American, candidate for Congress in 1855 and went Democratic in 1856. In December 1859 a Whig and Opposition meeting denounced John Brown's raid.
In March 1841 Whigs at Hillsborough nominated Dr. James S. Smith for Congress, and in May Orange gave him 1,210 votes to 1,180 for the Democrat Romulus M. Saunders, who won the district. In 1844 Orange elected its whole Whig ticket, gave its own William A. Graham a majority of nearly 200 for governor, and cast 1,686 votes for Henry Clay to 1,589 for James K. Polk. In 1848 the sheriff's casting vote broke a tie for Hugh Waddell in the state Senate race; Waddell resigned over a disputed precinct return, and after a new election on November 7 the sheriff declared John Berry elected. Graham ran for vice president with Winfield Scott in 1852, and Orange gave their electors 1,441 votes to 1,307. On February 3, 1855 Hillsborough elected a Know Nothing town slate, and that August Orange voted 932 to 797 for the American candidate for Congress, James B. Shepard. In 1856 the county voted for the Democrats Thomas Bragg and James Buchanan, and Paul C. Cameron beat Josiah Turner Jr. for the state Senate by 30 votes; Turner, running as an independent Whig, beat Cameron in 1858. On December 13, 1859 a Whig and Opposition meeting at the court house denounced John Brown's raid.
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.
Testimony gathered in an 1849 contested election case from Orange County, summarizing the evidence about the individual voters whose eligibility the committee could not agree on. John Berry and Hugh Waddell were the candidates in the case before the North Carolina Senate committee on privileges and elections. Eight pages, useful to anyone studying who could vote in the county and on what terms.
Hugh Waddell announces his candidacy for the House of Commons in the seat left vacant by James Forrest, signing at Orange County on the first of November 1835. An address printed for the freemen of the county, and one of the few surviving traces of that contest.
Personal and political papers of Willie Person Mangum, the Whig senator from Orange County, together with papers of Arthur Mangum and Charity Alston Cain Mangum. Correspondents include Daniel Webster, William A. Graham, David L. Swain, John Chavis and Abraham Lincoln, and other topics include plantations at Hillsborough, the estate called Walnut Hill, state politics, agriculture and education.
Senate committee reports from 1849 on the contested election for Orange County's seat in the 37th Senatorial District of North Carolina, fought between Hugh Waddell (1799-1878) and John Berry (1798-1870). The committee split, and the pamphlet prints both parts' reports, the Senate resolutions and the committee's proceedings. Printed in Raleigh by S. Gales, 32 pages.
Facsimile, dated 1940, of George W. Tate's 1891 map of Orange County. It shows towns, roads, railroads such as the North Carolina Rail Road and the Chapel Hill line, residences, schools, churches, mills and mines, with portraits and pictures of buildings in the margins.
John V. Allcott's 1965 article on the building campaign at Montrose, the Hillsborough home of William A. Graham, during the 1850s. Allcott connects the work to the architect Alexander Jackson Davis, and the piece runs as pages 85 to 95 of a larger publication, with illustrations.
William A. Graham's letter to A. M. Waddell, dated at Hillsborough on February 5, 1861, and printed there. Graham, the former governor and senator who lived in Hillsborough, argues against secession on the ground that Abraham Lincoln's election alone does not justify leaving the Union. A single printed letter from the winter before North Carolina seceded.
Two filmed interviews recorded on 9 June 1962 with Frank Porter Graham, former president of the University of North Carolina. In the first he talks with Hubert Robinson, a Black man who spent years as his driver, butler and assistant; in the second chancellor William Aycock joins him. Topics include university history, Graham's United Nations work and South Asian affairs.
The printed program for a ceremony held on the evening of 11 September 1964 at the new courthouse in Hillsborough, where the Hillsborough Historical Society and Eagle Lodge No. 19 unveiled a plaque honoring John Berry, the builder, architect and legislator who lived from 1798 to 1870. One folded sheet of four pages with a portrait.
Eva Ingersoll Gatling's article on John Berry (1798 to 1870), the Hillsborough builder and architect, detached from the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, volume 10, number 1, pages 18 to 22, with illustrations. It concerns the history of North Carolina architecture and the historic buildings of Hillsborough. Published by the society in Philadelphia in 1951.
James C. Turrentine, for many years sheriff of Orange County, addressed his fellow citizens in this 1844 broadside, answering John Berry's charge that he had acted improperly in casting the deciding vote for Berry's opponent at a recent election. Thirty by nineteen centimeters, signed at the end.
Star pattern quilt of 1861, pieced from red, green and yellow calico and stitched by hand, with a white backing quilted in floral designs. Elizabeth Vincent Berry, wife of the Hillsborough architect and builder John Berry, made it.
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. “Whigs, Democrats and Know Nothings in Orange County, 1841–1859.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/whigs-democrats-know-nothings-storyline-1841/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
