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Theme

Everyday Life & Traditions

Filling stations and front porches, holidays and fairs, and the ordinary routines that rarely made the history books.

In briefFilling stations, front porches, fairs, holidays and the routines that rarely made the history books: the records here are photographs, memoirs and local histories of ordinary life in the county’s towns and countryside. The chronology reads the whole county’s story from that everyday angle.

596 works about Everyday Life & Traditions are indexed here. 27 held at OCPL →

Search these works Research sources View indexed works ↓
Men at a country store and filling station, 1939.

Events and storylines

Storylines in this theme, in date order. Select a title to open its page or chronology entry.

Occaneechi Town and the Great Trading Path1680–2024 · 57 events · Occaneechi Town on the Eno, occupied from about 1680 to 1710, was where John Lawson stopped in 1701 on the trading path that ran from Virginia to the Catawba. Archaeologists located the village at the Fredricks site in 1983, and the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, recognized by the state in 2002, rebuilt a replica village there and dedicated a highway marker in 2024. Creation of Orange County and Hillsborough, 1752–17661752–1766 · 35 events · The General Assembly created Orange County in 1752 from parts of Granville, Johnston and Bladen counties. William Churton laid out its county seat in 1754 where trading paths crossed the Eno. The town was called Orange, then Corbin Town, then Childsburgh from 1759, and took the name Hillsborough in 1766. How Orange County’s boundaries changed, 1753–18811753–1881 · 41 events · A year after creating Orange, the Assembly in 1753 replaced the eastern line the 1752 act had set, ordering a new line run from the Virginia line twenty miles west of Granville Court House due south to the Neuse River and down the Neuse to the mouth of Horse Creek, and the creation of Rowan County that year gave Orange its first fixed western line. An act of 1761 moved part of southeastern Orange into Johnston County. In 1767 Orange still ran over land later taken into Wake, Chatham, Guilford, Caswell, Person, Randolph, Rockingham, Alamance and Durham, and had the largest population of any county in North Carolina; successive divisions cut it to about 7,560 people by 1779. In November 1768 the Assembly rejected bills to form new counties out of Orange and Johnston and out of Orange and Rowan, though many people had to travel as far as 60 miles to court, and in 1770 residents of northern Orange petitioned for a county of their own, telling the Assembly that travel to the county's musters and courts was a heavy burden. Between 1771 and 1777 the legislature carved Guilford, Wake, Chatham and Caswell counties wholly or partly out of Orange, then took Alamance from its west in 1849 and Durham from its east in 1881. Records filed under Orange County before those dates can therefore concern places that now lie in other counties. Cedar Grove and rural northern Orange1755–2013 · 224 events · The crossroads communities north of Hillsborough grew around Eno Presbyterian, organized in 1755, the Hughes Academy of 1845, the Pope farm of the 1870s and Ellis Store of 1923, with nearly half the county’s Black-owned farms in Cedar Grove Township by 1940. The Schley Grange brought telephones in 1948, the schools were consolidated and desegregated in the 1960s, and the branch library came and went between 2004 and 2010. The Regulator crisis, 1766–17711766–1771 · 137 events · Orange County farmers organized in 1766 against high fees, taxes and dishonest county officers, calling a meeting at Maddock's Mill that October. Protest turned violent at the Hillsborough court in September 1770 and ended with the Regulators' defeat at Alamance on May 16, 1771 and the hanging of six at Hillsborough on June 19. Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies1779–1865 · 222 events · Meeting at Halifax on February 12, 1779, the General Assembly chartered an academy near Hillsborough named Science Hall, naming William Hooper, Thomas Burke, Nathaniel Rochester, James Hogg and others as trustees, with the same powers as those of Liberty Hall in Mecklenburg County. Jesse Benton, who supported the school, was secretary-treasurer of its trustees in 1784, and some years later he gave it the 50 pounds damages he won from Colonel William Sheppard for an assault. The school opened about 1785 as Hillsborough Academy in the old Anglican church, which an act of the 1784 Hillsborough session had ordered repaired for a school and a free meeting house, but it never thrived and closed in 1790. Pender lists a school kept by Joseph Dunn Hughes near Eno Presbyterian Church in 1785, the earliest of the Hughes family schools that later produced Cedar Grove Academy, and in September 1790 Richard Stanford, who had come to the Hawfields from Maryland in 1789, opened an academy there, with Thomas Hart Benton among his early pupils. At New Hope church William F. Thompson urged the congregation in 1795 to take up schooling, and the church generally kept a school for many years after. Hillsborough Academy opened on a larger plan under Andrew Flinn in October 1801 and grew under William J. Bingham, principal from 1827 until 1844, when he left to open his own school at the Oaks. The Burwell School for girls ran from 1837 to 1857. The Nash and Kollock School opened in 1858 and Hillsborough Military Academy in January 1859. The military academy closed for a time in 1865 at the end of the Civil War.
Show all 48 storylines
The founding of the University and Chapel Hill, 1789–17951789–1795 · 60 events · The General Assembly chartered the university on December 11, 1789. Meeting at Hillsborough in August 1792, the trustees voted to build within fifteen miles of Cyprett's Bridge, and that November their commissioners chose New Hope Chapel Hill. The Old East cornerstone was laid October 12, 1793, and the first student, Hinton James, arrived February 12, 1795. Chapel Hill's first inns and taverns, 1793–18051793–1805 · The county court licensed Chapel Hill's first taverns as taverns at the University, beginning in 1793 with James Patterson, Old East's contractor, whose inn was the starting point of the cornerstone procession. William and Betsy Nunn bought it in 1795 and added a tavern, the trustees barred students from taverns without leave in 1796, and John Taylor Sr. opened a second tavern by 1799. Betsy Nunn ran the inn from about 1805 until her death, and it stayed in the Nunn family for more than half a century. Public libraries in Orange County1822–2026 · 127 events · Orange County’s public libraries grew from the Franklin Library Society of 1822 and the free library counted at Hillsboro in 1910 to the Confederate Memorial Library of 1934, the Hyconeechee Regional Library of 1948, the Negro Public Library’s own building in 1951 and Chapel Hill’s town library in 1958. The county system that followed opened branches at Carrboro and Cedar Grove, a Main Library on Margaret Lane in 2010 and the Drakeford Library Complex in 2025, with the Friends of the library founded in 1981 along the way. Orange County and the 1835 constitutional convention, 1822–18351822–1835 · 11 events · Reforming the state constitution threatened Hillsborough's borough seat, the town's own member in the House of Commons, yet Orange pressed for reform. Toasts at Hillsborough in 1822 and 1823 said the constitution needed mending, and in 1823 a county meeting named four delegates, Thomas Ruffin among them, to a reform meeting at Raleigh; voters elected all four. In April 1835 Orange voted 1,648 to 111 for a convention, and Hillsborough itself voted 228 to 23 in favor. Candidates were pressed on the 32nd article, the religious test for office. At Raleigh, James S. Smith moved to abolish borough seats entirely and lost 61 to 67, but Hillsborough lost its member. Orange voters approved the amendments that November. Historic Rogers Road neighborhood1840–2021 · 25 events · The Rogers-Eubanks area grew from Black-owned farms and sawmills after emancipation, and in 1972 the county landfill was placed beside it. Residents organized through RENA and the Rogers-Eubanks Coalition from 2007, the landfill closed in 2013, and the neighborhood won a community center in 2014 and the sewer extension in 2019. Dividing Orange: the fight that made Alamance County, 1842–18511842–1851 · 16 events · From 1842 to 1849 Orange County fought over division and over a tax for a new courthouse that western voters saw as a move to fix the county seat and block division. In 1842 a meeting at the High Falls of Haw River resolved to keep petitioning for a central division, and voters rejected one. After the county court laid an $8,000 courthouse tax in 1844, meetings called the tax unjust, but voters rejected division again, by 292 votes. In 1849 a bill introduced by Giles Mebane created Alamance County west of a line nine miles west of Hillsborough, Orange voters approved it on April 19, and the new county's court first met on June 4. Orange County during the Civil War, 1861–18651861–1865 · 155 events · Students left Chapel Hill to enlist from late April 1861, and Hillsborough Military Academy's founder, Charles Tew, left in May to command a Confederate regiment. The university stayed open as enrollment fell to about a dozen. Federal cavalry held Chapel Hill from April 17 to May 3, 1865, as many newly freed people left town or joined the army. Freedom, schools, and Black community-building after emancipation1865–1889 · 168 events · After emancipation, Black residents of Orange County built their own churches, schools and societies. Chapel Hill's First Baptist Church formed in September 1865, and in June 1866 Job Berry and Philadelphia Quakers opened Hillsborough's freedmen's school in the old courthouse. Over the next two decades congregations bought land, Black Masons established Mount Olive Lodge No. 86, and supporters of Chapel Hill's Black public school pledged nearly $80 toward a schoolhouse. In 1886 Hillsborough's AME church bought the old courthouse where it had worshipped and kept school for twenty years. A normal school for Black pupils opened in Hillsborough in 1887, and in 1889 the American Missionary Association made the Methodists' 1853 Chapel Hill church a Congregational church for Black worshippers. Racial-terror lynchings in Orange County1869–1898 · 40 events · Six people are documented as lynched in Orange County: Washington Morrow, Thomas Jefferson Morrow, Daniel Morrow, Wright Malone and Cyrus Guy in 1869, and Manly McCauley in 1898. Sworn testimony before Congress in 1871 gives the same count for 1869, four men hanged and one shot (Josiah Turner Jr.), or five Black men killed (constable W. G. Turrentine), though names differ: the Senate committee's list and two Orange witnesses name a man called Wood, hanged east of Hillsborough, and two sources a William Guy, who may be Cyrus Guy. In September 2022 the county commissioners apologized for racial-terror lynchings and approved markers, citing five cases without naming the victims. Kirk-Holden War connections, 1870October 1869–March 1871 · 49 events · Governor Holden named Orange County in his October 1869 warning about Klan violence, Hillsborough men were named in a Klan plot against Senator T. M. Shoffner, and Kirk's militia arrested Josiah Turner Jr. at Hillsborough in August 1870. Orange men Frederick N. Strudwick, William A. Graham and John W. Graham then helped bring, prosecute and decide Holden's impeachment. The Grange in Orange County, 1873–19481873–1948 · The Patrons of Husbandry, or Grange, took root in Orange County twice. James Means of Concord organized the Eno Grange at Cedar Grove in December 1873, and in October 1874 delegates of seven Granges organized a county council with John K. Hughes as master. A state Grange revival from 1929 to 1931 produced five Orange chapters, among them Schley Grange No. 710. Schley and Fairfield made their halls out of abandoned schoolhouses, and the chapters met every two weeks with women and children as members. A Grange was organized at New Hope in 1946, and in 1948 W. Kerr Scott, the Democratic nominee for governor and a former State Grange master, spoke to the county's Granges. From West End to Carrboro: railroad, mills, and a new town, 1882–19131882–1913 · 83 events · In 1882 a university railroad spur ended a mile west of Chapel Hill, and the settlement of West End grew around its boxcar depot. Thomas Lloyd opened a gin and grist mill in 1883 and the Alberta Cotton Mill in 1899, which Julian Carr's Durham Hosiery bought in 1909. Incorporated as Venable in 1911, the town became Carrboro in 1913. Carolina athletics from the ban to the undefeated 1898 team, 1888–19021888–1902 · Carolina athletics began with a fight over whether to play at all: organized football started at the university in 1888, and by 1890 the trustees had forbidden intercollegiate contests altogether. A student petition won repeal by January 1891, and that April the football and baseball associations united as the Athletic Association. The 1892 team lost only to Virginia and then beat Virginia in a rematch at Atlanta. In 1895 the association hired Princeton's Thomas G. Trenchard, whose team won seven games before losing to Virginia. After a disorderly fall term the faculty in 1896 barred students on probation from the teams and made players pledge not to drink or gamble on trips. The 1898 team was undefeated and untied. The last trains on the Chapel Hill branch, 1888–19371888–1937 · Passenger service on the ten-mile branch between University Station and Carrboro ended as car ownership spread and roads improved. Captain Fred Smith became the branch's conductor on October 16, 1888. Effective January 1, 1924, the Southern Railway put the line under a separate corporation, to be operated as the State University Railroad Company, the News reported. The State Utilities Commission let the railroad drop passenger service, and the last passenger train ran on October 24, 1936, a trip some Chapel Hill and Carrboro people made into a railway picnic. The freight train was taken off by January 8, 1937, and Smith retired after 47 years as the line's conductor, kept on by the Southern Railway as a freight solicitor. Julian S. Carr's Occoneechee Farm, 1891–19231891–1923 · By 1896 Julian S. Carr's Occoneechee Farm held nearly all of the registered cattle and hogs that put Orange first in the state's register of blooded stock. The Durham industrialist bought Poplar Hill, the house James Hogg had built about 1794 on the Eno, in 1891 and renamed it. He gave the Norwood Mineral Spring a marble basin and spring house and built a large stock barn, a gate wall and a model sheep fold. The State Dairymen's Association met there in 1896, and a Farmers' Institute in 1906 drew several hundred people. Wind, lightning and a 1918 storm destroyed barns, and Carr rebuilt. On November 22, 1923 the farm was sold at auction in small farms. Telephones in Chapel Hill, 1901–19281901–1928 · Telephone service in Chapel Hill grew from one professor's telephone in 1901 to an automatic dial system owned by the University. Bryant lists Professor Eben Alexander as the first in town to have a telephone, number 1 in 1901, and by Battle's account Professor Joshua W. Gore had the first long-distance line set up that session. In 1922 more than eighty citizens protested a rate increase to the state Corporation Commission. In 1925 the University bought the Chapel Hill Telephone Company to keep it from outside buyers. In 1927 it ordered dial equipment to replace the overloaded manual board, and between December 1927 and January 1928 the town changed over to automatic service, with new numbers and higher rates. Silent Sam1913–2018 · 21 events · On June 2, 1913, the United Daughters of the Confederacy and UNC alumni dedicated a Confederate soldier statue in McCorkle Place, and Julian Carr's dedication speech boasted of whipping a Black woman. The monument drew decades of protest until demonstrators pulled it down on August 20, 2018. Orange County’s Black high schools: the Training School, Lincoln and Central1916-1968 · 193 events · In 1916 the county board of education bought Louis H. Hackney's private school campus in Chapel Hill, helped by $3,000 raised by Black citizens, to house the Orange County Training School, which took the name Lincoln High School in 1949. Hillsborough's school for Black students was built in 1936 and became Central High School in 1943. Lincoln High merged with Chapel Hill High School in 1966. In 1968, a year of student walkouts against a phased desegregation plan, Central graduated its last high school class, and its high school students then went to Orange High School. The Chapel Hill Country Club and its golf links, 1920–19291920–1929 · Fire destroyed the Chapel Hill Country Club's first clubhouse on April 3, 1920, and the club rebuilt on land given by William C. Coker. After a time in the Gorgon's Head lodge, members opened a new clubhouse on Coker's grounds south of the campus on May 17, 1923, and the golf course went in over the next two years. In January 1929 the club gave up 6 acres and received 29 from Coker, enough to extend the course to nine holes, and in February Coker gave the six-acre hill back so the club could stay open. The land later passed to the university, and the Laurel Hill subdivision was laid out along the course. Durham Hosiery's Carrboro mills through the Depression and after, 1928–19421928–1942 · Falling demand for cotton stockings, and then the Depression, led Durham Hosiery Mills to close its Carrboro mills, and Carrboro people had to find other work. The company began curtailing work in 1928 and about June 1930 closed its No. 4 spinning mill. A yarn mill went back to full time in 1932, but in June 1938 the company closed Mill No. 7, its last Carrboro mill, putting about 140 people out of work. In 1939 it auctioned much of its Carrboro property, many houses going to the families living in them. By 1940, the Weekly reported, University wages had made up much of the loss, and in 1942 a munitions plant was hiring mostly from Carrboro and nearby. The Mary Bayley Pratt Children's Library, 1929–19401929–1940 · Chapel Hill's children's library began in the spring of 1929 with citizens' gifts and kept going on memberships and gifts as its appropriation fell. That October it moved into a basement room of the Chapel Hill school as the Mary Bayley Pratt Memorial Library. William Bayley, brother of the late Mrs. Joseph Hyde Pratt, and his family gave $1,500 toward a permanent endowment, and in the year to June 1931 the library lent 17,181 books. With its appropriation down to $94.61 in 1933-34, it cut its yearly membership fee from $5 to $1. In the spring of 1940 a campaign brought in more than $185 from 822 contributors, some children giving their weekly allowances. Water for the towns: University Lake, the 1976–77 drought, and OWASA1932–1977 · 72 events · The University dammed Morgan Creek in 1932 to create University Lake. Droughts in 1968 and 1976–77 forced rationing and purchases from Durham, and on February 16, 1977 the Orange Water and Sewer Authority, organized by the county and both towns, took over the university and town systems. A long fight over a Cane Creek reservoir followed. Desegregating the University of North Carolina, 1933–19551933–1955 · 27 events · In 1933 Thomas Raymond Hocutt, a 24-year-old Black man from Durham, went to court to compel Dean of Admissions Thomas J. Wilson Jr. to admit him to the University's school of pharmacy; Judge M. V. Barnhill denied the writ of mandamus on March 28, and the Weekly noted that no state school for Black students taught pharmacy or law. On December 14, 1938 Dean W. W. Pierson rejected Pauli Murray's application to the graduate school because of her race, and her appeals to President Frank Porter Graham became national news. After a 1951 federal court decision in McKissick v. Carmichael, five Black students began law school classes at UNC on June 22, 1951. In September 1955, again under court order, LeRoy and Ralph Frasier and John Lewis Brandon of Durham registered as the university's first Black undergraduates. Eastwood Lake, 1939–19411939–1941 · 4 events · In April 1939 a dam was being built across Booker Creek, near Harward's dairy off the Chapel Hill to Durham highway, to form a lake as the center of a restricted residential development called Eastwood, promoted by W. S. Crawford. The masonry dam was finished by early July, and after the gate closed and rains came about 50 acres were under water by July 27. In April 1940 Crawford opened graded roads to and around the lake, invited the public to see it, and offered hilltop lots and acreage for sale with building restrictions. On June 21, 1941 he opened a bathing beach near the dam, with free swimming that weekend before a formal opening on June 25. The Navy Pre-Flight School at Chapel Hill, 1942–1945May 1942–October 1945 · 92 events · Commissioned at UNC in May 1942, the U.S. Navy Pre-Flight School trained 18,700 cadets before it was decommissioned on October 15, 1945. Cadets ate in Lenoir Hall and drilled in a Navy-built armory that opened in 1943. George H. W. Bush trained there as a cadet, Gerald Ford taught there, and Ted Williams played on its baseball team. Polio and vaccination1944–1964 · 29 events · Polio closed the county’s schools in 1944 and 1948, the University pool in 1950 and two UNC football games in 1952, and the county’s polio chapter bought iron lungs. The first Salk vaccinations reached first and second graders in 1955, and more than 25,000 residents took the Sabin oral vaccine on one Sunday in 1964. Occoneechee Speedway, Hillsborough1947–1968 · 53 events · Bill France and four partners chartered a company in September 1947 to build a one-mile dirt oval by the old Occoneechee Farm, and it opened in June 1948. The track held a race in NASCAR's first Strictly Stock season in 1949, was renamed Orange Speedway in 1954, and closed after Richard Petty won its last race on September 15, 1968. Recreation in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, 1955–19641955–1964 · 20 events · Chapel Hill voters turned down a recreation tax in 1957 and approved one in 1963, and in between private backers and gifts of land supplied a recreation center and a pool. A 1955 act created a Chapel Hill-Carrboro recreation district, but Carrboro asked to be left out. At the 1957 hearings Carrboro residents feared for their school tax and Black PTA leader Lattice Vickers asked what Black residents would get; the commissioners dropped Carrboro and the rural areas, and voters turned down the tax 1,176 to 514. Private backers formed Chapel Hill Recreation Center, Inc. on Bolin Creek land offered by John W. Umstead and his family, and in 1962 Exchange Pools, Inc. opened a pool beside the center. School desegregation in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, 1954–19671956–1966 · 67 events · In 1956 and 1957 Preston Weaver applied to move his son from Northside School to the white Chapel Hill Elementary, and in 1958 the county school board refused applications from the Vickers and Walden families for places at the new white Carrboro Elementary. After the school board refused in 1959 to admit ten-year-old Stanley Vickers to Carrboro Elementary, his parents sued, and their 1961 win in federal court set the Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools on the course to desegregation. In 1966 all-Black Lincoln High merged into Chapel Hill High, and Lincoln's name, colors and mascot were left behind. A home for the Chapel Hill Public Library, 1958–19681958–1968 · Chapel Hill's first public library opened on December 15, 1958 in the east wing of the Hill House, with about 4,500 books. In November 1964 the State Library Commission again turned down the town's request for a share of new federal library money, because its library did not belong to a county or regional system. Around 1965 the library committee kept Don Stewart and his modern plan, though its head had asked him about a traditional design. His 1966 building on East Franklin Street used sloping native stone walls and stained wood to fit among the older faculty houses. When the library moved to Pritchard Park in 1994, the building became home to the town museum. Research Triangle Park and the county’s transformationFrom 1959 · 27 events · The Research Triangle Foundation, formed in 1959, ran the research park planned between Durham and Raleigh around UNC, N.C. State and Duke. That November Orange County commissioners said the park would bring the county mainly new residents and school costs rather than taxable industry, and began discussing county-wide zoning. Chapel Hill freedom movement, 1960–19641960–1964 · 95 events · Nine Lincoln High students began Chapel Hill's sit-ins at Colonial Drug on February 28, 1960. Through 1963 and 1964 Black residents and UNC students picketed, marched and sat in, and held a Holy Week fast at the post office, but the aldermen narrowly rejected a public accommodations ordinance and many businesses stayed segregated until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Speaker Ban controversy, 1962–19681962–1968 · 35 events · In October 1962 the Division Three area of the state American Legion, meeting in Chapel Hill, endorsed a Chapel Hill post resolution by Col. Henry E. Royall asking for an investigation of possible leftist influences on the UNC campus. The General Assembly passed the Speaker Ban on June 26, 1963, barring known Communists and people who had pleaded the Fifth Amendment from speaking on state campuses. In March 1966 Frank Wilkinson and Herbert Aptheker spoke to UNC students from the Franklin Street side of the wall, and a federal court struck the law down on February 19, 1968. The Chapel Hill civil-rights demonstrations, 1963–19641963 to 1964 · 62 events · Marches, sit-ins and arrests over segregated businesses from 1963 into 1964, the aldermen's refusal of a public accommodations ordinance, the Holy Week fast, and the Watts Restaurant protests and the Klopfer speedy-trial case that grew out of them. Orange County’s antipoverty program begins, 19641964 · 5 events · Orange County's antipoverty program began in 1964 with a slow start for Community Action, Inc., a proposed privately financed biracial corporation meant to work on Chapel Hill's racial and economic problems. In April the county commissioners, while saying they favored its aims, put off endorsing it over objections to the makeup of its 18-member board. By mid-May the commissioners and the Chapel Hill aldermen had named members, and in June Carrboro's commissioners voted 3 to 2 to take part. In September the county commissioners unanimously created an Economic Opportunity Act advisory committee to plan a county program and seek federal funds, and in October they named its fifteen members. Black student activism at UNCFrom 1967 · 281 events · Black students founded the Black Student Movement at UNC in November 1967. It presented 23 demands to Chancellor J. Carlyle Sitterson in December 1968, backed the cafeteria workers' strike of 1969, and in the 1990s pressed for a freestanding Black cultural center, which opened as the Sonja Haynes Stone Center in 2004. Chapel Hill and Carrboro music sceneFrom 1969 · 41 events · Cat's Cradle opened in a small basement club near the UNC campus in 1969 and, after several moves, settled in Carrboro in 1993. With Merge Records, founded in Chapel Hill in 1989, and bands such as Superchunk and Polvo, the local scene drew national press in the early 1990s as a possible "next Seattle." The Cat’s Cradle and the “Chapel Hill sound” of the 1990s1969–2020 · 30 events · The Cat’s Cradle opened in 1969, Merge Records was founded in 1989, and by 1992 Superchunk, Polvo, Archers of Loaf and the clubs of Franklin Street had national magazines asking whether Chapel Hill was the next Seattle. The Cradle moved to Carrboro in 1993, Ben Folds Five and the Squirrel Nut Zippers followed, and Merge’s anniversary festivals and the Cradle’s 50th year in 2019 marked a scene that outlived the label hunt. UNC food workers’ and housekeepers’ struggles, 1969 to 19961969 · 24 events · UNC cafeteria workers struck twice in 1969 over pay and working conditions. Rogers Road environmental justice1972–2019 · 55 events · In 1972 officials placed the county landfill on Eubanks Road beside the historically Black Rogers Road community, promising it would run about ten years. It was expanded instead and did not close until 2013, and residents' organizing through the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association helped win a sewer line for the neighborhood, completed in 2019. LGBTQ political firsts in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, 1980s–1990s1987–1995 · 29 events · Joe Herzenberg's election to the Chapel Hill Town Council in November 1987 made him North Carolina's first openly gay elected official. Carrboro created a domestic partnership registry in September 1994 and Chapel Hill followed in 1995, and in November 1995 Carrboro elected Mike Nelson, the state's first openly gay mayor. Hurricane Fran, September 19961996–1998 · 13 events · Hurricane Fran crossed the county overnight on 5 to 6 September 1996, felling thousands of trees, cutting power to about 29,000 Chapel Hill customers and pushing the Eno at Hillsborough to its highest recorded flow. Chapel Hill declared an emergency, OWASA issued a boil-water advisory, UNC suspended classes for a campus cleanup, and Duke Forest spent two years salvaging timber.

Indexed works

Works about Everyday Life & Traditions from library and archive catalogs. The most widely held appear first; novels are not shown here. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.

Filter these works by material, period, or place. Counts refer to works, not individual copies. A work may appear under more than one period or place.

Material

Histories 209Programs 62Photographs & portraits 61Biography 56Letters & correspondence 50other types 174

Period

17th century 418th century 5219th century 159Civil War (1861–1865) 2920th century 143World War I era 12World War II era 921st century 7

Place

North Carolina (statewide) 302Chapel Hill 281Orange County 200Hillsborough 87City of Durham (neighboring) 40Durham County (neighboring) 30

Widely held

Chapel Hill in Plain Sight

Athas, Daphne · 2010 · Eno Publishers

Twelve essays by novelist Daphne Athas (1923-2020) on the Chapel Hill she knew across the twentieth century. Subjects include Carrboro as 'the Paris of the Piedmont', philosopher Horace Williams, Betty Smith writing in Chapel Hill, Junius Scales, Ab Abernethy and the Intimate Bookshop, Richard Wright's visit, and a set of Chapel Hill murders. Published 2010, 243 pages with illustrations.

Included because: Catalog heading in the Chapel Hill PL record: Chapel Hill (N.C.) -- Social life and customs.

✓ Held at OCPL · 975.656 ATHAS NC Cardinal UNC Duke NC State NCCU Durham Chapel Hill PL Library of Congress CH Historical Society

Memories of an Old-Time Tar Heel

Battle, Kemp Plummer · 1945

Kemp Plummer Battle's memoir, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1945, 296 pages with plates and portraits. Battle, a lawyer, state treasurer and president of the university from 1876 to 1891, recalls North Carolina manners, customs and public life across the nineteenth century, with Chapel Hill and the university's reopening after Reconstruction at the center.

Included because: Catalog heading in the NCCU record: Manners and customs.

Reviewed in Journal of American History (1946), The Journal of Southern History (1946).

Duke NC State NC Cardinal Durham Chapel Hill PL NCCU UNC CH Historical Society Library of Congress

Old Days in Chapel Hill

Chamberlain, G. Hope Summerell · 1926

Hope Summerell Chamberlain's life and letters of Cornelia Phillips Spencer (1825 to 1908), published in 1926, which doubles as a picture of Chapel Hill and the university in the nineteenth century. It runs 325 pages with illustrations and portraits.

Included because: Catalog heading in the Durham record: Chapel Hill (N.C.) -- Social Life and Customs -- 19th Century.

✓ Held at OCPL · NC BIO SPENCER CHA NC Cardinal UNC NCCU Durham Chapel Hill PL Wingate CH Historical Society

The Light That Shines

House, Robert Burton · 1959

Robert Burton House, later chancellor of the University of North Carolina, recalls Chapel Hill and the campus in his student years from 1912 to 1916. A memoir published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1959, 216 pages with illustrations and portraits. Topics include Chapel Hill's social life and customs and the university's history in the twentieth century.

Included because: Catalog heading in the Durham record: Chapel Hill (N.C.) -- Social life and customs.

✓ Held at OCPL · NC 378.756 HOU UNC Duke NC Cardinal Durham CH Historical Society Library of Congress

Rogers Road

Pearce, Emily Eidenier · 2009

Emily Eidenier Pearce's history of Rogers Road, the historically African American neighborhood on the edge of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, and of what happened to it after Orange County opened its landfill next door in 1972. Drawing on interviews with residents, the book records the neighborhood's origins, family life, churches and customs, and then the environmental and social burdens of decades beside the landfill. Privately issued in 2009, 298 pages with illustrations, maps and portraits.

Included because: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Manners and customs.

✓ Held at OCPL · 975.656 EID NC Cardinal UNC Durham Chapel Hill PL CH Historical Society

Daddy, Why Are Those Two Naked Men Sleeping in That Tree?

Hakan, Joe · 1996

Joe Hakan's collection of anecdotes and personal essays about Chapel Hill in the 1950s and 1960s, the subtitle promising the town in those decades and other stories. It concerns Chapel Hill social life and customs, local history and anecdotes of the university. Published in Chapel Hill by Professional Press in 1996, 299 pages with illustrations.

Included because: Catalog heading in the Chapel Hill PL record: Chapel Hill (N.C.) -- Social life and customs.

UNC NC State NC Cardinal Durham Chapel Hill PL CH Historical Society
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Selected Papers of Cornelia Phillips Spencer

Spencer, Cornelia Phillips · 1953

Selected writings of Cornelia Phillips Spencer (1825 to 1908), the Chapel Hill writer who campaigned for the university's reopening after Reconstruction, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1953. The 753 pages touch on Chapel Hill life, education and the university in the nineteenth century.

Included because: Catalog heading in the NC Cardinal record: North Carolina -- Social life and customs.

Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (1954).

NC Cardinal Durham Chapel Hill PL NCCU CH Historical Society Library of Congress

Dark Tales of the Eno River

Cook, David · 2025 · The History Press

David Cook collects the grim side of the Eno River's past in Orange and Durham counties: ghost stories, crimes, train wrecks and accidents, including the hanging of rebels near the river in 1771, a sawmill accident said to have started a run of hauntings, and a dance one Valentine's Day that ended badly. Published by The History Press in 2025, 141 pages with illustrations.

Included because: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Folklore.

✓ Held at OCPL · 133.109 COOK NC Cardinal UNC NC State Durham

Recently indexed: 100 years of Epsilon of Phi Gamma Delta, 1851-1951 : centennial celebration, March 31, 1951 (1951) · [Alpha Sigma of Delta Delta Delta] : University of North Carolina (1943) · Class of 1888 refutes false charges against university : ten per cent of class entered ministry (1926) · The college bell (1878) · Coming of age of the Carolina Playmakers : the Carolina play-book commemorative issue (1940) · Coming up on campus : well-read threads (1964)

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Books in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection whose titles, catalog subjects, or descriptions match this theme. The Friends’ recommended starting points are labelled.

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  • Rebecca Wall Collection · NC 975.656 OTTO Carrboro Otto, David · 2015

    Second Images of America volume on Carrboro by David A. Otto and Richard Ellington (Arcadia, 2015). Chapters follow the town from mill village to growing urban center, then turn to its merchants, the arts, festivals, changing demographics and changing architecture, in 95 illustrated pages.

  • Foundational · NC 398.097 ART Arts in Earnest: North Carolina Folklife 1990

    Daniel W. Patterson and Charles G. Zug III edited these fifteen essays on North Carolina folklife from the mountains to the coast, taking in decoy carving, tobacco auction chants, Piedmont blues, Jack tales, pranks in the mills and a Chatham County quiltmaker. Interviews give much of the text its voice, from Durham bluesman Willie Trice to Goldsboro auctioneer H. L. 'Speed' Riggs. Published by Duke University Press in 1990; 319 pages with notes and an index.

  • Rebecca Wall Collection · NC 975.656 STANLEY West Hillsborough Origins: Stories & Poems by A Native Son Stanley, Charles B. · 2018

    Charles B. Stanley's stories and poems about growing up in West Hillsborough, the mill village on the west side of town, subtitled by a native son. Born in 1940, Stanley writes of the neighborhood's social life and customs in the twentieth century in autobiographical verse and prose. Published in 2018 by the Create Short Book Writers Project, 162 pages with illustrations and portraits.

  • Rebecca Wall Collection · NC 813.5 CRAIG Life on the Eno and Other Stories Craig-Scott, Ellen J. · 1977

    Ten stories by Ellen J. Craig-Scott, which the catalog calls autobiographical, drawn from life in Hillsborough and along the Eno River: 'Lib's Liberation', 'Every Which Way', 'Life on the Eno', 'The Parade Is Over' and others. Published by Sir Walter Press in Durham in 1977 in a limited edition of 500 signed copies, 222 pages. Topics include Hillsborough social life and customs and Orange County fiction.

  • Rebecca Wall Collection · NC 975.656 AND Durham County: A History of Durham County, North Carolina Anderson, Jean Bradley · 2011

    Jean Bradley Anderson's history of Durham County, from prehistory to the end of the twentieth century. Its early chapters concern eighteenth-century Orange County, from which Durham was cut in 1881, and later ones cover the rise of Durham town, an independent Black culture after emancipation, the civil rights years and county government to 1981 and beyond. Published by Duke University Press in 2011, 596 pages with plates.

  • Rebecca Wall Collection · 975.656 OTTO Carrboro Otto, David · 2011

    Pictorial history of Carrboro in Arcadia's Images of America series by David A. Otto and Richard Ellington, published in 2011. Its 127 pages of photographs, maps, facsimiles and portraits cover the town's history, social life and African American community, with a bibliography and index.

In the chronology

A selection of 12 events from the 1,102 chronology entries for this theme, including highlights and examples from different years. See all 1,102 dated events in the chronology →

  1. Indian families from Virginia settle the Texas community in northern Orange County Charles Whitmore, Jesse Whitmore and Jacob Jeffries appear on the Orange County return used for the 1790 federal census, which was compiled from a tax list of 1787. Families of the same names had moved southwest from Greensville County in Virginia, and by 1820 the settlement later called Texas, or Pleasant Grove, was intact, with the Corn and Jeffries families holding tracts of several hundred acres.Excavating Occaneechi Town (UNC Press): Post-Revolutionary War
  2. The county tax list counts 36 white polls and 82 taxable enslaved people in Hillsborough town Orange County's 1790 tax list returned 2,272 polls and 406,106 acres across its eight districts, with a separate list for Hillsborough town showing 36 white polls against 82 black polls. William Hooper was charged for 22 of them, John Taylor for 10 and Francis Childs for 5. People: William Hooper, Walter AlvesDocumenting the American South: List of taxpayers in Orange County in 1790
  3. The Carolina Playmakers are organized Frederick H. Koch organized the Carolina Playmakers at UNC. People: Frederick H. KochUNC A to Z: Carolina Playmakers
  4. Influenza epidemic strikes Chapel Hill Spanish influenza swept the University in early October 1918, putting the campus and its student soldiers under a three-week quarantine. By October 23 about 300 students had been ill and three had died, and President Edward Kidder Graham died of influenza and pneumonia on October 26. People: Edward Kidder GrahamThe Tar Heel, October 23, 1918, p. 1
  5. Ellis Store and post office opens Allen A. Ellis built a new crossroads store.Search the index · Kaye Graybeal, Cedar Grove district National Register nomination, 1997
  6. The Texas community asks the Bureau of Indian Affairs for an Indian school Clayton Jeffries, Charles Will Jeffries and others retained a lawyer, drew up a list of Indian families, made contact with the Indian community in Person County that already had a state sponsored school, and wrote to Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier seeking a federal school for their children. A bureau agent visited and reported the families to be Indian, and the bureau's letters called the settlement an Indian community, but no assistance was ever given.Excavating Occaneechi Town (UNC Press): Twentieth Century
  7. Hyconeechee Regional Library is established The three county library systems incorporated as one region to enlarge book collections, run a shared bookmobile and provide trained supervision. The regional board held its second meeting on September 13, 1948 at the Confederate Memorial Library in Hillsboro, with Sydney Green of Orange County as president and Mrs. Douglas Davis as regional librarian.The News of Orange County (Hillsborough), September 23, 1948, p. 1
  8. Chapel Hill Public Library opens Chapel Hill's first public library held its formal opening on December 15, 1958 in the east wing of the Hill House on West Franklin Street, with about 4,500 books, 2,000 of them lent by state and regional libraries. It moved to its own building at 523 East Franklin Street in 1967 and to Pritchard Park in 1994.The Chapel Hill Weekly, December 11, 1958, p. 1 (Library Opening Monday) · Also: Chapel Hill Weekly, December 18, 1958, p. 7
  9. The Association for the Preservation of the Eno River Valley forms Residents who had begun organizing in 1965 against plans to dam the Eno for a water-supply reservoir formed the Association for the Preservation of the Eno River Valley on October 14, 1966. Led by Margaret and Holger Nygard, it began the campaign that preserved the river corridor in Durham and Orange counties. People: Margaret Nygard, Holger NygardEno River Association: ERA Through the Eras, Beginnings of the Eno River Association
  10. Friends of the Orange County Public Library is founded Residents organized the Friends of the Orange County Public Library on November 5, 1981, to raise money and advocate for a county library preparing to move into larger quarters in Hillsborough. The group incorporated on May 3, 1982, and the IRS recognized it as a 501(c)(3) charity in June 1983.ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer: Friends of the Orange County Public Library Inc
  11. Hurricane Fran strikes Orange County Hurricane Fran came ashore on the night of September 5, 1996 and crossed to the Triangle overnight. In Chapel Hill winds topped 70 mph, falling trees caused about 29,000 power outages and UNC cancelled classes, and the Eno at Hillsborough hit a record flow. No one in Orange County was killed.The Daily Tar Heel: front page, September 9, 1996
  12. Eve Carson, UNC’s Student Body President, is killed Eve Marie Carson, 22, UNC's student body president and a Morehead-Cain Scholar from Athens, Georgia, was abducted from her Chapel Hill home early on March 5, 2008, robbed and shot on Hillcrest Road near campus. Two men were convicted of her murder: one pleaded guilty in 2010, and a Hillsborough jury convicted the other on December 20, 2011. People: Eve CarsonIn the index: Chapel Hill Memorial Cemetery (Chapel Hill, N.C.) · Daily Tar Heel: Eve Carson's case is closed, but her legacy lives on through the Carolina Way (January 7, 2012)

See all 1,102 dated events in the chronology →

Places in this theme

Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows the 136 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.

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All places and the county map →

Research sources

Sources and research tools for this subject. Research guide: How to research with Orange County Indexed.

Background

Historic sites, markers, and maps

  • Open Orange Building-by-building community history with residents’ own photographs and stories

Records of the time

Collections and databases 8

Show all 8

Local help 5

Show all 5
  • Local History Help Hours and request formOCPL Local History Liaison Meet with the Local History Liaison at the Main Library, usually Mondays from noon to 3 p.m., or send a question using the online request form

Background reading at OCPL

Books from OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection that provide broader context. They may not discuss Everyday Life & Traditions directly.

  • Background reading · Rebecca Wall Collection Rough Weather Makes Good Timber: Carolinians Recall 1977

    Patsy Moore Ginns taped older North Carolinians, aged fifty-three to ninety-seven, talking about country life, and edited the tapes into first-person recollections reaching from about 1885 into the years after the Depression. Drawings are by J. L. Osborne Jr. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1977, 189 pages, and later reissued in paperback.

    Subjects in the Library of Congress catalog record: North Carolina -- Social life and customs; Country life -- North Carolina OCPL call number: NC 975.6 ROU
  • Background reading · Rebecca Wall Collection Born of the Mountains Reynolds, Thurlow Weed · 1964

    Folklore of North Carolina and sketches of life and customs in the Southern Appalachians by T. W. Reynolds, printed in 1964 with no place or publisher named; 179 pages with illustrations.

    Subjects in the OCPL catalog record: Folklore -- North Carolina; Appalachian Region, Southern -- Social life and customs OCPL call number: NC 975.68 REY

Search the Wall Collection for related books →

Related themes

UNC & Campus Life →Schools & Education →Families, Land & Genealogy →Women's Lives & History →Black Life & Civil Rights →Wars & Military Service →

Picture: Farm Security Administration photographs, Library of Congress; public domain. Image credits →

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Illustration by Caldecott Medalist Matthew Cordell, gifted to the Friends 2026