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Theme

Farms & Rural Life

Tobacco barns, sorghum mills, granges, and the people who have worked the county’s land.

In briefTobacco barns, sorghum mills, granges, tenant farms and the families who worked the land before the county turned suburban; the 1930 census counted tenants on about a third of the county’s farms. The storylines follow Cedar Grove and rural northern Orange and farm labor.

300 works about Farms & Rural Life are indexed here. 11 held at OCPL →

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Tobacco barns along a farm road.

Events and storylines

Named events and storylines the index follows in detail. Each has its own page.

Cedar Grove and rural northern OrangeThe crossroads communities north of Hillsborough: Cedar Grove, Efland, Caldwell, their farms, stores, churches, and schools, and the families who held the land Farm labor in rural Orange CountyTenants, sharecroppers, hired hands, and migrant crews on the county’s tobacco and dairy farms Rural electrification and Piedmont Electric, 1933–1964Farm power lines from 1933, the Piedmont Electric Membership Corporation formed in 1938, its lines and members, its Hillsborough headquarters, and the share of Orange farms with electricity Orange County’s dairy cooperatives, 1944–1955The Latta Cooperative Dairy at Hillsborough and the Farmers Cooperative Dairy at Chapel Hill, their milk plants, and their 1949 merger Curb markets and community canneries, 1937–1961The farm women’s curb market begun at Carrboro in 1937 and moved to Chapel Hill, the Black farm families’ market of 1945, and the community canneries at the county schools Schley Grange and its hall, 1931–2020The Schley community’s Grange from its 1931 charter: the telephone line and community projects that won the 1948 national contest, the prize hall dedicated in 1949, and its National Register listing
Show all 17 events and storylines
The Rural Progress Program and its successors, 1951–1959The county’s campaign to raise farm family income and improve homes and communities: neighborhood surveys and leaders, the prize nights for white and Black farm families, and Orange’s two County of the Year titles in 1953 and 1954 Orange County’s first county-wide zoning plan, 1960–1967Orange County’s plan to zone its rural areas: the County Planning Board the commissioners created in 1960, the 1962 hearings where Eno Township residents and the Farm Bureau opposed its draft ordinance, the board’s promise to simplify it, and the 1967 ordinance for Chapel Hill Township The county road bonds of 1911–1912How Orange County came to borrow for its roads: the Good Roads Association and Joseph Hyde Pratt’s talk, the bond election called off in 1911, the Chapel Hill citizens’ committee, the 1912 vote for $250,000, and the test of the road law Relief in Orange County as the Depression deepens, 1929–1933How Orange County met the needs of its poor as hard times arrived in 1929 and 1930: George H. Lawrence’s warnings, the commissioners’ matching health fund, the county home study, the Kiwanis and King’s Daughters relief and the Daily Tar Heel’s fund Selective service in Orange County, 1940–1946How the draft worked in Orange County from 1940 to the end of the war: the draft board and its first registration, the first volunteers sent to Fort Bragg, the later registrations, the Chapel Hill examining board, the farm deferments and the final count of men drafted Chapel Hill’s milk supply in wartime, 1942–1945Chapel Hill’s wartime milk disputes: the aldermen’s 1942 suspension of the milk ordinance and the Navy’s ban on 17 places, the 1943 fight over Durham Dairy Products’ shipped-in milk and the company’s withdrawal, the return to all Grade A, and the dairy farmers’ cooperative plant of 1945 Internal improvements and the 1833 Hillsborough railroad convention, 1828–1837How Orange County pressed for roads, river navigation and a railroad from 1828 to 1837: James Mebane’s flour boat, the early railroad and navigation meetings, the 1833 internal improvement convention at Hillsborough, the call for two-fifths state aid and the county’s later delegates and appointments Samuel Strudwick’s claim to the Haw Old Fields, 1754–1788How Samuel Strudwick tried to hold the Haw Old Fields against the people living on them: Burrington’s mortgage of 1754, the 1766 meeting with the settlers, the tenants’ association of 1768, the state patents taken on his land, his appeals of 1780 and the lawsuits that ended in 1788 The summer floods of 1924The rains and floods of the summer of 1924 around Chapel Hill: the wet weeks that ruined crops, the June downpours that took the Morgan Creek bridges, the August 3 cloudburst that carried off Purefoy’s and King’s mills, and the bridges the county rebuilt Selling the county’s farm produce, 1923–1926How Orange County farmers sold their cream, eggs and poultry through the Chapel Hill school’s agriculture teachers: the cream routes to the Burlington creamery, the first pure-bred egg shipments, the marketing truck of 1924 with its county-paid driver and school-board fund, and the producers’ reports of 1926 Orange County in the 1994 electionHow Orange County voted in 1993 and 1994: the race for district attorney, the field for three county commissioner seats, the May primary, the new single ballot counted by computer, and the November results for the commissioners, the sheriff, the state Senate, Congress and the farmland bond

More storylines

Other storylines that include this theme, in date order. Each has its own page.

StorylineThe sheriff and the taxes: Orange County's sheriffs, 1752–17771752–1777 · 19 events · 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. StorylineThe Bentons at Hartford: Jesse Benton and the young Thomas Hart Benton, 1780–17991780–1799 · 10 events · When Thomas Hart left Orange in 1780, Hartford and its mills passed to Jesse Benton, and his letters to Hart show what the war and the drought of 1782 cost the place. Benton backed the Science Hall academy and claimed 23,931 acres in the west, but he died in 1790 with his estate heavily in debt, and his will let his executors sell Hartford and its mills. His son Thomas Hart Benton, born in 1782 and later a U.S. senator from Missouri, left Hartford for the university and was expelled from the Philanthropic Society in March 1799 for taking his roommates' money. StorylineThe Hawfields, Cross Roads, Eno and Little River churches, 1780–18211780–1821 · 16 events · Between 1780 and 1821 the Presbyterian churches of western Orange split into two pastoral charges and went through the revival that began at Cross Roads. Hawfields moved west about 1780, Cross Roads was gathered from its neighbors, and about 1790 Hawfields and Cross Roads took one pastor while Eno and Little River took another. Opponents of James McGready burned his pulpit at Stony Creek in 1796. Under William D. Paisley, pastor from 1801, a Cross Roads communion in March 1801 set off what a 1966 article calls the Great Revival in the state, and crowds camped at Hawfields. Paisley also kept a grammar school before leaving in 1818. StorylineStagville and Fairntosh: the Bennehan and Cameron plantations, 1799–18261799–1826 · 8 events · Stagville and Fairntosh grew into the Bennehan and Cameron plantations on the labor of enslaved people, and the county court's records show how the law reached into their lives. Richard Bennehan built Stagville in 1799 on about 4,000 acres worked by 44 or more enslaved people, and Duncan Cameron built Fairntosh beside it from 1810. In 1809 the court let four men they enslaved carry guns and made patrollers return six guns taken from others. Mary Walker was born into a family they held in 1818, and by 1826 the plantations sold close to 30,000 pounds of tobacco. StorylineBinding out: the county court and its apprentices' masters, 1801–18211801–1821 · 7 events · Binding a child out made a master responsible for the child's food, clothing, schooling and trade, and the Orange County court kept the power to take the child back. From 1801 it required every child to be bound out to be produced in court, and in 1807 it wrote reading, writing and ciphering into three bindings. Between 1812 and 1825 it heard sworn complaints that masters failed to clothe, feed or lodge their apprentices or beat them, summoned the masters to show cause, and cancelled or rescinded indentures. StorylineThe Whittaker children and the county court, 1812–18181812–1818 · 4 events · In November 1812 the county court ordered the sheriff to take two children of color named Whittaker from James Thompson, son of Thomas, keep them safely and bring them to the next term. In February 1813 it bound them out: John Whittaker, a boy of about five, to James Forsyth to learn farming, and Nancy Whittaker, about eight, to Polley Comb to learn spinning, each until coming of age. A binding made the master responsible for the child's food, clothing and trade, and the court kept the power to take the child back. In February 1817 the court summoned Forsyth to bring John into the next court and show cause why his indenture should not be cancelled, and the sheriff was to take a bond of £250 from Forsyth, void if he produced the boy. In February 1818 the court cancelled Nancy's indenture to Polley Comb, describing her as a free girl of color about thirteen, and bound her instead to Henry Thompson Jr. until she came of age, to learn spinning.
Show all 35 storylines
StorylineAgricultural societies and fairs in Orange County, 1821–18571821–1857 · 13 events · Orange County farmers organized agricultural societies repeatedly between 1821 and 1857. The Cane Creek Agricultural Society, reporting in 1821 that the county's wheat crop had largely failed, asked farmers to report their improvements and trials. A county society formed at Hillsborough in 1822, with Duncan Cameron as president, offered premiums and planned a cattle show, and in 1841 a grand jury proposed another. In 1853 the Orange County Society for the Promotion of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts was organized under Paul C. Cameron. At its first fair, in 1854, Cameron predicted that the coming railroad would shake farmers out of their old habits. The society bought fair grounds near the depot in 1856 and held fairs through 1857. StorylineRailroads through Orange, 1849–19091849–1909 · 118 events · Orange County residents put up $100,000 toward the North Carolina Railroad, a line built partly by enslaved workers that reached Hillsborough in April 1855, with through trains early in 1856. The Hillsborough depot shipped flour, tobacco and bacon, a depot on the Orange-Alamance line gave rise to Mebanesville, and state convicts built the University Railroad from University Station, which brought trains to West End in 1882. From 1901 came new bridges over the Eno, a train that killed two Caswell County farmers in 1903 and a fire that destroyed the Hillsborough depot that November. In 1905 a legislative committee killed a bill that would have let the University Railroad be abandoned. StorylineThe Grange in Orange County, 1873–19481873–1948 · 6 events · 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. StorylineHillsborough's tobacco market: factories and warehouses, 1877–18911877–1891 · 17 events · Hillsborough built up a tobacco market of warehouses and factories between 1877 and 1891, though the firms behind it dissolved or changed hands again and again. Pogue's warehouse held its opening sale in 1877, and in 1882 Major H. P. Jones received what the Observer called the first cablegram ever sent to Hillsborough, a Liverpool order for his Tar Heel smoking tobacco. In 1886 the Hookers' Central Warehouse gave the town a second warehouse. The Webb & Co. firm dissolved in 1887, A. A. Springs assigned his business in 1888, and Hooker & Crisp dissolved in 1889. E. A. Rosemond bought the Central Warehouse and in 1891 opened his warehouse at prices that pleased the farmers. StorylineThe stock law and the end of open range, 1881–18871881–1887 · 10 events · 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. StorylineTelephones in Hillsborough and the countryside, 1883–19641883–1964 · 31 events · Hillsborough's first telephone line ran from the railroad depot to Hooker's drug store in 1883. In 1905 the town gave John D. Morris of Roxboro a twenty-year franchise, and his exchange opened in March 1906 in the Murdock house on West King Street with Mamie Murdock, later Mamie Gordon, at the switchboard, where she stayed for 41 years. Morris switched Hillsborough to dial telephones in a new East King Street exchange in September 1947. In the countryside, Schley Grange members strung lines to 51 families in 1948, and the University's telephone service reached Calvander in 1949. Morris opened an exchange at Efland in 1951. The Mebane Telephone Company built 140 miles of rural lines in western Orange in 1955, the year Hillsboro merchants and the county commissioners asked the state to investigate Morris's service. In 1964 Morris built a larger exchange on East King Street. StorylineThe Farmers' Alliance in Orange County, 1887–18951887–1895 · 16 events · Orange County farmers began organizing in 1887 and within a year had joined the Farmers' Alliance. Bingham Township farmers formed a club at Oaks that June, and in September an Orange County Club organized under Alex. McIver, though small attendance soon led it to put off a farmers' institute. After the Alliance's state organizer spoke at Hillsborough in March 1888, chapters formed quickly, and on May 18 delegates created the County Alliance under Sheriff John Knox Hughes. It opened an exchange in Hillsborough in 1890 and in 1891 endorsed the sub-treasury plan and all the Alliance demands. In 1893 a county committee called a bill to repeal the State Alliance charter a scheme to destroy the order. StorylineJulian S. Carr's Occoneechee Farm, 1891–19231891–1923 · 15 events · 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. StorylineThe Farmers' Alliance headquarters at Hillsborough, 1895–19201895–1920 · 21 events · The Farmers' State Alliance made the old Hillsborough Military Academy barracks its state headquarters in 1896 and found the property a burden from about 1901. It published its Alliance Weekly there until the paper stopped at a loss, and ran a tannery and shoe factory that stopped, reopened, paid its debt by 1899 and closed in 1900. From the Barracks it denounced the railroad lease, asked for four-month public schools and compulsory attendance, and heard Governor Charles B. Aycock in 1904. In 1905 it offered the buildings and 146 acres to the A. and M. College for an agricultural school. By 1916 it had decided to sell, and in 1920 the property was cut into lots and sold at auction. StorylineHerbert Lloyd's gin and grist mill at Carrboro, 1898–19211898–1921 · 3 events · Fire struck again and again at the steam gin and grist mill by the tracks at Carrboro, whose frame buildings had started the settlement in the early 1880s. Herbert Lloyd ran it from about 1898. His roller mill burned and was not rebuilt, and by August 1919 he was rebuilding a cotton gin partly destroyed by fire the fall before; the News urged him to restore the roller mill for the farmers' sake. A brick grist mill later replaced the burned frame buildings, but about 1921 lightning set a fire that burned out its interior. It was soon repaired, and W. Albert Lloyd is said to have made it a grocery and his home. StorylineBig farms sold in small tracts, 1919–19231919–1923 · 3 events · Between 1919 and 1923 three big Orange County farms were broken up and sold at auction in smaller tracts. On July 12, 1919 the 508-acre Williams-Snipes farm near Carrboro sold in tracts laid off by a Greensboro realty company, and Professor H. H. Williams of the University bought most of it. That October the New Hope Valley tobacco farm east of Chapel Hill, owned by Maynard Mangum of Durham, was auctioned as sixteen farms and brought $98,260.70. On November 22, 1923 Julian Carr's Occoneechee Farm near Hillsboro was sold at auction in small farms along the Durham-Greensboro highway, with its personal property; Carr had already sold his Holstein herd to Chapel Hill dairyman C. H. Weaver. StorylineDairying and clean milk around Chapel Hill, 1920–19321920–1932 · 8 events · Falling cotton prices and the boll weevil turned farmers in southern Orange County to dairying in the 1920s, and the price of Chapel Hill's milk twice went before citizens' committees. After the high school's agriculture teacher helped 37 farmers buy purebred Jersey cattle, they formed a breeders' club. By 1927 C. H. Weaver had built a pasteurizing plant at his Oak Grove Dairy, and a government inspector tested more than 400 cows for tuberculosis. When the dairymen together raised milk from 15 to 20 cents a quart in 1928, wide protest brought agreement on 17 1/2 cents. In 1932 a second committee recommended 12 1/2 cents, though the aldermen set no price. StorylineBreeding and testing the county's dairy cattle and poultry, 1923–19271923–1927 · 10 events · In 1923 the Bank of Chapel Hill backed the Chapel Hill high school's purebred Jersey program, and that fall Jersey owners in the southern half of the county formed a breeders' club. Federal inspectors found no tuberculosis in the town's dairy herds that summer, a result the Weekly credited to the town's testing rule. In 1924 the first county poultry show formed a poultry breeders' association, and in 1925 the Lloyds' large incubator at Sunnyside began hatching farmers' eggs. That year the county joined the federal and state campaign to rid its cattle of tuberculosis and Chapel Hill began grading its dairies under the state milk ordinance, and in 1927 a federal inspector tested more than 400 cows in the town's dairies. StorylinePublic health in rural Orange County1924 to 1955 · 121 events · County nurses, clinics, the district health department and sanitation work reached into rural Orange County from 1924: the campaigns against typhoid, diphtheria, tuberculosis and polio through 1955. StorylineThe county home for the aged and infirm, 1924–19411924–1941 · 8 events · Grand juries urged Orange County to replace its county home for the aged and infirm, far from the county seat, and the home closed in 1941 once most of its residents qualified for old age assistance. In 1924 a grand jury asked for a modern home on the highway nearer Hillsboro, and in August 1928 another condemned the buildings as unfit for human habitation. That October George Lawrence described them in the Chapel Hill Weekly: two narrow brick buildings north of Efland, heated by fireplaces and lit by kerosene, with no plumbing. At the closing the last residents were boarded with relatives and friends at county expense, and on October 4, 1941 the county auctioned the home and its farm. StorylineEast of Chapel Hill: the Strowd farm, the DuBose estate and Paul Green's Greenwood, 1925–19511925–1951 · 14 events · Between 1925 and 1951 farmland on Chapel Hill's eastern edge became estates and home colonies, beginning with the auction of lots from Robert L. Strowd's farm in April 1925. The realty company that bid in the remaining land went bankrupt, and its receivers auctioned the farm in 1928. In 1931 St. Pierre DuBose of Durham bought 308 acres on the new Nelson-Raleigh highway and built a country house. In 1933 four University economics professors bought 42 acres of the old Strowd farm for a home colony, and Paul Green arranged to buy about 200 acres. In 1938 Green offered lots there as Greenwood, where the illustrator William Meade Prince later lived and worked until his death in 1951. StorylineThe old Methodist church at Henderson Street and Rosemary Lane, 1926–19381926–1938 · 3 events · The long-closed 1853 Methodist church at Rosemary and Henderson streets in Chapel Hill found a series of new uses after 1926. That July it became an automobile repair station, the Club Service Motor Co., with a platform built from the rear door to Henderson Street for cars. In December 1934 the American Legion post announced a bargain with Lueco Lloyd to buy the building, once the church of the Rev. Adolphus W. Mangum, and make it a memorial hut, but by March 1935 the post gave up the plan as more than it could pay for. In January 1938 the Orange County Women's Market, a farm women's market, reopened there on Saturdays. StorylineSoil conservation in Orange County, 1929–19391929–1939 · 4 events · In July 1935 the federal Soil Erosion Service estimated that erosion had cost Orange County the value of 26,300 acres. Work against it had begun in January 1929, when the new farm agent, Don S. Matheson, held a terracing school for 25 farmers (terraces are low ridges run level across a slope to slow runoff). The county commissioners then bought a Diesel-powered terracing outfit and rented it to farmers, and by the end of October it had terraced 836 acres on 54 farms. In February 1939 county voters approved joining the Neuse River Soil Conservation District, and federal farm planning began that year. By June 1953 plans covered 1,265 farms and about 142,000 acres. StorylineThe New Deal in Orange County, 1933–19361933–1936 · 25 events · Families asking relief in Orange County peaked at 900 in March 1933; from that summer federal programs reached the county, which had to share their cost. George H. Lawrence ran Civil Works projects that by December 1 employed more than 200 men, and 851 Orange farmers were under federal AAA contracts. Cuts in relief money halted work projects in 1934 and 1935, and Orange was merged into a five-county relief district run from Durham. The Works Progress Administration then gave jobs to all but 24 of the families on the old relief list. By December 1936 Lawrence said any able-bodied man who tried could get work, and the need that remained was among widows, orphans, the old and the sick. StorylineHome demonstration and 4-H clubs in Orange County, 1935–19391935–1939 · 7 events · Home demonstration work, the teaching of homemaking to farm women and girls by a county agent, began in Orange in September 1935, when no county school but Hillsboro's taught home economics. Grace Holcombe, hired jointly by Orange and Chatham counties, led it. That month women of New Hope and Blackwood Station organized what the Weekly called the county's first club, and Fairfield women the second. Holcombe organized girls' 4-H clubs that fall, and by May 1936 there were seven clubs with 106 members and ten girls' 4-H clubs with 231. The boys' 4-H clubs were reorganized in 1938, Woodward Byars succeeded Holcombe by 1939, and by 1941 the county had 17 home demonstration clubs. StorylineOrange County’s home front in the Second World War1940–1946 · 151 events · From 1940 to 1945 Orange County was drawn into the Second World War. Red Cross women sewed garments for Britain and later made surgical dressings, a record 2,507 of them in Hillsborough on D-Day. The draft board sent men into the Army from 1940, and by late October 1945 it counted 3,110 drafted. Farm families, schools and civic clubs pledged or sold war bonds and gathered scrap, and the county more than doubled its quota in the Seventh War Loan. Carrboro's munitions plant loaded shells for the Navy, and German prisoners of war worked Orange farms in 1945. The county marked V-E Day quietly, while Chapel Hill celebrated the end of the war with Japan on Franklin Street. StorylineOrange County's war loan drives, 1942–19451942–1945 · 12 events · From farm families pledging a pig or an acre of crops in 1942 to the Victory Loan of 1945, Orange County kept buying war bonds, and it passed its quota in each drive from the Fourth War Loan on. In 1942 rural families pledged $50,000 in bonds and stamps for the year. The Fourth War Loan of 1944, under county chairman J. Maryon Saunders of Chapel Hill, passed its $540,000 quota by mid-February, helped by a $25,000 county investment, though E bond sales lagged. The county went over in the Fifth and Sixth loans, and in 1945 the Seventh closed at $1,308,000 against a $574,000 quota. Saunders counted $6,120,000 in bonds bought in the seven drives he led. StorylineShort wartime school days, 1943–19441943–1944 · 3 events · Wartime farm work shaped Orange County's school hours in 1943 and 1944. In August 1943 Superintendent R. H. Claytor announced that most county schools would run from 8:15 to 1:15 for the first six weeks so children could help on farms. Chapel Hill's schools ran a wartime short day from 8 to 1. In November, 99 of 160 parents favored a day from 8:40 to 2, but on November 16 the Chapel Hill school board put an 8:45 to 3:15 schedule into effect, against most parents' wishes. By May 1944 all Orange County schools had gone on a short schedule, after young farmers were drafted and heavy spring rains delayed the crop year. StorylineChapel Hill’s zoning reaches the countryside, 1948–19551948–1955 · 16 events · Chapel Hill set up a planning and zoning board in 1948, put its first zoning ordinance into effect in June 1949, and that May asked for zoning a mile beyond its limits. In 1951 the town sought power to zone three miles out, chiefly to keep commercial strips off the new Durham-Chapel Hill boulevard, and the legislature enlarged its zoning commission with county members. A 1952 plan to zone four miles around town brought heated opposition from rural landowners through four public hearings; the county put farmers on the commission, and in 1953 a new act cut the area and gave rural residents equal seats. After a final hearing the aldermen adopted the perimeter ordinance in March 1955, and that August the county named its members to the Greater Chapel Hill zoning boards. StorylinePaving the rural roads, 1949June–December 1949 · 17 events · On June 4, 1949 Orange County voters approved Governor Kerr Scott's $200 million secondary road bonds, 2,450 to 1,743, though the Hillsboro precinct voted them down. In September a mass meeting called by the Pomona Grange set up a countywide steering committee and township committees to choose the roads to be paved. The Highway Commission let the first two Orange paving contracts in October, and in December highway commissioner James A. Barnwell chose 42.9 miles for the first phase and the county commissioners endorsed ten projects totaling 39.7 miles. StorylineFire protection for the countryside, 1951–19641951–1964 · 17 events · When Chapel Hill's fire department stopped answering most calls outside town in January 1951, people in the countryside began arranging fire protection of their own. Rural residents around Hillsboro, whose truck already stayed near town, formed the Orange Fire Protective Association, raised money by memberships and had a truck by March 1951, crewed by the town's volunteer firemen. Carrboro offered contracts to property owners around town in 1954. Around Chapel Hill, voters approved a tax-supported fire district 188 to 9 in 1955, and in 1956 Chapel Hill agreed to protect the district in return for its fire tax. In 1964 the county set up an Orange Fire Commission to regulate the departments receiving county aid. StorylineThe five-member county board, 1953–19561953–1956 · 8 events · In January 1953 rural residents brought petitions with about 940 names asking that the county commissioners and the board of education each be enlarged from three to five members. After a heated hearing on February 2 the commissioners voted 2 to 1 to ask for a five-member board elected at large, without the one-per-township rule the petitioners wanted, and the General Assembly passed the local act that March. The first primary for five seats came in May 1954, voters filled the enlarged board that November, and the first five-member board took office on December 6, 1954, electing R. J. M. Hobbs chairman. In 1956 the commissioners asked the legislature to limit the board to two members from any one township, and after protests from Chapel Hill speakers and the League of Women Voters they reaffirmed the request that November. StorylineCane Creek Reservoir and Bingham Township1961 to 1989 · 65 events · From the first engineering studies of 1961 to the filling of the reservoir in 1989: OWASA's Cane Creek Reservoir, the watershed land purchases, and the Bingham Township farm families displaced. StorylineChapel Hill’s food co-ops, 1971–19751971–1975 · 4 events · Between 1971 and 1975 groups in Chapel Hill formed food cooperatives that sold produce and other food to their members below store prices: the Chapel Hill Food Co-op, begun at the Baptist Student Union, a co-op at the Newman Center, the Student Consumer Action Union's co-op at the Multi-Purpose Center and the Community Food Co-op on West Rosemary Street. In two of them, members worked set hours.

Indexed works

Works about Farms & Rural Life 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 109Letters & correspondence 26Photographs & portraits 23Biography 15Genealogy 12other types 86

Period

17th century 418th century 42Revolution (1775–1783) 1419th century 71Civil War (1861–1865) 28Reconstruction (1865–1877) 720th century 39World War II era 4

Place

Orange County 197North Carolina (statewide) 173Hillsborough 74Chapel Hill 54City of Durham (neighboring) 18Durham County (neighboring) 16

Widely held

Miss Mary's Money

Jones, H. G. · 2014 · McFarland & Co.

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.

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

✓ Held at OCPL NC Cardinal UNC Duke NC State NCCU Durham Library of Congress Wake Forest Davidson Methodist CH Historical Society

Piedmont Plantation: The Bennehan-Cameron Family and Lands in North Carolina

Anderson, Jean Bradley · 1985 · Historic Preservation Society of Durham

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.

Included because: Catalog heading in the NCCU record: Plantations.

Reviewed in South Atlantic Quarterly (1987).

✓ Held at OCPL · NC 929.209 AND Duke NC State NC Cardinal Durham Chapel Hill PL NCCU CH Historical Society Library of Congress

A Mind to Stay: White Plantation, Black Homeland

Nathans, Sydney · 2017

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.

Included because: Catalog heading in the Duke record: Plantation owners.

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 œAlabama review (2019), The Oral History Review (2019), ˜The œRegister - Kentucky Historical Society/˜The œregister of the Kentucky Historical Society (2020).

Duke NC State NC Cardinal Durham Chapel Hill PL NCCU

The Black family in slavery and freedom, 1750-1925

Gutman, Herbert G. (Herbert George), 1928-1985 · 1976 · Pantheon Books

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.

Included because: Catalog heading in the NCCU record: Stagville Plantation (N.C.).

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).

NCCU UNC CH Historical Society Library of Congress

The Couch tract of the Durham division of the Duke Forest: a history of agricultural land-use patterns, 1750-1950

Frankel, Rachel · 1984 · Rachel Frankel (attributed)

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.

Included because: Catalog heading in the NC Cardinal record: Agriculture -- North Carolina -- Orange County -- History.

NC Cardinal Duke

Cedar Grove, 1939 : revisiting Marion Post's photos of a Black rural neighborhood

Bennett, Evan P. · 2025 · Historical Research Office, Office of Archives and History

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.

Included because: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Rural African Americans.

UNC
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Bright leaf culture and Thomas Day : Orange and Caswell counties

Vernacular Architecture Forum (U.S.). Conference (2016 : Durham, N.C.) · 2016 · Vernacular Architecture Forum

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.

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

UNC

Interviews With Residents on Fish Dam Road

Liles, Joe · 2004

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.

Included because: Catalog heading in the Durham record: Rural Roads -- North Carolina -- Durham.

Durham

Recently indexed: Cigarette smoking habits and selected health behaviors among present UNC-CH generic and RN-BSN nursing students (1993) · Eugene Cunningham Branson, humanitarian (1967) · Welfare work in mill villages : the story of extra-mill activities in North Carolina (1929) · Address of John W. Norwood, Esq., of Orange : delivered before the State Agricultural Society of North Carolina at the annual fair on the 20th October, 1871 (1871) · Anaylzing the preferences of market customers : a case study of the Chapel Hill Farmers' Market (2013)

Search all 300 indexed works →

Start at OCPL

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. Books marked Wider context cover the broader subject rather than this theme itself.

  • Wider context · NC 633.71 YEA Remembering North Carolina Tobacco Yeargin, Billy · 2008

    Billy Yeargin collects his own memories and those of others raised in North Carolina's tobacco culture, following the crop's year through laying by, cropping and curing, along with the nuisance of slugs and tar and the sight of a field in bloom. The History Press of Charleston published it in 2008; 128 illustrated pages.

  • Foundational · NC 633.71 YEA North Carolina Tobacco: A History Yeargin, Billy · 2008

    Billy Yeargin's history of tobacco in North Carolina: how the crop shaped farm communities and their customs, gave rise to manufacturing industries and left a lasting mark on the state's culture. The History Press of Charleston published it in 2008; 159 illustrated pages with source references.

  • Wider context · NC 929 NOR North Carolina Century Farms: 100 Years of Continuous Agricultural Heritage 1989

    The North Carolina Department of Agriculture's 1989 tribute to the farms recognized under its Century Farm program, worked by the same families for at least a hundred years. James F. Devine opens with a history of farming in the state, followed by a list of Century Farm owners and family histories of the farms. Compiled by Libby Gorman and Mary Hunter Martin, edited by Deborah Ellison and Jearlean Woody; 247 large pages, illustrated.

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  • Foundational · NC 333.76 FRA The Couch Tract of the Durham Division of the Duke Forest: A History of Agricultural Land-use Patterns 1750-1950 Frankel, Rachel · 1984

    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.

  • Wider context · NC 975.63 FLO Up From Mount Misery: The Blossoming of North Carolina's Sandhills Florance, Chris · 1990

    The Sandhills of North Carolina and their growth over the twentieth century, as Chris Florance tells it through the lives of local people, farm life and the story of the Chase family. Down Home Press of Asheboro published it in 1990: 211 pages with illustrations, a map and a bibliography.

  • Wider context · NC 338.173 BAD Prosperity Road: The New Deal, Tobacco, and North Carolina Badger, Anthony J. · 1980

    Anthony J. Badger's study of the New Deal in North Carolina centered on tobacco, tracing how federal economic policy of the 1930s worked out in the state's tobacco economy. Badger, a British historian, later held the Paul Mellon chair of American history at Cambridge; this was his first book. University of North Carolina Press, 1980, in the Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies; 295 pages with a bibliography and an index.

  • Rebecca Wall Collection · NC 929.209 COU The Couch Farms in Orange County, North Carolina

    A local study of the Couch farms in Orange County, North Carolina. Part of the Wall Local History Collection.

  • Wider context · NC 770.92 WOOTEN Tobacco Barns, Eastern North Carolina Wooten, Hubert · 2023

    Hubert Wooten's color photographs of tobacco barns in eastern North Carolina, collected in a 243-page book that he published himself in 2023.

  • Wider context · NC 929.209 LIMBAUGH Farming Across America: A 300-year Family History Limbaugh, Ronald H. · 2013

    Ronald H. Limbaugh's history of the Limbaugh and Mortimer families across three centuries of American farming, with maps and portraits, issued in 2013 in a limited edition of 100 copies.

In the chronology

A selection of 12 events from the 1,635 chronology entries for this theme, including highlights and examples from different years. See all 1,635 dated events in the chronology →

  1. Indigenous communities occupy the Eno River Valley Excavations at the Hogue and Wall sites on the Eno near Hillsborough show farming communities growing corn, beans and squash, first in small scattered settlements (Haw River phase, about 1000–1400) and then in compact palisaded villages (Hillsboro phase, about 1400–1600). The Wall site village held perhaps 100 to 150 people in the mid-1400s. Place: Eno River valleySearch the index · UNC Research Laboratories of Archaeology, Ancient North Carolinians: Central Piedmont
  2. John Lawson's party fords the Haw and meets a Virginia pack train in the Haw Fields On the last stages before Occaneechi Town, Lawson's party stripped in cold weather to ford the Haw River, which he described as running among boulders the size of houses. The next day, crossing the rich land known as the Haw Fields, they met a pack train of thirty loaded horses and four or five men led by Massey, an Englishman from Leeds trading out of Virginia, and reached the Occaneechi town about three that afternoon. People: John Lawson Place: Haw River ford and the Haw Fields (now Alamance County)Internet Archive: Douglas L. Rights, "The Trading Path to the Indians", North Carolina Historical Review 8 (1931), p. 417
  3. 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. Place: Orange County · Also named: Charles Whitmore, Jesse Whitmore, Jacob Jeffries · Also mentions: Pleasant GroveExcavating Occaneechi Town (UNC Press): Post-Revolutionary War
  4. The Henry Lloyd farm is built around a walled barnyard in Chapel Hill Township Henry Lloyd, farming in Chapel Hill Township by 1880, probably built his farmhouse in the 1880s; the farm grew in stages, and log and frame outbuildings of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries close in a rectangular barnyard, an arrangement the survey found worth a Study List place. Place: Chapel Hill Township · Also named: Henry LloydSearch the index · NC Digital Collections: Historic Resources of Orange County, National Register multiple property documentation form (1993), p. 96 · Also: Find a Grave, Henry Lloyd
  5. E. H. Pogue & Co. hold the opening sale at the Hillsboro Tobacco Warehouse The Hillsboro Tobacco Warehouse, run by E. H. Pogue & Co., held its opening sale on Tuesday, January 5, 1886, and the Observer reported a heavy break with good prices. Three days earlier Pogue and fourteen other men had incorporated the Orange County Tobacco Association to buy and sell leaf tobacco. People: E. H. Pogue Place: HillsboroughSearch the index · Orange County Observer (Hillsborough), January 9, 1886, p. 3 (opening sale report and notice of incorporation)
  6. Orange County commissioners offer to match gifts for an emergency health fund for the poor After welfare superintendent George H. Lawrence told them of sick people too poor to pay doctors or hospitals, the commissioners agreed to match private gifts dollar for dollar up to $500, once the county accountant found room in the budget. Orange had no hospital of its own, and hospitals in neighboring counties were reluctant to take its charity cases. People: George H. Lawrence Place: Orange CountyThe Chapel Hill Weekly, October 18, 1929, p. 1
  7. Census counts tenants on about a third of Orange County farms Tenants operated 643 of 1,870 Orange County farms in 1930 (34.4 percent), 718 of 1,956 in 1935 (36.7 percent) and 687 of 2,043 in 1940 (33.6 percent). Of the 1940 tenants, 514 were share tenants and croppers. Place: Orange County · Also mentions: Orange County farmsUS Census of Agriculture 1940: North Carolina County Table II, farms by tenure of operator
  8. 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. Place: Pleasant Grove Township · Also named: Clayton Jeffries, Charles Will Jeffries, John CollierExcavating Occaneechi Town (UNC Press): Twentieth Century
  9. Durham Dairy Products stops selling milk in Chapel Hill rather than use the Grade C label Durham Dairy Products made its last deliveries and closed its Chapel Hill store at noon on March 15 after the aldermen held to the ordinance requiring a Grade C label on its mixed milk. The University contracted with Selected Dairies of Winston-Salem for 1,100 to 1,200 gallons a day, and local dairies covered most of the town's loss. People: William P. Richardson Place: Chapel HillSearch the index · The Chapel Hill Weekly, March 19, 1943, p. 1
  10. Orange County's farm agents launch the Farm and Home Efficiency Program The county's farm and home agents replaced the four-year-old Rural Progress Program with a 1955 Farm and Home Efficiency Program stressing net profit over output, organized through community groups such as granges and home demonstration clubs. By early March community meetings had begun and separate meetings for Black farm families were scheduled; the Bank of Chapel Hill and the Hillsborough branch of Durham Bank and Trust paid for it. People: Don S. Matheson Place: Orange County · Also mentions: Bank of Chapel HillSearch the index · The News of Orange County (Hillsborough), March 10, 1955, p. 1
  11. Orange County Rural Buffer is established Orange County adopted the Orange County-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Joint Planning Area Land Use Plan and map on August 19, 1986, designating a low-density Rural Buffer. The three governments signed the Joint Planning Agreement on November 2, 1987, and the county dates the buffer to 1988. Place: CarrboroSearch the index · Town of Chapel Hill: Joint Planning Agreement (Orange County, Chapel Hill, Carrboro), November 2, 1987, as amended · Also: The Daily Tar Heel, October 28, 1987, p. 3; The Daily Tar Heel, November 11, 1987, p. 3
  12. Census counts 36 migrant workers on Orange County farms The 2022 Census of Agriculture found 174 Orange County farms employing 597 hired workers, including 36 migrant workers on seven farms. Between 2017 and 2022 the number of tobacco farms in the county fell by 60 percent. Place: Orange County · Also mentions: Orange County farmsN.C. Cooperative Extension, Orange County Center: Growing Food

See all 1,635 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 120 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

National Register files 10

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Historic sites, markers, and maps

Records of the time

Collections and databases 7

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Local help 6

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Related themes

UNC & Campus Life →Black Life & Civil Rights →Schools & Education →Slavery, Emancipation & Reconstruction →Families, Land & Genealogy →Politics & Government →

Picture: Farm Security Administration photographs, 1939–1940, Library of Congress; public domain. Image credits →

More to discover

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