The state historical marker for Hart's Mill (G-122) near Hillsborough, 2009
Indexed works
Related works found in catalogs and archives across North Carolina. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it.
The Hartford mill complex during the revolution
Engstrom, Mary Claire, 1906-1997 · 1979
Mary Claire Engstrom's article on the Hartford mill complex on the Eno and its fortunes during the Revolution, centered on Thomas Hart, who died in 1808. Nine pages with a facsimile and a portrait, printed in 1979.
Books in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection whose titles, catalog subjects, or descriptions match this event. The Friends’ recommended starting points are labelled. Books marked Wider context cover the broader subject rather than this event itself.
Stewart E. Dunaway's transcription of letters exchanged between Jesse Benton and Thomas Hart from 1780 to 1790, concerning Hart's affairs at Hartford, his place at Hillsborough. The letters concern the economic and social conditions of Hillsborough in the eighteenth century and the Revolution in North Carolina. Self-published through lulu.com in 2009, 68 pages with illustrations and facsimiles, and part of the library's Wall Local History Collection.
Stewart E. Dunaway's account of the Battle of Lindley's Mill, fought in September 1781 after the Loyalist David Fanning raided Hillsborough and carried off Governor Thomas Burke. Burke, Fanning and the Lindley family, whose mill gave the fight its name, are the people at its center, with the Revolutionary campaigns in North Carolina as the frame. Published in 2009.
Stewart E. Dunaway's life of Edmund Fanning (1739-1818), the colonial officeholder in Hillsborough whom the Regulators singled out and who left North Carolina as a loyalist, together with the Fanning family's genealogy. Self-published through Lulu in 2011, 223 pages with illustrations, facsimiles, genealogical tables and maps. Topics include American loyalists and Hillsborough and Orange County biography and genealogy.
A reference work by Jeffery Bright and Stewart E. Dunaway on the Revolutionary War campaigns in North Carolina's Piedmont, among them the 1781 battle at Clapp's Mill. This new edition, privately issued in 2013, runs to 466 pages with illustrations, maps, a bibliography and an index.
The second series of the Colonial Records of North Carolina, the documentary edition begun in 1963 to follow William L. Saunders's ten volumes of 1886 to 1890. Its first volume, Mattie Erma Edwards Parker's edition of the charters and constitutions of 1578 to 1698, came from the Carolina Charter Tercentenary Commission; later volumes, starting with the colony's higher-court records of 1670 to 1696, were issued in Raleigh by the state's archives and history agency.
David Fanning's own account of his years as a Loyalist partisan in North Carolina, 1775 to 1783, including his 1781 raid on Hillsborough, where he captured Governor Thomas Burke. Edited by Thomas H. Wynne and first printed privately at Richmond in 1861, it was reissued in 1865 by Joseph Sabin of New York with an introduction by John H. Wheeler and notes partly by former governor David L. Swain; 86 pages.
The Battle of Clapp's Mill, fought on March 2, 1781, on Beaver Creek in present Alamance County, when Otho Williams's light troops, with Henry Lee's Legion and militia, ambushed Banastre Tarleton's British cavalry shortly before Guilford Courthouse. Rollin M. Steele Jr. argues that the skirmish was a turning point of that year. Alamance County was formed from Orange in 1849. Printed by the author in the early 1990s, 215 pages with an index.
Algie Innman Newlin's short study of the Battle of Lindley's Mill, the 1781 engagement in which Whig militia caught up with David Fanning's Loyalist column on its way from Hillsborough with the captured governor. Published by the Alamance Historical Association in 1975, 30 pages with maps and a bibliography.
North Carolina politics from 1763 to 1776, and the disputes with Britain that carried the colony into the Revolution, in a short study by Lindley S. Butler. It was number 6 in the Bicentennial pamphlet series of the state's Division of Archives and History, published in 1976, 81 pages with illustrations and a bibliography.
Thomas Hart buys Joseph Maddock's mill on the EnoJoseph Maddock, a Quaker who had run the grist mill on the Eno west of Hillsborough since 1755, sold it to Thomas Hart, a friend of Governor William Tryon, who built it up with a sawmill, oil mill, fulling mill, distillery, tannery and other works. This is the mill, known as Hart's Mill, that a British guard held in February 1781.People: Thomas HartNC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources: Hart's Mill (G-122)
Lee's Legion joins Pickens's militia camp after the Hart's Mill raidLater the same day as the Hart's Mill raid, Henry Lee's Legion, returning from beyond the Dan River with Greene's army, reached General Andrew Pickens's militia at a farm up Stony Creek, where the camp at first took the horsemen for Tarleton's cavalry. The combined force then went after Tarleton west of the Haw, the movement that led to Pyle's defeat.People: Andrew PickensSouthern Campaigns Revolutionary War Pension Statements: Pension application of Joseph Graham S6937
Patriots and Loyalists clash at Hart’s MillAt daybreak about 45 North Carolina cavalry under Captain Joseph Graham and mounted riflemen under Captain Richard Simmons, sent out by General Andrew Pickens, surprised the British guard of about 26 regulars and two Loyalists that was keeping Thomas Hart's mill on the Eno grinding for Cornwallis's army. Graham's accounts report the whole guard killed, wounded or captured with no Patriot dead, and the party reached Pickens's camp with its prisoners ahead of pursuing British cavalry.People: Andrew PickensSouthern Campaigns Revolutionary War Pension Statements: Pension application of Joseph Graham S6937
Other catalogs to search and local organizations that can help.
Background context:Historical marker G-122: Hart's MillNC Highway Historical Marker
Grist mill. Site of key Regulator meeting, 1766, and skirmish in 1781 that boosted the Patriot cause. Stood 1/5 mile N.
Search beyond the index:NC LIVE: prepared search for Hart’s Mill skirmish, February 1781NC LIVE
An advanced search of the state’s shared databases already scoped to Orange County’s places and this subject; edit it freely, and sign in through your North Carolina library to read
Ask locally:Local History Help Hours and request formOCPL Local History Liaison
The library’s Local History Liaison helps in person most Mondays, 12 to 3, at the Main Library, or by the online request form
Background reading at OCPL
Held in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection. Selected because their titles or catalog subjects provide wider historical context for this event; they may not discuss the Orange County event directly.
A roster of Revolutionary War soldiers, patriots and other ancestors buried in North Carolina and the sites of their graves, compiled by the North Carolina Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution and published in 2007 with sketches by Morgan Harris. Unpaged and illustrated.
Subjects in the OCPL catalog record: Cemeteries -- North Carolina; Tombs -- North Carolina; United States -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783 -- Veterans OCPL call number: NC 973.3 REV
Picture: The state historical marker for Hart's Mill (G-122) near Hillsborough, 2009. CC BY 2.0. Photograph by the Alliance for Historic Hillsborough; via Wikimedia Commons
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