Storyline
How Hillsborough served as the southern army’s base in 1780: de Kalb’s halt, Gates’s regrouping of the army after Camden, the General Assembly and its Board of War, the courthouse and church turned to army use, the crowded town, the march to Salisbury and Greene’s arrival.
In briefAfter the American defeat at Camden in August 1780, Hillsborough became the southern army's base, and the town and county strained to feed it. Gates regrouped his army there, the General Assembly created a Board of War that directed the war effort from the town, the courthouse became a storehouse and the church a hospital, and fugitives crowded the town. In late November the board judged that Orange could not feed the army through the winter, and Gates marched it toward Salisbury. The story runs from de Kalb's halt in June to the arrest of four Maryland soldiers in December.
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No works in the index are currently linked directly to this storyline. The works below provide background on Black Life & Civil Rights.
On June 20, 1780 Baron de Kalb halted at Hillsborough with 2,000 Continental troops, marching to relieve Charleston after it had already fallen, and used up the area's provisions before moving south. On July 19 Horatio Gates, on his way to the southern army, wrote from the town to Governor Abner Nash that the army's commissary and quartermaster departments were in a deplorable state and asked for magazines of provisions and forage and 700 tents. Thomas Burke, home from Congress, took up his neighbors' complaints of troops grazing horses on growing corn and taking cattle, wagons and smokehouse stores; he wrote to Congress and to Gates and was later credited with largely stopping the abuse in Orange. On August 1 he told Gates that his neighbor Barnaby Cabe was bringing a load of flour he would hand over only on Gates's order.
After the American defeat at Camden on August 16, Gates gathered the remnants of his army at Hillsborough, and on September 3 he reported the Maryland division and the artillery being refitted there. The Board of War sent Lieutenant Colonel James Thackston to collect recruits and returning deserters; by mid-November he had sixteen men. Fugitives crowded the town, among them South Carolina's Governor John Rutledge, Tadeusz Kosciuszko and Daniel Morgan, and Rutledge shared a bed with John Penn of the Board of War. The General Assembly, meeting at Hillsborough from September 5 to 13, levied a provision tax in kind, paid in produce rather than money, to supply the army and created a five-member Board of War, which first met there on September 14 with Alexander Martin, Penn and Oroondates Davis present. Through the fall the board issued orders for arms, provisions and militia, ran a shoe factory for the army, made the courthouse a storehouse and had the church repaired as a hospital. On October 12 Gates wrote from the town thanking the victors of Kings Mountain.
Colonel John Gunby of the First Maryland Regiment served as commandant through the last months of 1780 and into January 1781, with more than a thousand troops in and around the town; his 400 to 500 Marylanders were barefoot until shoes came from Maryland. In late November the board, judging that Hillsborough and Orange could not feed the army through the winter, persuaded Gates to move toward Salisbury, and Nathanael Greene, named to succeed him, arrived to find the army gone. The board rose to sit at Halifax from December 1. In early December four free Black soldiers of the First Maryland, Leonard Turner, Valentine Murrin, Thomas Thompson and John Adams, were charged with robbing Joseph Hastings's house south of town and abusing him and his wife. Major McIntosh took them from the civil officers by force, but Gunby returned them to the sheriff when the magistrates appealed; they were bound over for trial but never tried.
Events in this storyline, in date order. See these 15 dated events in the chronology →
Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows them all.
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.
Background reading on Black Life & Civil Rights. These works cover the broader subject and may not discuss this storyline. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.
An Alex Cross thriller by James Patterson with Chapel Hill among its settings alongside Washington, D.C. Bombings, a kidnapping, a missing-persons investigation, terrorism and fathers and sons are its subjects; the Sampson of the title is Cross's longtime partner John Sampson. Published by Little, Brown in 2026.
Theodore Parrish's memoir of a Black life in Chapel Hill and of gentrification in the town, subtitled race, gentrification, and the path of my own life. Published by the Chapel Hill Historical Society in August 2025, 243 pages with illustrations. Subjects include African Americans in Chapel Hill, race relations and gentrification in North Carolina.
Sylvia D. Hoffert's study of gossip, rumor and reputation in nineteenth-century Hillsborough, using the town as a case study of how talk shaped social standing and race relations in a small Southern place. Chapters take up the workings of idle chatter, people living on the edge of freedom under slavery, schooling, daily labor, and a period of fear over madness in the community. Published 2025 by the University of Georgia Press.
Beverly A. Scarlett's 2024 study of a free community of color in nineteenth-century Orange County, drawing on apprenticeship and freedmen's records among other county sources.
Brian Burns's collection of lesser-known episodes from Chapel Hill's past, published by The History Press of Charleston, South Carolina, in 2023. Topics include the town's history, its buildings and structures, and the history of civil rights in Chapel Hill. 158 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Tracy Deonn's young adult fantasy novel set around the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Bree, an African American teenager with newly awakened powers she cannot yet control, learns that the leaders of the secret Order mean to hide the coming demon war, and she and her friends flee so that she can find her own training. Subjects include magic, secret societies, imaginary wars and psychic trauma. Published by Simon & Schuster in 2022, 561 pages.
Reviewed in Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books./Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (2022).
Picture book by Courtney Soling Smith, published by the Orange County Historical Museum in Hillsborough in 2022, about a collie named Minnie and an African American family in Cedar Grove Township. Twenty-nine unnumbered pages, chiefly color illustrations, with portraits that point to a real family behind the story.
Companion picture book about Minnie the collie by Courtney Soling Smith, again from the Orange County Historical Museum in 2022, following an African American farm family in Cedar Grove Township. Thirty-seven unnumbered pages, chiefly color illustrations, with a facsimile. Written for children, with the museum's local history interest behind it.
Adam Lucas's account of the 2021-2022 Carolina men's basketball season, Hubert Davis's first as head coach. Davis, appointed in April 2021, was the first Black head coach in the program's history, and the season ended at the NCAA tournament in New Orleans. Published 2022 by the UNC Department of Athletics, 155 pages with color illustrations. Topics include the Tar Heels, Davis, and college basketball in Chapel Hill in the twenty-first century.
A folded walking tour map of Northside, the historically African American neighborhood near downtown Chapel Hill, produced by Alexander Stephens for the Marian Cheek Jackson Center for Saving and Making History in 2021. One illustrated sheet, 43 by 28 centimeters, folded to pocket size. The walk introduces the neighborhood through its residents' own histories of home.
Collected first-hand and second-hand stories from the Eno River valley as told from the standpoint of African Americans and Native people who have lived along the river in Orange and Durham counties, from prehistory to the present day. Issued by the Eno River Association in Durham as volume 10, number 2 of the Eno Journal, 2021, 106 pages with illustrations.
Geeta Kapur's history of race at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, from the enslaved labor that built the campus through desegregation and the Black student protests that followed. Twelve chapters, with a foreword by William Barber II, move from the founding era and the Great Depression controversies to the state's response to integration and the turmoil of later decades; North Carolina Central University also figures. Published 2021 by Blair in Durham.
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