Storyline
How Orange County raised men for the Mexican War: the volunteers of the Hawfields and 47th regiments, John Cameron’s Orange Volunteers and their send-off from Hillsborough, the company broken up at Smithville, the army recruiting station and the dinner for the returned volunteers.
In briefOrange County raised a volunteer company for the war with Mexico, only to see it divided among other companies at the regiment's camp because it was still short of full strength. In 1846, 110 men enrolled at a Hawfields Regiment muster, and the volunteers later elected John Cameron captain. In January 1847 townspeople gave the Orange Volunteers a dinner at the Hillsborough House, and the company, accepted as Company I of the North Carolina Regiment, marched for Wilmington. At Smithville in February it was broken up, leaving Cameron without a command, though Orange men served on in the regiment in Mexico. In August 1848 about five hundred people attended a Chapel Hill dinner for the returning volunteers.
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No works in the index are currently linked directly to this storyline. The works below provide background on Wars & Military Service.
On May 30, 1846, at a muster of the Hawfields Regiment, 110 men enrolled as volunteers for the war with Mexico. On June 20 the volunteers of the 47th Regiment drew lots to cut 108 enrolled men to the 77 a company needed and elected John Cameron captain, Shepard K. Nash first lieutenant and Addison Mangum second lieutenant. On August 7 Col. Handy Wood, first lieutenant of the Haw River Volunteer Company, died of fever in western Orange. On January 16, 1847 townspeople gave the Orange Volunteers a dinner at the Hillsborough House; the company then elected Cameron captain and Nash first lieutenant and was accepted as Company I of the North Carolina Regiment. On January 21 each volunteer received a Bible from the Orange County Bible Society at the court house, and the company marched for Chapel Hill and Raleigh on its way to Wilmington. At the regiment's camp at Smithville in February the company, still short of full strength, was divided among other companies, chiefly the Yancey company, leaving Cameron without a command; Orange men served on in the regiment in Mexico. In April Lieutenant James F. Waddell opened an army recruiting station at Hillsborough. On August 26, 1848 Chapel Hill gave a dinner for the North Carolina volunteers just home from the war, and about five hundred people attended.
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Background reading on Wars & Military Service. These works cover the broader subject and may not discuss this storyline. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.
A picture book set in the Eno River valley of Orange County in 1776. Four red wolf pups are born in a woodland den and spend their first summer and fall learning to hunt and howl with their family, while nearby a young widow, Sally Few, keeps her household going as the Revolution unsettles the countryside. Eileen Heyes wrote the story, published in 2025 by the North Carolina Office of Archives and History with color illustrations and maps, 42 pages.
Anne R. Keene's history of the Cloudbusters, the baseball team of the Navy Pre-Flight School at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill during the Second World War, on which Ted Williams played in 1943. The chapters move from a batboy's trunk of keepsakes through the pre-flight training program to the players' lives after the war, and Keene's own family is part of the story. Published by Sports Publishing in New York in 2018, 340 pages with sixteen pages of plates.
Alex Albright's history of the B-1 band, the group of Black musicians drawn largely from students and graduates of North Carolina A&T who became the first Black sailors of the modern Navy to serve above the rank of messman, and the first of more than a hundred Black Navy bands in wartime. The band was posted to the Navy Pre-Flight School at Chapel Hill, the book's Orange County link. Published by R.A. Fountain in 2013, 194 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Suzanne Adair's 2011 mystery, one of her Michael Stoddard novels, set in Hillsborough during the Southern campaign of the American Revolution and written as a historical thriller. Adair is a North Carolina author.
Letters of the Sparrow family, including Thomas Sparrow and George Attmore Sparrow, gathered and published in 2011. The correspondence includes material associated with the Hillsboro' Military Academy, which opened in Hillsborough in 1859, and combines family and military history.
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 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.
Suzy Barile's account of Eleanor Hope Swain, daughter of the University of North Carolina's president, and Smith D. Atkins, the Union general whose troops occupied Chapel Hill in April 1865; the two married later that year. Published by Eno in Hillsborough in 2009, 237 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Civil War letters of Colonel Frank Schaller of the 22nd Mississippi Infantry, combining personal narrative with regimental history. Schaller was associated with the Hillsboro Military Academy in Hillsborough. Published by the University of South Carolina Press in 2007. 185 pages with six pages of plates and illustrations.
A congregational history of New Hope Presbyterian Church in Orange County, written by Barbara A. Murphy and published in 2006 by Chapel Hill Press. Chapters take up the five successive church buildings, the land itself, the ministers who served, the cemeteries, members who went to war, the church's organization, its music, gifts and memorials, and its outreach to the surrounding community. It also covers Presbyterian experience of the Civil War. 126 pages with illustrations and portraits.
The Rev. Charles M. Jones (1906-1993), minister of Chapel Hill's Presbyterian church in the late 1940s, and his wife Dorcas talk with John Egerton in a Southern Oral History Program interview recorded July 21, 1990. Jones spends most of the hour on the disputes his stand on race provoked, when the regional presbytery objected to his conduct of the church, and his dealings with university president Frank Porter Graham. Published online in 2006 by the UNC-Chapel Hill Library in Documenting the American South.
Guion Griffis Johnson (1900-1989), a historian of the antebellum South, talked with Jacquelyn Hall and Mary Frederickson in August 1974 for the Southern Oral History Program. She recalls her training, her years at the Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina, the standing of women historians in higher education, and the research behind her study of antebellum North Carolina society. Running about an hour; electronic edition issued by the UNC library in 2006 through Documenting the American South.
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