Theme
Soldiers, militia, veterans, pensions, and the county in wartime.
In briefOrange County men marched to Alamance in 1771, hosted and fought Cornwallis in 1781 and served in every war that followed; Chapel Hill trained Navy pilots in the Second World War and struck against the Vietnam War in 1970. The records here run from militia rolls and pensions to memorials, Silent Sam among them.
1,497 indexed works are connected with this theme. 16 held at OCPL →
Named events and episodes the index follows in detail. Each has its own page.
Related works found in catalogs and archives across North Carolina, the most widely held first, novels aside. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it.
Narrow these works. Each link opens the search already limited to this theme. Counts are indexed works, not copies on a shelf; a work can carry more than one period or place.
Francis Nash's history of Hillsborough in colonial and Revolutionary times, first published in 1903 and reprinted in 1953 by Edwards & Broughton with an index and a sketch of the author. Topics include the Regulator Insurrection of 1766 to 1771, the Revolution and local genealogy.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the Wake Forest record: North Carolina -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783.
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.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Veterans.
William Edward Fitch's account of the Regulator movement and the Battle of Alamance of 1771, which his subtitle calls the first battle of the American Revolution, published by Neale in 1905 in a second edition. Hillsborough, the Orange County seat, was the scene of the Regulators' 1770 courthouse riot and of the hangings that followed Alamance. 307 pages with nine leaves of plates, folding maps and a portrait.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the NC Cardinal record: North Carolina -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783.
Ernest Dollar examines the mental toll of the Civil War's last weeks in North Carolina on Confederate and Union soldiers and on civilians, using letters, diaries and later accounts. After chapters on each group, the narrative follows the days from April 10 to early May 1865 as Sherman's army moved through the central counties, Chapel Hill and Hillsborough among them; an epilogue considers how the trauma colored later memory of the conflict's end. Published 2022, 265 pages.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the NC Cardinal record: North Carolina -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Campaigns.
Reviewed in Civil War Book Review (2023).
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.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Civil war -- Religious aspects -- Presbyterians.
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.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: United States. Navy.
Numbered dispatches 59 through 67 from Governor William Tryon to the Earl of Hillsborough, with enclosures about the Regulators, whose protests broke into riot at Hillsborough in 1770. Reproduced by Adam Matthew Digital in 2019 from Colonial Office CO 5/302. The papers touch on the council and assembly, naval stores and trade, oaths, militia and provincial troops, judges, sheriffs and juries, voting, currency, Cherokee affairs, clergy, quitrents and land, and name officials such as Richard Caswell, Richard Henderson, Maurice Moore and Hugh Waddell.
Why this is here: The record names this subject alongside a heading for the county or its towns.
Governor William Tryon's correspondence with the Earl of Hillsborough for the months from October 1768 to May 1769, just after Tryon marched militia to Hillsborough to protect the court from the Regulators. Adam Matthew Digital reproduced the file, Colonial Office CO 5/301, in 2019. Topics include legislation, Anglican clergy, soldiers' wages, sheriffs, land and quitrents, trade and currency, taxes and education, the Catawba and the boundary line, roads, a murder case, punishment and prison, and people such as Richard Caswell, James Hasell and John Rutherford.
Why this is here: The record names this subject alongside a heading for the county or its towns.
Recently indexed: 1937 in memoriam, World War II (1948) · Address by Edwin A. Alderman ... on the life of William Hooper, "the prophet of American independence" : Guilford Battle Ground, July 4, 1894 (1894) · The Administrative Committee of the Program of Peace Committee (1940) · Back the attack with war bonds : your September bond purchases will help make Orange County make its 3rd war loan quota (1942) · Biographical sketch of General J. Johnston Pettigrew (1886) · Biographical sketch of Lieut. Col. "Hal" Dixon (1895)
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.
After the Civil War, North Carolina supplied artificial limbs to Confederate veterans who had lost arms or legs. Ansley Herring Wegner's history of that program adds an index to the related files in the State Archives. Published in 2004 by the Office of Archives and History; x, 261 pages with illustrations, a bibliography and an index.
Letters and diaries of North Carolina soldiers and civilians from 1861 to 1865, edited by Christopher M. Watford in two volumes, the first on the Piedmont and the second on the mountains. McFarland of Jefferson, North Carolina, began publishing the set in 2003, with illustrations, portraits, bibliographies and indexes.
A short account of the Civil War campaigns fought in North Carolina from 1861 to 1865, written by John G. Barrett of the Virginia Military Institute and published by the State Department of Archives and History in 1960; 99 pages with illustrations and a map. It was reissued in 1980 and again in 2003.
Neil Hunter Raiford's history of the 4th North Carolina Cavalry, formed from seven partisan ranger companies raised in 1862 in fifteen counties. Using official records, letters and diaries, he follows the regiment from the Blackwater skirmishes and the Battle of Whitehall through Brandy Station, Gettysburg and the defense of Petersburg to Appomattox. A roster with biographical and service details on each soldier fills more than half the book. McFarland, 2003; 294 pages with maps.
The North Carolina returns of the 1890 federal census of Union veterans and their widows, as compiled by Sandra L. Almasy. The schedules also name other U.S. veterans and many Confederates. Published at Joliet, Illinois, in 1990; 316 pages with indexes.
John G. Barrett's military history of the Civil War inside North Carolina, where eleven battles and seventy-three skirmishes were fought. Chapters follow the secession crisis, the 1861 fighting on the Outer Banks, Burnside's coastal expedition, Pickett's failure at New Bern, war in the mountains, Fort Fisher, Sherman's entry into the state, Averasboro and Bentonville, and Stoneman's raid, ending with the surrender at the Bennett farmhouse. Published in 1963, 484 pages with maps; reissued in 1995.
Paul D. Escott edits nine essays on North Carolinians from secession through Reconstruction: Piedmont disaffection, Wild's Raid and guerrilla war in the northeast, African Americans under Union occupation, soldiers and the 1864 governor's race, the war's end as seen by Chapel Hill writer Cornelia Phillips Spencer, Zebulon Vance and university president David L. Swain, women and the law, divorce at the 1868 constitutional convention, the roots of Jim Crow, and Vance's memory. UNC Press, 2008.
Some 450 North Carolina Confederates, most of them deserters, are traced through their service records and military trials by Aldo S. Perry, a retired IBM project engineer in Raleigh; Confederate courts sentenced more North Carolina soldiers to death than those of any other state. Organized by army, corps, division and brigade, the book follows trials, executions and escapes, and argues that wider use of execution would have strengthened the Confederacy. McFarland, 2012.
Sarah McCulloh Lemmon, who headed the history and political science department at Meredith College, wrote this short account of the Second World War in North Carolina for the State Department of Archives and History. It covers the road to war, the state's military part and life on the home front. Published in 1964, 68 pages with illustrations, portraits and a bibliography, and reprinted several times.
Other storylines that include this theme, earliest first. Each has its own page.
Dated events connected with this theme: sixteen of 321, the highlights and a sample of the rest spread across the years, in date order. See all 321 dated events in the chronology →
Mark Morgan, a justice of the peace and militia officer who had settled on Morgan Creek near present Chapel Hill, was a member of the colonial General Assembly for Orange County for the 1753-54 session.
Governor William Tryon's militia defeated the Regulators at Alamance. James Few, captured on the field, was hanged at Tryon's camp the next day.
Part of The Regulator crisis, 1766–1771 · 90 events
People: William Tryon · Herman Husband
Having received at Hillsborough camp the King's command to go at once to govern New York, Tryon thanked the officers and men for their conduct through the campaign, gave the army to Colonel John Ashe to march to Colonel Bryan's and disband by counties, and ordered the artillery escorted to New Bern and the horses taken in battle sold for the public. He reached New Bern on June 24 and sailed on the 30th.
Part of The Regulator crisis, 1766–1771 · 90 events
People: William Tryon · John Ashe
Thomas Burke of Hillsborough wrote to Horatio Gates that his neighbor Cabe was bringing a load of flour to the southern army and would hand it over only on Gates's order, having been put off by the commissaries. The former Tryon wagoner had come over to the patriot side.
People: Thomas Burke
At the close of the Revolution the town listed forty white taxable men and sixty-seven enslaved people between the ages of twelve and fifty, which Nash reads as a population of about three hundred.
The ball managers told the trustees the seniors' ball could not be held unless the board gave $200 or $300, and the trustees did not answer, so it was omitted for the first time. A quarrel between seniors and juniors over the marshal left the commencement without marshals or music.
Subject: Gerrard Hall
Writing from Chapel Hill, the merchant Charles P. Mallett reported that Union troops had held the village for fourteen days, that they had behaved tolerably where safeguards were posted but had stripped the surrounding countryside of horses and mules, and that General Judson Kilpatrick had held a review in the village the previous day.
Part of Orange County during the Civil War, 1861–1865 · 42 events
People: Smith D. Atkins
Henrietta P. Collins and Mrs. J. Cheshire Webb taught girls and boys from six to sixteen to knit wash cloths for soldiers, using knitting cotton that Daniel Miller and Co. of Baltimore donated through Lillie Bivins. The room was full at every meeting, and the better knitters moved on to wool; by October about fifty children were knitting for the chapter.
People: Henrietta P. Collins
In October 1917 the Woman's Committee held the Registration of Women for Service, and more than two hundred women filled out and signed service cards.
Confined to the campus for three weeks, the Student Army Training Corps men had their first leave on Saturday, October 19, under orders not to leave town. The paper counted about 300 cases among the students, three deaths and 35 still in the college infirmary, credited the second-year medical students with keeping the toll low, and noted that both of the university's physicians, Dr. Mangum and Dr. MacNider, had fallen ill.
People: Charles S. (Charles Staples) Mangum · William de Berniere MacNider
Subject: The Daily Tar Heel
Around 1920 a fenced playground with swings and horseshoe pits went up on the north side of Mill No. 7, one of the projects of the mills' Industrial Democracy plan. It was taken apart in World War II so its metal could go to the war effort.
Federal relief crews began a new library on Churton Street in Hillsborough in December 1933, with local money, including $7,000 from the Hillsborough United Daughters of the Confederacy, paying for materials. The cornerstone of the Confederate Memorial Public Library was laid on July 13, 1934, and the building became the Orange County Historical Museum in 1983.
Subject: Orange County Public Library · Orange County Historical Museum
Tanner gave the student officer-training corps the use of West House as its headquarters for the rest of the war. The corps then had 125 students in eight companies under Lt. Col. W. A. Raborg.
Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows the 38 with a known location.
Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange and OpenStreetMap; town and community pins mark the middle of their mapped buildings.
Background from selected state and local sources
Newspapers, photographs, and records of the time
Other catalogs, databases, and guides worth searching
Other catalogs to search and local organizations that can help.
Picture: Official U.S. Navy photograph, National Museum of the U.S. Navy; public domain. Image credits →
More to discover
The Friends connect people with new library materials, local writers and publishers, and resources documenting Orange County.
