Local theme
Two centuries of local papers, from the Hillsborough Recorder to the Daily Tar Heel, and the broadcasters who followed.
409 indexed records are connected with this theme.
Narrow the indexed records. Each link opens the search already limited to this theme. Counts are indexed records, not copies on a shelf.
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 first group is the works most libraries hold on this theme, novels aside; the second is what the index added most recently. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it.
… Origins in the English department -- Growth, tragedy, and recovery -- Department of Journalism -- Pressures for change -- A school begins and an era ends -- A dean is named -- A break with the past -- Accreditation and a new home -- The Danielson years -- The Adams years -- Richard Cole, new programs and a new name --…
Foundational works for this theme in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection: broad histories, major interpretations, primary-source collections, and reference compilations, chosen by the Friends from the collection’s catalog.
The Recorder compilations are foundational sources; nothing equivalent covers the Daily Tar Heel, local radio, or broadcasting.
Dated events connected with this theme: sixteen of 38, the highlights and the earliest of the rest, in date order. See all 38 in the chronology →
The congress meeting at Hillsborough directed that its proceedings be delivered to James Davis, the province's printer and a delegate for the town of New Bern, who was desired to print them and send a copy to each member. It also named a committee to state and settle his account for services done as printer to the province.
William Woods Holden, later editor of the North Carolina Standard and governor, was born near Hillsborough to Thomas Holden and Priscilla Woods. His grandfather had moved to Orange County to farm, and from age six he was raised by his stepmother, Sally Nichols Holden.
Dennis Heartt began publishing the weekly Hillsborough Recorder in February 1820, at three dollars a year. The paper ran until 1879, and its surviving issues are a main record of nineteenth-century Hillsborough and Orange County.
Part of The Hillsborough Recorder begins publication, 1820
People: Dennis Heartt
Josiah Turner Jr. was born in Hillsborough, the eldest son of Josiah and Eliza Evans Turner. His father was a longtime sheriff and large landowner in Orange County.
At about age ten Holden was apprenticed as a printer's devil to Dennis Heartt, editor of the Hillsborough Recorder, who was responsible for his early education and political views. He struck out on his own at about sixteen, working first for the Milton Chronicle.
After schooling at the Caldwell Institute in Greensboro and a year at the University of North Carolina, Josiah Turner Jr. studied law for two years in Hillsborough and was admitted to the bar in about 1845. He soon built a large practice.
Frederick Nash Strudwick, born in Hillsborough on 27 June 1833 and schooled there, graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1851 and then began a law practice in Hillsborough.
In February 1870 Strudwick, a Democrat, was chosen to fill the unexpired term of J. J. Allison in the North Carolina House of Representatives. He was elected to a full two-year term that August.
On August 5, 1870, a detachment of Kirk's state militia seized Raleigh Sentinel editor Josiah Turner Jr. at or near Hillsborough, took him by rail to Company Shops and then held him with Kirk's other prisoners in the Caswell County courthouse at Yanceyville. U.S. District Judge George W. Brooks ordered him discharged on August 19, 1870, on his habeas corpus petition.
Part of Kirk-Holden War connections, 1870
People: William W. Holden · Josiah Turner Jr.
After guiding the impeachment resolution through the house judiciary committee and the full house, Strudwick was not chosen as a manager for the senate trial. It was feared that his widely known association with the Ku Klux Klan would make the proceedings look like a Klan prosecution.
On 11 August 1887 Strudwick and C. E. Parish became co-owners and editors of the Hillsborough Recorder. Their first issue promised a firm and conservative stand on matters of public welfare and a thoroughly Democratic line in politics. Strudwick left the paper after the issue of 8 March 1888.
Strudwick died on 29 July 1890 after an illness of several months and was buried in the Hillsborough Cemetery. A special town meeting led by C. E. Parish was convened in his honor. Between the legislature and his death he had served as solicitor for the Fifth District for eight years.
The first issue of The Tar Heel, volume 1, number 1, appeared on Thursday, February 23, 1893, as a weekly published under the auspices of the University Athletic Association, with Charles Baskerville as editor in chief. The student paper took the name The Daily Tar Heel in 1929.
Subject: The Daily Tar Heel
The weekly that became The News of Orange County began in Chapel Hill in October 1893 as The Chapel Hill News. Renamed The News, it moved to Hillsboro between 1936 and 1941 and took the title The News of Orange County in 1944. The paper still dates its founding to 1893.
Subject: The News of Orange County
WUNC-TV began broadcasting from Chapel Hill on January 8, 1955.
WXYC streamed its radio broadcast over the internet on November 7, 1994.
People: Paul Jones
Background from selected state and local sources
Newspapers, photographs, and records of the time
Other catalogs, databases, and guides worth searching
Local organizations that preserve the story and can help you go further
Held in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection. Selected because their titles or catalog subjects provide wider historical context for this theme; they may not discuss the Orange County theme directly.
More to discover
The Friends connects people with new library materials, local writers and publishers, and resources documenting Orange County.
