Theme

Slavery, Emancipation & Reconstruction

Slavery, freedpeople, and Reconstruction in the county.

In briefEnslaved people were a large share of Orange County’s population from its founding, and the records here follow slavery, the war, emancipation and Reconstruction, from the Kirkland sale of 1804 and Elizabeth Keckly’s purchase of her freedom in 1855 to the freedpeople’s schools and churches, the Kirk-Holden War and the lynchings that followed. The storylines gather those histories.

293 indexed works are connected with this theme. 29 held at OCPL →

Search these works Research sources View indexed works ↓

A Freedmen’s Bureau school on the James plantation, North Carolina, 1866.

Events and storylines

Named events and episodes the index follows in detail. Each has its own page.

The Burwell School and the Burwell householdHillsborough’s girls’ school, 1837–1857, and the enslaved people who worked in the household, Elizabeth Keckly among them Elizabeth Keckly in HillsboroughKeckly’s enslaved years in the Burwell household and her memoir’s testimony about them, including the abuse by schoolmaster William Bingham Orange County during the Civil War, 1861–1865Enlistment and the home front, the Hillsboro Military Academy, the university through the war, enslaved people’s pursuit of freedom, and the Federal occupation of Chapel Hill in April 1865 Freedom, schools, and Black community-building after emancipationFreedpeople’s schools, the Quaker Freedmen’s School in Hillsborough, Black churches, mutual-aid societies, landownership, and the institutions that later carried Lincoln High and the civil-rights movement Kirk-Holden War connections, 1870Orange County actors in the 1870 crisis: Josiah Turner, Frederick Nash Strudwick and William A. Graham Racial-terror lynchings in Orange CountySix people are documented as lynched in Orange County: Washington Morrow, Thomas Jefferson Morrow, Daniel Morrow, Wright Malone and Cyrus Guy in 1869, and Manly McCauley in 1898. The county’s 2022 resolution apologized and approved markers without naming them

Show all 8 events and episodes

Slavery in Orange CountyEnslaved people in the county’s households, farms, courts and university from the first settlements to emancipation in 1865, and the recovery of their graves and names since The Freedmen’s Bureau office at Hillsborough, 1866–1868The federal office for the sub-district of Orange: its officers, the freedmen’s court, labor contracts and complaints, relief, and the freedmen’s schools it supported

Indexed works

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.

Material

Histories 148 Letters & correspondence 52 Genealogy 30 Biography 25 Historical sources 14other types 73

Period

Colonial era (to 1775) 5 17th century 5 18th century 88 Revolution (1775–1783) 26 19th century 119 Civil War (1861–1865) 34 Reconstruction (1865–1877) 19 20th century 20

Place

Orange County 191 North Carolina (statewide) 183 Hillsborough 138 Chapel Hill 53 Chatham County (neighboring) 15 Durham County (neighboring) 13

Widely held

To Free A Family

Nathans, Sydney · 2012 · Harvard University Press

Sydney Nathans's biography of Mary Walker, an enslaved woman from Orange County who escaped to the North in the mid nineteenth century and spent the following decades in Cambridge, Massachusetts, working to free the family she had left behind. Chapter titles trace her flight, her years among Northern friends, a rescue plot, a long silence, and the reunion that gives the book its close. Published 2012 by Harvard University Press, 330 pages with 20 pages of plates, illustrations and maps.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the Methodist record: Women slaves.

Reviewed in Choice Reviews Online (2012), Civil War Book Review (2012).

✓ Held at OCPL · BIO WALKER NAT NC Cardinal UNC Duke NC State NCCU Durham Chapel Hill PL Library of Congress Davidson Methodist Wingate UNCSA

Miss Mary's Money

Jones, H. G. · 2014 · McFarland & Co.

H. G. Jones follows the fortune of Mary Ruffin Smith (1814-1885), the unmarried heiress whose Orange and Chatham County lands passed at her death to the University of North Carolina and the Episcopal Church. Chapters profile her grandfather Francis Jones, then trace the bequest through a quarrel among Episcopalians over Price Creek, the Chapel of the Cross and the university's buildings. A December 1885 New York Times report called the gift money; Jones shows it was land. Published by McFarland in 2014, 231 pages.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Plantations.

✓ Held at OCPL NC Cardinal UNC Duke NC State NCCU Durham Library of Congress Wake Forest Davidson Methodist CH Historical Society

Piedmont Plantation: The Bennehan-Cameron Family and Lands in North Carolina

Anderson, Jean Bradley · 1985 · Historic Preservation Society of Durham

Jean Bradley Anderson's history of the Bennehan and Cameron families and their plantations, Stagville and Fairntosh, on lands that lay in Orange County until Durham County was formed from it in 1881. Published by the Historic Preservation Society of Durham in 1985, the book follows plantation life and ownership across several generations, with genealogical tables, a map, portraits, a bibliography and an index; 227 pages plus plates.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the NCCU record: Plantations.

Reviewed in South Atlantic Quarterly (1987).

✓ Held at OCPL · NC 929.209 AND Duke NC State NC Cardinal Durham Chapel Hill PL NCCU CH Historical Society Library of Congress

To Drink from the Well: The Struggle for Racial Equality at the Nation’s Oldest University

Kapur, Geeta · 2021

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.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the NCCU record: Slave labor.

NC Cardinal UNC NC State NCCU Durham Chapel Hill PL Library of Congress UNCSA

The Impact of Slavery on the Education of Blacks in Orange County, North Carolina 1619-1970

Moore, Rosetta Austin · 2015

Rosetta Austin Moore's survey of Black education in Orange County from the colonial era to 1970, in a revised edition published in 2015 through Lulu in Morrisville. After chapters on slavery nationally and on schooling for enslaved people in North Carolina, the book turns to the county: its formation, the growth of its schools, the arrival of free public schooling for all, and the schools and African American educators of the twentieth century. 265 pages with maps, portraits and facsimiles.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Enslaved persons.

✓ Held at OCPL · 371.009 MOORE NC Cardinal UNC NC State Durham Chapel Hill PL CH Historical Society

A Mind to Stay: White Plantation, Black Homeland

Nathans, Sydney · 2017

Sydney Nathans's history of a Black community in Hale County, Alabama, whose founders were enslaved people sent there before the Civil War from the Cameron family's plantations in Orange County, North Carolina. Instead of following the Great Migration out of the South, this group stayed, moved from bondage to owning the land they had worked, and held onto it across generations. Published 2017, 342 pages with plates and maps; this is the e-book edition.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the NC State record: Freedmen.

Reviewed in Journal of American History (2017), Journal of Social History (2017), London review of books (2017), The Journal of the Civil War Era (2018), The Journal of Southern History (2018), Environmental History (2018), The Alabama review (2019), The Oral History Review (2019), The Register - Kentucky Historical Society/The register of the Kentucky Historical Society (2020).

Duke NC State NC Cardinal Durham Chapel Hill PL NCCU

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A Traitor and a Scoundrel: Benjamin Hedrick and the Cost of Dissent

Smith, Michael Thomas · 2003 · University of Delaware Press ; London : Associated University Presses

Michael Thomas Smith's biography of Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick, the University of North Carolina chemistry professor dismissed in 1856 after he declared support for the antislavery presidential candidate John C. Fremont. Published by University of Delaware Press in 2003, 216 pages with illustrations. Topics include abolitionists and dissenters in North Carolina, the antislavery movement in the state, and the university's biography before 1962.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the Duke record: Abolitionists -- North Carolina -- Biography.

Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (2005).

Duke NC State NC Cardinal Durham UNC Library of Congress

Slavery and the making of the University: celebrating our unsung heroes, bond and free

2005

A 38-page bibliography of sources in Wilson Library on slavery and the building of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, issued by the university library in 2005 with illustrations. Its subtitle honors the unsung people, enslaved and free, behind the university's making. A finding tool for researchers rather than a narrative history.

Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Slavery.

NC Cardinal UNC NC State Library of Congress CH Historical Society

Recently indexed: Construction program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill : construction costs, purposes, and facilities, other information (1939) · Dr. James Phillips (1882) · The life and character of Hon. David L. Swain (1878) · A pen-picture of Wilson Caldwell, colored, late the janitor of the University of North Carolina (1941) · The challenge of memorializing slavery in North Carolina : the Unsung Founders Memorial and the North Carolina Freedom Monument Project (2012) · North Carolina, Supreme Court, Raleigh : Rippy v Gant, June 1847 [printed] (1847)

Search all 293 indexed works →

Start at OCPL

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.

Foundational · NC 975.656 HISTORIC Antebellum Hillsborough, Slavery, and Enslaved and Free People of Color Who Worked at the Burwell School, 1837-1857 Historic Hillsborough Commission (Hillsborough, N.C.) · 2019
The Historic Hillsborough Commission's account of slavery in antebellum Hillsborough and of the enslaved and free people of color who worked at the Burwell School, the female school the Burwells kept in town, between 1837 and 1857. African American history in Hillsborough and the school's own history are its two threads. Published in 2019.
Foundational · NC 306.3 SLA Slaves From Orange County, North Carolina: Estate Records, 1840-1865 2000
Estate records from Orange County, 1840 to 1865, that name enslaved people: inventories, sales and divisions in which men, women and children were listed as property. Published in 2000, it is a source for the county's history of slavery and for African American genealogy.
Foundational · NC 973.745 NOR North Carolinians in the Era of the Civil War and Reconstruction 2008
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.

Show 6 more

Foundational · NC 342.756 BYRD Against the Peace and Dignity of the State: North Carolina Laws Regarding Slaves, Free Persons of Color, and Indians Byrd, William L. · 2007
North Carolina's laws on enslaved people, free people of color and Native Americans, compiled by William L. Byrd III: the statutes that governed slavery and fixed the legal standing of free Black and Indian residents. Willow Bend Books first published the compilation in 2004; this 2007 Heritage Books printing runs to 479 pages with an index.
Foundational · 306.362 NORTH North Carolina Slave Narratives: The Lives of Moses Roper, Lunsford Lane, Moses Grandy, and Thomas H. Jones 2003
Four narratives by men enslaved in North Carolina, reprinted in 2003: Moses Roper's of 1838, Lunsford Lane's of 1842, Moses Grandy's of 1843 and the Reverend Thomas H. Jones's of 1854. Editor William L. Andrews opens with an essay on how such books fed the abolitionist movement and began an African American literary tradition, and each text has an introduction and notes. The stories reach from Caswell County and Raleigh to Camden County and Wilmington.
Foundational · NC 929.375 MAL Freedmen's Marriage Records, Orange County, North Carolina, 1866-1868 Mallard, Shirley Jones · 2000
Transcriptions by Shirley Jones Mallard of Orange County's freedmen's marriage records for 1866 to 1868, the registers in which formerly enslaved couples recorded marriages made under slavery and given legal standing after emancipation. For many African American families in the county these are the earliest records that name both partners. Compiled in 2000.
Foundational · NC 973.8 ZUB North Carolina During Reconstruction Zuber, Richard L. · 1969
Published in 1969 by the State Department of Archives and History, Richard L. Zuber's short history follows North Carolina through Reconstruction after the Civil War. It runs 67 pages with illustrations, facsimiles, portraits and a bibliography, and was later reprinted by the Division of Archives and History.
Wider context · NC 306.362 KAY Slavery in North Carolina, 1748-1775 Kay, Marvin L. Michael · 1995
Marvin L. Michael Kay and Lorin Lee Cary's study of slavery and enslaved people in North Carolina in the decades before the Revolution, 1748 to 1775, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1995. The xv and 402 pages include maps, illustrations, some seventy pages of notes and sources, and an index.
Foundational · NC 306.363 SCARLETT Sheer Resilience : An Untold Story of A Free Community of Color in Orange County, N.C Scarlett, Beverly A. · 2024
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.

In the chronology

Other storylines that include this theme, earliest first. Each has its own page.

Black workers and campus labor1795–2021 · 58 events · Enslaved men built and served the university from its first buildings, Wilson Caldwell led its labor force after Reconstruction, and the janitors organized an association in 1930 that became a CIO local in 1942. The university named the laundry for Kennon Cheek and Rebecca Clark in 1998, dedicated the Unsung Founders Memorial in 2005 and published the names of 119 enslaved workers in 2018. Historic Rogers Road neighborhood1840–2021 · 25 events · The Rogers-Eubanks area grew from Black-owned farms and sawmills after emancipation, and in 1972 the county landfill was placed beside it. Residents organized through RENA and the Rogers-Eubanks Coalition from 2007, the landfill closed in 2013, and the neighborhood won a community center in 2014 and the sewer extension in 2019. Railroads through Orange, 1849–19001849–1900 · 106 events · Orange County backed a central route for a state railroad in 1849, and its residents put up $100,000 toward the North Carolina Railroad. Built partly by enslaved workers, the line reached Durham's Station in December 1854 and Hillsborough in April 1855, and through trains ran early in 1856. The Hillsborough depot shipped flour, tobacco and bacon in its first year, a depot on the Orange-Alamance line gave rise to Mebanesville, and the railroad agreed to a depot at University Station in 1875. State convicts built the University Railroad from University Station, which brought trains to West End in 1882. Farm labor in rural Orange County1859–2022 · 24 events · Tobacco spread from Washington Duke’s turn to the crop in 1859, and after emancipation many freedpeople worked the land as tenants and sharecroppers; the 1930 census counted tenants on about a third of the county’s farms. Farm Security Administration loans reached Black farmers from 1938, tenancy fell sharply in the 1950s, and by 2022 the census counted 36 migrant workers on the county’s farms. Northside, Pine Knolls, and Tin Top1864–2023 · 58 events · Chapel Hill’s historic Black neighborhoods took shape after emancipation around the West End church and school, the Orange County Training School and its Rosenwald campus of 1924, St. Joseph CME and First Baptist, and the tin-roofed houses that named Tin Top. Lincoln High opened on Merritt Mill Road in 1951, residents resisted urban renewal in the 1970s, and as the Black population fell by about 40 percent the conservation districts, the Jackson Center and the 2015 Northside initiative worked to keep the neighborhoods in place. The university closes and reopens1868 to 1875 · 78 events · Reconstruction Republicans took control of the trustees in 1868 and dismissed the old faculty; Solomon Pool's presidency drew almost no students, and the university closed in February 1871. The legislature revived it in March 1875, Cornelia Phillips Spencer rang the bell, and it reopened in September under a rebuilt faculty.

Show all 7 storylines

The congressional Ku Klux hearings, 1871January–September 1871 · 22 events · In 1871 two committees of Congress took sworn testimony on the Klan in North Carolina. Before the Senate select committee in January and February, Hillsborough constable W. G. Turrentine, clerk of court George Laws and editor Josiah Turner Jr. gave opposed accounts of the jail raid, hangings and whippings in Orange; before the Joint Select Committee that summer and fall, Dr. Pride Jones told of persuading the Orange Klan to disband in 1870, and William L. Saunders refused to answer.

Dated events connected with this theme: twelve of 403, the highlights and a sample of the rest spread across the years, in date order. See all 403 dated events in the chronology →

1747 Mark Morgan is granted land in the New Hope Creek section Morgan secured land in the New Hope Creek section of eastern Orange. By 1755 he held more enslaved people than anyone else in the county.Search the index · Lefler and Wager, Orange County, 1752-1952 (1953), p. 15
1790 The county tax list counts 36 white polls and 82 taxable enslaved people in Hillsborough town Orange County's 1790 tax list returned 2,272 polls and 406,106 acres across its eight districts, with a separate list for Hillsborough town showing 36 white polls against 82 black polls. William Hooper was charged for 22 of them, John Taylor for 10 and Francis Childs for 5. People: William Hooper, Walter AlvesDocumenting the American South: List of taxpayers in Orange County in 1790
1804 Suit by William Kirkland and others leads to the sale of Hannah and her children Legal proceedings brought by William Kirkland, Catlett Campbell, Jacob Greer and Isaac Mordecai against Robert Bell placed Hannah and her children Jenny and David in the hands of the sheriff. Sheriff Samuel Turrentine sold the three at public auction at the Hillsborough Market House to Duncan Cameron for 200 pounds. People: Duncan Cameron, William KirklandOn These Grounds (UNC Libraries): 1804, Sale of Hannah, Jenny, and David
1825 A branch Manumission Society meeting at Trotter's Creek issues an address against slavery Meeting at Trotter's Creek, a branch of the Manumission Society, strong among Orange Quakers, adopted an address calling on citizens to end slavery by consent and to open schools to Black as well as white children.Lefler and Wager, Orange County, 1752-1952 (1953), p. 104-105
1840s or 1850s The Hogan-Rogers House was built on the Hogan plantation on Purefoy Road The two-story frame house on Purefoy Road, on land now owned by St. Paul AME Church, dates to the 1840s or 1850s; the 1992 township survey recorded it as the Lloyd-Rogers House at 1612 Purefoy Road, the only house in the township on a raised basement. A fireplace in that basement led the Preservation Society's director to conclude that enslaved people on the Hogan plantation probably lived and worked there. INDY Week reported in 2012 that many Rogers-Eubanks residents descend from people held on the plantation.INDY Week: Once a home to slaves, the Hogan-Rogers house could be demolished
March 9, 1850 Hillsborough gives free Black residents five days to post bond or leave town The Hillsborough commissioners amended the town ordinance so that free Black residents, once notified, had five days instead of thirty to give security for their good behavior or leave the town.Hillsborough Recorder, March 13, 1850, p. 3
December 7, 1861 Hillsborough orders a nightly patrol and a pass rule for Black people on its streets On December 7 the Hillsborough commissioners ordered the magistrate of police to appoint a patrol to go out every night. Any Black person found in the streets between dark and daylight, or on a Sunday except going to or from church, without a pass stating where he was permitted to go was to be arrested and brought before the magistrate of police.Hillsborough Recorder, December 11, 1861, p. 3
November 1866 to July 1867 The Hillsborough Bureau office records nine attacks on freedpeople Porter's register of outrages for November 1866 to July 1867 lists the killing of a freedman and eight assaults and batteries on Black men and women, most sent to magistrates on warrants; in one case in February 1867 two white men beat two freedmen, and one was bound over to the county court while the other fled. Through the same months Porter's twice-monthly reports to Raleigh each said no outrages had been reported in the period they covered.Search the index · Freedmen's Bureau, North Carolina Field Offices, Hillsboro: Letters and Endorsements Sent and Received, Vol. 128, transcription p. 105
June 30, 1868 Lt. Thomas H. Hay praises Hillsborough's Howard Freedmen's School and asks the Philadelphia Friends for more teachers Writing to the secretary of the Friends' Freedmen's Association of Philadelphia, Hay called the Howard Freedmen's School at Hillsborough one of the most flourishing he had seen in the South and its teachers, Misses Harris and Allen, competent and faithful, and said nearly every freedman in town wanted them back after their vacation. He asked whether the association could send three or four teachers by September 1 for schools he was organizing.Freedmen's Bureau, North Carolina Field Offices, Hillsboro: Letters Sent, Vol. 130, July 1867–Dec. 1868, transcription p. 127
by November 10, 1869 U.S. troops are quartered in a college building at Chapel Hill Federal troops were quartered in one of the university buildings at Chapel Hill and took in ten students found out at night, which the paper said would drive students away.Hillsborough Recorder, November 10, 1869, p. 2
April 15, 1878 St. Paul AME buys a church lot from Benjamin and Dilsy Craig The congregation paid fifty-five dollars on April 15, 1878 for a church lot bought from Benjamin and Dilsy Craig, and was raising money in December 1879 and January 1880 to finish a church there. In 1892 it built its present church across Merritt Mill Road from the earlier one, on land the 1983 Carrboro inventory says the Hargraves and Caldwell families gave about 1890. People: Benjamin Craig, Dilsey CraigSt. Paul AME Chapel Hill: History · Also: The Chapel Hill Ledger, December 6, 1879, p. 3; Brown, McSwain and Florin, Carrboro Inventory
August 2026 The Burwell School is renamed the Elizabeth Keckly Center at the Burwell School The Burwell School Historic Site in Hillsborough took the name the Elizabeth Keckly Center at the Burwell School in late August 2026, honoring the woman the Burwells held in slavery in the house from 1835. Site director Elizabeth Hays said the aim was to hold the site's histories together.Search the index · Chapelboro: Hillsborough's Burwell School Adopts New Name to Honor Enslaved Dressmaker

See all 403 dated events in the chronology →

Places in this theme

Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows the 35 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.

Old Chapel Hill Cemetery Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries · Chapel Hill · 7 events here
Old East University buildings and grounds · Chapel Hill · 7 events here
Old West University buildings and grounds · Chapel Hill · 7 events here
St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church Churches and lodges · Hillsborough · 6 events here
Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies University schools and programs · Chapel Hill · 5 events here
Hillsborough Presbyterian Church Churches and lodges · Hillsborough · 5 events here
South Building University buildings and grounds · Chapel Hill · 5 events here
Burwell School Schools and academies · Hillsborough · 4 events here
Mount Bright Baptist Church Churches and lodges · Hillsborough · 4 events here
Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough Public buildings and services · Hillsborough · 4 events here
St. Paul AME Church Churches and lodges · Chapel Hill · 4 events here
University Presbyterian Church Churches and lodges · Chapel Hill · 4 events here

Show 30 more

Burnside Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries · Hillsborough · 3 events here
Chapel of the Cross Churches and lodges · Chapel Hill · 3 events here
Margaret Lane Cemetery Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries · Hillsborough · 3 events here
Memorial Hall University buildings and grounds · Chapel Hill · 3 events here
Ayr Mount Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries · Hillsborough · 2 events here
Hillsborough Recorder Libraries, museums and media · Hillsborough · 2 events here
North Carolina Railroad Public buildings and services · Hillsborough · 2 events here
Orange County jail, Hillsborough Public buildings and services · Hillsborough · 2 events here
Pleasant Grove (William Cain plantation) Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries · Hillsborough · 2 events here
Steward’s Hall University buildings and grounds · Chapel Hill · 2 events here
Toney and Nellie Strayhorn House and William Strayhorn House Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries · Carrboro · 2 events here
Blackwood Farm Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries · 1 event here
David Faucette House (The Elms) Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries · Eno River · 1 event here
Dickerson Chapel AME Church Churches and lodges · Hillsborough · 1 event here
Flat Rock AME Church Churches and lodges · 1 event here
Horace Williams House Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries · Chapel Hill · 1 event here
Jones Grove Missionary Baptist Church Churches and lodges · Hillsborough · 1 event here
Nash Law Office Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries · Hillsborough · 1 event here
Nash and Kollock School Schools and academies · Hillsborough · 1 event here
Occoneechee Farm Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries · Hillsborough · 1 event here
Old Town Cemetery, Hillsborough Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries · Hillsborough · 1 event here
Orange County Training School / Lincoln High School Schools and academies · Chapel Hill · 1 event here
Orange County poorhouse (County Home) Public buildings and services · Hillsborough · 1 event here
Ruffin-Hill House Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries · Hillsborough · 1 event here
Senlac (Battle house) Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries · Chapel Hill · 1 event here
UNC Libraries University schools and programs · Chapel Hill · 1 event here
UNC School of Law University schools and programs · Chapel Hill · 1 event here
University Baptist Church Churches and lodges · Chapel Hill · 1 event here
University Station Public buildings and services · Chapel Hill · 1 event here
University Summer School University schools and programs · Chapel Hill · 1 event here

All places and the county map →

Research sources

Resources picked for this theme, each with a note on what it holds.

Background 8

Show all 8

UNC: Re-examining Old EastUNC-Chapel Hill The university's own account of its oldest building and the enslaved labor that built it
NCpedia: Reconstruction in North Carolina Concise historical background
UNC Libraries exhibit: Slavery and the UniversityUNC-Chapel Hill The enslaved people who built and served the university
NCpedia: Thomas Ruffin The Hillsborough jurist whose 1829 opinion in State v. Mann defined the law of slavery

Historic sites, markers, and maps

Alliance for Historic Hillsborough: Margaret Lane Cemetery Hillsborough burial ground for an estimated 300 Black people, on land bought in 1854, where only three gravestones remain
Alliance for Historic Hillsborough: Coachman’s Quarters Story of Jesse Ruffin, an enslaved coachman who etched the date of emancipation into a brick at the quarters where he lived
Historic StagvilleNC State Historic Sites The Bennehan and Cameron plantation, in Orange County until 1881, now a state historic site interpreting the lives of the enslaved

Records of the time 10

Documenting the American South Narratives by formerly enslaved people, church records, and other first-person accounts
Orange County Register of Deeds: sales of enslaved people, 1761-1867Orange County Register of Deeds: Slave Records Abstracts of about 1,900 deed, will and court records of sales and transfers of enslaved people, with their names, ages and families as recorded, and book and page for each.
Orange County Register of Deeds: index of enslaved people named in the deed booksOrange County Register of Deeds: Slave Records More than 4,000 people by name, each with the deed book, page, date and parties. Compiled by UNC and NCCU interns for the Register of Deeds.
Digital Library on American Slavery: runaway notices North Carolina runaway advertisements 1750 to 1865, searchable by county, free without a library card

Show all 10

Documenting the American South: North American Slave Narratives A major collection of narratives by formerly enslaved people published before 1920, Keckly’s and Horton’s among them
NC Digital Collections: Records of Enslaved People in Private CollectionsNorth Carolina Digital Collections Bills of sale, lists, and plantation papers naming enslaved people
NC Digital Collections: Cohabitation RecordsNorth Carolina Digital Collections The 1866 registrations that gave formerly enslaved couples legal marriages, by county
National Archives: Freedmen’s Bureau records Labor contracts, rations, marriages, and complaints from the Bureau’s North Carolina offices, 1865 to 1872
Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery Newspaper advertisements placed by formerly enslaved people searching for family, searchable by place
George Moses Horton, The Hope of Liberty (1829)Documenting the American South The full text of the first book by a Black Southern author, written while enslaved near Chapel Hill

Collections and databases 8

NC LIVE: Digital Library on American Slavery Library card Runaway advertisements and manumission records for Orange County, searchable by name
NC LIVE: Bloomsbury Collections (ABC-CLIO Ebooks) Library card American slave narratives as e-books, Elizabeth Keckly’s memoir among them
NC LIVE: HeritageQuest Library card The 1850 and 1860 slave schedules and the censuses of 1870 onward, the first to name freedpeople
NC LIVE: Exploring Race in Society Library card How slavery’s aftermath was written into law and policy