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.

307 works about Slavery, Emancipation & Reconstruction are indexed here. 32 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 storylines 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 15 events and storylines

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 at Hillsborough, 1865–1868The 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 Freedom and free people of color in the county court, 1791–1817Emancipation petitions and decrees before the Orange County court, the names the freed took, and free people of color whose liberty the court upheld when they were offered for sale or jailed as runaways The county patrol, 1787–1829The county court’s patrols over enslaved people: patrollers named for Hillsborough and the University village, the patrol taxes on Black polls, the committees that drafted patrol rules, and the licenses that let some enslaved men carry guns Free children of color and the apprentice law, 1786–1864How the county court bound out the children of free families of color, kept some with their mothers or released them from masters, and hired out a boy held in jail to pay his own fees The Revill family and the county court, 1790–1833A free family of color whose children the Orange County court bound out across three generations, often to prominent men: the bindings, a youth said to have been sold, a girl taken from a master who mistreated her, and Susan Revill’s 1826 habeas corpus before Judge Thomas Ruffin St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, Hillsborough, 1823–1854How Hillsborough’s Episcopalians organized St. Matthew’s parish and built its brick church: Thomas Ruffin’s gift of land, the church of 1825 and 1826 and its consecration, William Mercer Green’s rectorship, the gallery for Black worshippers, the conventions held there and Ruffin’s deed of 1854 Raising Old East and building Old West and Gerrard Hall, 1821–1837How the University raised Old East a story and built Old West and Gerrard Hall to William Nichols’s designs: the trustees’ vote of about 1821, the enslaved men who did much of the work, the settled accounts, the naming of Gerrard Hall and its completion in 1837 Benjamin Hedrick, the scientific school and his dismissal, 1851–1862How Benjamin Hedrick went from first honors to the University’s chair of agricultural chemistry in its new scientific school, and how his 1856 support for Fremont led to effigy burnings, the faculty’s disavowal, his dismissal by the trustees and, in 1862, his removal from the Presbyterian roll

More storylines

Other storylines that include this theme, in date order. Each has its own page.

StorylineThe Few family on the Eno, 1758–17711758–1771 · 11 events · The Few family's years on the Eno show how the Regulation undid a family of mill owners near Hillsborough. William Few came from Maryland in 1758 with four enslaved people, built a mill with his brother and later kept a tavern a mile from town. In 1768 he went on the bond of the Regulator William Butler. In 1771 his son James was captured at Alamance and hanged the next day, Tryon's army turned its horses onto the family's crops, and the Fews, pressed by lawsuits after going surety for several people, left for Georgia that winter. StorylineThomas Burke of Hillsborough, 1772–17891772–1789 · 15 events · Thomas Burke went from a Hillsborough law practice to the Continental Congress and the governor's office, and Orange County sent him to each stage of the Revolution. Douglass credits him with drafting Orange's 1776 instructions to the Halifax Congress, and he sat on the committee whose report empowered the delegates to join in declaring independence. The Assembly at Hillsborough cleared him in 1778 in his quarrel with Congress. Elected governor in 1781, he was captured in David Fanning's raid, broke his parole to return, and died near Hillsborough in 1783. In 1789 the court let his executor sell four people the estate held in slavery. StorylineThe Bentons at Hartford: Jesse Benton and the young Thomas Hart Benton, 1780–17991780–1799 · 10 events · When Thomas Hart left Orange in 1780, Hartford and its mills passed to Jesse Benton, and his letters to Hart show what the war and the drought of 1782 cost the place. Benton backed the Science Hall academy and claimed 23,931 acres in the west, but he died in 1790 with his estate heavily in debt, and his will let his executors sell Hartford and its mills. His son Thomas Hart Benton, born in 1782 and later a U.S. senator from Missouri, left Hartford for the university and was expelled from the Philanthropic Society in March 1799 for taking his roommates' money. StorylineBlack workers and campus labor1795–2021 · 81 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. StorylineSteward's Hall and the University commons, 1797–18191797–1819 · 5 events · On December 9, 1797 Pleasant Henderson, who had moved from Mt. Pleasant to Chapel Hill that year, was chosen steward of the University of North Carolina, following John Taylor in the post; a UNC Libraries exhibit records that he enslaved nineteen people. Complaints about the food at Steward's Hall under Taylor and Henderson helped fuel the student uprising of 1799, and in 1801 Henderson's house was stoned. He did not reapply, gave up the stewardship in 1802, declined the trusteeship he was elected to, and went into business as Henderson and Searcy; he kept his Chapel Hill residence while clerk of the House of Commons from 1807 to 1830. In 1808 thirty-eight students, John Branch among them, petitioned the faculty over too little butter and beef often unsound and full of vermin. The faculty found the wording defiant and had it rewritten, and suspended John R. Stokes and Elias Foord for refusing to sign the milder version. Board at the hall rose from $30 a year in 1795 to $95 in 1818. In 1819 the trustees ended the old commons and rented Steward's Hall to Mrs. Burton, who had to feed students for no more than $9 a month the first year and allow the commencement ball in the dining room free, and students could board where they chose. StorylineHillsborough Presbyterian Church, 1815–18371815–1837 · 12 events · The first pastor of Hillsborough's Presbyterian church strained relations with his congregation by advocating religious education, Sunday schools and preaching for enslaved people. The brick church on West Tryon Street was built with money from a lottery the state authorized, and in September 1816 Mary W. Burke, eight others and the Rev. John Knox Witherspoon organized the church. In 1823 the session admonished two members for trading in enslaved people without punishing them. Witherspoon ended seventeen years as pastor in 1833. In 1834 six enslaved women were baptized, and in 1835 Robert Burwell began a thirteen-year pastorate; the church bought a manse, and a Sessions House was built for the Sunday school.

Show all 12 storylines

StorylineHistoric 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. StorylineRailroads through Orange, 1849–19091849–1909 · 118 events · Orange County residents put up $100,000 toward the North Carolina Railroad, a line built partly by enslaved workers that reached Hillsborough in April 1855, with through trains early in 1856. The Hillsborough depot shipped flour, tobacco and bacon, a depot on the Orange-Alamance line gave rise to Mebanesville, and state convicts built the University Railroad from University Station, which brought trains to West End in 1882. From 1901 came new bridges over the Eno, a train that killed two Caswell County farmers in 1903 and a fire that destroyed the Hillsborough depot that November. In 1905 a legislative committee killed a bill that would have let the University Railroad be abandoned. StorylineFarm labor in rural Orange County1859–2022 · 29 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. StorylineNorthside, Pine Knolls, and Tin Top1864–2023 · 106 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. StorylineThe 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. StorylineThe 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.

Indexed works

Works about Slavery, Emancipation & Reconstruction from library and archive catalogs. The most widely held appear first; novels are not shown here. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.

Filter these works by material, period, or place. Counts refer to works, not individual copies. A work may appear under more than one period or place.

Material

Histories 157 Letters & correspondence 57 Genealogy 33 Biography 25 Historical sources 15other types 74

Period

Colonial era (to 1775) 5 17th century 5 18th century 96 Revolution (1775–1783) 33 19th century 121 Civil War (1861–1865) 34 Reconstruction (1865–1877) 19 20th century 20

Place

Orange County 206 North Carolina (statewide) 196 Hillsborough 153 Chapel Hill 53 Chatham County (neighboring) 16 Granville County (neighboring) 14

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.

Included because: 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.

Included because: 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.

Included because: 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.

Included because: 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.

Included because: 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.

Included because: 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

Show 2 more

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.

Included because: 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.

Included because: 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) · Bright leaf culture and Thomas Day : Orange and Caswell counties (2016) · The challenge of memorializing slavery in North Carolina : the Unsung Founders Memorial and the North Carolina Freedom Monument Project (2012)

Search all 307 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

A selection of 12 events from the 513 chronology entries for this theme, including highlights and examples from different years. See all 513 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. People: Mark Morgan Place: New Hope CreekSearch 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 Alves Place: Orange County · Also named: John Taylor, Francis ChildsDocumenting 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 Kirkland Place: Hillsborough, Market House · Also named: Catlett Campbell, Jacob Greer, Isaac Mordecai, Robert Bell, Samuel Turrentine, David, Hannah, JennyOn These Grounds (UNC Libraries): 1804, Sale of Hannah, Jenny, and David
May Term 1809 The court names a committee to draft rules for the patrols The court appointed Samuel Benton, Abner B. Bruce, James Webb, Frederick Nash and William Norwood to draft rules and regulations for governing the patrols and to report at the next term. At the same term it again levied one shilling on each Black poll outside Hillsborough to pay the patrols and allowed forty shillings each to patrollers for the past year. People: James Webb, Frederick Nash, William Norwood Place: Orange County · Also named: Samuel Benton, Abner B. BruceMark Chilton, transcription of the Orange County Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions minutes: May Term 1809
1830 Fred Hartgrove, a free Black man, holds three enslaved people The 1830 records show Hartgrove holding three people and Lucy Peters, also free and Black, holding one. No free Black resident of Orange held anyone in 1860. Place: Orange County · Also named: Fred Hartgrove, Lucy PetersLefler and Wager, Orange County, 1752-1952 (1953), p. 105
1844 to 1856 Paul C. Cameron sends enslaved people from the family farms to cotton plantations in Alabama and Mississippi Paul C. Cameron bought a cotton plantation in Greene County, Alabama, in 1844 and land for another in Tunica County, Mississippi, in 1856, and sent more than 100 enslaved men and women from the family's North Carolina farms to them. People: Paul C. Cameron Place: Stagville and Fairntosh plantations, Orange County (Durham County since 1881)Search the index · UNC Research Laboratories of Archaeology, Ancient North Carolinians: Stagville (Orange County)
June 17, 1855 Five enslaved people are the first baptized into the Chapel Hill Baptist Church The church's first baptisms took place at a new outdoor baptistry by a spring on the McDade place. The candidates were five people enslaved by William Barbee, so the first people immersed into the church in the village were Black. Black members made up about a third of the early church. Place: Outdoor baptistry on the McDade place, Chapel Hill · Also named: William BarbeeSearch the index · Almonte Charles Howell, A History of the Chapel Hill Baptist Church, 1854-1924 (1945), scan p. 18
Inscribed December 5, 1865 Bricks at the Coachman's Quarters carry the date Dec 5, '65 Two bricks in a small outbuilding near the Burnside stable in Hillsborough carry the hand-cut inscription 'Dec 5, '65', found during the building's restoration after 2003. The owners and descendants connect it to Jesse Ruffin, a coachman once enslaved by Thomas Ruffin. According to family tradition he cut the date to mark the day after the General Assembly ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which formally ended slavery. People: Thomas Ruffin, Jesse Ruffin Place: Coachman's Quarters, South Cameron Street, HillsboroughNews of Orange County: 13th amendment commemorated through local coachman's story
1868 Dialectic and Philanthropic societies hide their books and papers Believing the societies would not be run under their constitutions after the university changed hands, their last officers gave the Dialectic records to Alexander McIver and the Philanthropic records to William L. Saunders. The property lay safe until the societies revived in 1875. People: Alexander McIver, William L. Saunders Place: Chapel HillDocumenting the American South: Kemp P. Battle, History of the University of North Carolina, vol. I (1907), p. 785
1869 A count of Chapel Hill finds 483 white and 454 Black residents Four years after emancipation, Chapel Hill had 483 white and 454 Black residents, close to half and half. Freed families were making homes on the village's western side, on West Cameron Avenue, West Franklin Street and around Potter's Field west of Church Street. Place: Chapel Hill · Also mentions: Potter's Field, West Cameron AvenueNC Digital Collections: M. Ruth Little, The Town and Gown Architecture of Chapel Hill, 1795-1975 (2004), p. 35
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 Craig Place: Chapel Hill · Also named: Dilsy Craig · Also mentions: Merritt Mill RoadSt. 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. People: Elizabeth Hobbs Keckly Place: Burwell School, Hillsborough · Also named: Elizabeth Keckly, Elizabeth HaysSearch the index · Chapelboro: Hillsborough's Burwell School Adopts New Name to Honor Enslaved Dressmaker

See all 513 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 48 with a known location.

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.

Old Chapel Hill Cemetery Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries · Chapel Hill · 9 events here
Old East University buildings and grounds · Chapel Hill · 9 events here
Old West University buildings and grounds · Chapel Hill · 9 events here
St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church Churches and lodges · Hillsborough · 7 events here
Stagville Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries · Little River · 7 events here
Hillsborough Presbyterian Church Churches and lodges · Hillsborough · 6 events here
Orange County Courthouse, Hillsborough Public buildings and services · Hillsborough · 6 events here
Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies University schools and programs · Chapel Hill · 5 events here
Fairntosh Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries · Little River · 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

Show 46 more

St. Paul AME Church Churches and lodges · Chapel Hill · 4 events here
University Presbyterian Church Churches and lodges · Chapel Hill · 4 events here
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
Orange County jail, Hillsborough Public buildings and services · Hillsborough · 3 events here
Steward’s Hall University buildings and grounds · Chapel Hill · 3 events here
Ayr Mount Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries · Hillsborough · 2 events here
Cabe-Pratt-Harris House (Riverbend Farm) Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries · Eno River · 2 events here
Hartford (Thomas Hart plantation and mills) Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries · Hillsborough · 2 events here
Hillsborough Recorder Libraries, museums and media · Hillsborough · 2 events here
Hillsborough railroad depot Public buildings and services · Hillsborough · 2 events here
North Carolina Railroad Public buildings and services · Hillsborough · 2 events here
Pleasant Grove (William Cain plantation) Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries · Hillsborough · 2 events here
Toney and Nellie Strayhorn House and William Strayhorn House Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries · Carrboro · 2 events here
University Baptist Church Churches and lodges · Chapel Hill · 2 events here
Blackwood Farm Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries · 1 event here
Crystal Palace (Nancy Hilliard house) Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries · Chapel Hill · 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
Duke Homestead (Washington Duke farm) Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries · 1 event here
First Baptist Church (Hillsborough) Churches and lodges · Hillsborough · 1 event here
Flat Rock AME Church Churches and lodges · 1 event here
Gerrard Hall University buildings and grounds · Chapel Hill · 1 event here
Hargraves Community Center Community centers and organizations · Chapel Hill · 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
McCorkle Place (with the Davie Poplar) University buildings and grounds · Chapel Hill · 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
New East University buildings and grounds · Chapel Hill · 1 event here
New Hope Presbyterian Church Churches and lodges · New Hope · 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
Snow Hill (William Johnston plantation) Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries · Hillsborough · 1 event here
Tom Taylor House (later President Swain's house) Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries · Chapel Hill · 1 event here
Twin Chimneys Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries · Hillsborough · 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 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

Sources and research tools for this subject. Research guide: How to research with Orange County Indexed.

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