NCALAMAN-L Archives

From: MS LOUISE T OVERTON< >
Subject: [NCALAMAN] 1st Courthouse in Orange Co. NC
Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 14:21:45, -0500

The First Courthouse for Orange County, NC

At the beginning of the formation of Orange County, the courthouse was
not located in Hillsborough, as it is today, there was no Hillsborough in 1752.
The first courthouse was located in the present day Alamance County town
of Haw River, NC.
The original Orange County consisted of present day counties of Alamance,
Caswell, Chatham, Orange, Person, parts of Guilford, Lee, Randolph, and
Rockingham, and very small portions of Stokes and Wake.
Alamance County was dead center of old Orange County, which the Haw River
roughly bisected from northwest to southeast. Orange County included the
headwaters of the Neuse River system, most significantly the Eno River.
The first court met at the home of John GRAY near the Eno River in
September 1752. At this court session it was ordered to build a courthouse
farther west, near the Haw River, close enough to the river crossing at
Pine Ford for that crossing to give access to people who lived west of the
Haw River.
Pine Ford or "Piney Ford" is in the present town of Haw River, across
from the present day Granite Mill, near the railroad bridge and today's
John Robert WATKINS bridge on NC Highway #70.
Pine Ford was near the center of Orange County, and the main leg of the
Trading Path crossed there.
Seven of the eight justices present at the first court meeting were: John
PITTMAN, Mark MORGAN, James DICKEY, Lawrence BANKSTON, Joseph TATE, Andrew
MITCHELL and John PATTERSON. They contracted with the eighth justice,
Marmaduke KIMBROUGH to build a courthouse, stocks, and jail, the usual
facilities for county business that the law required. The specific site was
to be selected by a committee of PITTMAN, ALLISON, and KIMBROUGH. The only
requirement the other justices made were that the site be within two miles
of Pine Ford. They selected a site, on the high ground west of the main
tributaries of Back Creek. This is located east of (today's) Belview
Baptist Church on Bason Road, it is the nearest high ground to where the
Trading Path crossed Quaker and Otter Creeks. 1778 and 1779 land records
refer to a tract on both sides of the tributaries of Back Creek as "the Old
Courthouse tract".

To be continued....

Sources: State Records of North Carolina
23: pages 390, 399,
25: pages 271 and 272

N.C. Archives:
Minutes of Orange County of Pleas and Quarters 1752-1755

Collet Map 1770
Mouzon Map 1775
Price-Strother Map 1808

This thread:

• [NCALAMAN] 1st Courthouse in Orange Co. NC by MS LOUISE T OVERTON< >