Old Orange County map

The original Sauthier map held at the British Library in London.

 Photo by Courtney Smith

Europeans began settling in Orange County around 1740.  However, the migration pattern in North Carolina was different from the other twelve British colonies.  In the other colonies, Europeans landed on the coast and moved westward as they required more land to satisfy the needs of their growing population.  North Carolina’s geography inhibited this pattern of expansion.  The coast was inhospitable, resulting in many shipwrecks.  European settlers typically landed in the northern and southern parts of Carolina and moved inward along the Tidewater rather than westward.  Additionally, travel to the west was difficult because rivers were shallow and rocky and they flowed more in a north/south direction than east/west.  Therefore, the European settlers who moved to central North Carolina, traveled from the north, moving southward down the Piedmont.

These settlers chose to move to Orange County because it was the frontier.  The government of the colony was located in the Tidewater.  Piedmont North Carolina was essentially autonomous.  This situation afforded three important advantages:  1). freedom from government interference in matters of faith, 2). cheap land, and 3). essentially no behavioral prescriptions and restrictions.

Accordingly, the first European settlers in this area were religious separatists – people whose beliefs and customs were different from the established religions of their countries.  They were pilgrims who wanted to worship according to the dictates of their own consciences.  Most of these people had originally arrived in Pennsylvania and Virginia and sought greater religious freedom in North Carolina.  The earliest of these groups were Quakers.  There were also Moravians.  But the largest group of separatists were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians who did not want to attend or pay taxes to the Church of England.  

Another issue luring people south was the ability to purchase land at better prices.  By the 1740s, Pennsylvania and Virginia were well settled and property was being re-sold at prices significantly higher than the cost of the virgin soil in North Carolina.  Second and third sons with small inheritances as well as formerly indentured servants could buy more land in Piedmont North Carolina and afford a higher standard of living.

Lifestyle was not only an economic concern but also a social choice.  Behavioral standards were significantly more lax in the back woods of North Carolina.  Orange County was essentially the Wild West.  The production and consumption of alcohol was high, formal attendance at church was low, people cohabitated and fornicated out of wedlock, and gambling was ubiquitous.      

Producing, selling, and consuming alcohol was one of the most prominent industries in colonial Hillsborough.  Historian Mary Claire Engstrom documented thirty ordinaries, taverns, and tippling houses in the period from 1754 when the town was laid out to 1776 when the American Revolution officially began.  Ordinaries were primarily hotels where people did a lot of drinking.  Taverns were essentially bars where people could spend the night if they had consumed too much.  Tippling houses, also known as tippling booths, were generally places that exclusively sold liquor.  

In 1768, surveyor and mapmaker Claude Joseph Sauthier drew the earliest known map of Hillsborough to depict not only geographic features and major roads, but also every street, alleyway, garden, farm, and mill as well as every public and private building.*  At that time, the town had a population of roughly forty men, women, and children – free and enslaved.  At least three of the buildings that appear on Sauthier’s map were ordinaries and taverns.  More drinking establishments existed just outside the town limits, offering comfort to travelers along the two major north/south and east/west roads.  Some historical accounts have attributed the high consumption of alcohol to poor water quality and supply.  This conclusion is clearly erroneous in regard to the people of Orange County where water was potable and plentiful.  People simply preferred to drink alcoholic beverages and many people drank extremely large quantities of wine, beer, brandy, whiskey, and other spirits. 

Noticeably missing on the Sauthier map is a church.  While St. Matthew’s Anglican Church would be completed either by the end of 1768 or early the following year, it did not exist at the time Sauthier created his record.  Therefore, the town of Hillsborough had been in existence for fourteen years without an official, communal place of worship.  And, even after a church was constructed, many years would pass before the town had a parson.  Worship occurred in private homes, but probably not at the same level of diligence that having a church building and pastor would educe.  Also, the lack of a pastor meant that people in Orange County could not get “properly” married.  Mr. Wooddason, a Church of England clergyman who traveled through the county in 1766 asserted, “Marriages, through want of the clergy, are performed by every ordinary magistrate.  Polygamy is very common, celibacy much more, bastardy is no disrepute, concubinage general.”

Another interesting feature on the Sauthier map is the appearance of a horseracing track.  How often races were held is currently unknown as is the length of time that the track existed, but races were regular enough in the colonial period to merit an improved track dedicated to the sport.  (Tradition maintains that although the horse racing track was located on property across the river from the Occoneechee Speedway, NASCAR founder Bill France was flying low in an airplane, scouting sites to build his first racecourse, saw the remnants of the old horse track, and then decided to establish his enterprise in Hillsborough).  In his 1903 study, Hillsboro – Colonial and Revolutionary, Francis Nash noted of Hillsborough, “there were drinking, gambling, horse racing, cock fighting, man fighting, and gouging,” particularly at the quarterly County Courts. 

Accordingly, one can easily understand how the appearance of lawman Edmund Fanning, who was charged by Governor William Tryon with bringing order to Orange County, ran into so much opposition. 

The Orange County Historical Museum was founded in 1957 with a mission to enlighten and engage our community and visitors by preserving and interpreting the history of Hillsborough and Orange County.  To learn more, visit www.orangehistorync.org.

*Side note: During my recent visit to the British Library in London, I had the privilege of being able to hold and view the original Sauthier map. I was surprised that I did not need to make advance arrangements to see it. In the US, documents from the 1760s are considered special collections and require special handling. But, evidently in the UK, the 1760s are recent enough in their history that the librarian simply handed me the book of Sauthier’s maps with a shake of the head, wondering why I was so giddy about being able to hold it.  And I was truly excited to be able to look at it up close. The art work is beautiful:  black pen on crisp white paper. The drawings were so precise that I worried it might be a copy and not the original, but I was able to discern what appeared to be pencil marks under the ink which confirmed the authenticity.