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. CC <br /> •0 3 J <br /> • <br /> PERIOD i 1• • AREAS OF SIGNIFICANCE--CHECK AND JUSTIFY BELOW <br /> 1 <br /> PREHISTORIC _4ACHE0IUGY-PREHI5TORIC .,,COMMUNITY PLANNING <br /> 1400.1499 ..ARCHEOLOGY•HISTORIC -tANOSCAPEAACHITECTURE _RELIGION <br /> ._CONSERVATION _LAW <br /> .1500.1599 _AGRICULTURE -ECONOMICS -..SCIENCE <br /> •1899 -MILITARY -SCULPTURE <br /> X:ARCHIT£CTURE X.-EDUCATION _..MILITARY <br /> 700.1799 _IIRT, _.ENGINEERING -S AL/HUMANITARIAN <br /> X.1800•1899 COMMERCE -MUSIC _THEATER ' <br /> _EXPLORATIOWSETTLEMENT ,PHILOSOPHY •._1 -COMMUNICATIONS _tNOUSTRY" - TRANSPORTATION ' <br /> :PdUTtCS/GOVERNMENT _OTHER(SPECIFY) <br /> _INVENTION <br /> SPECIFIC DATES 1845-1864 ' SUILDER/ARCHITECT <br /> STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE <br /> The Bingham School at Oaks is an interesting complex of buildings from several <br /> eras located in a pleasant rural setting in the rolling Piedmont farmland of western <br /> Orange County. The complex includes an L—shaped house composed of small early nineteent <br /> century buildings and the more ambitious mid nineteenth century Greek Revival house h <br /> probably built for the Binghams, plus several outbuildings. This was the site of the <br /> Bingham School from 1845 until 1864, one of a series of•North Carolina locations of <br /> a school established by William J. Bingham in Hillsborough and continued by his sons <br /> and grandsons, .which.gained a.statewide reputation,for.academic .excellence. <br /> The Bingham School property at Oaks, North Carolina, is a group of buildings <br /> used by William James Bingham and his sons as a school for boys y Bingham to and during <br /> ow, t the <br /> Civil War. Bingham was the son of the Reverend William James Bingham of Glasgow, the <br /> founder and first headmaster of the first Bingham School, located in Pittsboro in <br /> iltG1793. The Reverend Bingham gave up his school from 1801 to 1805, when he taught Latin <br /> reeklat' the new University of. North Carolina at Chapel. Hill,.-where William James <br /> born. <br /> According.to his grandson Robert, writing in Ashe's,•$idgra 1hidal-Histor . of North <br /> Carolina, the Reverend Bingham left the University o P <br /> school in2Hillsborough because the boys who came o,the tUni.versit reopened his private <br /> prepared. He thus afforded his sons and grandsons an opportunity tore rt_ cipate <br /> in what the Asheville Cititen•Times of 1921 referred to as "the only institutioneof. <br /> learning of any grade in the United States which has been administered continuously <br /> from grandfather to gradson. by three successive generations of headmasters so as to <br /> touch three centuries." <br /> The school was relocated at Mt. Repose, eleven miles'northwest of Hillsborough, <br /> about 1810, where it remained until the Reverend Bingham's death in 1826. His son <br /> William James administered the school in Hillsborough until 1845, when he moved the <br /> school t yet another location twelve miles southwest of Hillsborough in an area w <br /> ' Oaks. It is on this site that the only buildings associated with the school at o <br /> q of its many locations are still in existence. <br /> William James purchased the Oaks <br /> bounded by Cane Creek and the Hillsborough eRoad,1from Alexander Morrowyin70 acres. <br /> ?aid Morrow twenty—five hundred dollars 1844. He <br /> there may have. been at least one structure 2alrreadyronhit. Mety, which suggest <br /> 1345 recalled that they "reached the y buildings arrivals toggle area in <br /> community, passed the Binghams' newly acquiredsfarm ndra adembuilding the the <br /> III <br /> y buildings on the left <br /> l • <br />