HPC agenda 092398 - Laserfiche WebLink

Browse Search

Many of the county ' s datable prehistoric sites were occupied during more than one period , suggesting that areas initially settled continued through time to be perceived as desirable locations . Archaeological research has suggested that the sites of larger Archaic base camps , occupied in the spring , summer and fall , are located primarily along rivers and creeks (Ward 1983 : 65 -70) . In the winters , smaller camps were placed throughout the uplands , for the more efficient hunting of deer this 1979 : 31 -33) .. Overview of Historic Sites Although European-Americans visited the North Carolina Piedmont in the sixteenth and seventeenth century , it was not until the 1720s that actual settlement began to occur . Descendants of a number of European cultures settled Orange County , beginning in the 1740s with the Irish Quakers who settled at Cane Creek in what is now Alamance County and at Mars Hill , two miles northeast of present day Hillsborough (Engstrom 1983 ) . Slightly later , Germans from Pennsylvania and English descendants from Virginia began to arrive and spread throughout the present county . Settlement was sparse in the early years and the population was comprised predominantly of yeoman farmers (Lally and Little 19911) . Orange County landholdings were sal , with 75 % of eighteenth-century property owners holding between 100 and 500 acres (Lefler and Wager 1953 : 16) . In response to the increasing numbers of immigrants arriving from the north, Orange County and Hillsborough were both formed in the early 1750s (Anderson 1989) . Hillsborough was founded along the Eno , adjacent to the Trading Path and near the former location of Occaneechi Town (31Or231 ) . Growth of the new town was rapid , due in part to a building act which required that structures be constructed on town lots within two years of the purchase date (Merrens 1964 : 163 ) . Agriculture and small-scale industry played important roles in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century economy of the county . Corn, wheat , and tobacco were the primary crops grown in the region, and by the mid-nineteenth century , nearly all of the arable land in Orange County was under cultivation (Henderson 1991 a 4) . Although African Americans never comprised more than 31 % of the population of the county , by 1860 , 48 % of the county ' s families owned slaves (Lefler and Wager 1953 : 16) . Mid-nineteenth-century Orange County could be characterized as a rural area with a stable population comprised largely of descendants of its eighteenth-century settlers (Kenner 198792) . Although populous , the county was thinly settled (approximately three houses per square mile) , with extended families clustered in small groups along rivers and creeks (Kenner 1987 : 10 ; Lally and Little 1992 : 2) . To date , only around forty domestic sites from # the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries , many of them probably farmsteads , have been recorded in Orange County . Twenty-seven of these sites were found in the 19934994 survey along the Little River and Back Creek (Daniel 1994) . 6