Orange County NC Website
Browse       Search
37 <br /> ORANGE COUNTY LOCAL LANDMARK APPLICATION <br /> HISTORICAL OVERVIEW <br /> In the late 1740s and early 1750s, a migration of Irish Quakers, mostly from the Philadelphia <br /> area but a few directly from Ireland and England, began arriving in the central Piedmont section <br /> of the Province of North Carolina—the area that after 1752 was Orange County, including <br /> present-day Alamance County and the eastern part of Guilford County. In 1751, a group of about <br /> thirty families convened the "first sitting" of the Cane Creek Meeting of Quakers in what is now <br /> the Snow Camp Community of.Alamance County, located about two-to three-days' distance <br /> southwest of where the Eno Quakers later settled.i4 <br /> All of the Quakers were searching for land that was reasonably priced, fertile, abundant in <br /> waterways and springs, and was in a temperate climate with a long growing season. The Eno <br /> Quakers chose to settle in the Eno River Valley to the north and east of the other Quakers, taking <br /> advantage not only of the attributes of the land that the other Quakers enjoyed, but also of the <br /> Eno River and the opportunities it afforded for water power for grist and saw mills. One group of <br /> the Eno Friends settled west and northwest of present-day Hillsborough, while another group <br /> located north and northeast of the county seat along what is now NC57 and St. Mary's Road. <br /> Others could be found to the southeast, so that in all, the Eno Quakers formed almost a crescent <br /> 14 The historical information in the Historical Overview came from research conducted by Mary Claire Engstrom,as <br /> published in"Early Quakers in the Eno River Valley ca. 1750-1847," Eno Journal,Vol.7,No. 2, 198311984. <br /> According to Engstrom,no manuscript records of the old Eno Friends Meeting are known to exist,but marry of its <br /> members and leaders as well as an outline of its history can be pieced together from entries in the Minutes and <br /> Records of the Cane Creek Monthly Meeting and the Spring Monthly Meeting as well as from entries in the Western <br /> Quarterly Minutes and the List of Tombstone Inscriptions at the Eno Quaker Burying Ground. Official Orange <br /> County records supplement these materials.3-4. <br /> 15 I <br />