Copyright Notice: This content is from the North Carolina Gazetteer, edited by William S. Powell and Michael Hill. Copyright © 2010 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. For personal use and not for further distribution. Please submit permission requests for other use directly to the publisher.
This content is from the North Carolina Gazetteer, edited by William S. Powell and Michael Hill. Copyright © 2010 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. For personal use and not for further distribution. Please submit permission requests for other use directly to the publisher.
Some place names included in The North Carolina Gazetteer contain terms that are considered offensive.
"The North Carolina Gazetteer is a geographical dictionary in which an attempt has been made to list all of the geographic features of the state in one alphabet. It is current, and it is historical as well. Many features and places that no longer exist are included; many towns and counties for which plans were made but which never materialized are also included. Some names appearing on old maps may have been imaginary, but many of them also appear in this gazetteer.
Each entry is located according to the county in which it is found. I have not felt obliged to keep entries uniform. The altitude of a place, the date of incorporation of a city or town, may appear in the beginning of one entry and at the end of another. Some entries may appear more complete than others. I have included whatever information I could find. If there is no comment on the origin or meaning of a name, it is because the information was not available. In some cases, however, resort to an unabridged dictionary may suggest the meaning of many names."
--From The North Carolina Gazetteer, 1st edition, preface by William S. Powell
| Place | Description |
|---|---|
| Hillsborough |
town and county seat, central Orange County on Eno River. Alt. 543. John Lawson visited the Indian town of Occaneechi there, 1701. Appears on the Moseley map, 1733. In 1754 the site came to be known as Corbinton for Francis Corbin, colonial official. Est. as Childsburgh, 1759, in honor of Thomas Childs, attorney general of the province. Name changed to Hillsborough in 1766 in honor of Wills Hill, Earl of Hillsborough (1718-93), president of the Board of Trade and Plantations, and secretary of state for the colonies. The spelling later changed unofficially to Hillsboro, but the original spelling was restored in 1965. The legislature met there in 1778 and 1782-84. |
| Hillsborough District |
was composed of Caswell, Chatham, Granville, Orange, Randolph, and Wake Counties at the time of the 1790 census. |
| Hillsborough Lake |
See Ben Johnson Lake. |
| Hillsborough Township |
central Orange County. |
| West Hillsborough |
unincorporated outskirts of town of Hillsborough, central Orange County. |
