The First Courthouse for Orange County, NC At the beginning of the formation of Orange County, the courthouse was not located in Hillsborough, as it is today, there was no Hillsborough in 1752. The first courthouse was located in the present day Alamance County town of Haw River, NC. The original Orange County consisted of present day counties of Alamance, Caswell, Chatham, Orange, Person, parts of Guilford, Lee, Randolph, and Rockingham, and very small portions of Stokes and Wake. Alamance County was dead center of old Orange County, which the Haw River roughly bisected from northwest to southeast. Orange County included the headwaters of the Neuse River system, most significantly the Eno River. The first court met at the home of John GRAY near the Eno River in September 1752. At this court session it was ordered to build a courthouse farther west, near the Haw River, close enough to the river crossing at Pine Ford for that crossing to give access to people who lived west of the Haw River. Pine Ford or "Piney Ford" is in the present town of Haw River, across from the present day Granite Mill, near the railroad bridge and today's John Robert WATKINS bridge on NC Highway #70. Pine Ford was near the center of Orange County, and the main leg of the Trading Path crossed there. Seven of the eight justices present at the first court meeting were: John PITTMAN, Mark MORGAN, James DICKEY, Lawrence BANKSTON, Joseph TATE, Andrew MITCHELL and John PATTERSON. They contracted with the eighth justice, Marmaduke KIMBROUGH to build a courthouse, stocks, and jail, the usual facilities for county business that the law required. The specific site was to be selected by a committee of PITTMAN, ALLISON, and KIMBROUGH. The only requirement the other justices made were that the site be within two miles of Pine Ford. They selected a site, on the high ground west of the main tributaries of Back Creek. This is located east of (today's) Belview Baptist Church on Bason Road, it is the nearest high ground to where the Trading Path crossed Quaker and Otter Creeks. 1778 and 1779 land records refer to a tract on both sides of the tributaries of Back Creek as "the Old Courthouse tract". To be continued.... Sources: State Records of North Carolina 23: pages 390, 399, 25: pages 271 and 272 N.C. Archives: Minutes of Orange County of Pleas and Quarters 1752-1755 Collet Map 1770 Mouzon Map 1775 Price-Strother Map 1808