Edmund Fanning
Hillsborough, Orange County, North Carolina
Marker Inscription
Edmund Fanning 1776 1847. Judge and local official. Target of Regulators who ransacked and destroyed his nearby home, 1770.
Erected by North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources
The Story
Edmund Fanning was a judge and colonial official in Hillsborough who became a lightning rod for backcountry anger. In 1770 the Regulators — farmers protesting corruption and unfair taxes — ransacked and destroyed his nearby home. His story sits at the heart of the unrest that shook North Carolina in the years just before the Revolution.
Why it matters
Fanning's ruined house marks the grievances of the Regulator movement, an early eruption of frontier resistance against colonial officials that foreshadowed the coming Revolution.
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Related people
- · Edmund Fanning
Related events
- · War of the Regulation
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Regulators Hanged
Hillsborough, NC
After Royal Governor William Tryon crushed the Regulators at the Battle of Alamance on May 16, 1771, retribution followed swiftly. Six of the captured Regulators were hanged a quarter mile east of here on June 19, 1771. Their execution marked the grim end of the War of the Regulation, a farmers' uprising against colonial corruption and taxation.
Regulator Monument
Hillsborough, NC
In 1771 backcountry North Carolinians known as Regulators rose up against corrupt colonial officials and crushing fees, a rebellion put down by the royal governor's militia at the Battle of Alamance. In its aftermath several Regulators were tried and hanged at Hillsborough that June. This monument, placed by the Colonial Dames in 1963, marks the reputed spot where these men were executed for defying colonial authority.
Battle of Alamance
Alamance County, NC
On May 16, 1771, militia loyal to Royal Governor William Tryon met the Regulators — backcountry farmers rebelling against corrupt officials and unfair taxes — and defeated them at this spot. The clash ended the War of the Regulation and scattered the movement. Some have seen this frontier uprising as a prelude to the American Revolution that would follow within the decade.
James Hunter, Regulator Leader
Guilford County, NC
James Hunter was a leader of the Regulators, backcountry farmers who rose in the 1760s and early 1770s against corrupt local officials and unfair taxes. After the movement was crushed at the Battle of Alamance in 1771, Hunter was declared an outlaw, and Governor William Tryon's troops burned a nearby house in the reprisals that followed.