Colonial Inn future remains in doubt as owner continues sale efforts
If only the walls, floors, and nearby trees, stones and pathways around Hillsborough’s Colonial Inn could talk. The stories they might tell us.
Might they tell us stories of the fledgling American Revolution, when British General Cornwallis, according to legend, in the midst of his occupation of Hillsborough, had his soldiers pave the muddy street in front of the Inn with flagstone?
Might they tell us what it was like to see William Hooper – later a signer of the Declaration of Independence – dragged through the streets of Hillsborough in 1770 during the height of the War of the Regulation, a precursor to the American Revolution?
Might those antebellum walls, columns, and floors tell us of the day when General Sherman’s Army rolled into Hillsborough, barreling its way south intent on destroying the will and fighting ability of the Confederacy? How a Union commander supposedly convinced Sherman not to burn down the Colonial Inn due to the fact that the owner was a fellow Mason?
Whether or not any of these things actually happened or not at the Colonial Inn, they’re part of the lore of the place. And one of the reasons why the Hillsborough mainstay has been designated a National Historic Place.
(The News of Orange, 9/30/17)