1771 (MDCCLXXI) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar, the 1771st year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 771st year of the 2nd millennium, the 71st year of the 18th century, and the 2nd year of the 1770s decade. As of the start of 1771, the Gregorian calendar was 11 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.
Orange County is a county located in the Piedmont region of the U.S. state of North Carolina. As of the 2020 census, the population was 148,696. Its county seat is Hillsborough.
Francis Nash was a slave owner and brigadier general in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Prior to the war, he was a lawyer, public official, and politician in Hillsborough, North Carolina, and was heavily involved in opposing the Regulator movement, an uprising of settlers in the North Carolina piedmont between 1765 and 1771. Nash was also involved in North Carolina politics, representing Hillsborough on several occasions in the colonial North Carolina General Assembly.
Lieutenant-General William Tryon was a British Army officer and colonial administrator who served as governor of North Carolina from 1764 to 1771 and the governor of New York from 1771 to 1777. He also served during the Seven Years' War, the Regulator Movement, and the American War of Independence.
Richard Caswell was an American politician and lawyer who served as the first and fifth governor of the U.S. state of North Carolina from 1776 to 1780 and from 1785 to 1787. He also served as a senior officer of militia in the Southern theater of the American Revolutionary War. As a delegate to the First Continental Congress, he was a signatory of the 1774 Continental Association.
Samuel Johnston was an American planter, lawyer, Grand Master of Freemasons, slave holder, and statesman from Chowan County, North Carolina. He represented North Carolina in both the Continental Congress and the United States Senate, and he was the sixth Governor of North Carolina.
Robert Howe was a Continental Army general from the Province of North Carolina during the American Revolutionary War. The descendant of a prominent family in North Carolina, Howe was one of five generals, and the only major general, in the Continental Army from that state. He also played a role in the colonial and state governments of North Carolina, serving in the legislative bodies of both.
Edmund Fanning was an American-born colonial administrator and military officer. Born in New York, he became a lawyer and politician in North Carolina in the 1760s. He first came to fame as the focus of hatred of the Regulators, and led anti-Regulator militia in the War of the Regulation. When the American Revolutionary War broke out, he was driven from his home in New York, and joined the British Army, recruiting other Loyalists. He served during campaigns in New England and the South. At the end of the war in 1783 he became a United Empire Loyalist, settling in Nova Scotia.
James Few was born in 1746 in Hartford. His parents were William Few, Sr., and Mary Wheeler. James migrated with his parents and siblings to Orange County, North Carolina circa 1758.
The Hillsborough District Brigade of militia was an administrative division of the North Carolina militia established on May 4, 1776. Brigadier General Thomas Person was the first commander. Companies from the eight regiments of the brigade were engaged in 55 known battles and skirmishes in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia during the American Revolutionary War. It was active until the end of the war.
Alamance Battleground is a North Carolina State Historic Site commemorating the Battle of Alamance. The historic site is located south of Burlington, Alamance County, North Carolina in the United States.
James Moore was a Continental Army general during the American Revolutionary War. Moore was born into a prominent political family in the colonial Province of North Carolina, he was one of only five generals from North Carolina to serve in the Continental Army. He spent much of his childhood and youth on his family's estates in the lower Cape Fear River area, but soon became active in the colonial military structure in North Carolina.
General Hugh Waddell was an Irish-born military officer, merchant, planter and politician who served in the Thirteen Colonies during the mid-18th century. Waddell formed and led a provincial militia unit in Rowan County, North Carolina and the Ohio River Valley during the French and Indian War and the Anglo-Cherokee War, and supervised the construction of Fort Dobbs near the settlement of the Fourth Creek Congregation. His career was well-served by close connections to several provincial governors of North Carolina.
John Butler was a military officer in the Hillsborough District Brigade of the North Carolina militia during the American Revolutionary War from 1775 to 1784, and served as its commanding general between 1779 and the end of the conflict. He was a member of the North Carolina House of Commons for several terms simultaneously with his military service. Butler commanded soldiers in several major engagements throughout North and South Carolina, but is perhaps best remembered for his role in the Patriot defeat at the Battle of Lindley's Mill. Butler died shortly after the end of the war, and his career as a military commander has received mixed reviews by historians.
Thomas Person (1733–1800) was an American politician, Anti-Federalist organizer, and brigadier general in command of the Hillsborough District Brigade of the North Carolina militia during the American Revolution.
John Sampson (1719–1784) was a politician in North Carolina during and after the American Colonial era. After immigrating to the colony from northern Ireland, he settled near Wilmington. He was appointed to local offices, raised a militia to defend against the Spanish Alarm, and served as a Revolutionary War Patriot militia officer. He was an early settler in Duplin County, North Carolina. He served as mayor of Wilmington, North Carolina starting in 1760.
The Battle at the Yadkin River was a military engagement of the Regulator Movement fought at the crossing of the Yadkin River on May 9, 1771, just a week prior to the Battle of Alamance, the final battle of the conflict.
Captain Benjamin Merrill was an American military officer, gunsmith and planter who served in the militia of Rowan County, North Carolina. He sided with the Regulator Movement in North Carolina, and was captured following the Battle of Alamance on May 16, 1771. Shortly thereafter, he was executed as a rebel by Governor William Tryon.
Philemon Hawkins II was an American planter, military officer and politician who served in the North Carolina militia during the Revolutionary War.
The Regulator Movement in North Carolina, also known as the Regulator Insurrection, War of Regulation, and War of the Regulation, was an uprising in Provincial North Carolina from 1766 to 1771 in which citizens took up arms against colonial officials whom they viewed as corrupt. Historians such as John Spencer Bassett argue that the Regulators did not wish to change the form or principle of their government, but simply wanted to make the colony's political process more equal. They wanted better economic conditions for everyone, instead of a system that heavily benefited the colonial officials and their network of plantation owners mainly near the coast. Bassett interprets the events of the late 1760s in Orange and surrounding counties as "...a peasants' rising, a popular upheaval."
North Carolina 
