This page covers two overlapping sets of books at OCPL: the Orange County works in the index that the library holds, and the Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection, the library’s wider local history room, from county deed and will abstracts to North Carolina histories. Some books belong to both. Start with the plan of the room, or go straight to either list.
About these counts
The index counts works, not copies or editions: the editions of one book are gathered under one entry, so the library’s own catalog lists more titles than the 357 here. The Wall Collection figure is the library’s inventory of that collection as of September 2026, counted by catalog title; the Orange County works shelved there are in both counts.
The Local History Room
Find your way around the local history room
Find the books, maps, research equipment, and displays of the Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection at the Main Library in Hillsborough. The lettered locations below match the plan; tap or hover one to see what stands there.
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Locked cabinet
Fragile items that mending would damage. Above it, a platter Rebecca Wall painted of the law office of Thomas Ruffin, an ancestor of hers, at 201 South Cameron Street, and a pastel portrait of her in her fifties.
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Gray file cabinet
Microfilm of the local newspaper and federal census returns from the 1800s; Orange County court records, vital statistics, tax lists and Confederate soldier records reaching back to the 1700s. On top, a photograph of Rebecca Wall in her twenties and a wooden model of the Burwell School.
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Research computer with microfilm reader and scanner
Read and scan the microfilm here, and search Ancestry and other research sites.
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Genealogy bookshelf, D-1
Historical records of many kinds, color-coded and labeled by county and record type, with books on how to do genealogical research.
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Genealogy bookshelf, D-2
Published family histories, biographies and genealogical journals; the colonial and higher-court records of North Carolina; lives of local figures from William Tryon to John Blackfeather.
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Genealogy bookshelf, D-3
More about Rebecca Wall.
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North Carolina history bookshelf, E-1
North Carolina histories of every kind, from the university and the State Fair to natural history and Durham’s Hayti.
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Reference bookshelf, E-2
Traditional general reference books, still valuable as comprehensive, authoritative sources.
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Framed print: the courthouse
Hope Summerell Chamberlain’s 1926 pen-and-ink rendering of the county courthouse; she was an author, artist and civic worker.
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Framed print: the 1892 county map
George W. Tate’s 1892 map of Orange County.
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Framed print: Hillsborough, County Down
Views of the Irish town the county seat is named for.
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Framed print: the Nash and Kollock School
Chamberlain’s 1926 interpretation of a late-1800s photograph of the school, which stood at 137 West Margaret Lane, the Main Library’s address today.
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Framed print: Hillsborough Military Academy
Uniform buttons from the academy, which ran from 1859 to 1861 off Barracks Road in West Hillsborough; outbuildings still stand.
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Framed print: the 1768 town plan
C. J. Sauthier’s 1768 map of the town of Hillsborough.
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Black file cabinet
Family and local histories researched, compiled and donated by patrons, with local history odds and ends. On top, a model of the county courthouse by Allen Alexander Lloyd (1914 to 2006), lifelong Hillsborough resident and keeper of the town clock, who with his wife Pauline wrote the histories of the town and of its churches that stand in this room.
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Assorted maps
Maps of the county and the town.
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Elizabeth Keckly display
Keckly was enslaved in Hillsborough by her half-brother Robert Burwell, minister of the Presbyterian church and founder of the Burwell School. A seamstress of rare skill, after her emancipation in 1855 she became dressmaker and confidante to Mary Lincoln.
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Elizabeth Keckly display, continued
The second panel of the Keckly display.
On the shelves
Orange County works at OCPL
These works connect to Orange County and are held at OCPL. Search by title, author, or description, or pick a section to browse it in call-number order. Open the catalog record for location and availability.
Biography BIO, 920: 17 works as they shelve at OCPL, in call-number order. All 357, with filters by place, theme, and material, in the search →
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A Dream About Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons
Folds, Ben · 2019 · Biography
Singer and songwriter Ben Folds (born 1966), whose band Ben Folds Five came together in Chapel Hill, looks back on his life in music. Chapters cover his music teachers and 'cheap lessons', a stretch in Nashville, the band's first albums and the music business, 'Rockin' the suburbs', going solo, and the years after a low point, told through anecdotes and working advice. Published in a first edition of 2019, 311 pages with illustrations.
Call number BIO FOLDS FOLArts, Music & PerformanceLiterature & Publishing View in OCPL catalog → -
James J. Freeland
Freeland, Maxine · 1999 · Biography
Maxine Freeland's biography of James John Freeland (1918-1999), a Hillsborough man of the twentieth century, compiled in 1999.
Call number BIO FREELAND FREHillsborough View in OCPL catalog → -
Ghost Fields
Bradley, John · 2021 · Histories
John Bradley's interview with John Blackfeather Jeffries, an elder of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, whose tribal grounds lie in northern Orange County near Hillsborough. Occaneechi history and Native history in North Carolina and Virginia, the tribe's older homeland, are its subjects. Published in 2021.
Call number BIO JEFFRIES BRAHillsboroughIndigenous Peoples & ArchaeologyThe Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation today View in OCPL catalog → -
Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House
Keckley, Elizabeth · 1868 · Biography
Elizabeth Keckley's memoir of 1868, thirty years in slavery and four years in the White House as dressmaker and confidante to Mary Todd Lincoln. Keckley spent part of her enslaved youth in Hillsborough, which ties the book to Orange County. This edition is the Oxford University Press reprint, with a portrait, 371 pages.
Call number BIO KECKLEY KECHillsboroughBlack Life & Civil RightsThe Burwell School and the Burwell household View in OCPL catalog → -
The Courage to Lead: One Man's Journey in Public Service
Lee, Howard N. · 2008 · Biography
Howard N. Lee (born 1934) tells his own story, from a farm childhood in Lithonia, Georgia, through college, army service in Korea at Camp Casey and the move from Savannah that planted him in Chapel Hill, to his election as mayor of Chapel Hill in 1969 and his later run for Congress and years in the state legislature. Published by Cotton Patch Press of Chapel Hill in 2008, 199 pages with plates.
Call number BIO LEE LEEChapel HillBlack Life & Civil RightsHoward Lee’s election as mayor of Chapel Hill, 1969 View in OCPL catalog → -
Warm Firesides Wide Porches
McPherson, Sally Ann Webb · 2013 · Biography
Sally Ann Webb McPherson remembers Hillsborough in the 1940s, subtitled as an authentic Southern town, in a 2013 memoir of the town's anecdotes, social life and customs. Personal recollection rather than formal history, it records daily life in the town during and after the Second World War.
Call number BIO MCPHERSO MCPHillsboroughEveryday Life & Traditions View in OCPL catalog → -
Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family
Murray, Pauli · 1956 · Biography
Pauli Murray's account of her grandparents, Robert and Cornelia Fitzgerald, and of a family that came together out of enslaved people, free Black people, white slaveholders and Cherokee ancestors in the years before and after the Civil War. Murray, born in 1910 and raised in Durham, follows the Fitzgeralds from Pennsylvania to North Carolina, where Cornelia had been born enslaved in Orange County near Chapel Hill. First published by Harper in 1956; this edition runs 280 pages.
Call number BIO MURRAY MURChapel HillBlack Life & Civil RightsChurches & Faith View in OCPL catalog → -
Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray
Rosenberg, Rosalind · 2017 · Biography
Rosalind Rosenberg's 2017 biography of Pauli Murray (1910-1985), lawyer, poet and Episcopal priest, raised in Durham. Its six parts follow a Southern childhood, the move to New York, the 1938 application to the University of North Carolina that was refused because Murray was Black (the chapter is titled 'Members of your race are not admitted'), law school and the coining of the phrase Jane Crow, the Cold War years, the push toward 'an NAACP for women', and a late-life ordination. 494 pages with portraits.
Call number BIO MURRAY ROSChapel HillBlack Life & Civil RightsChurches & Faith View in OCPL catalog → -
Vignettes
Shetley, Frances Lloyd · 2025 · Biography
Frances Lloyd Shetley's self-published collection of short recollections, issued in 2025, drawn from the author's own life in Calvander and Carrboro. Calvander is the crossroads community northwest of Carrboro.
Call number BIO SHETLEY SHECalvander View in OCPL catalog → -
Clover Garden
Simpson, Bland · 2024 · Biography
Bland Simpson's memoir of country life in the Clover Garden community of Orange County, in the North Carolina Piedmont, published by UNC Press in 2024. Short chapters take in cabin life, neighbors like the Binghams and Mr. Stacy, hounds, owls and turkeys, an auction, Merritt's and Lewis Allen's store, the sculptor of White Cross School, Maple View, Saxapahaw, the Devil's Tramping Ground, storms and snows, and a carol for Cane Creek. 182 pages with illustrations.
Call number BIO SIMPSON SIMNorth Carolina (statewide)Eno & EnvironmentEveryday Life & Traditions View in OCPL catalog → -
Dimestore: A Writer's Life
Smith, Lee · 2016 · Biography
Lee Smith, the novelist who lives in Hillsborough, recalls a mountain childhood in Grundy, Virginia, and the writing life that followed. The essays also take in her mother's mental illness, and later her son's own illness and his death at a young age, alongside pieces on the recipe box, marble cake and moonshine, lady lessons and a life in books. Published 2016, 202 pages.
Call number BIO SMITH SMIEveryday Life & TraditionsLiterature & Publishing View in OCPL catalog → -
Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn
Hajdu, David · 1996 · Biography
David Hajdu's biography of Billy Strayhorn, the composer and pianist who spent much of his career writing with and for Duke Ellington, and who passed part of his boyhood with grandparents in Hillsborough. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1996, 305 pages with illustrations. Topics include jazz musicians, composers and African American gay composers.
Call number BIO STRAYHOR HAJArts, Music & PerformanceBlack Life & Civil Rights View in OCPL catalog →
The Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection
Browse the full Wall Collection
The wider local history collection, named for Rebecca Wall, the retired librarian whose 1986 bequest built it: genealogy, North Carolina history, and regional reference works, alongside the Orange County titles. Browse it shelf by shelf or search by title, author, subject, or description.
Science, medicine, agriculture and technology 500 to 639, 650 to 699: 43 titles as they stand on the shelf at OCPL, in call-number order. North Carolina history bookshelf, E-1: North Carolina histories of every kind, from the university and the State Fair to the state’s natural history and Durham’s Hayti.
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Exploring North Carolina's Natural Areas: Parks, Nature Preserves, and Hiking Trails
2000
Driving tours of the state's natural areas, 38 in all, written by naturalists from across the state and edited by Dirk Frankenberg, a marine sciences professor at UNC Chapel Hill. Grouped by the coast, the coastal plain, the Piedmont and the mountains, each tour follows a route of thirty to seventy miles linking parks, preserves, hiking and nature trails and scenic overlooks. UNC Press, 2000, 412 pages with 42 maps.
Call number 508.756 EXP View in OCPL catalog → -
Exploring the Geology of the Carolinas: A Field Guide to Favorite Places From Chimney Rock to Charleston
Stewart, Kevin G. · 2007
A field guide to geological sites across North and South Carolina, from Chimney Rock in the mountains to Charleston on the coast, by Kevin G. Stewart and Mary-Russell Roberson. Stops include DuPont State Forest, Whiteside Mountain and Grandfather Mountain, and the text takes up rocks, minerals, gold, fossils and plate tectonics. The University of North Carolina Press published it in 2007 with color plates, maps and an index.
Call number 557.56 STE View in OCPL catalog → -
A North Carolina Naturalist: H.H. Brimley: Selections From His Writings
Brimley, Herbert Hutchinson · 1971
Selected writings of Herbert Hutchinson Brimley, the English-born, self-taught naturalist who studied North Carolina's wildlife for more than sixty years, in the field and as longtime head of the state's natural history museum in Raleigh. Eugene P. Odum edited the collection, which the University of North Carolina Press first published in 1949, three years after Brimley's death; Books for Libraries Press reprinted it in 1971, 205 pages with photographs and portraits.
Call number fNC 574.975 BRI View in OCPL catalog → -
Putting Down Roots: Foundations of Botany at Carolina : With A Concluding Chapter on the History of the Department of Botany
Burk, William R. · 2023
William R. Burk's history of botany at the University of North Carolina, from its early natural scientists such as Denison Olmsted and Elisha Mitchell through later figures including George Francis Atkinson, Joseph Austin Holmes and Henry Van Peters Wilson, closing with a chapter on the Department of Botany itself. Published in Fort Worth in 2023.
Call number NC 580.9 BURK View in OCPL catalog → -
Essays on William Chambers Coker, Passionate Botanist
Joslin, Mary Coker · 2003
Mary Coker Joslin's essays on her uncle, William Chambers Coker (1872 to 1953), the University of North Carolina botanist who began the Coker Arboretum in Chapel Hill in 1903 and chaired the botany department for 36 years. She presents him as scientist, teacher, landscape designer and editor. Published in Chapel Hill by the Botanical Garden Foundation in 2003, the arboretum's centennial year, with drawings by Sandra Brooks-Mathers and eight pages of plates.
Call number NC 580.92 JOS View in OCPL catalog → -
Chapel Hill and Elisha Mitchell, the Botanist
McVaugh, Rogers · 1996
Elisha Mitchell, the University of North Carolina professor for whom Mount Mitchell is named, as botanist and as observer of early Chapel Hill, in a study by Rogers McVaugh, Michael R. McVaugh and Mary Ayers. It covers Mitchell's botanical knowledge, the plants of Chapel Hill and the town's historical geography. Published by the Botanical Garden Foundation in Chapel Hill in 1996, 122 pages with illustrations and maps.
Call number NC 580.92 MCV View in OCPL catalog → -
Botany: Containing A Catalogue of the Plants of the State, With Descriptions and History of the Trees, Shrubs, and Woody Vines
Curtis, M. A. · 1860
Moses Ashley Curtis's botanical report for the state, issued in 1860 as Part III of North Carolina's Geological and Natural History Survey. It catalogues the plants of North Carolina and describes its trees, shrubs and woody vines; 123 pages with an index. Curtis, an Episcopal priest and botanist, was rector at Hillsborough and died there in 1872. A longer edition followed in 1867, and the state reprinted the shrub and vine accounts in 1945.
Call number NC 581.078 CUR View in OCPL catalog → -
Stock-poisoning Plants of North Carolina
Hardin, James W. · 1966
Issued in 1966 as Bulletin 414 of the Agricultural Experiment Station at North Carolina State University, James W. Hardin's guide covers the plants of the state that poison livestock. It runs to 126 pages with illustrations, maps, references and an index.
Call number NC 581.6 HAR View in OCPL catalog → -
Herbs and Herb Lore of Colonial America
Colonial Dames of America · 1995
The Connecticut society of the Colonial Dames of America describes more than fifty herbs and plants that colonial New Englanders used as medicines, dyes, disinfectants and seasonings, from bee balm and feverfew to tansy and yarrow. Each plant has a drawing from an early herbal, its common and botanical names, and an account of its household uses and lore. First published at Wethersfield in 1970 as 'Simples, Superstitions & Solace'; reprinted by Dover in 1995.
Call number NC 581.63 COLONIAL View in OCPL catalog → -
Lindy's Identification Keys for Native Plants Growing in the North Carolina Triangle
Lindholm, Roy C. · 2002
Illustrated keys for identifying the native plants of the Triangle region around Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, compiled by Roy C. Lindholm and published by him in Chapel Hill in 2002, with a short bibliography and indexes.
Call number NC 581.975 LINDHOLM View in OCPL catalog → -
Atlas of the Vascular Flora of the Carolinas
Radford, Albert E. · 1965
Maps showing where the vascular plants of North and South Carolina grow, compiled by Albert E. Radford of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with Harry E. Ahles and C. Ritchie Bell, three years before their Manual of the Vascular Flora of the Carolinas (1968). Issued in Raleigh in 1965 as Technical Bulletin 165 of the North Carolina Agricultural Experiment Station, 208 pages, chiefly maps, with an index.
Call number NC 581.975 RAD View in OCPL catalog → -
Manual of the Vascular Flora of the Carolinas
Radford, Albert E. · 1968
The standard manual for identifying the vascular plants of North and South Carolina, from ferns to conifers and flowering plants, by Albert E. Radford of the University of North Carolina with Harry E. Ahles and C. Ritchie Bell. The University of North Carolina Press published it in 1968: 1,183 pages with illustrations and a bibliography.
Call number NC 581.975 RAD View in OCPL catalog →
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