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.
Schools and the university 370 to 379: 1 work 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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The Impact of Slavery on the Education of Blacks in Orange County, North Carolina 1619-1970
Moore, Rosetta Austin · 2015 · Biography
Rosetta Austin Moore's survey of Black education in Orange County from the colonial era to 1970, in a revised edition published in 2015 through Lulu in Morrisville. After chapters on slavery nationally and on schooling for enslaved people in North Carolina, the book turns to the county: its formation, the growth of its schools, the arrival of free public schooling for all, and the schools and African American educators of the twentieth century. 265 pages with maps, portraits and facsimiles.
Call number 371.009 MOOREOrange CountyBlack Life & Civil RightsFreedom, schools, and Black community-building after emancipation 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.
Travel, description and geography 910 to 919: 46 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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The Carolina Pirates and Colonial Commerce, 1670-1740
Hughson, Shirley Carter · 1894
Shirley Carter Hughson's study of piracy along the Carolina coast and of colonial trade from 1670 to 1740, in both North and South Carolina. It appeared in 1894 as numbers 5 to 7 of the twelfth series of the Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, edited by Herbert B. Adams; 134 pages.
Call number NC 910.4 HUG View in OCPL catalog → -
Journal of A Lady of Quality: Being the Narrative of A Journey From Scotland to the West Indies, North Carolina, and Portugal in the Years 1774 to 1776
Schaw, Janet · 1939
Letters Janet Schaw of Edinburgh wrote on a voyage of 1774 to 1776: to Antigua and St. Kitts, then to her brother Robert's plantation near Wilmington on the Cape Fear, where she saw the Revolution begin as a Loyalist, and home through Portugal. She describes sugar plantations worked by enslaved people. Evangeline Walker Andrews and Charles McLean Andrews edited the anonymous manuscript for Yale in 1921; this 1939 third edition has 351 pages with maps.
Call number NC 910.4 SCH View in OCPL catalog → -
Graveyard of the Atlantic: Shipwrecks of the North Carolina Coast
Stick, David · 1952
Shipwrecks along the North Carolina coast, where the waters off the Outer Banks around Cape Hatteras and the Diamond Shoals earned the name Graveyard of the Atlantic, in a history by David Stick. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1952; 276 pages with illustrations by Frank Stick, maps and a bibliography.
Call number NC 910.45 STI View in OCPL catalog → -
Colonial North Carolina in the Eighteenth Century: A Study in Historical Geography
Merrens, H. Roy · 1964 Foundational
Eighteenth-century North Carolina seen through historical geography, with particular attention to the colony's economy, in a study by Harry Roy Merrens. The University of North Carolina Press published it in 1964, 293 pages with maps, charts and a bibliography, and reissued it in 2012.
Call number NC 911 MER View in OCPL catalog → -
Map Guide to the U.S. Federal Censuses, 1790-1920
Thorndale, William · 1987
An atlas of county boundaries at each federal census from 1790 to 1920, by William Thorndale and William Dollarhide. On nearly 400 state maps the county lines of each census year are drawn over the modern ones, and each map notes which county returns survive and which are lost. Essays cover the growth, accuracy and technical details of the censuses. Genealogical Publishing Company, 1987; 445 pages with a bibliography and an index, reprinted since.
Call number NC 911.73 THO View in OCPL catalog → -
Atlas of Historical County Boundaries: North Carolina
1998 Foundational
Compiled by Gordon DenBoer and edited by John H. Long, the North Carolina volume of the Newberry Library's Atlas of Historical County Boundaries maps the creation of each county in the state and every later change to its lines, beginning in 1665, with dated chronologies taken chiefly from the session laws. Name changes and failed attempts to create counties are recorded too. Scribner, 1998; 434 pages with a bibliography and index.
Call number NC 911.756 ATL View in OCPL catalog → -
The Formation of the North Carolina Counties, 1663-1943
Corbitt, David Leroy · 1987
How each of North Carolina's counties came into being between 1663 and 1943, traced with maps by David Leroy Corbitt and first published in 1950; it became his most widely used book. Corbitt spent 37 years with the state's historical agency, as chief archivist and then head of its publications division. The 1987 printing, the Division of Archives and History's corrected fourth reprinting, has 323 pages, a folded plate and an index.
Call number NC 911.756 COR View in OCPL catalog → -
The Formation of the North Carolina Counties, 1663-1943
Corbitt, David Leroy · 1950
For each North Carolina county, David Leroy Corbitt gives the date and background of its creation and its boundaries as the laws described them. Maps covering 1700 to 1912 show the counties spreading from the northeast toward the west, and a chart lists each county's date and parent counties. Published in 1950 by the State Department of Archives and History, where Corbitt headed the Division of Publications; xix and 323 pages, indexed.
Call number NC 911.756 COR View in OCPL catalog → -
North Carolina in Maps
Cumming, William Patterson · 1966
A short history of the mapping of North Carolina by William P. Cumming, author of 'The Southeast in Early Maps', with facsimiles of historic maps. First published in 1966; this printing carries the later imprint of the state's Division of Archives and History. The text runs 36 pages.
Call number NC 912.756 CUM View in OCPL catalog → -
The North Carolina Atlas: Portrait for A New Century
2000 Foundational
Douglas M. Orr Jr. and Alfred W. Stuart edited this statewide atlas, published by UNC Press in 2000 with a foreword by Governor James B. Hunt Jr. Its 461 pages carry more than 300 maps, charts and photographs on the land, history, people and economy, government and politics, schools, health, culture and outdoor recreation. It succeeds the 1975 'North Carolina Atlas: Portrait of a Changing Southern State', edited by Orr, Stuart and James W. Clay.
Call number NC 912.756 NOR View in OCPL catalog → -
County Indexes for G.P. Stout Historical Research Maps of North Carolina
Stout, G P
Indexes to the G.P. Stout historical research maps of North Carolina for Orange County and its neighbors: Alamance, Caswell, Chatham, Durham, Person and Wake. The indexes are keyed to the names and features on Stout's maps, so they serve land and family researchers who work from the maps themselves.
Call number NC 912.756 STO View in OCPL catalog → -
Atlas of North Carolina
Lonsdale, Richard E. · 1967
An atlas of North Carolina with colored maps, prepared under Richard E. Lonsdale as director and chief cartographer, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1967; 158 pages.
Call number NC 912.758 LON View in OCPL catalog →
Research help, online and in the room
