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.
Literature and language 800 to 899, 400 to 499: 5 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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The Black Bard of North Carolina
Horton, George Moses · 1997 · Fiction
Selected poems of George Moses Horton (1798?-about 1880), the enslaved North Carolina poet who sold his verses to students at the university in Chapel Hill, in an edition published in 1997 in the Chapel Hill Books series. The volume gathers uncollected poems with selections from his three books, 'The Hope of Liberty', 'The Poetical Works' and 'Naked Genius', and opens with an introduction and a bibliography of his writings. 192 pages.
Call number 811.4 HORChapel HillBlack Life & Civil RightsLiterature & Publishing View in OCPL catalog → -
Breath of the Song: New and Selected Poems
Green, Jaki Shelton · 2005 · Fiction
New and selected poems by Jaki Shelton Green, the African American poet from Efland who later became North Carolina's poet laureate; Efland gives the collection its Orange County tie. Published by Carolina Wren Press in 2005, 136 pages.
Call number 811.54 GREBlack Life & Civil RightsLiterature & Publishing View in OCPL catalog → -
A Place in the World
Mayes, Frances · 2022 · Biography
Frances Mayes, who lives in Hillsborough, on the meaning of home: a 2022 collection of essays that moves among the houses and places she has lived in and traveled to. Travel writing and personal memoir at once, it comes from a North Carolina author better known for her books about Tuscany.
Call number 813.54 MAYESLiterature & PublishingWomen's Lives & History View in OCPL catalog → -
Observations of an accidental farmer--and a mindful reader
Kavros, Harry · 2024 · Biography
Harry Kavros's 2024 collection of essays and anecdotes about taking up farm life near Hillsborough, from the landscape to keeping chickens and other animals, alongside reflections on the South and on the writers who shaped his reading: Thoreau, Emerson, Aldo Leopold, Annie Dillard and Frederick Law Olmsted. Sections run from an introduction through 'The landscape', 'Chickens and other beasts' and 'The South' to an epilogue and appendix. First Paul Dry Books edition, Philadelphia.
Call number 814.54 KAVROSHillsboroughEno & EnvironmentFarms & Rural Life View in OCPL catalog → -
Goat light
Rankin, Tom · 2021 · Pictorial works
Tom Rankin's book of photographs of goat farming and country life in Orange County, published in 2021 by Horse & Buggy Press in Durham with essays alongside the pictures. The colophon records 750 copies of the first edition, with covers hand printed on a letterpress, and twenty-six lettered deluxe copies signed by Rankin and by Jill. Ninety-six unnumbered pages.
Call number 814.54 RANKINOrange CountyFarms & Rural Life 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.
Customs and folklore 390 to 399: 9 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 Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore: The Folklore of North Carolina, Collected by Dr. Frank C. Brown During the Years 1912 to 1943, in Collaboration With the North Carolina Folklore Society
Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore · 1952 Foundational
Frank C. Brown of Duke University and the North Carolina Folklore Society, which he founded in 1913, gathered this folklore from 1912 to 1943 through his classes and trips into the mountains. Duke University Press published it from 1952 to 1964 in seven volumes under general editor Newman Ivey White, with wood engravings by Clare Leighton: games, customs, riddles, proverbs, speech and tales; ballads and folk songs with their music; and popular beliefs and superstitions.
Call number NC 398 DUK View in OCPL catalog → -
Arts in Earnest: North Carolina Folklife
1990 Foundational
Daniel W. Patterson and Charles G. Zug III edited these fifteen essays on North Carolina folklife from the mountains to the coast, taking in decoy carving, tobacco auction chants, Piedmont blues, Jack tales, pranks in the mills and a Chatham County quiltmaker. Interviews give much of the text its voice, from Durham bluesman Willie Trice to Goldsboro auctioneer H. L. 'Speed' Riggs. Published by Duke University Press in 1990; 319 pages with notes and an index.
Call number NC 398.097 ART View in OCPL catalog → -
Tales of the North Carolina Coast
Edmunds, Pocahontas Wight · 1986
Legends and local history from along the North Carolina coast, retold by Pocahontas Wight Edmunds (1904 to 1999), a Richmond-born writer who settled in Halifax, Virginia, and wrote that county's history in two volumes. Edwards & Broughton of Raleigh published it in 1986: 179 pages plus four pages of plates, with a bibliography and index.
Call number NC 398.2 EDM View in OCPL catalog → -
North Carolina Indian Legends and Myths
Johnson, F. Roy · 1981
Native American legends told in North Carolina, gathered by F. Roy Johnson: among them the white doe, Batts' grave, the Indian gallows tree, and how Lake Mattamuskeet and Lake Waccamaw came to be. Eugenia (Jenny) Johnson drew the illustrations, and a list of sources closes the 112 pages. Johnson Publishing Company, Murfreesboro, 1981.
Call number NC 398.2 JOH View in OCPL catalog → -
John Rattling-Gourd of Big Cove: A Collection of Cherokee Indian Legends
Bell, Corydon · 1955
Cherokee legends retold and illustrated by Corydon Bell, framed as stories told beside the fire by the old man John Rattling-Gourd at Big Cove, a Cherokee community on the Qualla Boundary in the North Carolina mountains. Bell notes that he chose the tales selectively. Macmillan, 1955; 103 pages.
Call number NC 398.209 BEL View in OCPL catalog → -
Belled Buzzards, Hucksters and Grieving Specters: Appalachian Tales, Strange, True & Legendary
Carden, Gary · 1994
Gary Carden and Nina Anderson retell tales drawn from the folklore and popular culture of the southern Appalachian mountains. Down Home Press of Asheboro published the illustrated collection in 1994, 208 pages.
Call number NC 398.209 CAR View in OCPL catalog → -
North Carolina Legends
Walser, Richard Gaither · 1980
Richard Walser's collection of North Carolina legends, with drawings by Bill Ballard, first published in 1980 by the state Division of Archives and History, which reprinted it in 1984 and 1986. It runs to 76 pages, with references to sources.
Call number NC 398.209 WALSER View in OCPL catalog → -
Nonnulla: Memories, Stories, Traditions, More or Less Authentic
Cheshire, Joseph Blount · 1930
Recollections, stories and traditions set down late in life by Joseph Blount Cheshire (1850 to 1932), born in Tarboro, rector of the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill from 1878 to 1881 and Episcopal Bishop of North Carolina from 1893 until his death. The foreword calls it a cross section of North Carolina life. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1930, 255 pages.
Call number NC 398.23 CHE View in OCPL catalog → -
Judaculla's Handprint: And Other Mysterious Tales From North Carolina
Street, Julia Montgomery · 1975
Julia Montgomery Street, a Concord-born writer of children's stories drawn from North Carolina history, collects legends and unexplained happenings from the state. The title refers to the Cherokee story of Judaculla, master of game, whose leap from his mountain left his handprint on a soapstone boulder near Cullowhee in Jackson County. Illustrated by Harold Rydberg and published in Chapel Hill by Briarpatch Press in 1975, 62 pages.
Call number NC 398.232 STR View in OCPL catalog →
Research help, online and in the room
