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.
North Carolina history 975.6: 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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Breaking Loose Together: The Regulator Rebellion in Pre-Revolutionary North Carolina
Kars, Marjoleine · 2002 · Histories
Marjoleine Kars's history of the Regulator Rebellion of 1766 to 1771, the backcountry uprising against corrupt county officials that ended at the Battle of Alamance. Hillsborough, the Orange County seat, was a center of the Regulators' protests and the scene of their 1770 court riot. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2002, 286 pages with illustrations and maps.
Call number 975.602 KARNorth Carolina (statewide)Colonial Orange CountyThe Regulator crisis, 1766–1771 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.
Art, architecture, music and crafts 700 to 789: 66 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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Nine From North Carolina: An Exhibition of Women Artists
1989
Catalog of a 1989 to 1990 traveling exhibition of nine North Carolina women artists, organized by the North Carolina State Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts and curated by Christie Taylor. The artists are Clara Couch, Carolyn DeMeritt, Paula Garrett, Maud Gatewood, Gina Gilmour, Bryant Holsenbeck, Jan Brooks Loyd, Elizabeth Matheson and Patricia Rieger, with essays by Doris Betts, Jane Kessler and Caroline Hickman. It runs 49 pages with color plates.
Call number NC 704 NINE View in OCPL catalog → -
The North Carolina Portrait Index, 1700-1860
National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of North Carolina · 1963
An illustrated index of portraits of North Carolina people painted between 1700 and 1860, compiled by Laura MacMillan for the North Carolina society of the Colonial Dames of America. The main section reproduces the portraits in photographs, and further sections cover the artists, unillustrated portraits, locations and patrons. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1963; 272 pages.
Call number NC 704.94 NAT View in OCPL catalog → -
Hillsborough Artists Cooperative and Skylight Gallery, 1990-2020
Miller, Jennifer E. · 2021 Foundational
Jennifer E. Miller's account of the Hillsborough Artists Cooperative and its Skylight Gallery across their first thirty years, 1990 to 2020. Topics include art in Hillsborough for that period and the history of both the cooperative and the gallery. Published in 2021, it records a local institution in the town's art scene that would otherwise leave little written trace.
Call number 708.156 MILLER View in OCPL catalog → -
North Carolina Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections
North Carolina Museum of Art · 1998
A handbook to the North Carolina Museum of Art's collections in Raleigh, in its first edition of 1998, edited by Rebecca Martin Nagy with June Spence and introduced by Lawrence J. Wheeler, with contributions from Virginia Burden, John W. Coffey, Joseph P. Covington and others. It runs to ix and 277 pages, illustrated partly in color, with an index; a revised edition of 608 pages followed in 2010.
Call number NC 708.156 NORTH View in OCPL catalog → -
Art for Humanity's Sake: The Story of the Mary Duke Biddle Gallery for the Blind
Stanford, Charles W. · 1976
Charles W. Stanford Jr., who proposed it, tells how the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh opened its gallery for blind visitors in 1966, with a 1964 grant from the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, and let them handle the works. Chapters trace its planning, visitors and influence on other museums, with a sketch of Mrs. Biddle and a list of the collection. Published in 1976; 88 pages.
Call number NC 708.56 STA View in OCPL catalog → -
New Deal Art in North Carolina: The Murals, Sculptures, Reliefs, Paintings, Oils and Frescoes and Their Creators
Davis, Anita Price · 2009
Public art paid for by New Deal programs in 42 North Carolina towns during the Depression, most of it in post offices and courthouses, recorded with the artists who made it by Anita Price Davis, a retired Converse College professor of education. Chapters run town by town from Ahoskie to Wilmington, among them Chapel Hill and Mebane, with 162 photographs and an appendix on federal art projects from 1933 to 1943. McFarland, 2009.
Call number NC 709.73 DAVIS View in OCPL catalog → -
Art in North Carolina: Episodes and Developments, 1585-1970
Foushee, Ola Maie · 1972 Foundational
Ola Maie Foushee's history of the arts in North Carolina from 1585 to 1970, printed in Chapel Hill by Heritage Printers in 1972; 238 pages with illustrations.
Call number NC 709.756 FOU View in OCPL catalog → -
Signs and Wonders: Outsider Art Inside North Carolina
Manley, Roger · 1989
Roger Manley's catalog for an exhibition of twentieth-century outsider and folk art by North Carolina makers, shown at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh from July to October 1989, then at the Hickory Museum of Art and at St. John's Museum of Art in Wilmington through March 1990. It has 135 pages, illustrated partly in color, with references.
Call number NC 709.756 MAN View in OCPL catalog → -
Gardens of Old Hillsborough
1971
Twenty-seven pages with illustrations and a map, guiding a visitor among the gardens and historic buildings of old Hillsborough. A project of the Horticultural Committee of the Hillsborough Historical Society, published in the town in 1971. Topics include gardens and historic buildings at Hillsborough, and the pamphlet sits with the North Caroliniana that local societies produced for the town's tours.
Call number NC 712 GAR View in OCPL catalog → -
The Sarah P. Duke Gardens: A Wonderful Wonder
Glymph, Minnie · 2006
A large-format picture book on the Sarah P. Duke Gardens, some 55 acres of landscaped and wooded grounds at Duke University in Durham that serve as a memorial to Sarah Pearson Angier Duke, wife of Benjamin N. Duke. Minnie Glymph wrote the text; Chris Hildreth and Les Todd took the photographs, many in color. Published in 2006; 142 pages with a bibliography.
Call number NC 712.5 GLYMPH View in OCPL catalog → -
Montrose: Life in A Garden
Goodwin, Nancy · 2005
Nancy Goodwin's month-by-month account of a year in the gardens at Montrose, the nineteenth-century estate in Hillsborough that she and her husband Craufurd moved to in 1977. Beginning in late January and running through the following January, the chapters record what is in bloom and in progress across the more than twenty acres of gardens she developed there, with a map of the grounds. Published by Duke University Press in 2005, 313 pages; this is the e-book edition.
Call number 712.609 GOO View in OCPL catalog → -
Hillsborough River Walk Feasibility Study Report
2000
A feasibility study report from 2000 on a river walk for Hillsborough, a proposed trail along the Eno River through town. Subjects include trail design in Hillsborough. Of interest to anyone following the planning history of the town's Riverwalk and its greenways.
Call number NC 719 HILLSBOR View in OCPL catalog →
Research help, online and in the room
