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.
Science, medicine, agriculture and technology 500 to 639, 650 to 699: 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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From Laurel Hill to Siler's Bog
Terres, John K. · 1969
Naturalist John K. Terres spent nine years walking Mason Farm, the university's biological reserve at Chapel Hill, and set down what he saw of its animal and plant life month by month, January through December. First published by Knopf in 1969, the book was reissued by UNC Press as a Chapel Hill Book, 232 pages with illustrations and maps.
Call number 508.756 TERRESChapel HillEno & EnvironmentFarms & 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.
North Carolina history 975.6: 116 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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Western North Carolina: A History, 1730-1913
Arthur, John Preston · 1973
The seventeen mountain counties of North Carolina, from Alleghany and Ashe to Cherokee and Clay, in John Preston Arthur's history, published in 1914 for the Edward Buncombe Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution in Asheville. Much of it is anecdote and tradition: family histories, duels, courts and schools, Indian history, Daniel Boone and John Sevier, and the Swepson and Littlefield railroad frauds. Reprinted in 1973; 710 pages with portraits.
Call number NC 975.6 ART View in OCPL catalog → -
History of North Carolina
Ashe, Samuel A. · 1971
A two-volume history of North Carolina by Samuel A'Court Ashe, a Confederate captain, lawyer and editor of the Raleigh News and Observer. The first volume, published at Greensboro by Charles L. Van Noppen in 1908, runs from 1584 to 1783; the second, published at Raleigh by Edwards and Broughton in 1925, carries the story from 1783 to 1925 in more than 1,400 pages. Reprinted in 1971 with illustrations, maps and portraits.
Call number NC 975.6 ASH View in OCPL catalog → -
The Black Presence in North Carolina
North Carolina Museum of History · 1978 Foundational
An illustrated booklet from 1978 on the history and culture of African Americans in North Carolina, part of a project of the North Carolina Museum of History, with Jeffrey J. Crow and Robert E. Winters Jr. as co-editors. The 55 pages end with a short bibliography.
Call number NC 975.6 BLA View in OCPL catalog → -
From Ulster to Carolina: The Migration of the Scotch-Irish to Southwestern North Carolina
Blethen, Tyler · 2013 Wider context
H. Tyler Blethen and Curtis W. Wood Jr. trace the migration of Ulster's Scotch-Irish to southwestern North Carolina. First published in 1983, the study was revised in 1998 by the state's Division of Archives and History with the Appalachian Consortium of Boone; this printing of the revised edition, dated about 2013, has 82 pages with illustrations, maps, a bibliography and an index.
Call number NC 975.6 BLETHEN View in OCPL catalog → -
Some Eighteenth Century Tracts Concerning North Carolina
Boyd, William Kenneth · 1973
Pamphlets and papers on North Carolina public affairs from 1740 to 1791, edited with an introduction and notes by William K. Boyd. Among them are pieces on taxing the colonies, Hermon Husband's Regulator tracts 'An Impartial Relation' and 'A Fan for Fanning', and the sermon George Micklejohn preached to Governor Tryon's troops at Hillsborough in September 1768. First issued in 1927 by the North Carolina Historical Commission; reprinted in 1973, 508 pages with facsimiles.
Call number NC 975.6 BOY View in OCPL catalog → -
William Byrd's Histories of the Dividing Line Betwixt Virginia and North Carolina
Byrd, William · 1929
In 1728 commissioners ran the line between Virginia and North Carolina, and William Byrd II wrote two accounts of the survey, set on facing pages: the History of the Dividing Line and the Secret History of the Line, a private version first printed here. William K. Boyd edited them with an introduction and notes for the North Carolina Historical Commission in 1929; xxvii and 341 pages with maps and facsimiles. Dover reissued it in 1967.
Call number NC 975.6 BOY View in OCPL catalog → -
North Carolina and the Coming of the Revolution, 1763-1776
Butler, Lindley S. · 1976 Foundational
North Carolina politics from 1763 to 1776, and the disputes with Britain that carried the colony into the Revolution, in a short study by Lindley S. Butler. It was number 6 in the Bicentennial pamphlet series of the state's Division of Archives and History, published in 1976, 81 pages with illustrations and a bibliography.
Call number NC 975.6 BUT View in OCPL catalog → -
Interesting Revolutionary Incidents and Sketches of Character, Chiefly in the "Old North State"
Caruthers, E. W. · 1856
The Reverend E. W. Caruthers (1793 to 1865) gathered this second series of stories of the Revolution and sketches of the people who lived through it, chiefly in North Carolina, as a continuation of his earlier Revolutionary Incidents. Published in Philadelphia in 1856, 448 pages with folding maps.
Call number NC 975.6 CAR View in OCPL catalog → -
Revolutionary Incidents: and Sketches of Character: Chiefly in the "Old North State"
Caruthers, E. W. · 1854
Eli Washington Caruthers, Presbyterian minister to the Buffalo and Alamance congregations in Guilford County, gathered these accounts of the Revolution in North Carolina and the people caught up in it, with help from David L. Swain and Griffith J. McRee. He presented the war in the state as a civil war. Published in Philadelphia by Hayes and Zell in 1854, 431 pages; a second series followed in 1856.
Call number NC 975.6 CAR View in OCPL catalog → -
Piedmont Soldiers and Their Families
Casey, Cindy H. · 2000
Photographs of Civil War soldiers from the North Carolina Piedmont and their families, compiled by Cindy H. Casey for Arcadia's Civil War History Series. The 128 pages of captioned pictures open with a view of Main Street in Salem about 1866. Published in 2000.
Call number NC 975.6 CASEY View in OCPL catalog → -
Chronology and Documentary Handbook of the State of North Carolina
1978
Published in 1978 as number 33 in Oceana Publications' series of chronologies and documentary handbooks of the states, Robert I. Vexler's North Carolina volume pairs a chronology of events from 1524 to 1977 with a biographical directory of prominent North Carolinians, an outline of the state constitution and a selection of documents, in 151 pages with a bibliography and an index.
Call number NC 975.6 CHR View in OCPL catalog → -
Makers of North Carolina History
Connor, R. D. W. · 1923
Biographical sketches for schoolchildren by R. D. W. Connor, then secretary of the North Carolina Historical Commission, carrying the state's history from Sir Walter Raleigh through George Durant, Cornelius Harnett, William R. Davie, Nathaniel Macon, William A. Graham and Zebulon Vance to Charles D. McIver. Each chapter ends with study questions, and appendices cover the origins of the county names and list the governors. First published in 1911; this printing is dated 1923.
Call number NC 975.6 CON View in OCPL catalog →
Research help, online and in the room
