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.
The twelve most recently published of the 357 Orange County works at OCPL, each with its description and call number. All 357, with filters by place, theme, and material, in the search →
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Cross & Sampson
Patterson, James · 2026 · Fiction
An Alex Cross thriller by James Patterson with Chapel Hill among its settings alongside Washington, D.C. Bombings, a kidnapping, a missing-persons investigation, terrorism and fathers and sons are its subjects; the Sampson of the title is Cross's longtime partner John Sampson. Published by Little, Brown in 2026.
Call number F PATTERSOChapel HillBlack Life & Civil RightsLaw, Courts & Justice View in OCPL catalog → -
Forged in the Spirit
Haines, Nancy Learned · 2026 · Histories
Nancy Learned Haines tells the story of the Quaker families who left Pennsylvania around 1750 for the Eno River valley near Hillsborough, where they farmed, traded and built a school, and asks how a community committed to peace fared through the unrest of the colonial years. Published by Pleasant Green Books in 2026, 122 pages with bibliography and index. Subjects include Quakers in North Carolina and the history of Hillsborough, Orange County and the Eno River valley.
Call number NC 289.6 HAINESEno RiverChurches & FaithEno & Environment View in OCPL catalog → -
Dark Tales of the Eno River
Cook, David · 2025 · Histories
David Cook collects the grim side of the Eno River's past in Orange and Durham counties: ghost stories, crimes, train wrecks and accidents, including the hanging of rebels near the river in 1771, a sawmill accident said to have started a run of hauntings, and a dance one Valentine's Day that ended badly. Published by The History Press in 2025, 141 pages with illustrations.
Call number 133.109 COOKDurham County (neighboring)Eno & EnvironmentEveryday Life & Traditions View in OCPL catalog → -
Freedom's Howl
Heyes, Eileen · 2025 · Fiction
A picture book set in the Eno River valley of Orange County in 1776. Four red wolf pups are born in a woodland den and spend their first summer and fall learning to hunt and howl with their family, while nearby a young widow, Sally Few, keeps her household going as the Revolution unsettles the countryside. Eileen Heyes wrote the story, published in 2025 by the North Carolina Office of Archives and History with color illustrations and maps, 42 pages.
Call number JF HEYESEno RiverColonial Orange CountyEno & Environment View in OCPL catalog → -
Oathbound
Deonn, Tracy · 2025 · Fiction
Third novel in Tracy Deonn's Legendborn series, young adult fantasy that began with a Black first-year student at UNC-Chapel Hill discovering a secret society descended from King Arthur's knights. In this 2025 installment Bree, cut off from the Order and from her ancestral magic, makes a pact with the Shadow King to sharpen her powers and shield her friends while the divided Round Table fights demons. Deonn is a North Carolina author. 650 pages; for readers 14 and up.
Call number YA F DEONNBlack Life & Civil RightsLiterature & Publishing View in OCPL catalog → -
Tar Heel Bred
Whisnant, Scott · 2025 · Humor
Scott Whisnant's memoir of a life measured out in North Carolina basketball seasons. A former sportswriter, Whisnant writes for readers raised in ACC country who learned the fight song early and treated the conference tournament in Greensboro as the high point of the year, recalling family, friends and the personal milestones that fell alongside Tar Heel games. Subjects include humor and anecdotes as well as the team's history. Published by Bearface Publishing in 2025, 318 pages with photographs.
Call number BIO WHISNANT WHIChapel HillCarolina SportsFamilies, Land & Genealogy 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 → -
Bean Woman
Wynters, Criss · 2024 · Juvenile literature
Criss Wynters's children's book retelling an Occaneechi folk story, published in 2024. Its Orange County connection is the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, based in the northern part of the county.
Call number J 398.208 WYNTERSEveryday Life & TraditionsIndigenous Peoples & Archaeology View in OCPL catalog → -
Bright and tender dark: a novel
Pearson, Joanna · 2024 · Fiction
Joanna Pearson's novel of a cold case at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Karlie Richards was a nineteen-year-old student when she was murdered; decades later her onetime roommate, divorced and in middle age, finds herself drawn back to the crime as online conspiracy theories about it multiply. A psychological thriller with a Chapel Hill setting, published by Bloomsbury in 2024, 275 pages.
Chapel HillLaw, Courts & JusticeSchools & Education 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 → -
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 → -
A Really Strange and Wonderful Time
Maxwell, Tom · 2024
Tom Maxwell's 2024 account of Chapel Hill's alternative rock scene in the 1990s, set against North Carolina's longer musical history. Maxwell writes as a musician who played in that scene, and the book follows the bands, clubs and labels that drew national attention to the town. Subjects include alternative rock music, Chapel Hill, 1991-2000, history and criticism. Published by Hachette, 310 pages with plates.
Call number 780.903 MAXWELLChapel HillArts, Music & PerformanceThe Cat’s Cradle and the “Chapel Hill sound” of the 1990s 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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