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Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
- 1860s
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Freedpeople build a church and school at Chapel Hill's West End
After emancipation, Black families kept homes and small farms on Chapel Hill's west end. St. Paul's congregation, first gathered under an arbor in December 1864, built a log church on Merritt Mill Road and bought land in 1878, and in 1866 Benjamin Craig and Green Cordal bought an acre nearby for a freedmen's school.
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First Baptist Church organizes independently
The minute books of the church now called University Baptist record a unanimous vote on September 3, 1865 to let the colored patrons withdraw and organize a church of their own, and note that sixty-one colored members were dismissed that month for the purpose. The new congregation, later First Baptist Church of Chapel Hill, met at first in the old Quaker schoolhouse on Franklin Street under Rev. Eddie H. Cole.
Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
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Quakers open a freedmen's school in Chapel Hill
In 1866 Philadelphia Friends opened a school for Black children in Chapel Hill; by early 1867 it had been running more than half a year with 248 pupils, in a rented house while the freedpeople built a school and house of worship on a fifty-dollar lot the Friends had bought. The school, which came to stand on the land near West Franklin Street and Merritt Mill Road that Benjamin Craig and Green Cordal bought in 1866, merged into Orange County Training School in 1917.
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The AME congregation later called Dickerson Chapel begins worshipping in the old courthouse
The AME congregation later known as Dickerson Chapel moved into the 1790 courthouse building on Queen Street in 1866, sharing it with the freedmen's school the Philadelphia Friends ran there. Lefler and Wager date its formal organization to 1873, and the Friends conveyed the building to the church's trustees in 1886.
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The Methodist conference forms a Hillsborough District, with Hillsborough heading a station of five churches
In 1866 the Methodists created a Hillsborough District, under presiding elder W. H. Bobbitt, and made Hillsborough a station that also took in Cedar Grove, Walnut Grove, Lebanon and New Sharon. W. C. Wilson was pastor.
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Twenty Black members leave First Baptist Church of Hillsborough and organize Mount Bright Baptist Church
Twenty Black members withdrew from First Baptist Church of Hillsborough in 1866 and organized a congregation of their own, named for its first pastor, Rev. Alfred E. Bright. The widow of Governor William A. Graham gave the group the West Union Street site where the congregation still worships.
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Thomas Lynch becomes stated supply at New Hope after James Phillips
Lynch took up the New Hope pulpit after Phillips stopped preaching there at the end of 1865 and served until the winter of 1867.
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Charles Phillips is ordained at New Hope Church in Orange County
Phillips was ordained on 14 April 1866 at Orange County's New Hope Church, which had long been under the pastoral charge of his father James Phillips. Orange Presbytery had convened there on Wednesday, April 11, and ordained Phillips and Calvin H. Wiley during the meeting.
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Calvin H. Wiley is ordained at New Hope
At the last meeting of Orange Presbytery held at New Hope, Calvin H. Wiley was ordained with Charles Phillips, both sine titulo, without a pastoral charge.
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Rev. Job Berry and the Philadelphia Friends open Hillsborough's first school for Black children and adults
Job Berry, who had advertised a fair in September 1865 to raise money for a school, worked with the Friends of Philadelphia to buy the former Orange County courthouse on Queen Street for twelve hundred dollars and open a freedmen's school in it on June 5, 1866. More than three hundred children and adults learned to read and cipher there.
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James Phillips dies in the college chapel
On the morning of March 14, 1867, James Phillips went early to the college chapel to lead morning prayers and was found dead on the rostrum as the bell rang. He had taught at the university since 1826 and was buried in the Chapel Hill Cemetery.
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Job Berry is admitted as a preacher by the A.M.E. Church
Meeting in Greensboro, the church's North Carolina Conference admitted Job Berry on trial and sent him to Mebanesville and Graham, making formal the ministry he had carried on while state law barred Black preachers.
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Hillsborough Methodist Church opens a lending library for its members
Around 1868 the church began a library of religious and general books, many donated by members and townspeople and some bought by Sunday school classes. Books went out on Sunday mornings, and the record book later counted 937 volumes.
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Ned Strowd organizes Terrell Creek Baptist Church
Ned Strowd organized Terrell Creek Baptist Church, a Black congregation, on Atwater Road about two miles south of its later site.
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Six freedmen's schools are running in Orange County
By 1868 six schools for freed people had been set up in the county, paid for mostly by the Freedmen's Bureau and Quaker missions, with Black families giving what they could.
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Henry B. Pratt, a missionary to South America, supplies New Hope
Pratt preached at New Hope for six months with the Hillsborough church. On May 24, 1868, D. I. Craig, John T. Hogan and three women were received and baptized as members.
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Alexander Kirkland, a son of the congregation, supplies New Hope
The Rev. Alexander Kirkland, son of the New Hope elder Joseph Kirkland, supplied the church for part of 1869 and 1870 after Pratt.
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Pleasant Green Methodist Church builds a frame church on the site of its log churches
In 1869 the Pleasant Green congregation in the Eno neighborhood replaced the second of its log churches, the first dating from the 1830s, with a frame building.
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New Hope's present graveyard is begun
Because the old graveyard lay so low that winter graves filled with water, James Newton Craig and elder David Craig chose a dry site a little south of east of the church. His nine-month-old son Vernon, who died on December 31, 1868, was buried there on January 1, 1869 as its first grave.
- 1870s
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Archibald Lynch builds a farmhouse on Mount Hermon Church Road
Around 1870 a rear wing was built for the farmer Archibald Lynch, and about 1890 a small frame I-house was added in front of it.
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Baptists form the Mount Zion Association
The Mount Zion Baptist Association was formed. By 1953 nearly every Baptist church in Orange County belonged to it, replacing the older Sandy Creek Association.
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Mount Sinai Baptist Church is organized
Black Baptists organized Mount Sinai Baptist Church in 1870 with E. H. Cole as first pastor.
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St. Paul joins the African Methodist Episcopal Church
Six years after it began meeting under a grape arbor in 1864, the Chapel Hill Black Methodist congregation now known as St. Paul AME received word in 1870 that it had been accepted into the African Methodist Episcopal Church, headquartered in Philadelphia.
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T. U. Faucett becomes stated supply at New Hope
Thomas U. Faucett served the church as stated supply from 1870 until the fall of 1872.
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Trustees refuse land for a Black school in Chapel Hill
The Chapel Hill school committee of Morgan Closs, W. H. Bunch and H. C. Andrews asked the trustees for two acres on the Pittsboro Road next to the Hubbard lot for a school for Black children, saying friends of education would pay for a schoolhouse. The board declined because the land was under mortgage.
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John T. Hogan and Samuel D. Blackwood are ordained elders at New Hope
The two men were ordained and added to the session. Hogan descended from the early elder John Freeland, and Blackwood from John Craig.
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Bill Crabtree's grandfather builds a log homestead on Damascus Church Road
A log house was raised around 1872 for the grandfather of Bill Crabtree, the later owner. About 1900 a frame I-house with fashionable trim was built in front, and the log house became its rear ell.
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The Hillsborough Presbyterian session asks that members be allowed to withdraw without church trial
The session resolved to ask presbytery to propose to the General Assembly a change in discipline, so that a member living outside the church's standards could leave its communion without a formal trial. After this, discipline cases disappear from the minutes.
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Job Berry is named a delegate to the Republican state convention
The Orange County Republican convention chose Rev. Job Berry as a Hillsborough delegate to the 1872 state convention, which backed Ulysses S. Grant and Governor Tod R. Caldwell.
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St. Matthew's rector Moses Ashley Curtis dies
Moses Ashley Curtis, rector of St. Matthew's for twenty-one years and a botanist of international standing, died at 64. The font and a south window in the church are his memorials.
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Charles Jones Curtis succeeds his father as rector of St. Matthew's
After his ordination to the priesthood, Charles Jones Curtis followed his father, Moses Ashley Curtis, as rector and served until he resigned in 1880.
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Hillsborough Methodist Church finishes paying for its building
The Civil War interrupted work on the brick church John Berry designed and built on West Tryon Street, and the congregation did not finish paying for it until 1874.
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Pleasant H. Dalton becomes stated supply at New Hope
Dalton, who had joined New Hope as a university student in 1842, began supplying the church in August 1874. By his own count at least fifty members were added in his twelve years there.
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Joseph Blount Cheshire marries Annie Huske Webb at St. Matthew's
Joseph Blount Cheshire Jr., later Episcopal bishop of North Carolina, married Annie Huske Webb of Hillsborough at St. Matthew's Church.
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Adolphus W. Mangum joins the faculty of the reopened university
When the university reopened in 1875 Mangum became professor of mental and moral science, history and English language and literature. He taught until he died in Chapel Hill in May 1890 and was buried in the old Chapel Hill Cemetery.
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Mount Bright Baptist Church builds its church in Hillsborough
Mount Bright Baptist Church, the Black Baptist congregation in Hillsborough led by Alfred Bright, erected its church building in 1875.
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St. Matthew's Episcopal Church reworks its entrance tower and adds the spire
In 1875 the west entrance tower of St. Matthew's was reworked and given its slate-covered spire.
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The school board orders a landowner to stop fencing off the Bethany Meeting House school
Told that William Jackson had fenced in the schoolhouse of District 15 at Bethany Meeting House and would not let school be taught, the board warned him to return the lot to the district committee or face legal action.
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A Presbyterian church for Hillsborough's Black members is founded
More than a decade after emancipation, a Presbyterian church for people of color was established on land from the Brodie family at the corner of Orange and Wake streets.
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Charles F. Deems preaches the commencement sermon and receives an honorary degree
At the 1877 commencement, Deems, then pastor of the Church of the Strangers in New York, preached the baccalaureate sermon, and the university conferred on him the honorary Doctor of Laws.
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William C. Claytor, Nettleton G. Craig and Charles W. Johnston are ordained elders at New Hope
Three elders were added to the session. Claytor was a son of the 1859 elder Samuel Claytor; Johnston's grandmother was Mary Cabe, a daughter of Gilbert Strayhorn.
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Hickory Grove Baptist Church is organized
Black families organized Hickory Grove Baptist Church, with C. D. Hackney as first pastor.
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Hillsborough's Black Presbyterians build their church on Orange Street
The congregation built its church about 1878 with some help from white residents. Leading families were the Ellisons, Boldens, Morrows, Richmonds and Webbs; Bill Bolden played the organ and a Rev. White was pastor.
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Joseph Blount Cheshire is assigned to the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill
Ordered deacon at Tarboro on 21 April 1878, Cheshire was assigned by Bishop Thomas Atkinson to the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill at the request of university president Kemp P. Battle. He served his diaconate there under Robert Sutton, rector of the Pittsboro parish.
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Mount Zion AME Church is organized at Martinsville
Lefler and Wager say five Black men, Jack Horner, Bedford Corbett, Richard Jordan, Sam McBroom and Richard Thompson, organized the church about 1878 at Martinsville, probably the Martin farm near Cedar Grove. The congregation's own history dates its first gatherings to about 1869 and says it was known as Poplar Springs, with a pastor by 1878, until it took the Mount Zion AME name about 1880. It bought an acre from S. W. and Margaret J. Hughes in 1882 and moved to its present site about 1927.
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The wife of pastor J. H. Wheeler is buried in front of the Hillsborough Methodist Church
During J. H. Wheeler's four-year pastorate his wife died and was buried in the church's front yard, a grave the church still showed in 1962.
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St. Paul AME buys a church lot from Benjamin and Dilsy Craig
The congregation paid fifty-five dollars on April 15, 1878 for a church lot bought from Benjamin and Dilsy Craig, and was raising money in December 1879 and January 1880 to finish a church there. In 1892 it built its present church across Merritt Mill Road from the earlier one, on land the 1983 Carrboro inventory says the Hargraves and Caldwell families gave about 1890.
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St. Matthew's rings its new bell, a memorial to Confederate dead
A steeple bell given by Mrs. Mary Curtis was rung for the first time for the Easter service. Its inscription remembers John Henry Curtis and the other men of the Orange Light Artillery who died in Confederate service.
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Latta Grove Baptist Church is organized
Jerry M. Latta and others organized Latta Grove Baptist Church about 1879.
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John C. Blake deeds Eno River land to the Catholic diocese
John C. Blake conveyed 15 acres on the Eno River to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Raleigh, decades before any Catholic parish was organized in the county.
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Samuel Kirkland and Leroy Craig are ordained elders at New Hope
The two were added to the session in what Craig in 1891 called the last ordination of elders at New Hope.
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Baptist minister James P. Mason speaks at University Day
At the 1879 University Day exercises, after President Kemp Battle's historical address, short talks were given by the Rev. Joseph Blount Cheshire, the Rev. James Pleasant Mason, the Methodist minister Mr. Heitman and several professors.
- 1880s
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Fairfield Presbyterian Church builds a new Gothic frame church north of Efland
The Fairfield congregation, dating to 1834, put up a new steep-roofed church with Gothic windows in the 1880s, sheathed inside with flush boards.
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Glenn's Grove Baptist Church is organized
Glenn's Grove Baptist Church, a Black congregation, was organized about 1880 with Henry Fuller as first pastor.
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Harmony Baptist Church builds its frame meeting house northwest of Hillsborough
The one-room weatherboarded church on stone piers, with a double door and shuttered windows, was built in the 1880s.
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Orange Cross Roads Baptist Church is organized
Orange Cross Roads Baptist Church, a Black Baptist congregation, was organized about 1880. It built its church in 1923.
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Chapel Hill's AME congregation issues a public appeal for money to finish its house of worship
Rev. G. W. Offley, preacher in charge of the African Methodist Episcopal church in Chapel Hill, signed a circular dated January 5, 1880 asking the public to help the congregation complete its house of worship and naming Brother George Trice to solicit subscriptions. The Chapel Hill Ledger printed it in full on January 10, 1880.
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Joseph Blount Cheshire is ordained priest two years after coming to Chapel Hill
Cheshire was ordained priest on 30 May 1880 by Bishop Theodore B. Lyman in St. Paul's Church, Winston, two years after going to Chapel Hill. While based at the Chapel of the Cross he also organized a mission at Durham and built a church there named for St. Philip the Deacon.
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Joseph Blount Cheshire leaves Chapel Hill to become rector at Charlotte
In the spring of 1881 Cheshire accepted a call to St. Peter's Church in Charlotte, ending about three years at the Chapel of the Cross. He was elected bishop of North Carolina in 1893.
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Joseph W. Murphy serves as rector of St. Matthew's
Joseph W. Murphy was rector of the parish for eleven years. His family later gave the brass alms basin in his memory.
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St. Matthew's vestry asks Joseph Blount Cheshire to be its rector
The vestries of St. Matthew's and the Burlington church asked Joseph Blount Cheshire to take charge of their parishes. He would have come to his wife's home town, but Bishop Lyman wanted him to stay in Chapel Hill.
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Hillsborough Presbyterian Church shares a pastor with the Chapel Hill church
During J. L. Williamson's short pastorate of 1882-83 the Hillsborough church was grouped with the Presbyterian church at Chapel Hill.
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The Mount Zion congregation buys an acre for its first church
The Black congregation then known as Poplar Springs, which had met in a schoolhouse and on members' farms, bought a one-acre lot from S. W. Hughes and Margaret J. Hughes for $10. Its first church there was a small frame building with benches made by members.
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Cross Roads Baptist Church is organized as Betheden
W. P. Roberts and S. S. Cates led the founding of a Baptist church first called Betheden and later Cross Roads, with R. A. Patterson as first pastor. It built a 300-seat church in 1910.
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Hillsborough Methodists report their Sunday school's hundredth anniversary
In 1884 H. N. Brown reported that the Hillsborough Methodist Sunday school had celebrated its centennial; it then had thirty-five pupils and seven teachers and a library of church literature.
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Pleasant H. Dalton is installed as pastor of New Hope
After nearly ten years as stated supply, Dalton was installed as the church's pastor.
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Mrs. William L. DeRosset and others give St. Matthew's a Bible
Mrs. William L. DeRosset, with family and friends, presented the church's Bible as an Easter offering.
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A rector's chair is given to St. Matthew's in memory of Sarah Mary Matthews Murphy
Her husband and children gave the rector's chair on the south side of the altar in memory of Sarah Mary Matthews Murphy.
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Dickerson's Chapel trustees buy the old courthouse from the Philadelphia Friends
Trustees of the Philadelphia Friends' association for the relief of freedmen sold the old Baptist church lot, with the former courthouse on it, to the trustees of Hillsborough's African Methodist Episcopal church for $800. The congregation had worshipped and kept school there for twenty years.
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The annual YMCA convention meets at Chapel Hill
The Young Men's Christian Association's annual convention met at Chapel Hill, with sessions in Gerrard Hall, reports from associations around the state and a Sunday talk to townspeople in the Baptist church. Professor J. W. Gore was chosen its president.
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Haywood Craig, a Black man, is received into the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church
The session received Haywood Craig on profession of faith; the book records him under a heading for the church's Black members.
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Pleasant H. Dalton's pastorate at New Hope is dissolved amid a divided session
Dalton offered his resignation in February 1886, but most of the congregation would not accept it; the relation was dissolved that December after the session fell into disagreement. The church stood vacant about a year while a presbytery commission settled the trouble.
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Berry's Grove Baptist Church is organized
Berry's Grove Baptist Church was organized in 1887 with A. T. Hord as first pastor and built a 400-seat church the next year.
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Professor Thomas Hume buys the house across from the Baptist church
Burned out of the president's house, Professor Thomas Hume bought the West Franklin Street house opposite the Baptist church. It had been home to the Baptist minister Needham Byron Cobb until the congregation turned its school building into a parsonage.
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The school board pays H. O. Strain for an acre to build the Orange Church school
The board allowed H. O. Strain $20 for one acre on which to build a schoolhouse for white children of the Orange Church district.
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James L. Currie is installed as pastor of New Hope
Currie, who had preached there briefly in 1874, was installed as pastor; the relation was dissolved in November 1889 after new troubles in the session.
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A carved eagle lectern at the Chapel of the Cross memorializes Mary Ruffin Smith
A lectern topped by a carved wooden eagle was placed in the Chapel of the Cross nave in memory of Mary Ruffin Smith, with an inscription on its base dated 1888.
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Piney Grove Baptist Church is organized
W. M. Ray organized Piney Grove Baptist Church, a Black congregation, and served as its first pastor.
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The school board forms Bethel district for the Bethel Church community
On a petition from the Bethel Church community the board created a new district, Bethel, No. 43.
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Hillsborough church men organize a Young Men's Christian Association at the Presbyterian manse
Men from the town's churches met at the Presbyterian manse on a Monday night, adopted a constitution and bylaws, and elected Charles M. Parks president and Joseph A. Harris secretary. The next meeting was called for the manse on December 10.
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First Baptist Church of Hillsborough repairs its church and ties the walls with rods
In 1889 the Romanesque Revival brick church at 201 West King Street, which John Berry finished by 1868, was fully repaired, including reinforcing its walls with rods.
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Mount Adar Baptist Church is organized
W. H. Whitted and A. J. Compton organized Mount Adar Baptist Church. A. T. Hord, first pastor at Berry's Grove two years earlier, was its first pastor too.
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The Presbyterian church buys the Phillips house on East Franklin Street for a manse
After Charles Phillips left Chapel Hill and died in 1889, the Chapel Hill Presbyterian church bought his former home at 513 East Franklin Street and made it the minister's residence. Bryant dates the purchase to 1891.
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Orange Presbytery decides an estate dispute that had divided New Hope's session
A quarrel over a member's settlement of an estate, which Craig thought belonged in the civil courts, had been brought before the session. An adjourned meeting of the presbytery decided it, and the ruling deepened the split in the session.
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Orange Presbytery removes all six active elders of New Hope
Member David A. Claytor had carried a petition, which most of the members signed, calling on the active elders to resign; three agreed and three refused. Meeting at the church, the presbytery heard the parties, dissolved all six elders' relation to the church and ordered a new election.
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New Hope re-elects three of its removed elders
With the Rev. F. H. Johnston presiding, the congregation chose Charles W. Johnston, John T. Hogan and William C. Claytor again, and they were reinstalled before a large congregation.
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Sans Souci is sold at auction and passes to Episcopal Bishop Lyman
Sans Souci was sold at public auction to a bidder named Parrish, who at once assigned his bid to the Episcopal bishop of North Carolina, Bishop Lyman of Raleigh.
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Chapel Hill's new Methodist church is dedicated
During the centennial commencement Bishop W. W. Duncan preached at night in the new Methodist church, a collection cleared its $800 debt, and the church was dedicated.
- 1890s
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Chestnut Ridge Methodist Church is organized
Chestnut Ridge Methodist Church was organized about 1890 and counted 270 members in 1953.
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Harris Grove Baptist Church is built near Rougemont
Harris Grove Baptist Church in northeastern Orange County builds a front-gable frame church with a bell tower around 1890. Its cemetery holds burials from before 1920; the church stood empty by 1993.
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Louis H. Hackney is pastor of Rock Hill Baptist Church on West Franklin Street
Louis H. Hackney, listed as a minister and living in Chapel Hill with his wife Lara Edwards Hackney by 1880, was pastor of Rock Hill Baptist Church on West Franklin Street by 1890. The church, organized in 1865, later moved to Roberson Street as First Baptist Church.
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The Chapel of the Cross adds a chancel and vestry
A chancel and a vestry room were built onto the rear of the 1848 Chapel of the Cross, replacing its original back wall. The vestry kept its corner fireplace, paneled wainscot and built-in cupboards into the 1970s.
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James E. Fogartie is installed as pastor of New Hope and Chapel Hill
Fogartie was called to New Hope jointly with the Chapel Hill church. About the same time the synod's evangelists W. D. Morton and a Mr. Maxwell held a meeting at New Hope that added a number of members.
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Dickerson's Chapel remodels the old courthouse church
The AME congregation remodeled its building, the county's former courthouse, five years after buying it.
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Hillsborough Methodist Church buys its first parsonage from C. M. Parks
The church bought about nine-tenths of an acre at Union and Churton streets, with a house that became its first parsonage. The trustees were H. N. Brown Sr., S. M. Gattis, J. A. Harris, O. J. Forrest and James Hedgepeth.
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Harvey's Chapel AME Church is organized
Families who had met as a brush-arbor congregation bought land and founded Harvey's Chapel AME Church in 1892 on a ridge about three miles southwest of Hillsborough. Lefler and Wager dated it about 1903, named Avery Harvey and Harpy Elkins as organizers and the Rev. Sandy Aiken as first pastor, and listed it as a CME church, though it is AME.
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Mildred C. Cameron gives St. Matthew's a new altar and reredos
Miss Mildred C. Cameron gave the altar and reredos in memory of Paul C. Cameron, Rebecca Graham and Pauline Sheppard.
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St. Paul AME congregation builds its present church on Merritt Mill Road
St. Paul AME, the first all-Black congregation in Chapel Hill, put up the church that still stands in 1892, across Merritt Mill Road from the site of its first building near the old Quaker school.
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The Hillsborough Presbyterian Church is stuccoed and given Gothic windows and a shingled tower
In 1892 the 1816 brick church was covered with scored stucco and given pointed-arch windows, a gabled roof and a shingled entrance tower with a spire. A two-story rear wing was probably added at the same time.
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A brass altar rail is given to St. Matthew's in memory of Mildred Cameron
At Christmas Miss Margaret Mordecai gave a brass altar rail in memory of Miss Mildred Cameron, who had given the altar earlier that year.
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Lee's Chapel Baptist Church is organized
William H. Standfield organized Lee's Chapel Baptist Church, a Black congregation, and was its first pastor.
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Forest fire destroys Eno Presbyterian Church
Wind-driven woods fires on Saturday, April 1, 1893 burned the Eno Presbyterian church and its session house at the old site near the river. The loss preceded the congregation's move to Cedar Grove, where it built again in 1897 to 1899.
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Walnut Grove Methodist Church dedicates its frame church
The congregation began a frame church in 1891 on land given by Anthony W. Cole, replacing the log building it had used since the 1840s, and dedicated it on October 29, 1893. The frame church served until the stone church of 1937 to 1942.
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Albert Long, a Black man, joins the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church by letter from New Hope
Albert Long transferred his membership by certificate from New Hope Presbyterian Church, one of two Black members the book names as received after the Civil War.
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Anne Roulhac gives St. Matthew's an oak litany desk
Miss Anne Roulhac gave an oak litany desk in memory of her niece Katherine R. Hamilton.
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Ebenezer Baptist Church is organized
Ebenezer Baptist Church was organized and built its first church in 1896, with Dalphus Crabtree as first pastor. A 300-seat building replaced it in 1952.
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Eno Presbyterian builds at Cedar Grove
The replacement church was constructed over three years.
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Samuel Paxon Watters serves fifteen years as rector of St. Matthew's
Samuel Paxon Watters led the parish from 1897 to 1912. His wife, an invalid through most of those years, was counted among the most useful women in the diocese.
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Chapel Hill's Congregational church sells its building and leaves the village
The Congregational church, which Wilson Caldwell had joined and where Battle gave Caldwell's eulogy in July 1898 at the pastor's request, sold its church building and schoolhouse and left Chapel Hill soon after Caldwell's death.
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Cotton Chapel CME Church, the forerunner of St. Joseph CME, was organized
Chapel Hill members of the Colored Methodist Episcopal church, who had worshipped at Hamlet Chapel in Pittsboro, formed their own congregation named for founder Henry Cotton. Its first building later burned and was rebuilt as a frame church.
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Louis H. Hackney becomes principal of the Quaker School
Louis H. Hackney served as principal of Chapel Hill’s Quaker school from 1898 to 1912.
Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1900s
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A Black congregation builds Neville's Chapel outside Chapel Hill
An African American congregation outside Chapel Hill built the small frame sanctuary now called Neville's Chapel (United Church of Christ) in the early twentieth century. A cornerstone on the site names an earlier Strowd Grace Church and its pastor, H. B. Baldwin.
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Damascus Christian Church builds a Gothic Revival frame church
Damascus Congregational Christian Church southwest of Chapel Hill builds a frame church with Gothic Revival details around 1900; its cemetery lies beside it.
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Mount Hermon, Bethel and Crossroads Baptist congregations build new churches
With farm prices rising after 1900, three established rural Baptist congregations each replaced their meeting houses with new buildings in the first decade of the century.
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St. Matthew's receives a brass alms basin in memory of Rev. Joseph W. Murphy
Dr. Samuel W. Murphy and Mrs. Walter E. Stumph, the former rector's brother and daughter, gave a brass alms basin in his memory.
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The Texas community builds Jeffries Cross Church and Martin's Chapel Baptist Church
Around the turn of the twentieth century the community built two churches on land given by Joe and Levi Jeffries and by Sam Martin, in place of the circuit riding preachers who had served the settlement before. Social life in the community turned on its churches and its school.
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Hillsborough Baptist Church ordains Robert P. Walker
The church ordained one of its own, Robert P. Walker, to the Baptist ministry, the first of the ordinations the book lists for the congregation.
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Fairfield Presbyterian Church is remodeled with pointed Gothic windows
The one-story frame church near Cedar Grove, built about 1834, kept its gable-front shape but got pointed-arch windows and doorway in a 1901 renovation.
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Thomas F. Lloyd gives a church lot facing his mill to Chapel Hill's four congregations
Lloyd offered a Weaver Street lot to the Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists and Methodists of Chapel Hill. The first two gave up their rights, and the Baptists and Methodists built Union Chapel on it in 1901 or 1902, a frame building about twenty by thirty feet.
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Jesse Ruffin, coachman and stagecoach driver, dies
Jesse Ruffin died in his nineties at his grandson Lindsey Faucette's house, out between Hillsborough and Durham. The Durham Sun remembered him as Judge Ruffin's servant and later Paul Cameron's, and a stagecoach driver before the railroad came; he was carried to Hillsborough by train for burial.
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A Pilgrim Holiness congregation is organized in West Hillsborough
A Holiness congregation, later the Pilgrim Holiness Church of West Hillsborough, was organized in 1902. It had a 250-seat building and 27 members in 1953.
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Charles E. Maddry is pastor of First Baptist Church, Hillsborough
Charles Edward Maddry was pastor of the First Baptist Church in Hillsborough while finishing his studies at the University of North Carolina.
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Charles E. Maddry is ordained at the Chapel Hill Baptist Church
Charles Edward Maddry was ordained to the Baptist ministry at the Chapel Hill Baptist Church, now University Baptist Church.
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Baptists organize Union Chapel in West End
On land Thomas Lloyd deeded for churches, Baptists and Methodists shared a small Weaver Street building on alternate Sundays, and the Baptists organized as Union Chapel with seventeen charter members; the congregation became Venable Baptist in 1911 and Carrboro Baptist in 1914.
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Mount Bright Baptist Church's first building burns
Fire destroyed Mount Bright Baptist Church's original building, on the lot Susan Graham had given the congregation. The 2014 Hillsborough Historic District documentation places that first church on South Churton Street near the Eno, before the congregation moved to West Union Street early in the twentieth century.
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William D. Moss becomes pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Chapel Hill
Coming from pastorates in Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, William Dygnum Moss arrived in North Carolina in 1903 to lead the Presbyterian Church of Chapel Hill. Apart from six years in Washington, he served the congregation until his death in 1932.
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Hillsborough Methodist Church buys town lot 94 and its house for a new parsonage
The church bought lot 94, with a one-story five-room house, from James Webb, son of Dr. James Webb, and used it as the parsonage. The lot later held the 1958 parsonage.
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Efland Baptist Church is organized
Baptists at Efland organized a church in 1904. It had 55 members in 1953.
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H. S. Bradshaw returns to the Hillsborough Presbyterian pulpit for a 33-year second pastorate
Bradshaw, pastor from 1894 to 1900, came back in 1905 and stayed until 1938, giving him thirty-nine years in all, the longest service in the church's history. He is buried in the churchyard.
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Efland Methodist Church is organized
Methodists at Efland organized a church and built it the same year.
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Gains Chapel AME Church is organized at Efland
Robert Watson, Shurman Morrow and Brown Wright led the organization of Gains Chapel, an African Methodist Episcopal church at Efland, about 1906.
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Mount Bright Baptist Church is rebuilt
Three years after the fire, Mount Bright's members raised a new church; the Rev. Alvis Whitted was then the pastor. The congregation's present church on West Union Street dates from 1979.
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Charles E. Maddry marries Emma Parker at Hillsborough Baptist Church
The former pastor Charles E. Maddry married Emma Parker, daughter of church members T. B. and Penelope Parker, in the Hillsborough Baptist church. Hight C. Moore and the pastor A. C. Hamby performed the ceremony.
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Eno Methodist Church is founded in West Hillsborough
Eno Methodist Church began with services upstairs in the Eno Cotton Mill's company store; in 1908 Allen Ruffin gave land in West Hillsborough and the frame church went up. It had 147 members in 1953.
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The Eno Methodist congregation builds its church on land given by Allen Ruffin
The congregation formed for Eno Cotton Mill workers first met in an upper room of a mill building. In 1908 it moved into a simple front-gabled frame church with pointed-arch windows and a small belfry, on land Ruffin donated facing the mill across the railroad tracks.
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Efland Presbyterian Church is organized
Presbyterians at Efland organized a church and built a 150-seat building in 1910.
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Gerrard Hall is refitted and daily chapel resumes for every undergraduate
With money Venable got from the legislature, Gerrard Hall's interior was renovated so that all undergraduates fit, and Dean Graham set a half-hour program before noon with ministers, faculty, trustees and other guest speakers. Upperclassmen had been excused from chapel for want of seats.
- 1910s
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Carrboro Methodist Church is organized
Methodists in the mill village that became Carrboro organized a church in 1910 with W. A. Stanbury as first pastor.
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Pleasant Green Methodist Church completes its present Gothic frame church
The congregation finished a steep-gabled frame church with Gothic windows and door in 1910, replacing the 1869 building.
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St. Matthew's Episcopal Church builds its present rectory across St. Mary's Road
St. Matthew's built a one-and-a-half-story frame rectory on the triangular lot across St. Mary's Road from the church around 1910. The parish had owned the lot since 1869, and rectors have lived there since then.
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Student YMCA members run eight Sunday schools around Chapel Hill
In 1910-11 the university YMCA organized Sunday schools at Calvander, Clark's Chapel, Williams' Chapel, Ephesus, Mount Carmel, Orange Church, Rankin's Chapel and Smith's Level, enrolling 321 pupils.
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The Damascus Church School is built
A one-story frame school is built near Damascus Church southwest of Chapel Hill around 1910.
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The First Pentecostal Holiness Church of West Hillsborough is organized
A. G. Cannady, Charles Martin, R. S. Andrews and others organized a Pentecostal Holiness church in West Hillsborough, with Cannady as first pastor. Its 1953 building dated from 1948.
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A Christian Church congregation is organized in Chapel Hill
The Christian Church congregation later called United Congregational Christian Church was organized in Chapel Hill and built its church in 1914.
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The Chapel of the Cross builds a new rectory and parish house
Under its rector, the Rev. Homer Worthington Starr, the Chapel of the Cross parish added a new rectory and a parish house to its East Franklin Street property.
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David K. Blackwood is moved from a family burying ground to New Hope churchyard
In 1912 the remains of David K. Blackwood, who had died in 1859, were taken from the family graveyard and reburied at New Hope Presbyterian Church. His marble headstone records the move.
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Union Baptist Church becomes Venable Baptist Church
Once the Methodists stopped meeting there around 1910, the chapel was known as Union Baptist Church. In 1912 the congregation took the name of the newly incorporated town of Venable.
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Wade's Temple is organized at Efland
Wade's Temple, a United Holy Church congregation at Efland, was organized in 1912 with George Wade as first pastor and built its church in 1915.
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Abe and Annie B. Mebane sell a lot in west Hillsborough to the trustees of Mebane Chapel
For $25 the Mebanes sold a 30-by-40-foot lot at the corner of Union Street, opposite the later Central High School, to trustees Elisha Williams and Arthur Hood. The chapel was named in their memory.
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Carr Methodist Church is organized
Carr Methodist Church was organized in 1913 and built a church in 1915.
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Mebane Chapel is organized in Hillsborough
Mebane Chapel, a United Holy Church congregation in Hillsborough, was organized in 1913 and built a 250-seat church the next year.
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Carrboro Methodists build their first church
Organized in 1910 as a mission of the Chapel Hill Methodists, the congregation met in the public school until early 1914, when it built a plain frame church on the large lot east of the school, later the Britt Building site. From about 1900 the town's Methodists had shared Union Chapel with the Baptists.
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Mebane Chapel builds its church in Hillsborough under its first pastor, B. F. Alston
A year after the United Holy Church congregation organized, it put up its chapel, seating about 200, with thirty-five members and Rev. B. F. Alston as first pastor.
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Venable Baptist Church becomes Carrboro Baptist Church
In 1914, the year after the town was renamed for Julian S. Carr, the Baptist congregation changed its name again, to Carrboro Baptist Church.
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White Oak Grove Baptist Church is organized
Charles Wells and William Thompson were leaders of White Oak Grove Baptist Church, a Black congregation organized about 1914.
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Carr Methodist Church builds its Gothic Revival frame church
Two years after organizing, the Carr Methodist congregation builds a modest frame church with Gothic Revival touches on NC 49 at Carr.
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Flat Rock AME Church is organized
Flat Rock, an African Methodist Episcopal congregation, was organized about 1915 and built a 300-seat church in 1952.
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Flat Rock church builds its frame church at St. Mary's and New Sharon Church roads
Soon after the congregation formed in 1915, members of Flat Rock church built a one-story frame church in a plain Gothic style at the corner of St. Mary's and New Sharon Church roads, the center of one of two Black settlements that grew up along the road after emancipation.
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St. Paul's A.M.E. Church widens its sanctuary by one bay
A growing congregation led to the widening of the 1892 frame church. Brick veneer went on in the 1950s, but the belfry and steeple kept their original look.
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The old Episcopal rectory is said to be cut into sections and moved to North Street
Local tradition holds that around 1915 the Episcopal rectory, a two-room house of about 1850 later enlarged into an H shape, was sawn into pieces and moved to North Street, where the parts became the small houses at 408, 410 and 412.
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A Christian Church congregation is organized near Mebane
The congregation later called Mebane Congregational Christian Church was organized on May 16, 1915, with W. C. Clements, pastor of the Christian church in Chapel Hill, as first pastor. Its building was finished in 1931.
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William D. Benton serves sixteen years as rector of St. Matthew's
William D. Benton was rector for sixteen years, the longest single tenure the book records after Moses Ashley Curtis. His wife directed the choir at the 1924 centennial.
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West Hill Baptist Church is organized in West Hillsborough
J. F. McDuffie and S. W. Oldham led the organization of West Hill Baptist Church, and Oldham became its first pastor. The book dates its building to May 1, 1920.
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The Orange County Red Cross grants New Hope Church a branch
The chapter's executive committee read and granted New Hope Church's application to form a Red Cross branch on September 7, 1917, and filed Cedar Grove's certificate of organization at the same meeting. By December New Hope was sending surgical dressings to Hillsborough for shipment with Cedar Grove's.
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Baptist pastor S. W. Oldham and his wife nurse the sick in the flu epidemic
During the influenza epidemic the Baptist pastor S. W. Oldham and his wife cared for the sick of Hillsborough, a neighbor recalled in the Baptist paper Charity and Children.
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The Temple of Truth is organized
Henry Thompson, R. C. Turner and others organized the Temple of Truth, a United Holy Church congregation, and built its church in 1918.
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A four-church committee raises $504 for Jewish war relief
About the middle of August 1918 a campaign for the Jewish Relief Fund, run by men from the Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian and Episcopal churches, raised $504.
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Palmer Grove Methodist Church is organized
A revival that began on August 4, 1918 in the new Palmer's Grove schoolhouse, about three and a half miles northwest of Hillsboro, closed with the organizing of a Methodist church with seventeen members; the people meant to build a church soon. Lefler and Wager name E. T. Blakely, R. T. Murdock and T. H. Yates among its leaders.
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Orange County's new Board of Health orders churches, schools and theatres closed and forbids all meetings
After the state Council of Defense warned county chairmen of the spread of Spanish influenza, they formed a County Board of Health, which on October 7 ordered the closing of all churches, schools and theatres and forbade meetings of every kind, the disease having already broken out in the community. Red Cross members carried most of the relief work that followed.
- 1920s
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Alston Grove Congregational Church builds its frame church near White Cross
The Alston Grove Congregational Church near White Cross builds a front-gable frame church around 1920 beside its cemetery.
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Efland Methodist Church builds a brick Gothic Revival church
The Efland Methodist congregation builds a brick church in the Gothic Revival style on US 70 around 1920.
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Eno Methodist Church adds rear classrooms used for West Hillsborough school classes
A side-gabled addition built about 1920 gave the church its T plan and held classrooms where early West Hillsborough school classes met, before the West End School was built on Bellevue Avenue.
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Mars Hill Baptist Church builds a Gothic Revival frame church
Mars Hill Baptist Church on NC 57 north of Hillsborough builds a frame Gothic Revival church in the 1920s, next to its cemetery.
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Palmer's Grove Methodist Church builds a frame church
Two years after it was organized in the Palmer's Grove schoolhouse, the Methodist congregation northwest of Hillsborough had its modest front-gabled frame church, which the 1993 county survey dates to 1920.
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The Five Forks meeting house north of Cedar Grove
The 1993 county survey recorded a small front-gable frame building at Five Forks, north of Cedar Grove, as Five Forks Church and estimated it at about 1920. It was most likely the old pack barn owned by Mr. Laws where Five Forks Baptist Church began meeting in 1952 and was organized in 1953, until its new church was dedicated in 1967.
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The Hillsborough Methodist parsonage is remodeled and raised to two stories
Under pastor J. E. Blalock the one-story parsonage on lot 94 was remodeled with a second story added. It served until 1956.
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The Sparrow family takes over a Blackwood farm near Mount Carmel Church Road
A farm first held by the Blackwood family passed to the Sparrows in the 1920s. It keeps a much-changed two-story house and a good group of log outbuildings.
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Mount Olive Baptist Church is organized at Efland
Black Baptists at Efland organized Mount Olive Baptist Church and built a church the same year.
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The rebuilt Presbyterian church on Franklin Street is dedicated as Sprunt Memorial
The Presbyterian church at 209 East Franklin Street, remodeled in 1919-1920 mostly at the expense of James Sprunt as a memorial to his wife, Luola Murchison Sprunt, was dedicated as the Sprunt Memorial Presbyterian Church. William D. Moss was its pastor.
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Toney and William Strayhorn begin Carrboro Baptist's brick church
When the Rev. J. B. Davis called for full-time services, the Baptists traded their lot for a larger Durham Hosiery lot on North Greensboro Street and hired the Strayhorns, who laid the foundation and ground-floor walls in 1921. Money ran short and work stopped until 1924, a break visible in two shades of brick.
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Under rector Alfred Lawrence, the Chapel of the Cross asks Hobart Upjohn to design a new church
The vestry, led by its new rector Alfred Lawrence, asked church architect Hobart B. Upjohn to design a larger building linked to the old chapel by a cloister, after a 1920 diocesan resolution called for enlarging the church to serve the university.
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White Cross AME Church builds its present church
White Cross AME Church builds a new church in 1921; the congregation refaced it in brick veneer in 1958.
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Charles E. Maddry urges the faculty to add religious instruction
At Harry W. Chase's invitation, Maddry, a university graduate just back from an Austin pastorate to lead the Baptist State Convention, met the faculty and described the University of Texas plan, under which denominations paid Bible teachers whose courses earned university credit. No decision was taken; Chase sent the question to the faculty committee on educational policy.
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Bethlehem Presbyterian Church builds a Classical Revival church at Oaks
In 1922 the Bethlehem Presbyterian congregation at Oaks built a church fronted by a tall portico on square columns, with dentils along the eaves and large nine-over-nine windows. The congregation dates from early in the nineteenth century, and the form says its church has been replaced at least three times.
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McDuffie Memorial Baptist Church is organized
J. F. McDuffie and Mr. and Mrs. J. O. Franklin organized a Baptist church named for McDuffie, who became its first pastor. It built a 130-seat church the same year.
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New Bethel Methodist Church builds a frame church near Rougemont
New Bethel Methodist in northeastern Orange County builds a frame church with a recessed entrance in 1922.
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Chapel Hill Baptists build a Neoclassical church at Franklin and Columbia streets
Leaving their church a few blocks west, the Baptists built a tan brick and stone church with an Ionic portico on a raised basement at the corner of West Franklin and South Columbia streets, facing the campus. Frank Milburn designed it, probably his last Chapel Hill job.
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The faculty turns down church-paid Bible teachers at the university
Answering the churches, the faculty committee on educational policy, in a report drafted with Chase, refused to place instructors on campus who owed their posts and pay to a denomination, and warned that such a program would cut into the work of the church colleges. It offered instead Bible courses taught from a literary and historical standpoint by faculty the university chose.
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Carrboro's old schoolhouse is moved and split between the Methodist parsonage and church
The Carrboro school replaced by the new graded school was being moved in March 1923. Part became the Methodist parsonage at 114 West Main Street, which served until the Methodists built a new parsonage on Oak Street in 1955, and part was added to the Methodist church for Sunday school rooms, with John T. Squires as contractor.
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Church leaders spend a day with Chase and the faculty on teaching religion at the university
Baptist, Presbyterian, Moravian, Episcopal and Methodist leaders met in President Chase's office with the faculty committee on educational policy. All favored nonsectarian Bible courses; after a day of argument over who would choose and pay the teachers, the churchmen agreed on courses taught off campus by teachers the denominations selected, with credit from the university.
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Carrboro Baptist Church completes its brick church at Greensboro and Main
The mill-town congregation borrowed $50,000 to build a brick church at the corner of Greensboro and Main streets, paying off the debt in 1942; the building is now the Town's Century Center.
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First Baptist Church of Hillsborough replaces its steeple
In 1924 the steeple of the First Baptist Church at West King and South Wake streets was replaced; the bell tower now carries a tall four-sided copper steeple.
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St. Matthew's Church celebrates the hundredth anniversary of its organization
The parish marked a century since its 1824 founding with an evening service. Speakers included Samuel S. Nash of Tarboro, and two great-great-granddaughters of Thomas Ruffin, who gave the site, attended.
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Union Chapel is taken down and its materials go into McDuffie Baptist Church
Once the brick Carrboro Baptist Church was finished, the old frame chapel was dismantled and its materials used to build a church on N.C. 86 north of Chapel Hill, named for early Carrboro Baptist minister McDuffie.
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Alfred Lawrence helps found the Chapel Hill School of Religion
Lawrence took part in organizing the Chapel Hill School of Religion in 1925-26; funded by the town's churches, it opened its first non-credit courses in the fall of 1926. His papers hold material on it from 1925 and 1926.
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The new Chapel of the Cross church is consecrated
The Upjohn building, from then on called the Church, was consecrated during Alfred Lawrence's rectorship. The parish timeline notes that male students in the campus ministry resisted including women students.
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Alfred Lawrence publicly opposes fundamentalist attacks on teaching evolution
The Chapel of the Cross rector took a public stand against fundamentalist efforts to bar the teaching of evolution in public schools, introducing a diocesan resolution against limits on freedom of thought, teaching and research.
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Former students place a memorial tablet to the Nash sisters and Sarah Kollock in the Presbyterian church
Students of the girls' school kept by Sally and Maria Nash and their relative Sarah Kollock put up a tablet in their memory on the wall of the Hillsborough Presbyterian sanctuary.
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Black farmers Joe B. Brooks and John W. Jones organize Jones Grove Missionary Baptist Church
African American farmers Joe Bethel Brooks and John William Jones founded the Jones Grove congregation north of Hillsboro. Its members were close to Lea's (now Lee's) Chapel Baptist Church at Cedar Grove, where the Brooks family lived.
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Mount Sinai Baptist Church raises money for the new church it is building
The Black congregation on Mount Sinai Road held a rally for the benefit of its new church, then under construction, asking men for $2.50 and women for $1.50.
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