Chronology

Hugh McAden preaches to the Eno Presbyterian settlers

On August 10, 1755 the missionary Hugh McAden preached at Eno to a Presbyterian community already settled near the river, southeast of present Cedar Grove; the congregation counts its beginning from these years. The settlers asked Hanover Presbytery for supply preachers in 1756, and by church tradition the congregation was formally organized during the Synod mission of 1764.

Subject: Eno Presbyterian Church

Henry Pattillo leaves the Hawfields and Eno churches

Pattillo, who came to the Hawfields and Eno churches in 1765, left in 1774. The New Hope families still belonged to the Hawfields then, and Craig believed Pattillo had organized New Hope church in its first meetinghouse.

Subject: Eno Presbyterian Church · Hawfields Presbyterian Church · New Hope Presbyterian Church

The Allison family settles at Cedar Grove

The Allison family settles the Cedar Grove area in the late eighteenth century, and other families follow. Allisons still lived there when the survey was made.

Joseph Dunn Hughes keeps a school in the Eno Church community

Pender lists a school run by Joseph Dunn Hughes near Eno Presbyterian Church in 1785, the earliest of the Hughes family schools that later produced Cedar Grove Academy.

Subject: Hughes Academy (Cedar Grove Academy)

The John Paisley Hughes House is built at Cedar Grove

The oldest part of the John Paisley Hughes House at Cedar Grove dates to the early nineteenth century. It was enlarged around 1860 and again around 1880, and is on the Study List.

Orange County counts twenty-one academies

By 1832 Orange County had twenty-one academies, among them Hillsborough Academy, the Bingham school and Cedar Grove Academy, a pace of school founding somewhat ahead of the state as a whole.

Cedar Grove Methodist Church is organized

The Cedar Grove Methodist Episcopal Church was organized on July 23, 1832.

Subject: Cedar Grove Methodist Church

Cedar Grove Methodist Episcopal Church builds its first church

The congregation put up a small frame sanctuary facing east on what is now Efland-Cedar Grove Road, on land given by Joseph Allison and John Kelly. It was enlarged on the south side in 1876 and later torn down; its site lies just east of the 1939 stone church.

Subject: Cedar Grove Methodist Church

The two-story Wrenn log house is built near Cedar Grove

A two-story log house now called the Rosie Wrenn House is built near Cedar Grove around 1840. A large frame addition went on the back around 1869; the house is on the Study List.

Samuel Wellwood Hughes opens a classical school for boys near Cedar Grove

Samuel Wellwood Hughes opened his own academy in northern Orange County in January 1845. First called Cedar Grove Academy and later Hughes' Academy, it offered classical and mathematical courses modeled on the Bingham School and ran until his death in 1884.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Bingham School · Hughes Academy (Cedar Grove Academy)

The two-story Pickett log house is built near Cedar Grove

The Pickett House near Cedar Grove is a large log dwelling of two full stories, a size uncommon among the county's log houses. The survey could not settle whether it went up in 1846 or 1864.

Enslaved workers build the stone dam at Trimm's Mill near Cedar Grove

Enslaved laborers build a large stone dam for Trimm's Mill near Cedar Grove in the 1850s. The dam is all that survived of the mill by 1993.

The Mary Hughes House is built at Cedar Grove

About 1850 a center-hall cottage with Greek Revival touches, louvered shutters and sidelights at both front and back doors was built at Cedar Grove. When surveyed it was little altered outside but badly run down, and its mantels had been removed.

Samuel Wellwood Hughes opens his own school near Cedar Grove

After fourteen years as founder and principal of Cedar Grove Academy, Samuel Wellwood Hughes opened his own classical school five miles northwest of Hillsborough, its first session beginning on the second Monday of January 1859. He taught there until his death in 1884; the surviving schoolhouse, dated about 1862, was later moved to Hillsborough and restored.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Hughes Academy (Cedar Grove Academy)

The Pitard Place is built near Cedar Grove

A two-story frame house with a very low hip roof, widely spaced windows and a two-tier entry porch, the broadest local take on the Greek Revival.

The Tally family I-house is built near Cedar Grove

The main house at the Tally Homeplace near Cedar Grove, a two-story I-house, goes up around 1860 and is altered in the 1880s. The farm keeps tobacco barns, two tenant houses of about 1900 and an office, and is on the Study List.

Allison and Corbin run a plug tobacco factory at Cedar Grove

By the late 1860s Cedar Grove had a plug tobacco factory run by Allison and Corbin that employed fourteen men, the largest workforce of any business in the area. Dr. John J. Allison, a large landowner, was also a partner in dry goods, hardware and grocery stores, and William W. Allison kept a hotel.

Commissioners hire Silas M. Link to divide the county into townships

Link was paid $75 to lay the school districts out into townships, and the board approved his plan of eight: Hillsboro, Little River, Mangum, Durham, Patterson, Chapel Hill, Bingham and Cedar Grove. In 1877 the board split Mangum at Little River to form Lebanon Township.

The Watson family builds an ornate I-house near Cedar Grove

An ornate I-house is built on the Watson farm on NC 86 near Cedar Grove in the 1870s; the farm also keeps three log tobacco barns. It is on the Study List.

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.

Five custom grist mills work the creeks of Cedar Grove Township

The 1880 manufacturing census found five flour and grist mills in Cedar Grove Township on Back, Eno and Lynch creeks and the South Little River, grinding local farmers' grain about six months a year. James Allen, who owned the township's largest farm, ran one of the smaller mills on Lynch Creek; two sawmills on the Little River ran five months a year.

Pender Store is built at Cedar Grove

The two-story weatherboarded Pender Store, with a classical gable front and a hip-roofed porch, was built at Cedar Grove in the 1880s. Its shelves and display cases were still in place in 1996.

The first McDade Store goes up at McDade crossroads

The first McDade Store, a two-story frame building, was put up in the 1880s at the McDade crossroads just north of Cedar Grove, where it would have stood over the small community. A second McDade store with a canopy for motorists buying gas was built across the road in the early 1920s.

Subject: McDade Store

W. R. Hughes makes bricks at Cedar Grove

The only brickyard in Cedar Grove Township in 1880 belonged to W. R. Hughes. It worked two months of the year and turned out about 100,000 common bricks.

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.

People: Samuel Wellwood Hughes

A stock law ends open range in four Orange County townships

An 1885 act barred cattle from running at large in Cedar Grove, Little River, Hillsboro and Bingham townships and had the commissioners fence those townships from a special tax. A second act let Chapel Hill Township adopt the stock law on a petition of three-fourths of its freeholders.

Cedar Grove is the busiest post office community in its township

In the early 1890s Cedar Grove, with about sixty-five people, had the most businesses in its township. It had Cedar Grove Academy, the Methodist church, a doctor named Terrell, a tanner, a carriage maker and a dry goods merchant, with Eno Presbyterian Church and Compton's and Warren's mills a short way off. The High Rock and Yanceyville roads joined and ran east-west through the village.

Laws and Border post offices serve the far corners of Cedar Grove Township

In 1890 Cedar Grove Township had post offices at Cedar Grove, Laws and Border. Border, in the far southwest of the township, counted about twenty people, and Laws, in the far northeast, about twenty-five.

John W. Thompson of Cedar Grove becomes superintendent of the Orange County schools

John W. Thompson, a Cedar Grove teacher, took over the county schools from B. C. Patton in June 1890. He held the post until the board was abolished in 1895 and stayed on as supervisor under the county commissioners.

Five Forks rivals Cedar Grove as a crossroads settlement

In 1891 the crossroads of Five Forks was probably as populous as Cedar Grove. Allen's flour and grist mill and Sharp's sawmill stood nearby, and a Dr. Murphy lived at the fork and likely kept a store. Riley School, Harmony Primitive Baptist Church and Mount Zion Church lay between Five Forks and Border.

J. Laws keeps a country store at Laws post office

In 1891 J. Laws ran a small country store at the Laws post office in northeastern Cedar Grove Township. Walnut Grove Methodist Church, Sartain School, G. W. Parker's sawmill and Hawkins's flour and grist mill stood nearby.

J. McAdams runs a mill and a country store near Border

Around 1891 J. McAdams operated a mill and a small country store near the Border post office in southwestern Cedar Grove Township.

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.

Subject: Eno Presbyterian Church

Annie L. Hughes keeps Cedar Grove Academy

Annie L. Hughes carried on a Cedar Grove Academy from 1894 until 1915, a decade after the death of Samuel W. Hughes ended his Hughes Academy.

Subject: Hughes Academy (Cedar Grove Academy)

The county is divided into five school townships, each with a five-man committee

When the county commissioners took over the schools, the county was regrouped into five school townships (Cedar Grove, Little River, Hillsboro, Bingham and Chapel Hill), each run by a committee of five in place of the many district committees.

Eno Presbyterian builds at Cedar Grove

The replacement church was constructed over three years.

Subject: Eno Presbyterian Church

The late William H. Jordan's home place in Cedar Grove Township is put up at auction

Under a court decree, Jennie Jordan McDade, executrix of William H. Jordan, offered his 260-acre home place at the courthouse door in Hillsborough to pay the estate's debts, subject to the life estate of his widow, Mary F. Jordan.

Pender Store is moved across the road at Cedar Grove

In 1900 the Pender Store building was moved to the other side of the road, where it still stands.

The William Woods McDade House is built in the Cedar Grove area

Around 1900 a story-and-a-half house with a decorated center gable, a cutaway bay and a wraparound porch with turned posts was built near Cedar Grove. The county survey knows it as the William Woods McDade House, though William Woods McDade himself died in 1862; the 1993 survey form dates it about 1890.

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.

Subject: Fairfield Presbyterian Church

Cedar Grove district finishes a new $279 schoolhouse with county help

The board paid $150 from the general fund toward the new schoolhouse of Cedar Grove District No. 6, which cost $279.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

The Oliver family takes over the Cedar Grove crossroads store

The Oliver family acquired the frame store the Allison family had built at the Cedar Grove crossroads in the 1880s. They kept it until C. H. Pender and his wife Irene Oliver took it over in the 1960s.

John Kenion's center-gable farmhouse is built north of Hillsborough

The Kenion House, a two-story farmhouse with a shingled front gable, pointed window heads and a bracketed porch, was built in 1910 for John Kenion, a farmer and Hillsborough banker. It stands in the Cedar Grove area.

Dr. C. M. Hughes builds a Colonial Revival house in Cedar Grove

Dr. C. M. Hughes's large two-story frame house in Cedar Grove, with a high hip roof, a cutaway bay and a columned wraparound porch, was built in 1912.

The Cedar Grove pharmacy where Dr. C. M. Hughes practiced is moved beside his house

The early 1900s pharmacy building at the Cedar Grove crossroads, where Dr. Claude M. Hughes kept his medical practice, was moved in 1913 to the lot east of his new house so a three-story flour mill could go up on its site. The mill burned about 1931.

The old Cedar Grove one-teacher schoolhouse is moved to serve Black children

When Cedar Grove's white pupils moved to the new high school, the one-teacher schoolhouse was hauled to Baxter Thompson's land and used as a school for Black children.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

The county board buys the Annie Hughes Academy to house a Cedar Grove high school

Answering a petition from Cedar Grove residents, the board offered on May 3, 1915 to buy the old Cedar Grove Academy from Annie Hughes and on May 15 paid her $1,500 for it, deeding her the lot of the one-teacher school it closed. The new Cedar Grove High School took grades one through eleven.

Subject: Hughes Academy (Cedar Grove Academy) · Cedar Grove schools

Cedar Grove voters approve a special school tax district

The board allowed Cedar Grove to call an election on a special school tax in July 1917, and the returns reported in September showed 34 votes for and 16 against. The board then set pay for each Cedar Grove high school teacher at $50 a month.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Cedar Grove organizes a Red Cross branch

By August 1, 1917, a Red Cross branch had been organized at Cedar Grove and was making surgical dressings. In the fall the county chapter thanked Cedar Grove for giving it the premiums from the community fair.

The Orange County Red Cross counts 850 knitted articles and 41,396 dressings for

During 1918 the chapter and its branches at Cedar Grove, New Hope and Oaks sent 850 knitted articles to Atlanta and fourteen boxes holding 41,396 bandages and surgical dressings. The history adds that the Black auxiliary did little sewing but drew in Black members.

Marine Samuel Maris Wilkerson of Cedar Grove dies of wounds in France

Samuel Maris Wilkerson of Cedar Grove enlisted in the Marine Corps on December 8, 1917, and served with the 5th Marines in France. Reported wounded on June 15, 1918, he died of his wounds on June 17.

The Orange County Red Cross grants a branch to Carr precinct

At its August 12, 1918 meeting the chapter granted Carr precinct's petition to become a branch, its fourth after Cedar Grove, New Hope and Oaks. The same meeting heard headquarters' advice to stop giving comfort kits to men leaving for camp.

Cedar Grove Township counts about 375 influenza cases and four deaths

Cedar Grove Township had about 375 cases of Spanish influenza and only four deaths, and the epidemic there lasted until the second week of December 1918.

A second influenza wave strikes Cedar Grove, Efland and Hillsborough

After Christmas 1918 a second epidemic spread through the county and was very bad at Cedar Grove, Efland and Hillsborough. This time schools and churches stayed open, and the outbreak slowly died down.

Orange County towns and townships win honor flags in the Victory Loan

For meeting their Victory Loan quotas, Cedar Grove, Chapel Hill, Cheeks, Eno and Hillsborough townships and the towns of Chapel Hill and Hillsborough were awarded honor flags, the Chapel Hill News reported on May 29, 1919, crediting Mayor W. S. Roberson as Victory Loan chairman. The paper said county residents had put more than a million dollars into government securities since the first Liberty Loan.

People: W. S. Roberson

McDade Store No. 2 opens as a filling station at Cedar Grove

McDade Store No. 2, a small frame store with a gable-front canopy over its gas pumps, was a typical 1920s country filling station at Cedar Grove.

Subject: McDade Store

R. L. Snipes opens a general store and filling station near Cedar Grove

A general store and gas station with a stepped front gable, the R. L. Snipes Store, is built on NC 86 near Cedar Grove around 1920.

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.

Subject: Five Forks Baptist Church

The county board agrees to build a new school at Cedar Grove

On August 11, 1922, under superintendent Claytor, the county board agreed to build a modern school at Cedar Grove once state building-fund money came. The building was accepted in January 1924 and named Aycock School. Carrboro's new school, planned under the same program, was already going up in 1921.

Subject: Aycock School

Aycock School is built at Cedar Grove and named for the governor

The county built the original eight-room Aycock School at Cedar Grove on land bought from Carl C. McDade and named it for former governor Charles B. Aycock.

Subject: Aycock School

Harmony School patrons protest a merger with Aycock School

A delegation from Harmony School went before the board to object to consolidating their school with the new Aycock School at Cedar Grove. The board told them no such step was planned, though Harmony was merged into Aycock six years later.

Subject: Aycock School

The county board merges Chestnut Ridge, Jordan's Grove, Smith Level and Grover into larger schools

Over objections from families who wanted to keep neighborhood schools, the board sent the pupils of Chestnut Ridge to Gravelly Hill, those of Grover and Jordan's Grove to Aycock, and those of Smith Level to Carrboro. It then adopted a school budget of $180,849.25 for 1930-31.

Subject: Jordan’s Grove School · Aycock School

Black families from five northern Orange schools ask for a brick consolidated school

Parents from five schools for Black children, Cedar Grove, Carr, Harmony, Sartins and White Oak, asked the board for a new brick building to replace them. The board promised to look into it; a site near Vincent's Store for a Cedar Grove school for Black children was bought in 1946.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Cedar Grove Methodist Church's stone building goes up

The stone church replaced earlier facilities serving the congregation. Masons laid its cornerstone in late November 1939 at the request of the pastor, S. F. Nicks.

Subject: Cedar Grove Methodist Church

The county board agrees to build an agriculture building at Aycock School

Aycock principal Mrs. V. L. Warren and the school committee asked the board for a two-room brick building for agriculture classes, and the board agreed to provide it.

Subject: Aycock School

Census finds nearly half of Orange County's Black-owned farms in Cedar Grove Township

The 1940 census counted 1,753 Black and 1,671 white residents in Cedar Grove Township, the county's only township with a near-even racial balance, and about three-fourths of the township lived on farms. Nearly half of Orange County's 503 Black-owned farms were in the township, which also had the county's highest share of Black tenant farmers.

Part of Farm labor in rural Orange County · 16 events

Crabtree Store No. 2 is built north of Cedar Grove

A frame country store, Crabtree Store No. 2, is built north of Cedar Grove around 1940.

McDade and Laws stop functioning as crossroads communities

In the 1940s the crossroads of McDade and Laws in northern Orange ceased to hold together as communities and their stores closed, while Cedar Grove, where the Pender Store stayed open, kept its identity.

Charles Crisp Oliver builds an auto and tractor repair shop at the Cedar Grove crossroads

Oliver put up a one-story concrete block garage with a stepped parapet on the lot where his father, T. L. Oliver, had kept a blacksmith shop early in the century.

The county buys land from Mary Vincent for a Cedar Grove school for Black children

In May 1945 board members Charlie Stanford and James Compton were asked to find a site near Vincent's Store crossroads for a Cedar Grove school for Black children. The board bought the land from Mary Vincent for $1,000 in 1946.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

A community cannery is set up at Aycock School

G. A. Munn and E. F. Cude told the board in July 1947 that the cannery at Aycock School had used $3,500 and needed $1,500 more to finish.

Subject: Aycock School

Archie Royal Davis becomes architect for the Orange County schools

In 1948 the Durham architect Archie Royal Davis became architect for the Orange County school system. His work for the county included Cedar Grove and Efland-Cheeks schools for Black children, the first Cameron Park School building, Central High's 1959-60 main building and Central Elementary.

People: Archie Royal Davis

Architect H. Raymond Weeks presents plans for a school for Black children in Cedar Grove Township

H. Raymond Weeks showed the Orange County Board of Education his design for a consolidated school for Black pupils in Cedar Grove Township. The board sent the plans to the Federal Works Agency, which lent school systems money for architects' fees.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

The Cedar Grove Ruritan Club is organized

Formed in 1950, the club helped landscape the new Aycock School and equip its gym, fielded a community baseball team and arranged group hospital insurance for members. In 1952 it placed first among 22 rural groups in the community improvement contest.

Subject: Aycock School

Cedar Grove parents ask that Black educators help plan their new school

A delegation from the Cedar Grove Parent-Teacher Association asked the county board to let Central High principal A. L. Stanback and M. C. Burt, the county's agricultural agent for Black farmers, take part in planning the new Cedar Grove school.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Archie Royal Davis replaces H. Raymond Weeks as architect of the Cedar Grove school

When state school planners faulted H. Raymond Weeks's design in April 1950, the board sent him to W. F. Credle and Edward Waugh of the Division of Schoolhouse Planning, but Weeks would not rework it on short notice. By May the job had gone to Archie Royal Davis, who was also designing Lincoln High School in Chapel Hill; the board approved his preliminary plans in June.

People: Archie Royal Davis

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Principal E. M. Stanfield reports on the one-room school for Black children at Cedar Grove

In her report for 1949-50, E. M. Stanfield told the state she was the only teacher for 36 pupils in seven grades in a single room with no library, gymnasium, fire protection or indoor toilet. The two-room Carr School nearby, under principal Anne May Morrow, had 73 pupils and lacked a drinking fountain and state health approval.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

The county board accepts Archie Royal Davis's plans for Cedar Grove School

The Orange County Board of Education approved Davis's final design for the Cedar Grove school for Black children: a low, flat-roofed brick building with long bands of classroom windows.

People: Archie Royal Davis

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Bids for Cedar Grove School run over budget and the board asks the state for $147,000

None of the construction bids opened on December 6, 1950, came within the budget, so the board rejected them all. On December 28 it voted to ask the state School Plant Construction, Improvement, and Repair Fund for a $147,000 grant to build the school.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Jordan's Grove School for Black children closes as the Cedar Grove Negro School opens

Jordan's Grove School for Black children closed in the fall of 1951, when it and six other small Black schools were combined in the new Cedar Grove Negro School, accepted by the county board that November. It is the only surviving rural field school building the 1993 survey could tie to African American pupils, abandoned in a farm field when recorded. A separate white Jordan's Grove school had merged into Aycock in 1930.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools · Jordan’s Grove School · Aycock School

Orange County closes thirteen small schools for Black children and consolidates their pupils

At the start of the 1951-52 school year the county shut thirteen one- and two-teacher schools for Black children, put eleven new buses on the roads and consolidated every Black school except three near Efland. New buildings opened that year at the Cedar Grove school.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Construction of Cedar Grove School begins

Work on the new school for Black children on NC 86 north of Hillsborough started in January 1951. By early February a well had been drilled and the footings poured.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

The board cuts the north wing and kitchen from the Cedar Grove School plans

To lower costs, the county board struck the six-classroom north wing, the kitchen, floor tile, clocks, bells, sidewalks and other items from Davis's design. The gymnasium was to serve as a multipurpose room partitioned into four classrooms until money for more space could be found.

People: Archie Royal Davis

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Cedar Grove parents ask for a say in hiring teachers and get a Black building committee

Seven Cedar Grove PTA members asked for a local committee with power to hire and dismiss the new school's teachers, and for paint and tile floors. The board named a building committee of Dallas Sheppherd Burnett, Wayne Compton, D. W. Torain, Elijah Poole and Oscar Carver Beasley but gave it no say over staff; it did approve the paint and the floor tile.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Morris Telephone Company opens an exchange at Efland with lines to Cedar Grove

The Morris Telephone Company put a new 30-line switchboard into service in its new building next to the Baptist church in Efland, along with about 14 miles of rural lines running to the Cedar Grove community.

Farmers Home Administration pushes livestock to raise tenant incomes near Cedar Grove

The News of Orange County reported a Farmers Home Administration effort to raise tenant income by adding livestock to tobacco farming. Tenants on the Banks Wilson farm near Cedar Grove added hogs and other animals, and 42 county farm families had FHA operating loans.

The county board votes to borrow for a six-classroom wing at Cedar Grove School

On a motion by board member Kemp S. Cate, the board voted to borrow $30,000 from the state literary fund and add $25,000 from its capital budget to build the north classroom wing cut from the 1951 plans. The county commissioners approved the loan.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Millard Lee Bess joins the Cedar Grove School staff

The county board hired Millard Lee Bess, a Gaston County native, Winston-Salem State graduate and World War II veteran, for Cedar Grove School in September 1952.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

The county school board advertises the White Oak Grove school lot for sale

The Orange County Board of Education gave notice that it would sell at the courthouse on January 10, 1953, a lot on the Cedar Grove-Carr road beside White Oak Grove Church, with its frame, tin-roofed building. The sale followed the opening of the new Cedar Grove school for Black children, which replaced the small rural schools.

Subject: White Oak Grove School

Cedar Grove School's six-classroom north wing is finished

The north wing Archie Royal Davis had drawn in 1951 was finished late in 1953 and closely matches the original classroom wing. With the new rooms the multipurpose room became the gymnasium and auditorium. Davis and board members Harry Breeze and C. W. Stanford inspected the wing in January 1954.

People: Archie Royal Davis

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

The News of Orange prints the first picture of the Cedar Grove Negro School

A front-page photograph presented the new school as a major piece of the county's three-year building program. The story listed seven classrooms, a library, an office, a heating plant, two toilets and a multipurpose room used from the start as four classrooms.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Five Forks Baptist Church is organized in a converted pack barn

Prayer meetings begun in 1951 by Gattis Brown of Glen Hope Baptist Church in Burlington moved in 1952 to an old pack barn at the Five Forks crossroads, and the church was organized there on July 2, 1953 with 27 members. Brown was pastor until 1964.

Subject: Five Forks Baptist Church

The name Cedar Grove Negro School gives way to Cedar Grove School

The county board and local papers had called the school the Cedar Grove Negro School from the 1946 land purchase on. After 1954 they used Cedar Grove School or Cedar Grove Elementary School.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Harold H. Webb becomes principal of Cedar Grove School

Harold Hudson Webb, a Greensboro-born veteran of the Tuskegee Airmen with two degrees from North Carolina A&T who had taught at Central High, was hired as Cedar Grove's principal. He led the school until 1962, when he joined the state education department; in 1977 he became North Carolina's first Black state personnel director.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Orange County passes a $2 million school bond issue

A two-million-dollar county bond issue for schools passed in 1956. The next month Cedar Grove's Black parents went to the board to ask for a share of the building money.

A Cedar Grove committee asks for classrooms, a lunchroom and playground land

Wayne Compton, Arthur Wells, Lonnie Thompson, Carter White and Oscar Beasley asked the county board for four more classrooms at Cedar Grove School, a lunchroom large enough to grow, and two more acres for a playground. The board did not act.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

The county board approves a cafeteria for Cedar Grove School

After voting in September to study the need, the board approved a cafeteria for 150 pupils at Cedar Grove at no more than $40,000, while again putting off new classrooms. Archie Royal Davis's plans for it were approved and sent to the state in October 1957.

People: Archie Royal Davis

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

A kitchen and cafeteria are added to Cedar Grove School

A one-story brick kitchen and cafeteria, 78 by 49 feet, was finished behind the gymnasium late in 1958 to Archie Royal Davis's plans. One open dining room filled two-thirds of it, with the kitchen, dishwashing and storage along the north side.

People: Archie Royal Davis

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Carr Store Road is paved through Cedar Grove

Carr Store Road, the east-west road through the Cedar Grove crossroads, was paved in 1958, about a decade after the north-south Efland-Cedar Grove Road. Until then farmers in the area could find farm-to-market roads impassable for months of the year.

A Cedar Grove delegation asks for a classroom and playground to win accreditation

Seeking state accreditation, a delegation from the school asked the board for one more classroom so the library could be used as a library again, land for a playground, paint for the north wing and outdoor floodlights. The board took no action.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

The state declines to accredit Cedar Grove School for lack of space

Ruth Lawrence Woodson, state supervisor of the Black elementary schools, refused accreditation because the school had too few classrooms and was using its library as a fourth-grade room. Her report counted the parents' involvement, a staff study program, the office, auditorium and clinic room in its favor.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Cedar Grove's advisory committee asks for two more classrooms

Lonnie Thompson, Arthur Wells, Carter White, Wayne Compton and Oscar Beasley of the school's advisory committee asked the board for a two-classroom addition. The board agreed to consider it and in August approved Archie Royal Davis's plans with a $20,000 limit.

People: Archie Royal Davis

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Orange County builds its third ABC store near the Alamance line at Carr

The county ABC board put up a concrete-block liquor store on Mutt Byrd's land about 200 yards from the Alamance County line on the Roxboro-Burlington highway, with opening expected in mid-September. By early 1960 nearly all of its sales went to Alamance County customers.

Two classrooms are added to the south wing of Cedar Grove School

The two classrooms at the south end of the original wing, built to Archie Royal Davis's plans on bids taken in fall 1959, were finished by September 6, 1960, when the board inspected them with Davis and contractor Lindsay Fogelman.

People: Archie Royal Davis

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Clara Jones is appointed a supervisor of the Orange County schools

Clara Jones, a Person County principal for twenty-seven years, joined the county staff as supervisor in 1961, assigned to the Cedar Grove, Efland-Cheeks and A. L. Stanback schools for Black children. After integration she ran special education testing and placement, and she retired in 1974.

Belton Edwards becomes principal of Cedar Grove School

Belton Edwards, a South Carolina native and North Carolina A&T graduate, followed Harold Webb as principal in 1962 and stayed until 1968, when he became the first Black member of the Orange County Board of Education. George Pierce succeeded him at the school.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Aycock and Hillsborough High schools are consolidated into Orange High School

When Orange High School opened in 1963, the county consolidated the high school grades of Aycock School in Cedar Grove and Hillsborough High School into it, and the older buildings became junior high or elementary schools. Some Aycock seniors went to Eastern Alamance High School in Mebane, but most went to Orange High.

Subject: Orange High School · Hillsborough High School · Aycock School

Teacher Hassie Vanhook Gattis retires after 34 years

Hassie Vanhook Brooks Gattis retired in 1963 after 34 years of teaching Black children in northern Orange County, at the Sartin, Grover, Poplar Grove and Carr schools and, from about 1955, at Cedar Grove. The News of Orange County marked her retirement in June.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Four of Orange County's 2,001 Black pupils attend white schools

The county school system enrolled 2,001 Black students in 1964-65. Four went to formerly white schools; the rest attended Central High, Efland-Cheeks or Cedar Grove.

More than 25,000 Orange County residents take Sabin oral polio vaccine on one Sunday

The Durham-Orange County Medical Foundation ran a Sunday oral polio vaccine campaign at eight public school feeding stations in Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Hillsborough, Cedar Grove and Efland. A total of 25,679 people took the vaccine on a sugar cube, about 56 percent of the county, with Glenwood School alone serving 5,063; a second dose was set for May 17.

Sixty-six Black parents petition the county board to stop running schools by race

Led by the retired Cedar Grove teacher Hassie Vanhook Gattis, 66 parents signed a petition asking the Orange County board to stop operating its schools on a racial basis. It charged that the board had kept a dual system since the 1954 Brown ruling in disregard of the law.

Fire destroys the home economics building at Aycock School

The home economics building at Aycock School in Cedar Grove burned, with the loss put at $15,000 to $20,000 and fully insured through the state. The county board had approved the building in 1948.

Subject: Aycock School

Three Black students desegregate Aycock School in Cedar Grove

Under the county's Freedom of Choice plan, three Black families asked for their children to be transferred to the white Aycock School, and on May 20, 1965 the three students were assigned and began attending. United States Marshals escorted at least one of them.

Subject: Aycock School

Cedar Grove families answer the county's freedom-of-choice forms

The county sent 401 school-choice forms to Cedar Grove School families at the end of the 1964-65 year. Fifty-two made no choice, three asked for all-white Aycock Elementary and four for Orange Junior High.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Cedar Grove's advisory council asks for a painted lunchroom and a paved playground

Oscar Beasley and Arthur Wells of the Cedar Grove Advisory Council asked the board to paint the lunchroom, hang doors on the girls' restroom and give the school a hard-surfaced playground. The board granted part of the request.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Five Forks Baptist Church dedicates its new block church

Needing room for a cemetery, the congregation moved to land bought from Arthur Wright for $1 and began building in 1966 with 2,400 donated blocks, much of the work done by the pastor, Tommy Willis, and members. The church was dedicated on December 10, 1967.

Subject: Five Forks Baptist Church

Principal George Pierce and Arthur Wells ask for basketball goals and better lighting

Cedar Grove principal George Pierce and advisory council chairman Arthur Wells asked the board for basketball goals, better lighting, doors for the boys' restrooms and supplies for the lunchroom.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Cedar Grove's advisory council petitions to keep the school open

As the county prepared to integrate its schools, the Cedar Grove Advisory Council brought the board a petition asking that Cedar Grove School run fully through 1969-70 and that the integration plan be reconsidered. The council said the community did not intend to give up its school.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Cedar Grove School closes under the county's integration plan

The county board announced in May 1969 that Cedar Grove School would not operate in 1969-70. The school closed at the end of the 1968-69 year despite the community's appeals, and its pupils moved to schools in Efland and Hillsborough.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

The school board sells the empty Cedar Grove School to Orange County for ten dollars

After the building had stood vacant for nearly a decade, the Orange County Board of Education conveyed the former school and its eight acres to the county for $10.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Caldwell and Cedar Grove volunteer fire departments are incorporated

The Caldwell Volunteer Fire Department was incorporated on December 6, 1977 and the Cedar Grove Volunteer Fire Department a week later, on December 13, extending local fire protection across the northern townships.

Subject: Rural fire protection

Efland-Cheeks pupils use the old Cedar Grove School while their school is enlarged

Under county ownership the former Cedar Grove School served several purposes, among them holding Efland-Cheeks School students until an addition to their own building was finished in 1978.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools · Efland schools

Orange County gets a grant to build a park behind the old Cedar Grove School

A $30,000 grant let the county develop recreation land behind the school, where it built a baseball field and a children's play area.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

The state places rural Orange County houses, churches, schools and districts on the Study List

On July 8, 1993, after the survey of the rural county, the National Register Advisory Committee placed 23 rural Orange County properties on the state Study List: eighteen farmhouses and log houses, the Carr Methodist and Harmony churches, White Cross School, and the Cedar Grove and Oaks Rural historic districts.

A hurricane destroys the old Thomas Cox Ellis wing of the Dr. C. M. Hughes House

The mid-1800s frame house of Thomas Cox Ellis, kept as the kitchen ell when his son-in-law Dr. Claude M. Hughes built his larger house beside it in 1912, was destroyed by a hurricane in 1996.

Orange County buys 39 acres to expand the park at Cedar Grove

The county bought thirty-nine acres behind the old Cedar Grove School to enlarge its recreation park.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

The Cedar Grove Rural Crossroads Historic District is listed in the National Register

On April 23, 1998 the National Park Service listed the Cedar Grove Rural Crossroads Historic District in Cedar Grove in the National Register of Historic Places.

The Old Tavern and White Oak Grove School join the Study List

The National Register Advisory Committee placed the log Old Tavern at 419 Hillsborough Street, Chapel Hill, and the White Oak Grove School for Black children near Cedar Grove on North Carolina's Study List, its list of properties likely to qualify for the National Register.

Subject: White Oak Grove School · Old Tavern (419 Hillsborough Street)

Cedar Grove Branch Library opens in northern Orange County

Orange County opened the Cedar Grove Branch Library in two rooms of the Northern Human Services Center, a former school, to serve Cedar Grove and northern Orange. Budgets describe books, Spanish-language materials, children's and adult programs, computer classes and materials borrowed from other regional libraries.

Part of Cedar Grove and rural northern Orange · 80 events

Subject: Orange County Public Library

A state trust fund grant pays for a larger Cedar Grove Park

Beginning in 2007, with a $500,000 grant from the North Carolina Parks and Recreation Trust Fund, the county greatly enlarged the park around the old school. It now has three ball fields, two basketball courts, a playground and parking.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Commissioners reject closing the Carrboro and Cedar Grove branch libraries

Facing recession cuts while opening the new Hillsborough main library, the county manager proposed closing the Carrboro branch at McDougle School and the Cedar Grove branch and moving their staff to the new building. After opposition from Commissioner Mike Nelson, the Carrboro Board of Aldermen and residents, commissioners rejected the closures and used reserve funds to staff the new library in the budget adopted in June 2009.

Part of Cedar Grove and rural northern Orange · 80 events

People: Mike Nelson · Mark Chilton

Subject: McDougle School · Orange County Public Library

Orange County closes the Cedar Grove Branch Library

The county closed the Cedar Grove Branch Library, northern Orange County's only staffed library, effective August 1, 2010, citing 502 registered borrowers and a cost per patron far above other branches. Its materials and computers went to the main library and the Cybrary, and some Cedar Grove items were reused in 40 Literacy Bag outreach kits.

Part of Cedar Grove and rural northern Orange · 80 events

Subject: Orange County Public Library

The Captain John S. Pope Farm joins the Study List

The National Register Advisory Committee placed the Captain John S. Pope Farm near Cedar Grove on North Carolina's Study List, its list of properties likely to qualify for the National Register.

Subject: John S. Pope Farm

Cedar Grove Community Center opens with a self-service library station

Orange County dedicated the renovated Cedar Grove Community Center, once home to the Cedar Grove Negro School, in June 2016, with a self-serve library station beside the building. The $180,000 kiosk offered automated borrowing in northern Orange County without a staffed branch; the county's FY 2021–22 budget ended support for it, citing poor performance and low patron use.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools · Orange County Public Library

Orange County's library branches are merged into one catalog

Preparing for the Southern Branch, the library merged the holdings of the Main Library, the Carrboro branch at McDougle School and the Cybrary into a single catalog during the 2017–18 fiscal year and added the Cedar Grove kiosk's items. Staff reported an immediate rise in circulation at all three branches and in items sent between locations by courier.

Subject: Orange County Public Library · McDougle School

The Rocks in Chapel Hill and Cedar Grove School join the Study List

Among nine central and southeastern public requests approved on October 12, 2017 were William C. Coker's house, The Rocks, in Chapel Hill and the Cedar Grove School north of Hillsborough. The same meeting placed the Hillsborough survey's Ja-Max Motor Lodge and Military Academy dining hall site on the list.

People: William Chambers Coker

Subject: Cedar Grove schools · The Rocks (William C. Coker House) · Ja-Max Motor Lodge

Cedar Grove School is listed in the National Register

On April 23, 2020 the National Park Service listed Cedar Grove School near Cedar Grove in the National Register of Historic Places.

Subject: Cedar Grove schools

Orange County commissioners proclaim Dr. Kizzmekia S. Corbett Day

The Board of County Commissioners unanimously proclaimed Wednesday, January 20, 2021 Dr. Kizzmekia S. Corbett Day, honoring the county native who grew up in Cedar Grove and attended Orange County Schools; she accepted by Zoom.

Gaps in vaccination among Black and Hispanic residents reported

Chapelboro reported that Black residents were 12.4 percent of Orange County's population but 9 percent of those vaccinated, and Hispanic residents 8.6 percent and 5.5 percent. The county was working with church leaders and advocates in a Human Services Consulting Group and had held clinics at the Hargraves Community Center and in Cedar Grove.

Subject: Hargraves Community Center