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Colonial and Regulator years · 1680–1774
- 1740s
-
Settlers from Pennsylvania and Virginia come down the Great Wagon Road into the Haw and Eno country
From the 1740s families moving south from Pennsylvania, Maryland and western Virginia along the Great Wagon Road took up land in the Piedmont backcountry that became Orange County in 1752. Quaker families reached the Cane Creek country by this route, and German and Scotch-Irish families entered the colony the same way.
- 1750s
-
Quakers set up Cane Creek Monthly Meeting in the country that became Orange County
About thirty Quaker families from Pennsylvania had settled near Cane Creek by 1751. Abigail Pike and Rachel Wright traveled 200 miles to the Perquimans County quarterly meeting for authority to organize, and the first monthly meeting was held on October 7, 1751. It is the oldest Quaker meeting in the North Carolina Piedmont.
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St. Matthew’s Parish is established
The act of the spring 1752 General Assembly session that created Orange County also made it the Anglican Parish of St. Matthew, with its own vestry. The parish's first church stood in Hillsborough by about 1768, but today's St. Matthew's Episcopal Church descends from a congregation reorganized in 1824.
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Presbyterians found Grier's Church at High Towers
Grier's Presbyterian Church at High Towers, in the part of Orange that later became Caswell County, was the first Presbyterian church in the new county.
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Cane Creek Quakers found the Eno Friends Meeting
Quakers from the Cane Creek meeting set up a meeting in the Eno River valley, the one Friends meeting Mattson places inside present Orange County.
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The burying ground beside the town church lot is laid out
The cemetery next to the site of the present Presbyterian church, later called the Old Town Cemetery, was laid out in 1754, the year the town itself was laid off.
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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.
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Presbyterians found Hawfields Church
Hawfields Presbyterian Church was founded in the part of Orange County that is now eastern Alamance. Henry Pattillo later served as its pastor.
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Shubal Stearns gathers the first Baptist congregation in Orange County at Sandy Creek
In 1755 Shubal Stearns organized a Baptist church at Sandy Creek, then in Orange County and now in Randolph. Within a few years it counted more than six hundred people, and Baptist churches followed at Haw River, Rock Spring, Rocky River and Cane Creek.
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Hugh McAden preaches to the Eno and Hawfields settlements
The traveling Presbyterian licentiate Hugh McAden preached to the Eno settlement on the second Sabbath of August 1755, lodging at John Anderson's house, and rode on to preach at the Hawfields on the fourth Sabbath. His journal is the earliest surviving description of either settlement.
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New Hope Presbyterian Church traces its beginning to
New Hope Presbyterian Church, south of Hillsborough on the road to Chapel Hill, counts 1756 as its founding year, when the Hawfields and Eno Presbyterians, with whom the New Hope families then worshiped, first asked Hanover Presbytery for preachers. Its early records burned in 1827; D. I. Craig judged it was formally organized later, most likely under Henry Pattillo after his 1765 call, and it first appears with its own minister in the 1795 Orange Presbytery minutes.
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Baptists form the Sandy Creek Association
Baptist churches in the Sandy Creek country, then part of Orange County, joined in the Sandy Creek Association. During the Regulation the association expelled members who joined the movement.
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St. Mary's congregation is established
Anglicans established St. Mary's Chapel about 1759 on land given by Thomas Holden, about seven miles northeast of Hillsborough, to serve northern Orange County. The congregation joined the Episcopal convention in 1819 and built the present brick chapel, consecrated in 1859; regular services ended in the early 1930s.
- 1760s
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New Hope congregation builds its first meetinghouse
Settlers still attached to the Hawfields congregation built a rough first meetinghouse about five miles south of Hillsborough and a quarter mile east of the road to Chapel Hill. An octagonal log church on higher ground replaced it, which the church dates to 1775.
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Little River Presbyterian Church is organized
Hugh McAden led the organization of Little River Presbyterian Church, with Henry Pattillo as its first pastor.
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The county town becomes a courthouse village of stores, ordinaries and public buildings
William Few recalled that in 1764 the town was the metropolis of the county, where the courts were held and all public business done, a village of thirty or forty inhabitants with two or three small stores and two or three ordinary taverns, and that Scottish merchants then opened stores of European goods and a church, courthouse and jail were built. Claude Joseph Sauthier's 1768 plan of the town marks Canby's Ordinary, Nunn's Ordinary, McNair's Store, the market house, the first courthouse and the second jail.
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Henry Pattillo becomes pastor of the Hawfields, Eno and Little River churches
Henry Pattillo moved to Orange County as pastor of the Hawfields, Eno and Little River Presbyterian churches and served them for nine years, becoming known as "Father Pattillo." He was the first regularly installed minister at Eno.
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Henry Pattillo keeps a classical school in his Orange County home
While pastor of the Hawfields, Eno and Little River churches, Pattillo began a classical school for men in his home.
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George Micklejohn is sent to St. Matthew's Parish in Hillsborough
Governor William Tryon sent the Rev. George Micklejohn, a Society for the Propagation of the Gospel missionary first assigned to Rowan County, to St. Matthew's Parish in Orange County.
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George Micklejohn carries messages between the Regulators and the authorities
During the 1768 unrest the Hillsborough rector acted several times as a courier between the Regulators and the authorities, seeking a peaceful settlement. The Regulators called him "our Rector."
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Members of the Eno Friends Meeting move to Georgia
A group of Eno Quakers left for Georgia in 1768, one of the losses that weakened the meeting in the late colonial years.
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New Sharon Methodist Church is organized
The church list dates New Sharon Methodist Church in Orange County to 1768, making it the oldest Methodist congregation the chapter names.
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Presbyterian ministers, among them Henry Pattillo of Orange, write against the Regulation
While Tryon toured Rowan and Mecklenburg to raise troops, Presbyterian ministers Hugh McAden, James Creswell, Henry Pattillo and David Caldwell sent him a letter of loyalty condemning the Regulators, and the pastors also wrote to the colony's Presbyterians telling them to keep out of the movement. The letter was read to the Rowan militia and helped raise volunteers for the march on Hillsborough.
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George Micklejohn preaches to Tryon's militia at Hillsborough
Before Governor Tryon and the troops raised against the Regulators, Micklejohn preached on the important duty of subjection to the civil powers. Tryon had the sermon printed and distributed, and it cost Micklejohn favour with opponents of royal authority.
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Henry Pattillo preaches to Tryon's troops at Hillsborough
While the militia were quartered in Hillsborough, the Presbyterian minister Henry Pattillo preached to them and was publicly thanked. The German minister Suther was ordered to preach to the German troops as well.
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The Assembly pays for printing Micklejohn's sermon to the troops
The Assembly voted to repay the Orange parish minister George Micklejohn for printing the sermon he had preached to the troops at Hillsborough. Bassett, citing Foote's Sketches, reports that the sermon said at least twenty Regulators ought to have been hanged.
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Episcopalians build Hillsborough's first church
Members of the Church of England put up the town's first church at the corner of Churton and Tryon streets, under George Micklejohn, the parish minister Governor Tryon had appointed. It later held the 1788 convention and its lot passed to the Presbyterians.
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Simon Lindley is born in Orange County
Simon Lindley, the first son of John Lindley and Sarah Pyle, was born in Orange County on January 20, 1769. He later worked as a farmer, surveyor and Predestinarian Baptist minister, and his cipher book of 1786 to 1795 is held at UNC.
- 1770s
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Orange Presbytery forms as North Carolina's first presbytery
The pastors of the early Orange County Presbyterian churches and other ministers formed Orange Presbytery, the first presbytery in North Carolina.
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Quaker settlers farm the future Blackwood property
A Quaker settler identified as Mr. Marlett had purchased the property and begun farming there.
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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.
Revolution and early republic · 1775–1799
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John DeBow takes the Hawfields and Eno charge and preaches at New Hope
DeBow, a young minister, succeeded Pattillo at the Hawfields and Eno about 1775 and preached at New Hope as he could. Craig calls him probably the first preacher with anything like a regular appointment there.
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George Micklejohn opens the Provincial Congress with prayers
At the request of the congress, delivered by Francis Nash, Micklejohn attended and opened the Provincial Congress by reading prayers in the church at Hillsborough.
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Henry Pattillo is asked to read morning prayers to the Provincial Congress
The congress at Hillsborough asked the Rev. Henry Pattillo, a delegate from Bute County, to read prayers to it every morning, and Charles Edward Taylor every evening.
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Loyalist rector George Micklejohn is taken into custody
With the outbreak of the Revolution Micklejohn remained loyal to the Crown and was taken into custody. St. Matthew's Parish had no Episcopal rector again until 1825.
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George Micklejohn swears allegiance to the state and is released from parole
Taken prisoner after Moore's Creek, the Hillsborough rector was paroled on May 3, 1776 to Perquimans County, then ordered moved there in July when he was found still in Orange. On November 24 he took the oath of allegiance before the Halifax Congress and was discharged, and he later lived at Thomas Person's Goshen in Granville.
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Hillsborough gets its first regular Presbyterian services
After years of occasional preaching in the courthouse by David Caldwell, John DeBow and others, the Rev. Alexander McMillan began regular services there in 1777, shared with Little River and New Hope. Presbytery deposed him in September 1778, and the town had no organized Presbyterian church for many years.
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The county court orders the road from Bennehan's to New Hope Chapel finished
The road ordered earlier from Richard Bennehan's to New Hope Chapel had been cleared only as far as John Patterson's, so the May 1777 court named an overseer to clear the rest.
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Methodists divide their North Carolina circuit and form the New Hope Circuit, taking in part of Orange
When the original North Carolina circuit was split in three in 1778, the new New Hope Circuit covered parts of Orange, Chatham, Cumberland and Wake counties. Hillsborough was served by its riders, beginning with James O'Kelly and Philip Adams in 1779.
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The Presbytery removes Alexander McMillan, who had led Presbyterian worship in Hillsborough
McMillan had held regular services in the courthouse jointly with the Little River and New Hope congregations until the Presbytery deposed him for misconduct. For some years afterward Hillsborough had no regular Presbyterian services.
- 1780s
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Francis Asbury preaches to about 200 people at a Hillsborough tavern
On a tour of the state the Methodist leader Francis Asbury rode into Hillsborough and preached in the tavern of a Mr. Cortney (Courtney) to a crowd of about 200, whom he found orderly.
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The Board of War makes the courthouse a storehouse and the church a hospital
With supply wagons crowding every road into Hillsborough, the board designated the courthouse a storehouse and ordered the church repaired for use as a hospital.
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John DeBow, minister to the Hawfields, Eno and New Hope people, dies
DeBow died at 38 and was buried at Hawfields church. Craig was told he was the first person buried in the present Hawfields churchyard.
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Hillsborough Academy opens in the old Anglican church
The school chartered as Science Hall opened as Hillsborough Academy in the old Anglican church, which an act of the 1784 Hillsborough session had ordered repaired for a school and a free meeting house. It never thrived and closed in 1790.
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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.
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David Craig's 1785 stone is the oldest dated marker in New Hope's old graveyard
The earliest date Craig could find in the old graveyard beside the first church site reads 'D. C. - N. 2. - 1785', which he took for David Craig, a son of William Craige, who died November 2, 1785. Earlier graves there were marked with rough, unlettered stones.
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Cane Creek Baptist Church is organized
Thomas Cates and members of the Cates family organized Cane Creek Baptist Church, the oldest Baptist church on the chapter's list. It later planted Antioch and Mars Hill churches.
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Simon Lindley and Anna Stanley make their home in Orange County
After marrying Anna Stanley in South Carolina on July 14, 1789, Simon Lindley settled with her in Orange County. The family moved to Christian County, Kentucky, in the mid-1790s.
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The House pays the men who carried the state treasury out of Hillsborough
On November 10, 1789 the House of Commons voted to pay John Armstrong of Orange County three pounds for taking the Treasury's books and papers from Hillsborough to Fayetteville, and five pounds each to nine men of the Orange Company of Horse who guarded the money on the road. The treasurer's office had been kept in the town since 1786 in the confiscated store known as the Blue House, and its records had already been carted to Tarboro and back in 1787 and 1788.
- 1790s
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Jacob Lake ends his ministry to New Hope
Lake followed DeBow and served New Hope with the Hawfields and Eno churches in the same way until 1790. He left Orange Presbytery in 1794 after about ten years in it.
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The county tax list counts 36 white polls and 82 taxable enslaved people in Hillsborough town
Orange County's 1790 tax list returned 2,272 polls and 406,106 acres across its eight districts, with a separate list for Hillsborough town showing 36 white polls against 82 black polls. William Hooper was charged for 22 of them, John Taylor for 10 and Francis Childs for 5.
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General Assembly orders a new district courthouse built at Hillsborough
Alexander Mebane of Orange brought in the bill, and the act named William Watters, Absalom Tatom and Jeduthan Harper commissioners to raise a courthouse on the lot where the burned one had stood and to sell off its brick and remains. It was paid for by a poll and land tax on Orange and by lighter taxes on Wake, Chatham, Caswell, Granville and Randolph, the counties of the Hillsborough district.
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Eagle Lodge is chartered at Hillsborough
Eagle Lodge No. 19 was chartered at Hillsborough in 1791, among the first lodges under the Grand Lodge of North Carolina, with George Doherty as its first secretary. It stayed active until 1799 and then lay dormant until the masons revived it in 1819 under a new charter and a new number.
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Faucett's grist mill is working at the Eno ford northwest of Hillsborough
The county's architectural survey records the Faucett Mill in operation by at least 1792, at a place where a wagon road forded the Eno River northwest of Hillsborough, and says it may have been built as early as the 1760s by the Quaker milling family of Isaac Lowe. Mills of this kind ground the corn and wheat that Orange farmers hauled north to Petersburg or south toward the Cape Fear, and doubled as gathering places; the Faucett family later added a house that served as an inn and tavern.
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Gilbert Strayhorn deeds two hundred acres to New Hope church
Soon after Lake left, the aged Gilbert Strayhorn gave two hundred acres 'to the subscribers of the church and their successors.' Every New Hope church stood on this land, and seventy acres of it were still the congregation's in 1891.
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Hillsborough gets the first post office in Orange County
David Ray was appointed Hillsborough's first postmaster about December 18, 1792, and the office appears in post office lists from March 20, 1793, the first in the county; Chapel Hill followed on July 1, 1795. Letters were left at the office for recipients to collect, and for decades it moved from one Churton Street or King Street business to another.
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A school begins to be kept at New Hope church
Thompson urged the congregation to take up schooling, and after his time the church generally kept a school for many years. His successor James H. Bowman is said to have taught school there while supplying the pulpit.
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James Strayhorn, John Strain and John Freeland become ruling elders at New Hope
Three men were ordained and installed as elders about 1795, joining James Hart. The four made up the whole session when the church was reorganized in 1820.
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New Hope builds a parsonage with a farm on the church tract
At William F. Thompson's urging the congregation built a parsonage where William C. Claytor later lived and laid off much of Gilbert Strayhorn's two-hundred-acre gift as a farm to go with it.
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Orange Presbytery holds its earliest recorded meeting at New Hope
The oldest surviving Orange Presbytery minutes record a meeting at New Hope church, the first after Concord Presbytery was set off. James Bowman was moderator, William McGee was ordained with William F. Thompson, John Gillispie was licensed, and two candidates, Robert Foster and Robert Tate, sat part of their trials.
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William F. Thompson is ordained at New Hope as its first pastor
Thompson, said to be a native of Connecticut, was ordained at New Hope and apparently installed as its pastor at the same meeting, the first pastor the church had. Earlier ministers had served it as supplies alongside the Hawfields and Eno.
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Thomas Person gives $1,050 to complete the university chapel, later named Person Hall
Trustee Thomas Person gave $1,050 to finish the chapel then under construction at Chapel Hill. The trustees thanked him for his liberality and the building, completed in 1798, was named Person Hall.
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James O'Kelly organizes Damascus Christian Church
James O'Kelly, who had broken with the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1792, organized Damascus Christian Church near the Orange, Durham and Chatham lines and served as its first pastor.
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The Assembly orders the sale of the ruinous St. Matthew's church building
An act of 1797 authorised the sheriff to sell the old Anglican church on Lot 98, described as in a ruinous and decayed situation and not used for divine worship for a number of years. The building went soon afterwards, and around 1800 the town had no church at all.
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The Haw River Circuit takes the place of the New Hope Circuit in serving Hillsborough Methodists
In 1797 the Methodists replaced the New Hope Circuit with the Haw River Circuit, whose preachers then served the Hillsborough community. The Hillsborough church organized about 1807 belonged to this circuit.
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A free Black distiller works on East King Street as the county counts its Black residents
Africa Parker, a free Black man, was running a distillery on East King Street near William Courtney's house in Hillsborough in 1799. The census the next year counted 3,327 enslaved people and 100 free Black people in Orange County alongside 12,222 white residents.
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William F. Thompson deeds a hundred acres of New Hope church land to John Strayhorn
As he was leaving, Thompson sold about a hundred acres of the church tract to Gilbert Strayhorn's son John, stating that Gilbert had conveyed the land to him. No such conveyance was ever seen or recorded, and Craig judged the deed a forgery; the land left the church's hands.
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William F. Thompson resigns as pastor of New Hope
Thompson gave up the charge at a called meeting of Orange Presbytery at Cross Roads church and left the presbytery's bounds. In April 1802 the presbytery suspended him from the ministry for false charges he had made against it.
Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
- 1800s
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A great camp-meeting revival is held at New Hope
People came from long distances and camped on the church grounds for days, and the revival spread into other neighborhoods. Craig thought it did much to prompt the building of a third church.
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William D. Paisley becomes pastor of the Hawfields and Cross Roads churches
After serving the Union and Buffalo churches in Guilford County, Paisley took charge of the Hawfields and Cross Roads Presbyterian churches near present Mebane in 1801 and stayed until 1818. The Hawfields church historian credits him with organizing the first camp meeting in North Carolina there during the Great Revival.
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James H. Bowman becomes stated supply at New Hope
Bowman, whose charge in 1799 was Eno and Little River, went west as a missionary in 1800, returned in the fall of 1801 and probably came to New Hope in 1802. He preached and taught school there until he left the presbytery in 1815, and was perhaps the first to preach in the third church.
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Mount Carmel Baptist Church is organized at Pritchard's Mill
Mount Carmel Baptist Church began at Pritchard's Mill in 1803 and moved to its later site in 1873, when it built the church still in use in 1953.
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Gilbert Strayhorn, a founder and first elder of New Hope church, dies
Strayhorn died at 88 and was buried in the old New Hope graveyard, next to the church he had helped found on his own land.
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New Hope builds its third church
The third house of worship went up about two hundred yards southeast of the second, beside a spring that rises from rock. It had a high pulpit at the west end and a gallery at the east end for Black worshippers, and it stood until fire destroyed it in 1862.
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Cane Creek Baptists organize the Haw River Mountain Church, later Antioch
Cane Creek Baptist Church set up a new congregation called Haw River Mountain Church, which moved in 1830 and became Antioch Baptist Church.
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Methodists organize a church in Hillsborough
A Methodist congregation was organized in Hillsborough about 1807. Its building in use in 1953 dated from 1867.
- 1810s
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A sacred music society forms and an organ is ordered for the university chapel
The Raleigh Register reported a new society for the study of sacred music at the university and an organ, paid for by private gifts, already built in New York. The trustees later paid $50 to bring it to Chapel Hill.
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Robert H. Chapman serves New Hope as stated supply
After James H. Bowman left, Chapman supplied the New Hope pulpit about 1815.
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The Hillsborough Presbyterian Church is built on the old St. Matthew's church lot with lottery money
The brick church on West Tryon Street was built in 1815 and 1816 near the site of the colonial St. Matthew's church, lost in the 1790s, with money raised by a lottery the state authorized. The brickmasons John Berry and Samuel Hancock are credited with the work.
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Witherspoon takes charge of the Hillsborough Academy
Returning to Hillsborough at twenty-five, Witherspoon took a double charge: the pastorate of the newly built Presbyterian church and the principalship of the closely allied Hillsborough Academy. He gave up the academy sometime after 1819.
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John Craig, a founder and first elder of New Hope church, dies
John Craig, eldest son of William Craige, died at about 90. Craig names him with Gilbert Strayhorn as the church's original founders and first elders.
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Polly Burke helps organize the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church
In September 1816 Mary W. Burke joined eight other people and the Rev. John Knox Witherspoon to organize the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church, which acquired the town's brick church built in 1810. She rented pew 13 on the first pew list and supported the church for the next eighteen years.
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New Hope's elders sell seventeen acres of church land for repairs
After what the deed calls mature deliberation, the elders and subscribers sold seventeen acres at the southwest corner of the church tract to Samuel Strayhorn to pay for church repairs. Seventy acres of Gilbert Strayhorn's gift remained.
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Elijah Graves preaches at New Hope as stated supply
Graves, who was teaching at Hillsborough, preached at New Hope from November 1818 until April 1820. A temperance reformer, he persuaded many hearers to sign a pledge.
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St. Mary's Chapel is admitted to the Episcopal convention
The St. Mary's congregation in eastern Orange County was received into the Episcopal convention of North Carolina, two years after the diocese was formed.
- 1820s
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Lebanon Methodist Church is organized
Lebanon Methodist Church was organized in rural Orange County in 1820.
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Thomas Ruffin gives the land for St. Matthew's Church
Thomas Ruffin donated the hill on the east side of town where St. Matthew's church and churchyard stand, as a thank offering tied to his courtship of Anne Kirkland there.
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New Hope church is reorganized under Shepherd K. Kollock
On April 22, 1820, Kollock laid before the session Orange Presbytery's call for long-vacant churches to be reorganized; finding no roll of members and little discipline, the session resolved to reorganize the next day. On April 23 four elders and ten members publicly assented to the articles of faith and covenant.
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Alexander Gattis, Samuel Faucett and Gilbert Strayhorn are ordained elders at New Hope
The session added three ruling elders; Gilbert Strayhorn was a grandson of the founding elder and a son of William Strayhorn.
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A Methodist camp meeting at Hillsborough adds about 38 members and starts a fund for a meeting house
A camp meeting held at Hillsborough in 1821 brought about thirty-eight people into the Methodist fold, and the converts opened a subscription to pay for a house of worship. Two years later the church bought a lot with a house on it.
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Elisha Mitchell is ordained by the Presbytery of Orange at Hillsborough
In 1821 the Presbytery of Orange, meeting in Hillsborough, ordained Professor Elisha Mitchell, who had been licensed to preach by the Congregational Church.
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Brickmason Samuel Hancock joins the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church he helped build
Samuel Hancock joined the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church on November 17, 1821, five years after his wife Susan. He rented a pew and gave toward the pastor's salary and a bell.
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Bethlehem Presbyterian Church is organized
Elisha Mitchell, Elijah Graves and Samuel Child led the organization of Bethlehem Presbyterian Church, which built its first church the next year.
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Mount Moriah Baptist Church is organized
Mount Moriah Baptist Church, a white congregation, was organized in 1823.
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Dr. James Webb deeds Hillsborough's Methodists a lot and house on Tryon Street
For ten shillings Dr. James Webb conveyed a 44-foot-square part of town lot 102 on Tryon (then Church) Street to trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Church, on condition that a meeting house be kept there. A house already standing on the lot became the congregation's first church.
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The Presbyterian session admonishes two men for trading in enslaved people
Hillsborough Presbyterian Church charged William Adams and John Wall with the "unchristian act of negro trading." Adams said he had sold people he held to pay his debts and taken friends' slaves to market with his own; the session admonished both men and did not punish them.
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The trustees settle William Nichols's accounts for Old West and the campus repairs
The university settled with William Nichols, its supervisor and builder, for Old West, the new chapel, the bricks made on university land and repairs to South Building, the President's House and Steward's Hall. Battle gives the cost as about $26,587 and says the accounts showed a want of careful superintendence.
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William Norwood is elected first junior warden of the reorganized St. Matthew's Church
When St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Hillsborough was reorganized, William Norwood was elected its first junior warden.
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Hillsborough Episcopalians organize St. Matthew's Church
After decades without a resident minister, Hillsborough's Episcopalians organized a parish again and founded the present St. Matthew's on Thomas Ruffin's gift of land, with William Mercer Green as first rector.
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Francis L. Hawks buys the house at Churton and Orange streets
William H. Phillips sold the house to Francis Lister Hawks, then reporter to the state supreme court. While living there Hawks left the law to study theology under William Mercer Green of St. Matthew's and was ordained deacon in 1827; he later became a noted Episcopal clergyman and historian.
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John Berry and Samuel Hancock build St. Matthew's Episcopal Church to William Nichols's design
St. Matthew's, an early Gothic Revival church of Flemish-bond brick, was built in 1825-1826 by the local masons John Berry and Samuel Hancock to a design by William Nichols, who set its size at 35 by 45 feet. It replaced an earlier church at Churton and West Tryon streets that had burned in 1793.
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Shepherd K. Kollock's connection with New Hope is dissolved
Kollock, who had preached at New Hope with the Hillsborough church since 1820, ended his connection in May 1825. Elijah Graves came back as stated supply that November and stayed until May 1831.
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St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough is consecrated under its first rector, William Mercer Green
William Mercer Green became first rector of the reorganized St. Matthew's parish in 1825, the year work began on its brick church; state architect William Nichols and brickmaker John Berry were among the builders. Bishop John Stark Ravenscroft consecrated the church on May 21, 1826, during the diocesan convention it hosted.
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Fire destroys Witherspoon's farmhouse and the Orange Presbytery records
The fire burned the Witherspoons' rural home a mile and a half south of Hillsborough and its contents, including all but one volume of the old records of Orange Presbytery, which Witherspoon held as stated clerk. Losses were put at about 3,000 dollars and the house was rebuilt.
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Thirty students walk out of Sunday worship in the chapel
One Sunday morning thirty students left divine service in the chapel one by one. The faculty examined each; thirteen gave acceptable excuses and the other seventeen denied any plan, so the case was dropped.
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Presbyterians begin worshipping together in Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill's Presbyterians began meeting about 1829 in homes and university buildings, with university faculty serving as ministers, according to the church's own history. The congregation's surviving session records begin in 1845, the year Lefler and Wager give for its formal organization, on June 8. Its first sanctuary on Franklin Street was dedicated September 23, 1849, and the congregation took the name University Presbyterian Church in the 1960s.
- 1830s
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Orange Methodist Church is organized at the Davis School House
Alexander Gattis and neighbors organized Orange Methodist Church in the Davis School House near the Wash Fowler home. The congregation built its first church about 1838.
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A year-long revival at New Hope adds at least seventy communicants
Under the evangelists Daniel L. Russell, John S. McCutcheon and Philip Pearson, families built tents on the church grounds and lived in them for weeks to attend the meetings. The session record shows at least seventy people admitted to communion.
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A small nondenominational Union Church goes up on the Grand Avenue ground
After the university sold the old Grammar School property, a small church open to all denominations, called the Union Church or the Village Chapel, was built on the Grand Avenue plot facing Franklin Street.
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Fannie Breeze is born enslaved in the household of Samuel Breeze
Fannie Breeze was born in 1832, enslaved in the household of Samuel H. Breeze, a farmer and member of Pleasant Green Methodist church in what was then eastern Orange County. She joined Pleasant Green before the Civil War and later worked as a midwife along the Eno.
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Mount Zion Christian Church is organized
Thomas Reeves led the organization of Mount Zion Christian Church and built its first church in 1833.
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Pleasant Green Methodist Church is organized
Pleasant Green Methodist Church was organized about 1832 by a group of local families.
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Five elders are ordained at New Hope during the revival
William Brown, Alexander Strain, Samuel Hart, David Hart and Allen Petty were added to the session. The two Harts were grandsons of Gilbert Strayhorn, and Strain was a son of the earlier elder Alexander Strain.
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White Cross Church, later an AME congregation, is organized
The church list dates the White Cross congregation and its first building to May 1832. It was rebuilt in 1921 and was an African Methodist Episcopal church by 1953.
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Cedar Grove Methodist Church is organized
The Cedar Grove Methodist Episcopal Church was organized on July 23, 1832.
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James Phillips is licensed to preach and later serves New Hope Presbyterian Church
Mathematics professor James Phillips joined the Presbyterian church in 1832 and was licensed to preach by Orange Presbytery in 1833. He was later ordained and installed as minister of New Hope Presbyterian Church, about seven miles outside Chapel Hill, and shared the university chapel work with Elisha Mitchell.
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Trustees name the new chapel Gerrard Hall
The trustees sold Major Charles Gerrard's 2,560-acre service tract in Tennessee for $6,400, voted $2,000 of it toward finishing the new chapel that had stood unfinished since about 1824, and resolved that the building be known forever as Gerrard Hall in his memory.
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New Hope elects George W. Ferrill as pastor
The congregation unanimously elected Ferrill pastor, and he was installed soon after. The pastoral relation was dissolved in July 1836.
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Witherspoon ends seventeen years as pastor at Hillsborough
Witherspoon severed his connection with the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church and moved to Camden, South Carolina. His advocacy of religious education, Sunday schools and preaching for enslaved people had strained relations with his congregation.
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Job, later Rev. Job Berry, is baptized at St. Matthew's
Job, enslaved by George W. B. Burgwyn, was baptized at St. Matthew's Episcopal Church by William Mercer Green and confirmed the next April. As Job Berry he later led Hillsborough's first Black congregation.
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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.
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Fairfield Presbyterian Church is organized
Fairfield Presbyterian Church was organized with Samuel Paisley as its first pastor.
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Six enslaved women are baptized into Hillsborough Presbyterian Church
The Rev. S. J. Price baptized six women held by the Nash, Watters, Scott and Waddell households, and Frederick Nash and William J. Bingham received them as members. In the twenty years that followed under Robert Burwell, the church took in only one communicant of color.
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Members of Cane Creek organize Mars Hill Baptist Church
Members of Cane Creek Baptist Church organized Mars Hill Baptist Church, near the old Eno Quaker burying ground off the Hillsborough-Schley road.
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Dr. James Webb builds the Presbyterian Sessions House in the Old Town Cemetery
In 1835 Dr. James Webb took a ninety-nine-year lease on the southeast corner of Hillsborough's Old Town Cemetery lot and built a frame Sessions House with a bell tower there. It served as the Presbyterian Sunday school room and later as a public library until 1934.
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Harmony Primitive Baptist Church is organized
Harmony Primitive Baptist Church was organized about 1835. By 1953 it had three members.
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Robert Burwell becomes pastor of the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church
Burwell began a thirteen-year pastorate, and he and his wife opened a school for young women whose income let him serve the church on a small salary. He returned for a second term in the 1850s.
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St. Matthew's adds a gallery for Black worshippers under William Mercer Green
In 1835, during William Mercer Green's rectorship, a gallery was added to St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough to seat Black worshippers. Green also held monthly services at Duncan Cameron's Salem Chapel, where he gave instruction to enslaved people.
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Clover Garden Methodist Church puts up its building
The Methodist congregation at Clover Garden, organized some time before, erected a church in 1836 with seats for about 150.
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John Norwood begins forty-eight years as clerk of the Hillsborough Presbyterian session
John Norwood kept the session records from 1836 to 1884, one of the two longest terms in the church's history.
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Hillsborough Presbyterian Church buys the house as its manse
The church's trustees bought lots 152 and 153 in January 1836, renovated the house, and gave it to their minister, Robert Armistead Burwell, and his family, who had arrived from Virginia late the year before.
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James Phillips begins nearly thirty years as stated supply at New Hope
The university professor began preaching at New Hope in August 1836 and served it until December 1865, longer than any other minister. Because Chapel Hill long had no Presbyterian church, New Hope heard him almost every Sunday for years.
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William Mercer Green leaves St. Matthew's to become university chaplain and professor
William Mercer Green accepted a post at the University of North Carolina as chaplain and professor of belles lettres and resigned from St. Matthew's in Hillsborough the following year. The Hillsborough congregation had grown from seventeen communicants in his first year to sixty-seven when he left.
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Henry H. Prout becomes minister at St. Matthew's
Henry H. Prout took charge at St. Matthew's after William Mercer Green left for Chapel Hill. The parish's unbroken run of vestry records begins the same year.
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Elisha Mitchell preaches the university's first baccalaureate sermon
At the 1839 commencement Mitchell, chosen by the faculty, preached the first of the baccalaureate sermons to the graduating class. The choice of preacher was later given to the senior class.
- 1840s
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A one-room log school is built beside St. Mary's Chapel
In the 1840s a one-room log schoolhouse went up next to St. Mary's Chapel. The brick St. Mary's School of 1931 was later built on the same site.
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Jesse Hargrave opens a general store whose upstairs room serves the Methodists
Jesse Hargrave, in Chapel Hill since 1835, had a general store on Franklin Street by 1840. The Methodists, who had no church yet, held services in a second-floor room of the store. Hargrave bought the Yancey house the same year.
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Four elders are ordained at New Hope
George A. Faucett, David Craig, William C. Blackwood and Joseph Kirkland were added to the session. All but Faucett were great-grandsons of William Craige; Kirkland was the father of the Rev. Alexander Kirkland.
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Walnut Grove Methodist Church begins
Walnut Grove Methodist Church began in 1841, when the circuit rider Sidney Bumpass started holding services there and the community soon built a log church on land given by Samuel Woods. By 1953 it had 400 members.
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Moses Ashley Curtis becomes rector of St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough
Curtis, an Episcopal priest who had taught at the church school in Raleigh, accepted a call to St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough in June 1841. He did his botanical and fungus research from the town while serving the parish.
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Chapel Hill Episcopalians buy a church lot from the university
William Mercer Green told the 1842 diocesan convention that the new Chapel Hill congregation, then fifteen communicants, had bought a lot from the university for its church and had let a contract for part of the building materials.
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Charles F. Deems joins the UNC faculty
President David L. Swain brought Deems, a young Methodist preacher, onto the faculty in 1842 as adjunct professor of rhetoric and logic, to have a Methodist among the professors. He resigned in 1848 for Randolph-Macon College.
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Charles F. Deems preaches to Chapel Hill Methodists in the hall he names Bethesda
While a professor, Deems preached to the village Methodists, at their invitation, in the upper story of Jesse Hargrave's store, a former Masonic lodge room he named Bethesda. After he left the university in 1848, ministers were regularly appointed to the Chapel Hill charge.
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Charles Phillips joins New Hope church
James Phillips's son Charles, later a minister and teacher at the university, joined the church at New Hope. He often preached there with his father in later years.
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William Mercer Green organizes an Episcopal parish in Chapel Hill
In May 1842 William Mercer Green presided over the organization of the Church of the Atonement, an Episcopal parish in Chapel Hill with fifteen communicants, which met in members' homes for five years while its church was built. A record of subscribers for building the church, dated 1843, survives in Green's papers.
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The Episcopal parish begins building the Chapel of the Cross on East Franklin Street
A year after organizing, Chapel Hill's Episcopal parish started work in 1843 on its Gothic Revival chapel at 302 East Franklin Street, designed by the architect Thomas U. Walter. The building took until 1848 to finish.
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Swain reports the Chapel of the Cross walls up to a plan by Thomas U. Walter
Writing to Charles Manly, university president David L. Swain noted that the Episcopalians had raised the brick walls of their church and that it was planned by Walter of Philadelphia. The nomination treats this letter as the main evidence that architect Thomas U. Walter designed the chapel, which had long been credited to Richard Upjohn.
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Chapel Hill's Presbyterians and Methodists circulate subscription papers for church buildings
Swain's letter of November 1843 reported that the village Presbyterians and Methodists each had subscription papers going round to pay for churches, while the Episcopalians already had the brick walls of theirs standing. The Presbyterian church was finished in 1848 and the Methodist in 1853.
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Elias Dodson holds Hillsborough's first known Baptist services in the courthouse
Elias Dodson, a Virginia-born graduate of William and Mary, preached in the courthouse and is the first Baptist minister the authors could find holding services in town. When the county built a new courthouse he bought the old one for the Baptists.
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The Union Church is moved off Franklin Street and becomes a school
When the university sold the Grand Avenue ground to Andrew Mickle and Richard James Ashe and the Presbyterians, the little Union Church was moved away from Franklin Street and later used as the village school.
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The Old Orange County Courthouse is moved up Churton Street to Queen Street
After the county built a new courthouse, its commissioners advertised the old wooden courthouse for sale at the November 1845 county court, to be removed from the court square. The Baptist missionary Elias Dodson bought it, and by about 1847 it stood at the corner of Churton and Queen streets as a church. The building later became the freedmen's school and then the home of Dickerson Chapel AME Church.
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David L. Swain and Charles Phillips transfer from New Hope to the Chapel Hill church
University president David L. Swain, who first joined a church at New Hope, and Charles Phillips were released by letter to the Presbyterian church at Chapel Hill.
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James Phillips buys the Village Chapel lot for the Presbyterian church
Professor James Phillips, as trustee, bought for $200 the lot where the Union or Village Chapel stood, as a site for the Presbyterian church, on condition that no burials be made there. The old chapel was moved a few hundred yards north, enlarged, and long served as the village public school.
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False alarm sets off a panic in the chapel at commencement
During the 1846 commencement someone shouted that the gallery was falling, and the packed crowd rushed for the doors while some jumped from windows, until President Swain, Governor Graham and other trustees calmed it. No one was hurt, and more pillars were placed under the galleries before the next commencement.
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Union Grove Methodist Church is organized
Union Grove Methodist Church was organized on September 23, 1846. The cornerstone of its later building was laid on the centennial of that day.
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Dabney Cosby builds the Presbyterian church on Franklin Street
After the university work Cosby built a small Tuscan style church designed by Alexander Jackson Davis for the Chapel Hill Presbyterian congregation, whose members included university president David L. Swain. In March 1848 the congregation member Charles Phillips wrote to Davis that the mason could not match the lilac gray color specified for the outside. The building no longer stands.
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Moses Ashley Curtis leaves St. Matthew's for Society Hill, South Carolina
Rector and botanist Moses Ashley Curtis moved from Hillsborough to Society Hill, South Carolina, ending his first period at St. Matthew's.
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The Eno Friends Meeting closes
The Eno meeting, which never recovered the membership it lost in the eighteenth century, came to an end in 1847.
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James B. Connelly serves as rector of St. Matthew's
James B. Connelly took charge of the parish in 1848 and served until his death late in 1855.
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Mount Hermon Baptist Church is organized
Mount Hermon Baptist Church was organized on June 24, 1848, with Jesse Howell as its first pastor. Its later church was built about 1913.
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The Chapel of the Cross is consecrated
Bishop Levi Silliman Ives consecrated the Episcopal church at Chapel Hill as the Chapel of the Holy Cross. Designed by Thomas U. Walter for the parish William Mercer Green organized in 1842, it was built of bricks fired by enslaved people at kilns on Green's farm and included a wooden gallery for enslaved worshippers.
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The Presbyterian church on Franklin Street is finished and dedicated
Built with money and effort from James and Charles Phillips, Elisha Mitchell and President Swain, the small Presbyterian church on the old Grand Avenue ground was completed and formally dedicated.
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Trustees let student church members worship at their own churches
Petitions from several denominations reached the board in December 1849 asking to ease compulsory Sunday worship in the college chapel. On January 4, 1850 the trustees voted down a broader plan and adopted Samuel F. Patterson's rule letting communicants attend the church of their choice while all others still attended chapel, a rule that stood about ten years.
- 1850s
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Circuit rider Alson Gray organizes Orange Chapel Methodist Church
Orange Chapel Methodist Church was organized and built its first church in 1850 under the circuit rider Alson Gray.
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The Lindsey-Wilson farmstead takes shape on Damascus Church Road
A log farmhouse and log kitchen, a smokehouse, a barn for hay and a two-story frame granary that still holds its grain bins went up around the middle of the nineteenth century. A stretch of the old roadbed with a stone wall survives in the yard.
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Bethel Baptist Church is organized
Bethel Baptist Church was organized in 1851. The church it used in 1953 went up about 1900.
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Job Berry and Billy Payne begin the congregation that became Dickerson Chapel
Dickerson Chapel AME Church dates its founding to 1851, when Job Berry, an enslaved painter and its first pastor, began gathering the congregation with Rev. Billy (William) Payne, enslaved by Dr. Edmund Strudwick. With state law barring Black preachers, they met in homes; the congregation moved into the old courthouse on Queen Street in 1866.
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The new Hillsborough Baptist church joins the Beulah Association
On organizing, the Baptist congregation in Hillsborough entered the Beulah Association. It later moved to the Mount Zion Association, formed at Mount Moriah Church.
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Chapel Hill's Methodists dedicate their first church
In July 1853 the Methodist congregation that became University Methodist Church dedicated its first building, at Rosemary and Henderson streets, paid for with about $5,000 that its pastor J. Milton Frost had raised around the state. The congregation had met since about 1840, with Charles F. Deems preaching in the 1840s and Frost stationed there from January 1851.
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Witherspoon dies at Tusculum and is buried in the Old Town Cemetery
He died penniless at the Tusculum farmhouse on the thirty-seventh anniversary of the organization of the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church. His funeral was held in that church and he was buried nearby in the Nash-Strudwick plot of the Old Town Cemetery, where the congregation and townspeople paid for the obelisk over his grave.
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First Baptist Church of Hillsborough is organized in the old courthouse
The First Baptist Church was organized in Hillsborough and met in the former 1790 courthouse building, now Dickerson Chapel, until 1862, while it raised its own church building on a lot acquired between 1854 and 1860.
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Baptist minister James Pleasant Mason marries Mary Elizabeth Morgan
Mary Elizabeth Morgan (1825-1894) had inherited a tract south of Chapel Hill that came down from early settler Mark Morgan through his son John and grandson Solomon P. Morgan. The couple had four daughters, two of whom died as infants.
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Chapel Hill Baptist Church is organized
Chapel Hill Baptists organized the Baptist Church of Chapel Hill in 1854 under William Henry Merritt, George W. Purefoy and Brantley J. Hackney, with Elder J. P. Mason as first pastor. Its first building went up in 1854–55, and the congregation is now University Baptist Church.
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Hillsborough Presbyterian Church sells the people it held in trust for the Witherspoons
People once held by John Knox Witherspoon had passed to the church in trust for the care of his ailing daughter. The session refused a sale in August 1852, but after Witherspoon's death it agreed, and part of the money went to Mary Witherspoon. The names of those sold are not recorded.
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The Baptists buy W. J. Freeland's lot for a new church
The congregation bought a two-acre lot from W. J. Freeland running from Margaret Lane along Wake Street to King Street, where its present church stands.
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Hillsborough Baptists call their first pastor
Three months after organizing, the congregation called Rev. A. Jones Jr. as its first pastor, and he accepted. The church counted 29 pastors in its first hundred years.
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Thomas Ruffin deeds St. Matthew's Church the land he had given by word around
Thomas Ruffin's deed of April 10, 1854 formally conveyed 1 1/3 acres to St. Matthew's Church, land he had given verbally around 1820. The tract was later enlarged for the church, parish house and walled cemetery.
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The Baptist Church of Chapel Hill opens its first church
Services began on Sunday, May 6, 1855 in the brick meeting house, with vestibule, belfry and bell, that the Baptist congregation put up after it organized in September 1854. The building later became the Masonic temple of University Lodge.
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Charles Phillips serves as stated supply for the Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church
Phillips was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Orange in December 1857 and served as stated supply for the Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church from 1857 to 1868. He taught and superintended the church Sunday school and with his wife started a Sunday school for Black residents.
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The Baptists build a schoolhouse, and the lane beside it becomes Church Street
A schoolhouse went up next to the new Baptist church on West Franklin Street, and the dirt road just east of the two buildings took the name Church Street.
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Moses Ashley Curtis returns to St. Matthew's in Hillsborough
After about ten years at Society Hill, S.C., Curtis came back to St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough in February 1857, and stayed until his death in 1872; he was buried in the churchyard.
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Adolphus W. Mangum serves as pastor of the Chapel Hill Methodist church
The Methodist minister Adolphus Williamson Mangum, born at Locust Grove on the Flat River in what was then Orange County, was pastor of the Methodist church in Chapel Hill in 1858 and 1859.
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St. Mary's Chapel is built
The Episcopal congregation of St. Mary's, about six miles northeast of Hillsborough, replaced its eighteenth-century church with a small brick Gothic Revival chapel on land bought beside the original tract. Bishop Thomas Atkinson consecrated it on November 25, 1859, and the congregation reported that the neat brick church had cost $2,000.
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New Bethel Methodist Church is organized
John R. McMannan, Jackson Latta and five other men organized New Bethel Methodist Church in 1859. The church it used in 1953 dated from 1925.
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Hillsborough Methodist Church builds its church
The Hillsborough Methodist congregation, organized about 1807, bought its lot on April 4, 1859, and John Berry built the church, which was to be dedicated on Sunday, October 6, 1861. The war held up the finishing and the building was not paid for until 1874. Lefler and Wager counted 200 seats, and it was still the congregation's church in 1953.
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Five elders are ordained at New Hope
Samuel S. Claytor, Alexander Dickson, William S. Kirkland, Bryant Strayhorn and George R. Long were ordained and installed. Craig traces each to the founding families except Dickson.
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Bishop Atkinson consecrates St. Mary's Chapel
The St. Mary's Chapel building in eastern Orange County was consecrated by Bishop Atkinson with the Rev. Dr. Curtis taking part.
- 1860s
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Archbishop John Hughes preaches the commencement sermon
Invited again by the senior class, the Roman Catholic Archbishop Hughes preached the baccalaureate sermon, speaking without notes for an hour and three quarters on love of God and of neighbor. Some Protestant critics attacked the choice, and a Hillsborough Recorder correspondent charged that he was treated discourteously, which the university denied.
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First Baptist Church of Hillsborough builds its church
Seven years after organizing in the old courthouse, the First Baptist Church of Hillsborough began its brick church about 1860, to a design by William Percival. The congregation met in the courthouse until 1862 and the war stalled the work; John Berry took over from the first builder, D. Kistler, and finished it. The Baptist State Convention met in the newly completed church in the fall of 1868, when Rev. Thomas H. Pritchard of Raleigh preached the dedication sermon.
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Trustees allow students to be excused from chapel worship
Answering a memorial from the Episcopal convention that compulsory chapel on Sunday violated conscience, the trustees adopted Judge Matthias E. Manly's scheme letting the president excuse students whose parents lived in the village, who belonged to another church in town, or who or whose parents objected in writing. Morning and evening prayers stayed compulsory.
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Hillsborough Methodists refuse to give their church bell to be cast into Confederate cannon
When Confederate authorities, short of cannon, asked the Hillsborough Methodist Church for its bell to melt down, the congregation turned them down.
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T. M. Jordan preaches to enslaved people in the Baptist church basement
Rev. T. M. Jordan held services for enslaved people of Hillsborough in the basement of the Baptist church and married and baptized many Black members. One night his hearers gave him so much Confederate money that he carried it home in a handkerchief.
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Thirty-five men of the New Hope congregation die in Confederate service
Craig lists thirty-five men from within the bounds of the congregation who died in the Civil War, eight of them Strayhorns and three Craigs.
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Presiding elder William Barringer dedicates the new Methodist church in Hillsborough
The brick church that Capt. John Berry built on the Tryon Street lot bought in 1859 was dedicated by William Barringer, presiding elder of the Raleigh District. The first sermon in it was preached by Jesse A. Cunninggim.
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New Hope's 1805 church burns
The church burned on a Saturday night, most people believing it was set on purpose. The next morning James Phillips preached to the congregation under the trees, and through the summer of 1862 they worshipped under a large arbor built on the grounds.
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The Baptists sell their old courthouse church to George Bishop of New Bern
Trustees H. C. Strowd, John Cheek and William Ward sold the old Baptist church lot at Churton and Queen streets, part of town lot 80, to George Bishop of New Bern for $750. Bishop later resold it to Philadelphia Friends working for freedpeople, and it became the home of Dickerson's Chapel.
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New Hope Presbyterian Church builds its fourth church
In the middle of the Civil War, New Hope Presbyterian Church put up its fourth building, the one still in use in 1953.
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Pastor Henry B. Pratt tells the Presbyterian session he will serve the army as a chaplain
Pratt informed the Hillsborough church that he expected to go into Confederate service for the rest of the war once he obtained a chaplain's commission. He returned as pastor in 1867-68.
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Black and Native American worshippers in Chapel Hill gather under a grape arbor and form the congregation that became St. Paul AME
A group that included William Thompson, Charles Craig, Jerry Hargraves, Kenny Brooks, Green Merritt and Green Cordal began meeting under a grape vine arbor, with Rev. Green Cordal preaching the first service. The congregation was received into the African Methodist Episcopal connection in 1870.
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Hillsborough Baptists begin worshipping in the basement of their unfinished church
With its building money lost in the war, the congregation appears to have moved into the basement of the new Wake Street church around 1864 and met there for some years. The builder John Berry finished the building later.
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