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Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
- 1810s
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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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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.
- 1820s
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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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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.
- 1830s
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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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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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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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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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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.
- 1840s
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Robert Burwell buys the house and has John Berry enlarge it
Burwell resigned his pulpit and bought the two lots from the church for $800 and back pay. The builder John Berry added a central hall and two rooms and turned the house to face Churton Street. A deed of trust of July 16, 1850 shows Burwell still owing Berry $2,500 and the church trustees $800, secured on the lots and on enslaved members of the household.
- 1850s
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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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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.
- 1860s
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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.
Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
- 1870s
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Dennis Heartt dies in Hillsborough
Dennis Heartt died at his home in Hillsborough on the morning of May 13, 1870, in his eighty-seventh year, and his funeral was held at the Presbyterian church the next day while the town's stores closed. The Recorder noted that Governor W. W. Holden, once his apprentice in the Recorder office, had him appointed Hillsborough postmaster after the war.
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The Hillsborough Presbyterian session asks that members be allowed to withdraw without church trial
The session resolved to ask presbytery to propose to the General Assembly a change in discipline, so that a member living outside the church's standards could leave its communion without a formal trial. After this, discipline cases disappear from the minutes.
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William A. Graham dies and is buried at Hillsborough
Graham died unexpectedly at Saratoga Springs, New York, on 11 August 1875, where he had gone for a meeting of the Virginia and Maryland arbitration commission. He was buried in the cemetery adjacent to the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church. He had been elected a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1875 but died before it assembled.
- 1880s
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Hillsborough Presbyterian Church shares a pastor with the Chapel Hill church
During J. L. Williamson's short pastorate of 1882-83 the Hillsborough church was grouped with the Presbyterian church at Chapel Hill.
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Haywood Craig, a Black man, is received into the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church
The session received Haywood Craig on profession of faith; the book records him under a heading for the church's Black members.
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Hillsborough church men organize a Young Men's Christian Association at the Presbyterian manse
Men from the town's churches met at the Presbyterian manse on a Monday night, adopted a constitution and bylaws, and elected Charles M. Parks president and Joseph A. Harris secretary. The next meeting was called for the manse on December 10.
- 1890s
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The Hillsborough Presbyterian Church is stuccoed and given Gothic windows and a shingled tower
In 1892 the 1816 brick church was covered with scored stucco and given pointed-arch windows, a gabled roof and a shingled entrance tower with a spire. A two-story rear wing was probably added at the same time.
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Albert Long, a Black man, joins the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church by letter from New Hope
Albert Long transferred his membership by certificate from New Hope Presbyterian Church, one of two Black members the book names as received after the Civil War.
Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1900s
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H. S. Bradshaw returns to the Hillsborough Presbyterian pulpit for a 33-year second pastorate
Bradshaw, pastor from 1894 to 1900, came back in 1905 and stayed until 1938, giving him thirty-nine years in all, the longest service in the church's history. He is buried in the churchyard.
- 1920s
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Former students place a memorial tablet to the Nash sisters and Sarah Kollock in the Presbyterian church
Students of the girls' school kept by Sally and Maria Nash and their relative Sarah Kollock put up a tablet in their memory on the wall of the Hillsborough Presbyterian sanctuary.
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
- 1940s
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Mr. and Mrs. W. V. Fryer give a Baldwin organ to the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church
During Irving Birdseye's pastorate the Fryers gave a new Baldwin organ in memory of R. H. Claytor Sr., and also carpeted the sanctuary's pulpit and aisles.
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Hillsborough Presbyterian Church begins its educational building
After gifts starting in 1943 and a December 1947 drive that reached half the cost, the church started work on its educational wing in May 1948 and finished it that November.
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Hillsborough Presbyterian Church dedicates its debt-free educational building
Once the debt on the 1948 educational wing was paid, the church dedicated it in October 1949, under pastor Irving E. Birdseye.
- 1950s
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Hillsborough Presbyterian Church adds Strudwick Hall, a fellowship hall named for Shepperd Strudwick
In C. H. Reckard's pastorate the church built a fellowship hall to his drawings and named it for Shepperd Strudwick, elder, Sunday school superintendent and clerk of session.
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Hillsboro Presbyterian pastor preaches against local stock car racing
The Rev. C. H. Reckard, pastor of the Hillsboro Presbyterian Church, delivered a sermon criticizing local stock car racing and its effect on young people, one of the clergy protests against Sunday races at Orange Speedway.
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Orange County pastors form a ministerial association
Pastors of 18 churches in northern and central Orange County met at the Hillsboro Presbyterian Church and formed an Orange County Ministerial Association, electing the Rev. C. H. Reckard president and the Rev. Lawton Pettit of St. Matthew's Episcopal secretary.
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Hillsborough Presbyterian Church builds and moves into a new manse
A new manse drawn by pastor C. H. Reckard was finished and occupied early in 1958.
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Portrait painter Clement Strudwick dies and is buried in Hillsborough
Clement Read Strudwick, who had painted in a workshop behind his parents' Hillsborough home, died on February 26, 1958. His funeral was held in the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church and he was buried in the Hillsborough cemetery.
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Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 2, 2026.
