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Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1920s
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Chapel Hill Methodists complete a Georgian Revival church by James Gamble Rogers
Replacing their older sanctuary at 150 East Franklin Street, the Methodists finished a red brick church with white trim designed by New York architect James Gamble Rogers. Its tall steeple rises above the nearby campus and business district.
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The old Methodist church on Rosemary Street becomes a garage run by Montrose Tull
The long-closed 1853 Methodist church at Rosemary and Henderson streets was converted into an automobile repair station, the Club Service Motor Co., run by Montrose Tull. A platform was built from the rear door to Henderson Street for cars.
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Joseph H. Jones deeds a quarter acre of his farm to the Jones Grove church trustees
John Jones's father, Joseph H. Jones, gave a quarter-acre of his farm to the trustees of the new Jones Grove congregation: his son John, Joe Brooks and Joe's brother William Brooks. The deed also marks the line of the Ridge Road School lot to the south.
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The Church of God of Carrboro is organized
C. T. Boyd and others organized a Church of God congregation in Carrboro and built a 450-seat church the next year.
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Hillsborough's Black Presbyterian church closes
The small congregation had never been strong in numbers or money, and as its older members died there were too few younger ones to carry on. It closed about 1928.
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White Rock Church is organized
Laura Atwater, Henry Thompson and others organized White Rock Church, a United Holy Church congregation, and built it the same year. R. C. Turner, pastor of the Temple of Truth, was also its first pastor.
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Jones Grove Missionary Baptist Church dedicates its first sanctuary
Members and neighbors built a front-gable weatherboarded church, finished early in 1928, with Buck Jacobs giving a large cash gift, William Brooks the sand and Aldolphus Hester the logs; John Jones hauled lumber in a white neighbor's truck. Rev. Joe B. Brooks led the dedication.
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Meeting in the unfinished Graham Memorial, trustees add courses in religion
Chase seated the trustees on folding chairs in the empty lounge of Graham Memorial to shame alumni over the unfinished building. There they adopted the faculty's proposal for courses in the history and literature of religion with one dissenting vote, ending nearly ten years of debate.
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Gaines AME Chapel builds its church at Efland
The Black congregation of Gaines AME Chapel at Efland builds its church in 1929. It was covered in brick veneer in 1964.
- 1930s
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The Christian church congregation near Mebane builds a brick church
The congregation now known as Mebane United Church of Christ builds a cross-gable brick church near Mebane in 1931.
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University Lodge buys Chapel Hill's old Baptist church for its hall
University Lodge No. 408 bought the old Baptist church building on Franklin Street and made it into its lodge hall.
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St. Joseph CME built its first church on West Rosemary Street
Henry Baldwin, Margaret Burnette and Kennon Cheek mortgaged their homes for the down payment on the Rosemary Street lot, which Black leaders had judged too small for a new high school. A frame church went up under Rev. Joseph S. Miller and was dedicated as St. Joseph Colored Methodist Episcopal Church.
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Catholics organize a congregation in Chapel Hill
The Catholic Church of Chapel Hill was organized under its first priest, Francis J. Morrissey. With no building of its own, it held services in Gerrard Hall on the university campus.
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A Church of God congregation is organized in West Hillsborough
Garland Crabtree and T. E. Boman organized the Church of God of West Hillsborough, with Edd Mize as first pastor. It built a 250-seat church in 1945.
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Superintendent Hilda Allen sends the girls' Efland Quartette to sing in local churches
To raise money and show the home's progress, Hilda Allen taught the girls spirituals and arranged for the Efland Quartette to sing at churches around the area during her superintendency.
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The Methodist parsonage is moved to face Rosemary Street to make way for a Pure Oil station
The parsonage built on the old John Wesley Carr homesite was shifted and turned toward Rosemary Street, clearing the Franklin Street frontage for Ben Strowd's Pure Oil service station.
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The Williams family buys a 38-acre farm on Mount Carmel Church Road
In 1935 the Williams family acquired a farm whose buildings were already old: an antebellum frame hall-and-parlor house, two log outbuildings of the same age and two log tenant houses.
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Lebanon Methodist Church loses its old building
The old church of the Lebanon congregation, one of the rural churches tied to the Hillsborough charge, was destroyed in 1936.
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Oak Grove Baptist Church is organized
Oak Grove Baptist Church was organized in 1936, led by Robert A. Thompson, Jesse E. Sykes, Woody Thompson and M. E. Thompson.
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Lebanon Methodist Church puts up a new building
A year after its old church was destroyed, the Lebanon congregation built a new one, seating 250.
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Walnut Grove Methodist Church replaces its wooden church with a stone one
On May 4, 1937 the Walnut Grove congregation in northern Orange began building a rubble-stone Gothic Revival church, with buttresses and stained glass, from fieldstone that local farmers gathered, to replace its frame church of the early 1890s. The church was dedicated on April 14, 1942.
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Second Baptist Church is organized in Chapel Hill
A second Black Baptist congregation was organized in Chapel Hill and put up its building in April 1938.
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Louis H. Hackney dies in Chapel Hill
Louis H. Hackney, pastor, principal of the Quaker school from 1898 to 1912 and founder of Hackney's Educational and Industrial School, died in Chapel Hill on December 19, 1937. He was buried in the segregated Black section of the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery.
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Eno Methodist Church is moved back from the road and remodeled
In 1938 the congregation shifted its frame church back from Eno Street and remodeled it.
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Nunn's Chapel Baptist Church is organized
W. N. Nunn and other ministers organized Nunn's Chapel Baptist Church, a Black congregation, which built a church in 1946.
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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.
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Chapel Hill Methodists sell their parsonage and buy the Frink house
The Methodist church sold its parsonage to Marguerite M. Judson, mother of a university student, and bought the Frink house on Pittsboro Street as its new parsonage. By that September Mrs. Judson owned and lived in the old parsonage on Rosemary Lane near the Town Hall.
- 1940s
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Harvey's Chapel builds a frame church near Efland
The Harvey's Chapel congregation near Efland built its present front-gable frame church in the 1940s. Lefler and Wager put it about 1946 and the congregation's own history about 1940; the 1993 county survey had estimated about 1930 from the building's style.
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Hillsborough Methodist Church builds an educational wing
The congregation added a two-story educational wing behind its 1859 church in the 1940s. Another addition and a covered breezeway followed in 1985.
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Little River Presbyterian Church builds a brick church
Little River Presbyterian, organized in 1761, replaces its church with a brick building in the 1940s. The large cemetery around it is one of the county's oldest.
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Pastor S. F. Nicks leads a $12,000 addition of rooms to the Hillsborough Methodist Church
Soon after returning to Hillsborough in 1940, Nicks proposed adding rooms to the church. Robert Forrest and A. A. Lloyd raised the money with a match of one dollar from the Duke Endowment for every three raised, and much of the work was volunteer labor, Nicks included.
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St. Paul's A.M.E. builds a bungalow parsonage beside the church
The congregation put up a one-story bungalow next to the sanctuary as its parsonage.
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James Collins buys the closed Black Presbyterian church and its lot
About fourteen years after the congregation disbanded, James Collins bought the church building and land on Orange Street.
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The Methodist church annex on Franklin Street becomes a recreation center
The former Methodist church, kept as an annex when the new church went up in 1926, was converted into a recreation center.
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A Freewill Baptist church meets in a former store on South Nash Street
A small frame building at 219 South Nash Street, shown as a store on the 1911 and 1924 Sanborn maps and later a hot dog stand and a house, appears as the Freewill Baptist Church on the 1943 map. It keeps a small square steeple in its front gable.
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The B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation buys a lot on Cameron Avenue
The North Carolina B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation bought a lot on Cameron Avenue in Chapel Hill and later built a house there where a rabbi held services for students and townspeople.
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Quakers organize the Chapel Hill Monthly Meeting of Friends
The Chapel Hill Monthly Meeting was organized, the first Friends meeting in Orange County since the old Eno Meeting was laid down about a century earlier. It had no building and had bought a lot on Highway 54.
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The county school board sells the closed Harvey's Chapel schoolhouse
The Orange County Board of Education approved the sale of the Harvey's Chapel schoolhouse, a school for Black children about three miles from Hillsboro. It had closed several years before, its pupils sent to the Hillsboro school, and Mary E. Breeze bought the building.
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
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John Scott Trotter sells the Hill House on West Franklin Street to the Baptist church
Trotter sold the Hill House, next to the Baptist church, to the congregation, which went on renting out its apartments. In 1958 the town's first public library opened in one of its rooms.
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John Wesley Campbell builds a fieldstone house for a pastor on North Graham Street
John Wesley Campbell designed and built a large fieldstone house at 214 North Graham Street in Northside for a local pastor, finished in 1945 and one of the first houses on the street. It is the largest of his four stone houses in the neighborhood, with a broad arched corner porch and a stone end chimney.
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The Fellowship of Southern Churchmen runs its headquarters from Chapel Hill
The Fellowship of Southern Churchmen, an interracial group of Southern church people founded in 1934, kept its headquarters in Chapel Hill while Nelle Morton was general secretary from 1945 to 1949, working on race relations, labor conditions and the rural South.
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An old house said to contain part of the Nunn Tavern is moved across Kenan Street for the bus station
To clear the lot for the new bus station, a large two-story house was hauled across Kenan Street to 405 West Franklin, where W. W. McCauley later lived. Bryant traces the house to a section of the Nunn Tavern of about 1776, which had already been moved to this lot in 1923 when the Baptist church was built at Franklin and Columbia.
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The Gospel Baptist Tabernacle is organized
Willie Thompson, S. E. Elmore and W. J. Johnson organized the Gospel Baptist Tabernacle and built a 250-seat church the same year, with Elmore as first pastor.
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Union Grove Methodist Church builds a stone Gothic Revival church
Union Grove Methodist, organized a century earlier, builds a stone church in the Gothic Revival style around 1946.
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Lutherans organize Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Chapel Hill
Holy Trinity, the first Lutheran congregation in Orange County, was organized with 34 charter members and D. P. Rudisill as pastor. Its building was consecrated on January 6, 1952.
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Bethsada Baptist Church builds a 500-seat church
Bethsada Baptist Church, a Black congregation led by Jesse Morrow and Rudy Whitmore, built a church seating 500 in 1947.
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Dickerson Chapel's old courthouse frame is encased in brick
In 1947 the frame building that began as the third Orange County courthouse was covered in brick, giving Dickerson Chapel A.M.E. Church its present look with pointed-arch stained-glass windows and an entrance tower and steeple.
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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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The New Hope community helps build Camp New Hope for Orange Presbytery
Beginning in 1947 the New Hope Grange community contributed a good deal toward building Camp New Hope, which belonged to Orange Presbytery. The camp was also open to other youth groups, among them 4-H clubs and Boy Scouts.
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Chapel Hill NAACP holds its first meeting at the Community Center
On October 23, 1947, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro branch of the NAACP held its first official meeting at the Negro Community Center, now the Hargraves Center. The branch, which marked 75 years in 2022, gave Black residents a civil-rights organization apart from church and school.
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Lattisville Grove Baptist Church builds a Gothic Revival frame church
Lattisville Grove Baptist Church near Caldwell builds a frame church in the Gothic Revival manner in 1948, late for the style.
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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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Bethel Baptist Church puts up an educational building beside its church
In the spring of 1949 Bethel Baptist Church, six miles west of Chapel Hill on the Greensboro highway, was finishing an educational building on its grounds and invited members to its May homecoming to look over the work.
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Jim and John Webb open their office in the old Methodist church on Rosemary Street
The brothers opened a planning and architecture practice in the left side of the 1853 Methodist church at Rosemary and Henderson streets, which had been used as a garage. In the early 1970s they bought the building and turned all of it into offices.
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New Sharon Church members build a $50,000 church and pay for it in a year
Members of New Sharon Church, most of them poultry farmers, put up a $50,000 building in 1949 and cleared the cost within one year.
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The Pilgrim Holiness Church in West Hillsborough holds its first service in a new building
The Pilgrim Holiness congregation met for the first time in its new church, under construction since August 1948 near the site of its old building. District superintendent William S. Deal preached, and the Rev. J. F. Kernodle was pastor.
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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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Guion Griffis Johnson is president of the Chapel Hill Council of Churches
After returning to Chapel Hill from Atlanta in 1947, Johnson served on the boards of the Chapel Hill Community Council and Community Club, and in 1950 she was president of the Chapel Hill Council of Churches.
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The Harmony Primitive Baptist congregation disbands
The Harmony Primitive Baptist congregation northwest of Hillsborough breaks up in the 1950s, leaving its 1880 frame church empty. The building still had its original siding when surveyed.
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W. N. Tyler's Esso Servicenter holds its formal opening at West Franklin and Church streets
W. N. Tyler, a former Standard Oil sales supervisor, opened a new Colonial-style Esso station on the site of the old Ralph Weaver home at West Franklin and Church streets, with free movies and prizes on opening day.
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The Carrboro Church of God is organized
Clyde Maynor, Frank King and Robert Hill organized a second Church of God congregation in Carrboro in July 1950. It built a 300-seat church in 1952.
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Charles E. Maddry returns to First Baptist Church, Hillsborough, for his last pastorate
After his years with the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board, Charles Edward Maddry served his final pastorate at the First Baptist Church in Hillsborough.
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The Unitarian Fellowship of Chapel Hill is organized
A lay Unitarian fellowship began holding religious meetings in Chapel Hill. It had 25 members in 1953.
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Bethel Baptist Church marks its hundredth anniversary
Bethel Baptist Church celebrated its centennial with an all-day program and picnic on the grounds. UNC Chancellor Robert B. House gave the morning address and Annie Strowd read notes on the church's history.
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Holy Trinity Lutheran Church consecrates its Chapel Hill church
Holy Trinity Lutheran's new church in Chapel Hill, built in 1951 with 300 seats, was consecrated on January 6, 1952.
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Episcopalians organize the Church of the Holy Family in Chapel Hill
A second Episcopal congregation in Chapel Hill was organized with Maurice Arthur Kidder as its first pastor. Ground was broken for its building in June 1953.
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Hillsborough Baptist Church ordains J. G. Goodwin Jr.
J. G. Goodwin Jr. was ordained in the Hillsborough church and later went as a missionary to Korea.
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Fairview Baptist Church is organized in Hillsborough
Fairview Baptist Church was organized in Hillsborough in October 1952 under pastor James Clegg and put up a 250-seat building that year.
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Binkley Baptist and the Community Church of Chapel Hill
The Community Church of Chapel Hill formed in 1953 as an interracial congregation and started an integrated preschool in 1955; Binkley Baptist organized in 1958 under Robert Seymour. The Baptist association refused Binkley membership in 1966 over its open membership, the state and Southern conventions disassociated from it in 1992, and the Community Church joined the Unitarian Universalist Association in 1993.
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Community Church of Chapel Hill forms
An interracial congregation organized with Charles M. Jones as minister.
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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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Mt. Zion A.M.E. Church builds a parsonage on West Corbin Street
Mt. Zion A.M.E. Church builds a brick parsonage at 211 West Corbin Street in 1953, under its pastor the Rev. J. R. Bridges. The church still owns the house.
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The Rock Baptist Church building on West Franklin Street is torn down
The Black Baptist congregation's church on West Franklin, in use since 1908, was demolished late in 1953 once its new church on North Roberson Street was finished.
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Covenant Presbyterian Church is organized in Chapel Hill
A second Presbyterian congregation, Covenant, was organized in Chapel Hill. It had 33 members and no building in 1953.
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The Church of the Holy Family breaks ground in Chapel Hill
The Episcopal Church of the Holy Family, organized in Chapel Hill the year before, broke ground for a building to seat 150.
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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.
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Rock Hill Baptist, renamed First Baptist, holds its first services on North Roberson Street
The Black Baptist congregation organized in 1865 had worshipped for decades as Rock Hill Baptist Church on the south side of West Franklin Street. Under its pastor, the Rev. J. R. Manley, it raised $10,001 in the first months of 1952 and began a colonial-style brick church on North Roberson Street between Franklin and Rosemary streets. The first services in the $100,000 building were held on Sunday, September 27, 1953, opening three weeks of dedication services; with the move the congregation took the name First Baptist Church. By early 1954 the old Franklin Street lot stood vacant.
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First Baptist Church of Hillsborough celebrates its centennial
The congregation marked its hundredth year in November 1953 under Charles E. Maddry, with its new educational building finished for the occasion.
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First Baptist Church of Hillsborough completes its educational building
First Baptist Church finished a brick educational building at the rear of its sanctuary at West King and South Wake streets, about a year after work began, in time for the church's centennial in November 1953.
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St. Paul's A.M.E. adds an annex with a meeting hall and kitchen
The annex was built at the northwest corner of the church.
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Rev. Joe B. Brooks, founding pastor of Jones Grove, dies
Joe Bethel Brooks, a farmer who helped found Jones Grove Missionary Baptist Church in 1926, led it as pastor until his death.
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Chapel Hill-Carrboro churches name a committee to help schools desegregate peacefully
Two weeks after the Brown decision, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Ministerial Association set up a steering committee to study how the churches could help bring a peaceful transition to non-segregated schools. Its members were the Rev. Charles Jones, Mrs. Harold Walters, George Esser Jr., the Rev. T. P. Duhart and Mrs. J. Snipes.
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Rev. George W. Davis of Durham becomes pastor of Jones Grove
Rev. George W. Davis took charge of the Jones Grove congregation after Joe Brooks's death and served for twenty years, a period that saw the frame church replaced.
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Community Church starts an integrated preschool
The congregation’s preschool admitted children across racial lines.
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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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Shepperd Strudwick carves the cross for the Hillsborough Methodist sanctuary
Shepperd Strudwick, a Presbyterian elder who took up wood carving late in life, made the cross for the Methodist sanctuary as well as one for his own church.
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University Baptist Church acquires the McDade House lot next to its church
University Baptist Church voted to buy John Scott Trotter's properties beside its church at Franklin and Columbia streets for $250,000, among them the Cafe Mouza building, which was the old brick McDade House, and the Hill House. The church's later expansion plans on the lot led to the house's removal in 1997.
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The General Assembly bans Sunday racing in Orange County
After protests by the Rev. C. H. Reckard and other Orange County clergy, the legislature passed a law on May 8, 1957 banning racing on Sundays, though Sunday races were being advertised again at Orange Speedway by 1961.
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Hubert Robinson is named Man of the Year
After Robinson was re-elected alderman with the highest vote on the ticket, a group of Black citizens representing churches, fraternal organizations and civic clubs named him Man of the Year and gave a reception in his honor at the Lincoln High School gymtorium on June 11.
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Fire destroys the Presbyterian church on East Franklin Street
The University Presbyterian Church burned in 1958. The congregation built a larger church on the same site three years later.
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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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Mount Bright Baptist Church buys its first electronic organ and moves to full-time services
In Fred J. Boddie Jr.'s three-year pastorate the congregation bought its first electronic organ and moved to a full-time schedule of services.
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Hillsborough and New Sharon Methodists dedicate the parsonage they built together
The two churches put up a new parsonage on lot 94 in 1957-58 at a cost of about $22,000 and dedicated it on a Sunday afternoon in March 1958, with W. A. Seawell as pastor and Taylor Bivins chairing the building committee.
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Binkley Baptist Church organizes
Fifty-six charter members established the congregation, initially worshiping on campus.
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Community Church dedicates its first building
The building housed worship, classes, and offices.
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Mount Herman Baptist Church leases the closed Murphey School
Once the school closed, the county board leased the empty building to Mt. Herman Baptist Church for one year at $25 a month.
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Robert Seymour becomes the first pastor of Binkley Memorial Baptist Church
Robert Seymour came to Chapel Hill in 1959 as the first minister of the Olin T. Binkley Memorial Baptist Church, organized the year before. He led it until 1988.
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The Oh Boy Drive-In opens at West Rosemary and Church streets
The Oh Boy Drive-In, run by the Boy family of Durham, was nearing completion at the corner of West Rosemary and Church streets in early July 1959. It was hiring in early August and serving cars by late August.
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University Methodist Church adds a Sunday school wing
The congregation built an education wing on the east side of its brick church at 150 East Franklin Street in 1959.
- 1960s
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Charles E. Maddry writes a history of Mount Moriah Baptist Church
Charles Edward Maddry wrote a history of Mount Moriah Baptist Church in Orange County; it survives in his papers at UNC.
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Hillsborough and New Sharon Methodist churches each become a station church
Two years after they finished their shared parsonage, Hillsborough and New Sharon left the charge arrangement and each became a station church with its own pastor.
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The Chapel Hill Friends Meeting opens its meetinghouse
Mildred Ringwalt, who joined the Chapel Hill Friends in 1959, was influential in building the Quaker meetinghouse that opened in 1960 and later raised money to enlarge it. A Carolina Friends School tribute says she sold most of her Oriental art to finance the building and anonymously gave the money to finish it.
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Martin Luther King Jr. speaks in Chapel Hill
Invited by campus religious groups and the Carolina Forum, King spoke at University Baptist Church on May 8, 1960, visited two UNC sociology classes, and addressed an overflow crowd in Hill Hall on May 9 on the struggle for racial justice.
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Church and student groups picket Chapel Hill's Varsity Theatre
Local church groups and student organizations picketed the Varsity Theatre after Black patrons were refused entry. Later that year the management agreed to admit Black UNC students with ID, and the town's theaters were fully desegregated by early 1962.
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Mount Bright Baptist Church buys the Ellison lot and builds its first parsonage
Under its pastor Fred J. Boddie Jr. the congregation bought the Ellison home lot and put up its first parsonage there.
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The Presbyterians build a larger church where the burned one stood
Three years after the 1958 fire, a new and bigger Presbyterian church went up on the old site on East Franklin Street.
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Jones Grove dedicates a concrete-block church built by its own members
Congregants Otha Thompson and A. J. Breeze served as general contractors and Thomas Watkins supplied lumber for a front-gable concrete-block sanctuary paid for with members' gifts. The 1928 frame church to the west was torn down when it was done.
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Chapel Hill church women ask the county for a welfare office in Chapel Hill
A group from the Chapel Hill Council of United Church Women, including Mildred Ringwalt, asked the Orange County commissioners for a branch welfare office in the Chapel Hill area with a caseworker at least two days a week, and offered volunteers. The acting welfare superintendent replied that lay volunteers could not do casework.
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Binkley Baptist Church takes James Forbes as a student intern
Under Robert Seymour, Binkley Memorial Baptist Church accepted James A. Forbes Jr., a Black divinity student, as its intern in 1962.
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Quakers from the Chapel Hill and Durham meetings found Carolina Friends School
Members of the Chapel Hill and Durham Friends meetings founded Carolina Friends School as a purposely integrated school, beginning with early education programs in the two meeting houses. Mildred Ringwalt was one of the seven founders and the first clerk of its board of trustees.
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Charles E. Maddry's funeral is held at Hillsborough Baptist Church
Charles E. Maddry, pastor of the church at the start and end of his fifty-three-year ministry and former head of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board, died on September 17 and was buried at Richmond after a funeral in the Hillsborough church.
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Inter-Church Council forms
Seven women’s organizing led to coordinated local poverty relief.
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Carrboro Baptist Church remodels its sanctuary
Work on an extensive remodeling of the sanctuary began after the first Sunday in October 1963, alongside a new educational building. By September 1964 the renovation was finished and the church invited the community to see the new facilities.
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Walker's Funeral Home dedicates its chapel at 204 North Churton Street
On its 41st anniversary Walker's Funeral Home held an open house and dedicated the chapel in its brick building on North Churton Street, finished late in 1962, honoring founder Houston J. Walker and his late wife Minnie Montgomery Walker.
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Binkley moves to Willow Drive
The congregation occupied its first permanent building.
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The Holy Week fast ends on Easter Sunday and the Rev. LaVert Taylor is hospitalized
The five fasters finished their eight-day water-only fast in front of the post office on Easter Sunday. The Rev. LaVert Taylor of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was admitted to Memorial Hospital with an upset stomach afterward; James Foushee had been treated there during the fast and released.
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The Committee of Concerned Citizens raises about $400 for injured demonstrators and the hospitalized faster
Committee members served bread and cheese for donations twice a day in the basement of the First Baptist Church, raising about $400 to cover the hospital bills of demonstrators hurt in sit-ins and of the Rev. LaVert Taylor after the fast.
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Stewart and Anderson build a new office on Estes Drive as Webb stays in the old Methodist church
In the mid-1960s Don Stewart and Bob Anderson bought a lot on Estes Drive and built a new office for the firm, while James Webb returned to the old Methodist church on Rosemary Street, the firm's former office, where he worked until he retired.
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The former Military Academy dining hall is turned into a church
The one-story board-and-batten building beside Barracks Road, thought to be a surviving piece of the long frame service building that stood behind the barracks, became a church building in 1965.
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Baptist Association rejects Binkley membership
The local association denied admission over Binkley’s open membership policy.
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The Presbyterians sell their East Franklin manse to Gordon L. McAndrews
After 77 years of ownership, the church sold its manse at 513 East Franklin, the house William Mercer Green built in the 1840s and Charles Phillips later owned, to McAndrews.
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Herbert Aptheker gives his evening talk at the Community Church
Kept off campus, Aptheker gave his evening talk to about 350 people at the interdenominational Community Church on Purefoy Road. Paul Dickson then announced a Free Speech Defense Fund to pay for a lawsuit.
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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.
- 1970s
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Cogswell/Hausler design a new sanctuary for the Community Church on Purefoy Road
In 1970 the firm added a two-story International Style sanctuary with stained siding and large south windows to the Community Church at 106 Purefoy Road, tied to the congregation's plain brick building of 1957 by George Matsumoto through a glass link. The integrated, nondenominational church had been founded in 1953 by the Rev. Charlie Jones and members who left Chapel Hill Presbyterian with him.
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The old Methodist parsonage, later the Kappa Psi house, is torn down for a parking lot
A contractor demolished the brick house on West Rosemary Street that had been the Methodist parsonage and then the Kappa Psi house, turning down a $10,000 offer to move and restore it. Its owner, county commissioner Carl Smith, planned to lease the lot to the town for parking.
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Saint Matthew's Episcopal Church and Churchyard is listed in the National Register
On June 24, 1971 the National Park Service listed Saint Matthew's Episcopal Church and Churchyard in Hillsborough in the National Register of Historic Places.
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The Chapel of the Cross is listed in the National Register
On February 1, 1972 the National Park Service listed the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill in the National Register of Historic Places.
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Chase Park and Elliott Woods apartments are completed
The Inter-Church Council's housing corporation finished Chase Park and Elliott Woods, 79 federally assisted low-income apartments on Elliott Road in Chapel Hill. Construction began in January 1973, and the complexes took applications from June 1974.
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Jones Grove adds a rear wing to its church
In the mid-1970s the congregation built a rear addition holding the pastor's office, restrooms and a baptismal pool, and covered the sanctuary walls with wood-look paneling.
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Chapel Hill churches and residents sponsor Vietnamese refugee families
By July 1975 Chapel Hill residents had sponsored two Vietnamese refugee families and expected more. Four churches pledged about $1,500 for a family sponsored by UNC historian Thomas Reefe, and volunteers were directed to INFO, a referral service in the Inter-Church Council building.
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Rev. Theodore C. Nicholson begins a 41-year pastorate at Jones Grove
Rev. Theodore C. Nicholson of Durham led Jones Grove Missionary Baptist Church from 1975 to May 30, 2016. During his tenure he ordained six associate pastors, among them his wife Bessie M. Nicholson.
Recent decades · 1976–2026
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St. Mary's Chapel near Hillsborough joins the Study List
The National Register Advisory Committee placed St. Mary's Chapel, the 1859 brick Episcopal chapel northeast of Hillsborough, on North Carolina's Study List, its list of properties likely to qualify for the National Register. It was one of 84 properties across the state approved that day.
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Pauli Murray celebrates her first Eucharist at the Chapel of the Cross
Murray, newly ordained an Episcopal priest, celebrated her first Eucharist at the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill at the invitation of the rector Peter James Lee, who cited her family's connection to the parish. Her grandmother Cornelia Smith Fitzgerald had been baptized in the same chapel on December 20, 1854.
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Clements Funeral Service moves into the old Presbyterian manse on North Churton Street
Clements Funeral Service took over the house at 148 North Churton Street, which had served as a Presbyterian manse and a doctor's office, and built a chapel beside it in 1980.
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St. Mary's Chapel is listed in the National Register
St. Mary's Chapel, the brick Gothic Revival Episcopal chapel on St. Mary's Road northeast of Hillsborough, built in 1859 for a congregation dating to the late 1750s, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on July 12, 1978.
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Mount Bright Baptist Church builds its present brick church
The congregation replaced its earlier church on West Union Street with a one-story brick church with a steeple, and added an education building at the rear in 1990.
- 1980s
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Robert Campbell helps start Faith Tabernacle Oasis of Love International Church
Campbell and his wife helped start Faith Tabernacle Oasis of Love International Church, where he was ordained in the 1980s. He has said his bishop's charge to the congregation to go beyond its own comfort turned him toward the landfill and the neighborhood's water.
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Maude Faucette dies at 97 and leaves part of her estate to Fairfield Presbyterian Church
The last descendant of builder David Faucette died in the family house in 1983. Her will gave a quarter of her property, with family portraits, to Fairfield Presbyterian Church near Efland, where she had been a lifelong member; silver spoons by Lemuel Lynch found in her papers went to the Hillsborough Historical Museum.
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Habitat for Humanity of Orange County is incorporated
An ecumenical housing effort that began at Binkley Baptist Church in late 1982 became Habitat for Humanity of Orange County, incorporated in April 1984. Its first house was a donated building moved to what became the Chestnut Oaks neighborhood in Chapel Hill.
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First Community Baptist Church is organized in Hillsborough
First Community Baptist Church, which worships at 509 Eno Street in Hillsborough, dates its founding to 1986. It marked its twentieth anniversary in November 2006 and its twenty-fifth in November 2011.
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Reviewers keep St. Paul's A.M.E. Church off the Study List over its brick veneer
Staff told the State Professional Review Committee that St. Paul's was an important institution with long ties to its community, but that major alterations, among them a brick veneer, had cost it integrity. On July 13, 1989 the committee approved the day's other public requests and left the church off, and Robert Stipe asked staff to present standards for judging setting and integrity at the next meeting.
- 1990s
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Jones Grove builds a fellowship hall on land given by the Brooks family
Luther A. Brooks, son of the founding pastor, and his wife Catherine gave a tenth of an acre east of the church for a fellowship hall, begun in spring 1990 and finished in January 1991.
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Baptist conventions disassociate from Binkley
State and Southern conventions acted after the church licensed an openly gay ministerial candidate.
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Community Church joins the Unitarian Universalist Association
Members approved affiliation after years of discussion.
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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.
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Jones Grove names its fellowship hall for the Brooks family
The congregation named its 1991 fellowship hall in honor of the Brooks family, who had founded, led and given land to the church.
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Carrboro aldermen vote to buy the Carrboro Baptist Church property
After months of talks, the Board of Aldermen voted 5 to 2 to buy the church at Greensboro and Main streets, with room for the police and recreation departments. The town remade it as the Century Center, with the sanctuary as a hall seating about 250.
- 2000s
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Jones Grove pays off its mortgage and adds a steeple built by a deacon
The congregation marked the end of its mortgage along with the year's improvements: new carpet, lights and pew cushions, and a steeple that deacon Gotha C. Watkins built and gave.
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Emma Torian Jones gives her home lot beside Ridge Road School to Jones Grove Church
Emma Torian Jones donated the lot west of the school, where she and her husband had lived since the 1960s, to Jones Grove Missionary Baptist Church; the house was later torn down, returning the ground to woods. The Torian heirs had also deeded the school parcel to the church.
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Holy Family Catholic Church in Hillsborough holds its first Spanish Mass
Holy Family parish in Hillsborough, which had grown from about 107 families in 1986 to about 250 in 1999, celebrated its first Spanish Mass in 2003 as Latino members joined the congregation. By 2012 the parish counted about 680 families and held a Sunday Spanish Mass alongside its three other services.
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St. Joseph CME Church and UNC begin the Northside oral history partnership
Rev. Troy Harrison and UNC professor Della Pollock began collecting oral histories in Northside, the project that grew into the Marian Cheek Jackson Center.
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St. Paul AME Church bought land on Rogers Road for a new church campus
The Chapel Hill congregation bought more than 22 acres for a worship complex with a banquet hall, wellness center, daycare, senior and affordable housing, athletic fields and a cemetery. The land, at Rogers Road and Purefoy Drive, became the site of the planned St. Paul Village.
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Marian Cheek Jackson Center opens at St. Joseph CME Church
The Marian Cheek Jackson Center for Saving and Making History held its ribbon cutting on the second floor of the H.W. Baldwin Fellowship Hall at St. Joseph C.M.E. Church. It is named for Marian Cheek Jackson, the church historian and lifelong Pine Knolls resident.
- 2010s
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New community house opens
The men’s shelter moved to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
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Tremaine Royster becomes the fourth pastor of Jones Grove
Tremaine Royster became Jones Grove Missionary Baptist Church's fourth pastor; the church, which owns Ridge Road School, also runs a food bank.
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William J. Barber II is named a MacArthur Fellow
The MacArthur Foundation named William J. Barber II, pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, a 2018 MacArthur Fellow.
- 2020s
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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.
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Carrboro unveils a truth plaque naming Green Cordal and Benjamin Craig
The Town of Carrboro unveiled its second truth plaque at the former freedmen's school site on North Merritt Mill Road, next to St. Paul AME Church. The text reads that Green Cordal and Benjamin Craig, freed from bondage, purchased this land for a Freedman School and church, and that with funds from the Society of Friends they built a schoolhouse that served hundreds of free Black children and adults.
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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.
