Search and filters
Search and filters · 1 active
41 dated events and 1 storyline match your filters.
Ridge Road School, National Register nomination (OR1104).Open the sourceAll sources
Searched the full chronology of 9,006 dated events and 77 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–42.Back to highlights
Entries
Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
- 1840s
-
The county counts 57 common schools for white children in the 1844-45 term
In the 1844-45 term, 60 teachers at 57 Orange County common schools taught 1,347 boys and 945 girls, all of them white. The schools had been set up after the county board of superintendents divided the county into districts.
Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
- 1900s
-
The county board builds the first room of Carr School for $300
Carr School in northwest Orange County, a gable-roofed weatherboarded schoolhouse, went up in 1908 with one room costing $300. The nomination names it among the few surviving frame schools the county built for Black children; it stands long vacant.
- 1910s
-
The county counts 25 rural primary schools for Black children, eight of them log
The school board recorded 25 rural primary schools for Black children in 1910, all but one run by a single teacher; eight were log buildings and the rest frame. White children had high schools in Hillsboro and Chapel Hill and 42 rural primary schools.
-
A county report finds no factory-made desks in any school for Black children
In the 1911-12 term seven of the 23 Orange County schools for Black children were log buildings. Eleven had homemade desks and the rest only benches; none had factory desks, while 28 of the 47 frame white schools did.
-
Louis H. Hackney opens a school for Black students in Chapel Hill
Louis H. Hackney, minister of Rock Hill Baptist Church, opened Hackney's Industrial and Educational Institute, a private school for Black students on Merritt Mill Road in Chapel Hill.
-
Hackney's school on Merritt Mill Road is bought for a public training school
Louis Hackney had opened his school for Black students on Merritt Mill Road in 1912. In 1916 the property was bought for a public training school for Black students, after Black residents raised $3,000 toward the purchase.
-
Segregated schooling and the rise of Lincoln and Central High schools
In 1916 the county board of education bought Louis H. Hackney's private school campus in Chapel Hill, helped by $3,000 raised by Black citizens, to house the Orange County Training School, which took the name Lincoln High School in 1949. Hillsborough's school for Black students was built in 1936 and became Central High School in 1943. Lincoln High merged with Chapel Hill High School in 1966. In 1968, a year of student walkouts against a phased desegregation plan, Central graduated its last high school class, and its high school students then went to Orange High School.
-
Robert and Mollie Malone open Orange County Training School on the old Hackney campus
Principal Robert E. Malone, his wife Mollie Holmes Malone as domestic science teacher, and two other teachers began classes in academic, industrial and farm subjects at the county's new training school for Black students. Black residents had raised $3,000 toward the board's 1916 purchase of the Hackney campus on Merritt Mill Road.
-
Orange County Training School enrolls 215 students
Two years after it opened on the former Hackney campus in Chapel Hill, the county's training school for Black students had 215 enrolled.
- 1920s
-
Carr School gets its second classroom
The county board added a second room to Carr School in northwest Orange County, making it a two-room school twelve years after the first room was built.
-
Orange County Training School burns
In 1922 fire destroyed the buildings of the Orange County Training School, the county's school for Black students on the former Hackney campus in Chapel Hill. The school reopened that September, and in spring 1923 its pupils were meeting in the Odd Fellows' hall, lent free of charge, while they looked for a suitable place. A Rosenwald-aided brick building replaced the burned campus in 1924.
-
Black farmers Joe B. Brooks and John W. Jones organize Jones Grove Missionary Baptist Church
African American farmers Joe Bethel Brooks and John William Jones founded the Jones Grove congregation north of Hillsboro. Its members were close to Lea's (now Lee's) Chapel Baptist Church at Cedar Grove, where the Brooks family lived.
-
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.
-
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.
-
The county board funds a two-room Morris Grove School, with Black families paying part
The school board approved a gable-roofed, two-room frame school at Morris Grove in Chapel Hill Township. Black residents gave $250 toward it and supplied the lumber, and Louis Webb and Labon Hogan built it; the building survives, long vacant.
- 1930s
-
Ridge Road School is built for Black children north of Hillsborough
In 1932 the county board had a two-room frame school for Black children built on Walter and Maggie Torian's land off Ridge Road (now Coleman Loop Road), just west of NC 86 north of Hillsborough. R. J. Forrest built it with lumber from the community. It replaced an earlier Ridge Road school and was not a Rosenwald school, though the 1993 survey had taken it for one.
-
The county board agrees to pay for five new or enlarged schools for Black children
Despite the Depression, the Orange County board agreed to fund buildings or additions at Merritts, Ridge Road, Sunnyside, White Oak Grove and Sartin, schools of one to three rooms for Black children. Each community had to supply its own lumber; Ridge Road was first allotted $500.
-
Black children attend 27 schools while white children are gathered into 12
By 1933 consolidation had brought Orange County's white children into twelve schools, while Black children still attended twenty-seven, most of them one- and two-room buildings.
-
Ridge Road School counts 80 pupils enrolled and 51 attending
In the 1934-35 term Ridge Road School, a two-room school for Black children north of Hillsboro, had 80 pupils on its roll, 51 of whom attended regularly.
-
Architect H. D. Carter becomes supervisor of Orange County relief projects
Chapel Hill architect H. D. Carter replaced J. A. Page as supervisor of Orange County's Federal Emergency Relief Administration projects, which included painting and repairing schools. The next year he designed Public Works Administration buildings and additions for nine county schools.
-
Alethea Burt moves to Hillsboro and takes charge of Ridge Road School's upper grades
Alethea Arrington Burt, a Hampton Institute graduate, came from Currituck County to Hillsboro in 1935, the year her husband Moses became the county's Black farm agent. She taught fifth through seventh grades and served as principal of the two-room school until it closed in 1951.
-
The county board hires builders for White Oak Grove, Sartin, Piney Mountain and New Branch schools
After architect H. D. Carter ran the bidding, the board chose the contractors Forrest and Roberts to build a two-room White Oak Grove School and add second rooms to Sartin and Piney Mountain schools, all for Black children, and W. H. Woods to build a one-room New Branch School.
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
- 1940s
-
Ridge Road School reports 75 pupils and a 149-book library
The principal's report for 1948-49 counted 75 children enrolled, 57 in average attendance, with the sixth and seventh grades the largest group at 40. The school's equipment was a globe, a flag, word cards, art supplies and a library of 149 books.
-
The county board approves electric wiring for five rural schools for Black children
The Orange County board voted to electrify five rural schools for Black children, asking each community to pay half the cost. Ridge Road School had two electric lights in each room by the late 1940s, but when it was wired is not known.
-
Alethea Burt starts a junior 4-H club at Ridge Road School
Principal Alethea Burt organized a junior 4-H club at Ridge Road School in the 1949-50 term, when 64 children were enrolled. She and her husband, farm agent Moses Burt, helped form 4-H clubs among Black youth in the county.
-
The county board names A. J. Breeze, James Clark and Otho Thompson to the Ridge Road school committee
The Orange County board appointed three local men as the Ridge Road district's advisory committee; they served until April 1951, the school's last spring.
- 1950s
-
The News of Orange prints a photograph of a Ridge Road School classroom
An article on newer classroom methods in the county's Black schools ran a picture of Ridge Road pupils adding to a bulletin board, a few months before the school closed. It is the only historic photograph of the interior that has been found.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Moses C. Burt Jr. is one of the first three Black students admitted to UNC law as first-year students
Moses C. Burt Jr., son of Orange County farm agent Moses Burt and Ridge Road principal Alethea Burt, entered the UNC School of Law in fall 1955 as one of the first three African American students admitted straight into its first-year class. Three other Black students who enrolled that fall transferred from other programs.
-
Moses Burt retires after 23 years as Orange County's agent for Black farmers
Moses Cimuel Burt, a World War I veteran trained at NC A&T, Hampton and Cornell, retired as the county's African American extension agent in September 1958. Since 1935 he had backed farm programs in the county's Black schools and helped start 4-H clubs.
- 1960s
-
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.
-
The Torian family deeds a lot beside Ridge Road School to Emma Torian Jones and Rev. Walter Jones
Maggie Torian and her children conveyed 0.79 acre west of the school, on Coleman Loop Road, to her daughter Emma and Emma's husband, Rev. Walter Warren Jones, who built a frame house there. Walter and Maggie Torian, Black farmers, had owned the land the school stood on and supplied its water.
-
Alethea Burt retires from teaching at Central High School
Alethea Burt, who had led Ridge Road School until it closed in 1951 and then moved with her pupils to teach the elementary grades at Central High School in Hillsboro, retired at the end of the 1968-69 year.
- 1970s
-
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.
-
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
- 1990s
-
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.
-
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.
- 2000s
-
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.
-
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.
- 2010s
-
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.
- 2020s
-
Sartin School, a 1930s school for Black children, is taken apart and removed
The frame Sartin School, built as a one-room school by R. J. Forrest in 1932 and given a second room in 1935, was dismantled and carried off its site in 2021, leaving Ridge Road among the very few such schools still standing in the county.
Suggest a correction to an entry →
A dated event is a fact, filed on the page of the subject it belongs to: a person, a place, a theme, or a named event or history. Pages are subjects, with their own works and sources; the Place, community, or institution filter also gathers the institutions that recur in the entries without a page of their own. The page opens on the highlights; a search or any filter looks through every dated event and storyline, and each filter’s counts say how many entries choosing it would show alongside the others. A storyline is a longer history that gathers related dated events, and each storyline’s page lists its own. Counts give dated events and storylines separately. Dates come from the sources named on the cards and from the index’s event pages; where sources disagree, the card follows the county records. Entries marked approximate or needing research say so on the card; the rest were checked against the source named on it. The correction link under the entries opens the contact form; name the entry and its date and the Friends will check the source. Suggest an event →
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 4, 2026.
