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Hugh Conway Browning, Information Related to St. Mary's Chapel (1996).Open the sourceAll sources
Searched the full chronology of 9,006 dated events and 77 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–22.Back to highlights
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Colonial and Regulator years · 1680–1774
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Orange County court orders St. Matthew's vestry to divide the parish into processioning districts
The county court directed the vestry of St. Matthew's Parish to split the parish into districts so that each person's land lines could be walked and recorded between October and April. No report back appears in the minutes, but later records name parish districts in the county, among them St. Mary's in the east.
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Storekeeper Michael Synnott sells weaver Thomas Holden 500 acres on Buck Quarter Creek
Synnott conveyed to Holden the 500-acre tract he had been granted by Earl Granville in March 1752, lying across what is now St. Mary's Road. Browning matched its bounds against neighboring grants and placed the later St. Mary's Chapel lot and cemetery inside it.
Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
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Commissioners take bids for a stone wall around the St. Mary's graveyard
The Hillsborough Recorder reported that commissioners were letting the contract for a stone wall around the burying ground at St. Mary's. The dry-laid fieldstone wall still encloses the one-acre lot where the first log chapel stood.
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The census finds fewer than 500 of 6,463 Orange County young people in school
The federal census of 1840 counted 6,463 Orange County boys and girls between five and twenty, with under 500 of them enrolled: 209 in academies and grammar schools and 157 in primary and common schools.
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The county court levies a tax for Orange County's new public schools
After county voters accepted the 1839 school law, the court ordered a levy of five cents on each poll and two cents on each $100 of land value to support public schools.
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Orange County is laid off in school districts five miles square
The chairman of the county's school superintendents announced that Orange had been divided into districts about five miles square and asked local committeemen to report their schoolhouses so the county could claim its share of the state Literary Fund. Pleasant Green became District No. 9 and St. Mary's District No. 10.
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John H. Webb buys 9 9/16 acres from Ellen Bain for the St. Mary's congregation
Acting for the congregation, Webb bought the tract next to the old one-acre chapel lot from Ellen Bain, a great-granddaughter of Thomas Holden. The new brick chapel was raised on this land about 350 feet northwest of the first log chapel.
Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
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Orange County's school board writes off its Confederate funds and rents out the schoolhouses
Meeting after the war, the Board of Superintendents of Common Schools found that its balance of about $3,190 in Confederate money and a state draft for $1,732 payable in the same currency were worthless. It told each district's committeemen to rent out their schoolhouses and pay the rents to the county chairman.
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The county commissioners split Mangum Township and create Lebanon Township
Acting on a petition, the board divided Mangum Township at Little River and named the new township Lebanon, adding a ninth to the eight townships laid off in 1868.
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A one-room log schoolhouse is built for the St. Mary's school district
About 1880 a one-room log schoolhouse was built for the St. Mary's district on land given by John P. and Caroline Lockhart, about three-quarters of a mile northeast of St. Mary's Chapel; a frame school replaced it in 1904. The school moved onto chapel land only in 1917.
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The Rev. Joseph W. Murphy takes charge of the St. Mary's congregation
Murphy began serving St. Mary's together with St. Matthew's in Hillsborough and opened the chapel's second parish register, which records much of the little church's later history.
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The St. Mary's Chapel land is deeded to the trustees of the Episcopal Diocese
Two days after an Easter meeting elected Philip Walker warden and made the minister trustee with power to transfer the property, the Rev. Joseph W. Murphy deeded the chapel's 9 9/16 acres to the diocesan trustees. The old one-acre burial ground was left out of the deed.
Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
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A frame schoolhouse replaces the log St. Mary's School
The district built a new frame school beside its log schoolhouse, about three-quarters of a mile northeast of St. Mary's Chapel, and sold the log building to Amos Wilson, who took it apart and moved it to his farm on St. Mary's Road.
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Black pupils of the St. Mary's district are given the old 1904 schoolhouse
When the white school moved to the chapel grounds, the 1904 frame building northeast of the chapel was turned over to the district's Black children. It was later closed and its pupils sent to the Hillsborough school.
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The Episcopal Diocese deeds two acres by St. Mary's Chapel to the county school board
The diocese gave the Orange County Board of Education two acres of the chapel tract, west of the chapel and north of St. Mary's Road, on condition that the land be used only for a public school and return to the diocese if the school closed.
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The county builds a one-room St. Mary's School on the chapel grounds
The board of education put up a one-room frame school on the new lot, and the district's white pupils moved into it for the 1917-1918 term. A second room was added in 1919 and a third in 1921.
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Ernest L. Lockhart buys and tears down the closed St. Mary's school for Black pupils
The county board of education sold the former school property northeast of St. Mary's Chapel to Lockhart, who razed the 1904 frame building and took the lumber to his farm on St. Mary's Road.
Civil rights era · 1945–1975
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A committee forms to restore St. Mary's Chapel
The Committee for the Restoration of St. Mary's Chapel took charge of the building and grounds, apart from worship, starting with about $300 left in an old chapel fund and about $1,250 saved from Homecoming collections. Its drive had raised about $3,400 by the end of 1969.
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St. Mary's Chapel gets a new roof and a new cross
The restoration committee's first project reroofed the chapel and set a new cross on top in place of one removed because it was in danger of falling.
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The school board deeds the St. Mary's School lot back to the Episcopal Diocese
With the St. Mary's school long merged into Hillsborough's and its buildings used as the St. Mary's Grange meeting place, the Orange County Board of Education returned the two acres and the buildings to the diocesan trustees.
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A Durham school group buys the old St. Mary's School
Educational Opportunities of Durham, Inc., which had rented the buildings from the diocese for Saint Mary's Country Day School since the summer of 1970, bought the two-acre tract and buildings, enlarged them and by November 1971 had more than 150 students.
Recent decades · 1976–2026
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Conway Browning's bequest starts a perpetual care fund for St. Mary's Chapel cemetery
Hugh Conway Browning, who had spent two decades researching Orange County families and churches, left $1,000 in his will as principal for the upkeep of the 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 4, 2026.
