Search and filters
Search and filters · 1 active
21 dated events match your filters.
Joseph W. Murphy, A Sermon-Sketch of the History of St. Matthew's Parish, Hillsboro, N.C. (1900).Open the sourceAll sources
Searched the full chronology of 9,006 dated events and 77 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–21.Back to highlights
Entries
Antebellum and Civil War · 1800–1865
-
St. Jude's Church on Stony Creek is admitted to the Episcopal diocesan convention
A small Episcopal congregation meeting at the Union Meeting House near Stony Creek in Orange County, organized as St. Jude's Church, was received into union with the new Diocese of North Carolina at its 1818 convention, with Robert Davis seated as its lay delegate. Murphy counts it, with St. Mary's a year later, as an old colonial mission revived and long grouped with Hillsborough.
-
Visiting Episcopal clergy hold the first recorded services of the revived church in Hillsborough
In the convention year 1819-20, John Phillips of Tarboro and G. T. Bedell of Fayetteville became the first clergy recorded as officiating in Hillsborough, Bedell preaching in the Presbyterian church lent by its pastor John Witherspoon and baptizing nine children in Orange County. Eight of the baptisms took place at Thomas Latta's house four miles from town and were entered in the Latta family Bible, which Murphy found still kept in the same room in 1890.
-
St. Matthew's in Hillsborough is admitted into union with the diocesan convention
At the 1825 convention William Mercer Green asked that the newly organized St. Matthew's be received into the diocese, and it was admitted with Thomas Carney seated as its delegate. Green reported that a church building had been started in Hillsborough, and the convention assessed St. Matthew's, St. Mary's and St. Jude's together toward the bishop's salary.
-
The Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina holds its convention in Hillsborough for the first time
Bishop John Stark Ravenscroft, eight clergy and lay delegates from ten parishes met in Hillsborough in May 1826, gathering in the newly finished St. Matthew's Church, which was consecrated on the Sunday of the session. St. Matthew's sent Thomas Ruffin, William Norwood, Francis L. Hawks and James S. Smith as its delegates.
-
James H. Otey, later bishop of Tennessee, is ordained priest in St. Matthew's Church
Bishop Ravenscroft ordained James H. Otey to the priesthood in St. Matthew's Church, Hillsborough, on testimonials from Christ Church, Nashville. Otey heads Murphy's 1890 list of the seven men ordained at the St. Matthew's chancel.
-
Bishop Ravenscroft consecrates Salem Chapel, built by Duncan Cameron near his home
Duncan Cameron paid for a chapel near his residence in Orange County for his household and neighbors, standing by 1825 and still unfinished when the bishop preached in it in May 1826. After Cameron executed the deeds, Bishop Ravenscroft consecrated it as Salem Chapel on Sunday, October 7, 1827, assisted by Mr. Wright of Salisbury and by William Mercer Green, who served it from Hillsborough.
-
St. Matthew's adds a tower to its church
Rector William Mercer Green told the 1830 convention that a tower had been added to the Hillsborough church during the past year, four years after its consecration. The parish then counted 40 communicants and 61 Sunday school scholars.
-
New bishop Levi S. Ives confirms thirty at St. Matthew's on his first visit to Hillsborough
Two weeks after leaving New York for his new diocese, Bishop Levi S. Ives reached Hillsborough and preached four times in St. Matthew's over a weekend, giving communion to some fifty or sixty people and confirming thirty. Eleven of those confirmed were men, seven of them University of North Carolina students.
-
The Ladies' Working Society of St. Matthew's takes on much of the church debt
Ten years after the parish was organized, the women of St. Matthew's Ladies' Working Society undertook to pay a large share of the debt still owed on the church building. The vestry had reported in 1833 that it remained in debt to the builder.
-
Samuel Iredell Johnston and William W. Spear are ordained deacons in St. Matthew's
Bishop Ives returned to Hillsborough and made Samuel Iredell Johnston and William W. Spear deacons in St. Matthew's Church, with William Mercer Green reading prayers and the Rev. Mr. Freeman preaching. Johnston had been baptized as an adult in the parish, and Spear had spent part of his boyhood in it.
-
The diocesan convention meets in St. Matthew's for the second and last time
The Episcopal convention met at St. Matthew's in Hillsborough in June 1835 while Bishop Ives was in Europe for his health; by 1890 it had not returned, though Hillsborough was chosen again several times. Newly ordained deacon Moses Ashley Curtis arrived on June 4 and preached that night, probably his first sermon, from the chancel he would later serve for many years as rector.
-
St. Matthew's pays off the debt on its church
Rector William Mercer Green reported in 1836 that St. Matthew's was free of the debt it had carried since the church was built, that the plan of weekly offerings was still working well, and that the parish was raising money for an organ.
Reconstruction and the New South · 1866–1899
-
St. Mary's Chapel is reported as no longer entitled to representation as a parish
Long served once a month from Hillsborough and weakened as its old families' children drifted away, St. Mary's Chapel was reported to the 1868 diocesan convention as no longer qualifying for parish representation.
-
St. Matthew's replaces its flat roof and builds a recessed chancel
Rector Moses Ashley Curtis reported in 1869 that the old flat roof of St. Matthew's had given way to a high open one and the east end had been extended for a recessed chancel, vestry room and organ room. The chancel was lit by a triple stained glass window, and the $1,600 cost came almost entirely from present and former members.
-
Mrs. Curtis gives St. Matthew's a marble font in memory of her husband
After rector Moses Ashley Curtis died in April 1872, his widow gave the church a marble baptismal font as his memorial.
-
The women of St. Matthew's give a stained glass window in memory of Moses Ashley Curtis
In 1873 the ladies of the parish gave St. Matthew's a stained glass memorial window to its late rector Moses Ashley Curtis, who had died the year before.
-
Charles J. Curtis resigns as rector of St. Matthew's
Charles J. Curtis, who had followed his father Moses Ashley Curtis in charge of the parish, resigned on July 24, 1880, and held his last service on August 8. The church had no settled rector until Joseph W. Murphy took charge the next July.
-
St. Matthew's installs a new organ
After several years of fundraising, St. Matthew's set up a new organ on August 24, 1883, at a cost of $1,040.
-
St. Mary's Chapel is reorganized as a mission
Twenty years after losing its standing as a parish, St. Mary's Chapel was reorganized in 1888 as a mission served from Hillsborough. Murphy wished it had long since been joined with Salem Chapel and Flat River under a minister of its own.
-
St. Matthew's registers record 679 baptisms and 375 communicants in the parish's first 66 years
Totaling the parish registers in 1890, Murphy counted 99 marriages, 679 baptisms, 262 confirmations, 375 communicants and 242 burials since 1824. He also noted that only 10 Black people had been entered as communicants in that time, though the parish had built a gallery for Black worshippers in the 1830s.
-
Rector Joseph W. Murphy preaches a two-part history of St. Matthew's Parish
On St. Matthew's Day, Sunday, September 21, 1890, and again on October 5, Murphy gave his congregation a history of the parish drawn from diocesan journals and parish registers, from the revival of 1818-19 through the work of its six rectors. It was printed in Washington, D.C., in 1900.
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.
