Chronology

Dr. James Webb deeds land for Polly Burke's log schoolhouse

On November 6, 1817, Dr. James Webb deeded to his neighbor Mary W. Burke a strip of his lot on East Queen Street, where a log schoolhouse was built for her to teach the Webb children. Known as Miss Polly Burke's School, it took neighborhood children from about 1818 to 1834 and is cited as a forerunner of the Burwell School.

People: James Webb

Subject: Burwell School

Tavern keeper William Adams builds the house that became the Burwell School

William Adams, a Hillsborough tavern keeper and businessman, builds a two-story house with two rooms on each floor facing West Union Street in 1821. Those rooms survive as the south rooms of the Burwell School.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Burwell School

William H. Adams buys the lots that became the Burwell School site

Hillsborough sold lots in the old North Town Commons pasture, advertising the town as a healthy place to live and to school children. In November 1821 William H. Adams took the deed for lots 152 and 153, an acre each, for $216.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Burwell School

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.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

People: Robert Armistead Burwell

Subject: Hillsborough Presbyterian Church · Burwell School

Anna Burwell opens a school for girls in Hillsborough

Anna Burwell advertised that she would open a female school in Hillsborough on July 17, 1837, teaching the usual English branches, with music available. She and her husband, the Rev. Robert Burwell, ran it in their home until 1857.

People: Robert Armistead Burwell · Margaret Anna Burwell

Subject: Burwell School

A Female School House is built for the Burwells' school

As the school grew, subscribers in town paid for a 36-by-20-foot schoolhouse north of the Burwell home, built by the carpenter George A. Faucette.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Burwell School

Frances Devereux deeds Primus to Dr. Edmund Strudwick

Five months after her husband died, Frances Devereux of Raleigh deeded Primus to Dr. Edmund Strudwick of Hillsborough. Primus later drove and gardened at the Burwell School and, after emancipation, worked at the Nash and Kollock School as Primus Smith.

People: Edmund Strudwick · Frances (Pollock) Devereux

Subject: Burwell School · Nash and Kollock School

Richard Mayo, a free cabinetmaker of color, buys three town lots

Richard Mayo paid $200 for three lots on Occoneechee Street between West Tryon and West Queen streets, and in 1849 gave them to Levi McCollum to settle a debt. His brother William later waited tables at the Burwell School.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Burwell School

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.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

People: Robert Armistead Burwell · John Berry

Subject: Burwell School · Hillsborough Presbyterian Church

Sarah Kollock becomes the Burwell School's teacher of French and drawing

Sarah Kollock, one of the Burwell School's first pupils, had helped teach the younger children and in 1848 became its full-time teacher of French and drawing. By September 1851 Molly Burwell had taken her place and she was in Oxford.

Subject: Burwell School

The old Burwell schoolroom is said to be moved to West Orange Street during John Berry's work on the Burwell School

The west wing of the bungalow at 114 West Orange Street is reputed to be the old Burwell schoolroom, moved there in 1850 while John Berry was renovating the Burwell School. The house around it dates from 1922.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

People: John Berry

Subject: Burwell School

Aunt Fariby saves Jane from burning

Jane, a young enslaved servant at the Burwell School, caught fire. Anna Burwell wrote that she would have burned to death but for Aunt Fariby, who saved her life.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Burwell School

The Burwells resolve to sell their cook Hannah

Hannah, who had come from Virginia with the family and cooked for the school, had been drinking heavily through 1855. Anna Burwell wrote to her daughter Fanny that she had made up her mind: Hannah would be sent to Richmond to be sold.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

People: Robert Armistead Burwell

Subject: Burwell School

Anne Call Cameron, piano teacher to Burwell School students, dies

A widow known as Nancy, she gave piano lessons at the Burwell School to help pay for the care of her daughter Anna McKenzie Kirkland, whose illness followed her husband's death in 1843. She died in Hillsborough in June 1856.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Burwell School

A Black child and then a student die of illness at the Burwell School

Writing to her mother, the student Lizzie Glass mentioned a small Black boy who had died at the school the previous day, at a time when Nannie Burwell and three of the Burwell children lay sick. Within a few weeks Lizzie Glass herself died at the school.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Burwell School

Burwell School closes as the Burwells move to Charlotte

The Burwells closed their Hillsborough school in 1857, the same year they took charge of a girls' school in Charlotte.

Part of The Burwell School and the Burwell household · 37 events

People: Robert Armistead Burwell · Margaret Anna Burwell

Subject: Burwell School

The Collins family buys the former Burwell School and calls it the Beehive

Members of the Collins family of Somerset Place, who had left Union-held eastern North Carolina, paid Robert Burwell $3,500 for the house and four lots. By 1863 about forty family members and enslaved servants lived there, and the family named it the Beehive.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

People: Robert Armistead Burwell

Subject: Burwell School

The Collins women sell their shares of the Beehive to Dr. Thomas D. Warren

After the war the Collins relatives who had lived at the Beehive left Hillsborough, and the women sold their shares of the house to Dr. Thomas D. Warren, who had married Elizabeth Alethea Collins.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Burwell School

Peter and Diannah Benton acquire land south of Hillsborough

A deed from Frances Thompson conveyed land half a mile south of town, where the Chatham and Chapel Hill roads divided (today Mayo Street and Orange Grove Road), to Peter Benton, his wife Diannah and Jimmy Thompson. Peter Benton, a free man, had gardened at the Burwell School in 1855.

Subject: Burwell School

The sheriff auctions the former Burwell School to David C. Parks

Dr. Thomas D. Warren was deep in local debt, and the Orange County sheriff sold the house at auction to David C. Parks for $600. Parks and his brother Charles traded the property between them for the next quarter century.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

People: David C. Parks

Subject: Burwell School

David S. Payne marries Eliza Mayo

The marriage joined two Black Hillsborough families tied to the Burwell School: Eliza was a granddaughter of the school's laundress Eliza Chavious, and David was the son of Bettie Payne and a grandson of Rev. William Payne, a founder of Dickerson Chapel.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Burwell School

Jule Gilmer Korner remodels the former Burwell School

In the 1890s the old Burwell School house was remodeled by Jule Gilmer Korner of Kernersville, who gave it a bracketed cornice, a sawnwork porch, a new hall stair and new mantels, including a marble one in the parlor. Several of the older mantels were lost in the work, which was done for an owner thought to be Mrs. Charles M. Parks.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Burwell School

Dr. John S. Spurgeon buys the former Burwell School

The dentist paid Charles Parks $2,500 for lots 152 and 153. The Spurgeons, whose household included Carrie Waitt Spurgeon, daughter of a Burwell student, lived there for about seventy years and added electricity and plumbing.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Burwell School

Mary Claire Engstrom chairs the Historic Hillsborough Commission

Mary Claire Engstrom chaired the Historic Hillsborough Commission, a state-appointed body created in 1963, from 1964 to 1966 and again from 1976 to 1983. Her research files for the commission and other projects cover deeds, cemeteries, mills, inns, Quaker settlements and schools such as the Hillsborough Academy and the Burwell School.

Subject: Burwell School

The Historic Hillsborough Commission buys the Burwell School

The commission bought the house from the Spurgeon children and began restoring it to look as it had after the 1848 enlargement.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Burwell School

Burwell School is listed in the National Register

On September 15, 1970 the National Park Service listed Burwell School in Hillsborough in the National Register of Historic Places.

Subject: Burwell School

The Burwell School opens to visitors

The restored house has been open to visitors every year since 1977.

Part of Orange County’s nineteenth-century academies · 102 events

Subject: Burwell School

Burwell School Historic Site marks the bicentennial of Elizabeth Keckly

Through 2018 the Burwell School Historic Site in Hillsborough marked the 200th anniversary of Keckly's birth with an exhibition that included an original copy of her memoir and a replica of a purple velvet dress she made, sewn by local seamstress Karen DeSombre.

Subject: Burwell School

Hillsborough holds a celebration of Billy Strayhorn

A day of events called A Celebration of Billy Strayhorn began at the historical marker on South Churton Street and ran on at the Orange County Main Library and the Burwell School Historic Site. Mayor Tom Stevens, the musician Yahyah Corbett, the choreographer David Rousseve, the Duke professor Thomas DeFrantz and the puppeteer Jeghetto took part.

Subject: Burwell School · Orange County Public Library

The Burwell School is renamed the Elizabeth Keckly Center at the Burwell School

The Burwell School Historic Site in Hillsborough took the name the Elizabeth Keckly Center at the Burwell School in late August 2026, honoring the woman the Burwells held in slavery in the house from 1835. Site director Elizabeth Hays said the aim was to hold the site's histories together.

Subject: Burwell School