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5 dated events match your filters.
Searched the full chronology of 6,171 dated events and 63 storylines, not only the highlights. Showing 1–5.Back to highlights
- Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
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Eben and Ruby Merritt open a gas station on the Pittsboro Road
Eben and Ruby Merritt began running an Esso gas station on the Pittsboro Road south of Chapel Hill in 1929 and kept it for nearly fifty years. It is the business that became Merritt's Store and Grill.
Subject: Merritt's Store and Grill
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Eben G. Merritt opens a new filling station on the Pittsboro Road
E. G. Merritt opened a new filling station on the Pittsboro Road, just above his old stand, with a tiled roof and a large parking lot. It later ran as Merritt's Service Station and store.
Subject: Merritt's Store and Grill
- Civil rights era · 1945–1975
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Eben Merritt stops highway crews with an injunction over land taken for the new bypass
Filling station owner Eben G. Merritt got an injunction that briefly halted State Highway Commission work near Morgan Creek, arguing that the new bypass and the rerouted Pittsboro road would cut through his pasture, isolate his new house and pull his station off the main highway for far less than they were worth. A court-appointed commission set his damages at $6,000 in March 1953, and he appealed.
Subject: Merritt's Store and Grill
- Recent decades · 1976–2026
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The state puts Merritt's Store, a 1920s Chapel Hill gas station, on the Study List
Members questioned whether a 1920s gas station belonged on the Study List until Robert Stipe and H. G. Jones spoke to the store's place in local social history. The committee then approved Merritt's Store with the day's other central and eastern requests on January 11, 1990.
Subject: Merritt's Store and Grill
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Robin and Bob Britt buy Merritt's store from the Merritt family
Robin and Bob Britt bought the South Columbia Street store from the Merritts in 1991. Robin Britt's BLT for her husband's lunch grew into the sandwich trade that made Merritt's Store and Grill a Chapel Hill landmark.
Subject: Merritt's Store and Grill
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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 2, 2026.
