Key local figure
Mary Claire Engstrom (1906–1997) was a UNC-trained scholar of English literature who bought Hillsborough's Nash-Hooper House in 1959 and turned to documenting and preserving the town's history, surveying 122 old buildings for the Historic American Buildings Survey and twice chairing the Historic Hillsborough Commission.
Source: NCpedia: Engstrom, Mary Claire
1906–1997 · Dates from the Library of Congress · On the Friends’ Local Authors roster → · Library of Congress authority record ↗
5 works about Mary Claire Engstrom are indexed here, as are 9 works by Engstrom.
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Dated events connected with this person, in date order. See these 13 dated events in the chronology →
People named in the same dated entries as Mary Claire Engstrom, those sharing the most entries first. Each line links one of the shared entries in the chronology, where its source is cited. A shared entry shows these people in the same event, not how well they knew each other.
Works about or by Mary Claire Engstrom. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it. Background reading appears below.
Mary Claire Engstrom's history of the Quaker settlers of the Eno River valley from about 1750 to 1847, in the country that is now Orange and Durham counties. Published by the Association for the Preservation of the Eno River Valley in Durham in 1989, 73 pages with illustrations, maps and portraits.
Mary Claire Engstrom's biographical register of the young women who attended the Burwell School in Hillsborough, subtitled lives of educated women in the antebellum South. The school was kept by Margaret Anna Burwell and her husband, and the book bears on women's education in nineteenth-century North Carolina. Published by the Historic Hillsborough Commission, 1979, 256 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Mary Claire Engstrom compiled this single folded typescript sheet for the Historic Hillsborough Commission in 1966, recording the Old Town Cemetery of 1757 in Hillsborough. A note places the ground on lots 98 and part of 97 at the northwest corner of Churton and West Tryon streets. Topics include epitaphs, cemetery recording and Orange County genealogy. Part of UNC's North Carolina Collection.
Mary Claire Engstrom's article on the Hartford mill complex on the Eno and its fortunes during the Revolution, centered on Thomas Hart, who died in 1808. Nine pages with a facsimile and a portrait, printed in 1979.
Mary Claire Engstrom's article on the last years of William Hooper, one of the North Carolina signers of the Declaration of Independence, who moved to Hillsborough in 1782 and died there in 1790. Four pages with a portrait, detached from the February 1974 issue of the Daughters of the American Revolution magazine.
Five typescript leaves carrying Mary Claire Engstrom's remarks of 20 March 1978 to the Epsilon Beta chapter at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, delivered after the annual Eleusinian Banquet. She spoke on accepting the Chi Omega fraternity's North Carolina Distinguished Service Award for Women and signed as chairman of the Historic Hillsborough Commission. Topics include historic buildings in Hillsborough.
All 9 works by Mary Claire Engstrom →
First issue of the Hillsborough Historical Society Journal, July 1998, drawing on Mary Claire Engstrom's research on the town. Pieces cover William Churton, the surveyor who laid out Hillsborough; Edmund Fanning and the town in the Regulator troubles and the Revolution; the Third Provincial Congress, which met at Hillsborough in 1775; and figures and places of the old town: Mary Burke, known as Polly, the Presbyterian minister John Knox Witherspoon, Dr. Thomas Webb and Faddis Tavern.
Included because: Their name appears in the record.
Research papers of Mary Claire Engstrom, 1906 to 1997, dated 1963 to 1984 and filling 13.75 linear feet with roughly ten thousand items, part of the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 4684. Her subjects were Hillsborough's historic buildings and districts, John Berry, Mr. and Mrs. Burwell's Female School, county cemeteries, Quakers, and local history. Correspondence with other genealogists belongs to the group.
Included because: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Engstrom, Mary Claire, 1906-1997.
Thirty three letters of Rena C. Harrell, written between 1962 and 1966, in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 3751-z. The correspondence concerns the Burwell school for girls at Hillsborough and social conditions in the town, and people and organizations represented include Mary Claire Engstrom, Carolyn Andrews Wallace, Hugh Conway Browning and Thomas Hugh Spence.
Included because: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Engstrom, Mary Claire, 1906-1997.
Photographs gathered by Mary Claire Engstrom (1906-1997), dated from the 1930s to 1979 with most falling between the 1950s and 1976, about 2,140 items in 4.4 linear feet in UNC's North Carolina Collection. Subjects include historic buildings in Hillsborough and Orange County, the Alexander Dixon House, the Nash Hooper Graham House, Bingham School, Nash and Kollock School, the Hillsboro' Military Academy, Carrboro views, and the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery.
Included because: Catalog heading in the UNC record: Engstrom, Mary Claire, 1906-1997.
Books in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection whose titles, catalog subjects, or descriptions match this person. The Friends’ recommended starting points are labelled.
Mary Claire Engstrom's history of the Quaker settlers of the Eno River valley from about 1750 to 1847, in the country that is now Orange and Durham counties. Published by the Association for the Preservation of the Eno River Valley in Durham in 1989, 73 pages with illustrations, maps and portraits.
Mary Claire Engstrom's biographical register of the young women who attended the Burwell School in Hillsborough, subtitled lives of educated women in the antebellum South. The school was kept by Margaret Anna Burwell and her husband, and the book bears on women's education in nineteenth-century North Carolina. Published by the Historic Hillsborough Commission, 1979, 256 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows them all.
Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange, Orange County GIS, OpenStreetMap and a few other published sources named on each site’s page; town and community pins show approximate locations.
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