Town in Orange County
A mill village on the western edge of Chapel Hill, incorporated in 1911 as Venable and renamed in 1913 for Julian S. Carr, the Durham industrialist who electrified its cotton mill. The mill village grew into a town of its own, known today for its farmers’ market, its music venues and its independent politics.
Source: NCpedia, North Carolina Gazetteer
950 indexed works are connected with this place. 19 held at OCPL →
Themes here. The subjects the index files most often under Carrboro.
Storylines set here, earliest first. Each has its own page.
Other dated events here: sixteen of 410, the highlights and a sample of the rest spread across the years, in date order. See all 410 dated events in the chronology →
A story-and-a-jump house of hewn logs, one room on each floor, went up a few yards from the wagon road to Hillsborough, whose roadbed could still be traced in 1983. Tradition says it was first a tavern; it is the oldest building standing in Carrboro.
Subject: Weaver House
Manly McCauley, an 18-year-old Black farmhand, left Milton Brewer's farm west of Chapel Hill with Brewer's wife on October 26, 1898. A posse caught them beyond Jonesboro, and on the way back masked men took McCauley from the officer holding him and hanged him. His body was found on November 6, about three miles west of Chapel Hill.
Part of Racial-terror lynchings in Orange County · 17 events
People: Manly McCauley
At about age eleven, growing up near the railroad tracks in the settlement that became Carrboro, Elizabeth Cotten wrote "Freight Train." She played a right-handed guitar upside down, and the song became a folk standard after Folkways released her recording in 1958.
The General Assembly incorporated the mill settlement west of Chapel Hill as the Town of Venable in an act ratified March 3, 1911, naming William H. Parker mayor and T. N. Mann, J. F. Ragan, T. A. Ray and J. F. Partin commissioners until the first election. The town, named for UNC president Francis P. Venable, became Carrboro in 1913.
Part of From West End to Carrboro: railroad, mills, and a new town, 1882–1913 · 47 events
Spanish influenza swept the University in early October 1918, putting the campus and its student soldiers under a three-week quarantine. By October 23 about 300 students had been ill and three had died, and President Edward Kidder Graham died of influenza and pneumonia on October 26.
The Carrboro school replaced by the new graded school was being moved in March 1923. Part became the Methodist parsonage at 114 West Main Street, which served until the Methodists built a new parsonage on Oak Street in 1955, and part was added to the Methodist church for Sunday school rooms, with John T. Squires as contractor.
Subject: Carrboro Elementary School
The shell-loading plant that National Munitions Corporation had run in Mill No. 7 since 1942 closed in August 1945. At its peak it employed 1,600 people, many of them former mill hands assembling anti-aircraft rounds, and it won the Army-Navy E award for production three times.
Braxton Foushee was elected to the Carrboro Board of Aldermen in 1969, the first Black member of the town's governing board, and served until 1981. He pressed for paved roads and sidewalks in Black neighborhoods and counted bringing bus service to Carrboro as his proudest achievement.
Part of Carrboro’s Black political firsts · 12 events
People: Braxton Foushee
Jacques Menache, who had earned an MFA at UNC the year before, opened the ArtSchool in Carrboro in August 1974 to offer art classes. By 1978 the Carrboro ArtSchool also ran a gallery theatre, and the organization later became The ArtsCenter, which moved to Roberson Street in 2023.
Subject: The ArtsCenter
Robert "Bob" Drakeford, a Carrboro alderman since 1975 and a Carrboro Community Coalition candidate, won the mayor's race on November 8, 1977, with 57 percent of the vote over John Boone. He was the town's first Black mayor and served until 1983.
Part of Carrboro’s Black political firsts · 12 events
Orange County adopted the Orange County-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Joint Planning Area Land Use Plan and map on August 19, 1986, designating a low-density Rural Buffer. The three governments signed the Joint Planning Agreement on November 2, 1987, and the county dates the buffer to 1988.
The 1990 census counted 1,279 persons of Hispanic origin in Orange County (1.4% of 93,851), 199 in Carrboro (1.7% of 11,553) and 607 in Chapel Hill (1.6% of 38,719). Census Bureau report 1990 CP-1-35, Table 5 (counties) and Table 6 (places).
On January 26, 2001 the National Park Service listed the Thomas and Mary Hogan House near Carrboro in the National Register of Historic Places.
Subject: Thomas and Mary Hogan House
Orange County's FY 2016–21 capital plan scheduled $6,375,000 in FY 2017–18 to design and build a Southern Branch library replacing the Cybrary and the Carrboro branch at McDougle School, after commissioners directed staff to work with Carrboro on siting it on the town-owned 203 South Greensboro Street property. The plan projected ten staff positions, two of them moved from existing Carrboro library operations.
Subject: Orange County Public Library · McDougle School
Orange County's Southern Branch Library opened in February 2025 in the $42 million Drakeford Library Complex at 203 South Greensboro Street in Carrboro, replacing the Carrboro Cybrary, which had closed on January 31, 2025. The building, named for Robert Drakeford, Carrboro's first Black mayor, also houses town recreation offices and WCOM Radio.
Subject: Orange County Public Library
The Town Council passed a resolution by council members Eliazar Posada-Orozco and Cristóbal Palmer condemning discriminatory actions by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and reaffirming Carrboro's status as a 4th Amendment town. The council had voted unanimously for that designation on May 20, 2025.
People: Barbara Foushee
Dated maps that show this place, oldest first: town plans, county, road and soil maps, fire insurance sheets and the U.S. Geological Survey’s topographic maps, each linked to the library or archive that holds it. The USGS maps are free to download.
Related works found in catalogs and archives across North Carolina, the most widely held first, novels aside. Each links to the institution that holds or provides it.
Narrow these works. Each link opens the search already limited to this place. Counts are indexed works, not copies on a shelf; a work can carry more than one period or place.
Twelve essays by novelist Daphne Athas (1923-2020) on the Chapel Hill she knew across the twentieth century. Subjects include Carrboro as 'the Paris of the Piedmont', philosopher Horace Williams, Betty Smith writing in Chapel Hill, Junius Scales, Ab Abernethy and the Intimate Bookshop, Richard Wright's visit, and a set of Chapel Hill murders. Published 2010, 243 pages with illustrations.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the OCPL record: Athas, Daphne, 1923-.
John Cook's history of Merge Records, the independent label that Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance of Superchunk built in Chapel Hill. Chapters follow the label year by year from 1987 to 2009 and pause for profiles of Butterglory, Neutral Milk Hotel, the Magnetic Fields, Spoon, Lambchop and the Arcade Fire, ending on how it managed to stay small. Advance reading copy of the first edition, published in Chapel Hill in 2009, 289 pages with twelve pages of plates.
Maurice M. Bursey's biography of Francis Preston Venable (1856 to 1934), chemist and president of the University of North Carolina, published by the Chapel Hill Historical Society in 1989. It also covers the history of the university's chemistry department. Illustrated, 111 pages, with bibliographies.
Why this is here: The record names this place alongside a heading for the county or its towns.
Reviewed in Isis (1992).
Architectural and historical inventory of Carrboro by Claudia Roberts Brown, published in 1983 by the Carrboro Appearance Commission and the town. The 48-page survey, with illustrations and maps, documents the town's historic buildings and their conservation.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the NC Cardinal record: Carrboro (N.C.).
David Menconi's history of popular music in North Carolina, from the working-class roots of the state's traditions to the Chapel Hill and Carrboro rock scene of recent decades. Menconi, who covered music for the Raleigh News and Observer for nearly thirty years, builds the book on interviews and reporting, and Black musicians' contributions run through it. First issued in print by UNC Press in 2020; this is the online edition, 329 pages with illustrations.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (2022).
Elizabeth Shreve Ryan's combined histories and tour guides for Hillsborough, Chapel Hill and Carrboro, the three towns of Orange County, with the University of North Carolina treated alongside Chapel Hill. Each town gets a narrative history and a tour of its streets and buildings. Published by Chapel Hill Press in 2004, 369 pages with illustrations and maps.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the Library of Congress record: Carrboro (N.C.) -- Tours.
Emily Eidenier Pearce's history of Rogers Road, the historically African American neighborhood on the edge of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, and of what happened to it after Orange County opened its landfill next door in 1972. Drawing on interviews with residents, the book records the neighborhood's origins, family life, churches and customs, and then the environmental and social burdens of decades beside the landfill. Privately issued in 2009, 298 pages with illustrations, maps and portraits.
Mark Chilton's short history of transportation planning in the North Carolina Piedmont, drawing lessons from earlier projects. Subjects include the Cape Fear Navigation Company and river navigation, and the railroads of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, including the State University Railroad Company whose spur brought trains to the two towns. Chilton was mayor of Carrboro when the book appeared. Published by Hand Made Books, Carrboro, 2012, 92 pages with illustrations, maps and portraits.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the UNC record: North Carolina -- Carrboro.
Recently indexed: The 100 best art towns in America : a guide to galleries, museums, festivals, lodging, and dining (2005) · El Kanil, man of lightning : a legend of Jacaltenango, Department of Hueheutenango, Guatemala (1984) · Francis Preston Venable, Ph.D. : a brief sketch (1900) · The University of North Carolina, 1900-1930 : the making of a modern university (1957) · The use of economic incentives and public education to increase seat belt use in a community (1984) · Chapel Hill, Orange County, North Carolina, December 1915 : including Carrboro (1916)
Books in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection whose titles, catalog subjects, or descriptions match this place. The Friends’ recommended starting points are labelled.
Elizabeth Shreve Ryan's combined histories and tour guides for Hillsborough, Chapel Hill and Carrboro, the three towns of Orange County, with the University of North Carolina treated alongside Chapel Hill. Each town gets a narrative history and a tour of its streets and buildings. Published by Chapel Hill Press in 2004, 369 pages with illustrations and maps.
Architectural and historical inventory of Carrboro by Claudia Roberts Brown, published in 1983 by the Carrboro Appearance Commission and the town. The 48-page survey, with illustrations and maps, documents the town's historic buildings and their conservation.
Second Images of America volume on Carrboro by David A. Otto and Richard Ellington (Arcadia, 2015). Chapters follow the town from mill village to growing urban center, then turn to its merchants, the arts, festivals, changing demographics and changing architecture, in 95 illustrated pages.
Pictorial history of Carrboro in Arcadia's Images of America series by David A. Otto and Richard Ellington, published in 2011. Its 127 pages of photographs, maps, facsimiles and portraits cover the town's history, social life and African American community, with a bibliography and index.
Lesley Wyatt's history calendar for 1999, subtitled the amazing history calendar, a wall calendar with local history notes on Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Hillsborough. Published by the author in Carrboro in 1998, 28 unnumbered pages with illustrations in a large 28 by 44 cm format. Topics include the history of all three towns and of Orange County.
Stories of Mexican migrants told through a collaboration of the anthropologist Hannah Gill, the artist Todd Drake and migrant communities in Carrboro and Celaya, Guanajuato, subtitled narrating Mexican migrant experiences. It deals with migrant labor and Mexican workers in Carrboro and emigration from Celaya. Published by the University Center for International Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2006, 78 pages with color illustrations.
Background from selected state and local sources
Maps, surveys, and the ground itself
Newspapers, photographs, and records of the time
Local organizations that preserve the story and can help you go further
Other catalogs to search and local organizations that can help.
More to discover
The Friends connect people with new library materials, local writers and publishers, and resources documenting Orange County.
