Community in Orange County
A rural community and township in northern Orange County, farm country settled in the 18th century. Its records are church, school and family histories, and the Cedar Grove storyline gathers the area’s dated entries.
Source: NCpedia, North Carolina Gazetteer
22 indexed works are connected with this place. 4 held at OCPL →
Themes here. The subjects the index files most often under Cedar Grove.
Storylines set here, earliest first. Each has its own page.
Other dated events here: sixteen of 142, the highlights and a sample of the rest spread across the years, in date order. See all 142 dated events in the chronology →
On August 10, 1755 the missionary Hugh McAden preached at Eno to a Presbyterian community already settled near the river, southeast of present Cedar Grove; the congregation counts its beginning from these years. The settlers asked Hanover Presbytery for supply preachers in 1756, and by church tradition the congregation was formally organized during the Synod mission of 1764.
Subject: Eno Presbyterian Church
The Pickett House near Cedar Grove is a large log dwelling of two full stories, a size uncommon among the county's log houses. The survey could not settle whether it went up in 1846 or 1864.
John S. Pope, a Confederate captain, and his wife Mary Jane McDade Pope built a two-story I-house on land she inherited from her father's estate in 1869; it was likely finished by 1874, when her brother's share brought the tract to about 73 acres. Tobacco was the farm's main cash crop, and its oldest surviving barn dates to about 1875.
Subject: John S. Pope Farm
The two-story weatherboarded Pender Store, with a classical gable front and a hip-roofed porch, was built at Cedar Grove in the 1880s. Its shelves and display cases were still in place in 1996.
Wind-driven woods fires on Saturday, April 1, 1893 burned the Eno Presbyterian church and its session house at the old site near the river. The loss preceded the congregation's move to Cedar Grove, where it built again in 1897 to 1899.
Subject: Eno Presbyterian Church
The Kenion House, a two-story farmhouse with a shingled front gable, pointed window heads and a bracketed porch, was built in 1910 for John Kenion, a farmer and Hillsborough banker. It stands in the Cedar Grove area.
After Christmas 1918 a second epidemic spread through the county and was very bad at Cedar Grove, Efland and Hillsborough. This time schools and churches stayed open, and the outbreak slowly died down.
Allen A. Ellis built a new crossroads store.
Aycock principal Mrs. V. L. Warren and the school committee asked the board for a two-room brick building for agriculture classes, and the board agreed to provide it.
Subject: Aycock School
A delegation from the Cedar Grove Parent-Teacher Association asked the county board to let Central High principal A. L. Stanback and M. C. Burt, the county's agricultural agent for Black farmers, take part in planning the new Cedar Grove school.
Subject: Cedar Grove schools
The News of Orange County reported a Farmers Home Administration effort to raise tenant income by adding livestock to tobacco farming. Tenants on the Banks Wilson farm near Cedar Grove added hogs and other animals, and 42 county farm families had FHA operating loans.
After voting in September to study the need, the board approved a cafeteria for 150 pupils at Cedar Grove at no more than $40,000, while again putting off new classrooms. Archie Royal Davis's plans for it were approved and sent to the state in October 1957.
People: Archie Royal Davis
Subject: Cedar Grove schools
When Orange High School opened in 1963, the county consolidated the high school grades of Aycock School in Cedar Grove and Hillsborough High School into it, and the older buildings became junior high or elementary schools. Some Aycock seniors went to Eastern Alamance High School in Mebane, but most went to Orange High.
Subject: Orange High School · Hillsborough High School · Aycock School
As the county prepared to integrate its schools, the Cedar Grove Advisory Council brought the board a petition asking that Cedar Grove School run fully through 1969-70 and that the integration plan be reconsidered. The council said the community did not intend to give up its school.
Subject: Cedar Grove schools
Orange County opened the Cedar Grove Branch Library in two rooms of the Northern Human Services Center, a former school, to serve Cedar Grove and northern Orange. Budgets describe books, Spanish-language materials, children's and adult programs, computer classes and materials borrowed from other regional libraries.
Part of Cedar Grove and rural northern Orange · 80 events
Subject: Orange County Public Library
Chapelboro reported that Black residents were 12.4 percent of Orange County's population but 9 percent of those vaccinated, and Hispanic residents 8.6 percent and 5.5 percent. The county was working with church leaders and advocates in a Human Services Consulting Group and had held clinics at the Hargraves Community Center and in Cedar Grove.
Subject: Hargraves Community Center
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.
Irene Oliver Pender's history of the public schools of Orange County from 1752 to 1983, covering more than two centuries of schooling in Hillsborough, Efland, Cedar Grove and the rural districts of the county. Published in 1983, 186 pages with illustrations.
The centennial history of Mount Adar Baptist Church at Cedar Grove in northern Orange County, marking 1889 to 1989 under the motto a century of remembrance, a future of vision. Prepared by a centennial committee co-chaired by Nancy Rogers and Jackie Oakley and published by the church in 1989, 36 unnumbered pages with illustrations. Topics include Baptists in North Carolina and church history for Cedar Grove.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the OCPL record: Cedar Grove (N.C.) -- Church History.
A 1980 edition, issued by the church, of A. A. Ellis's history of Eno Presbyterian Church at Cedar Grove, Orange County. Twenty unnumbered pages with illustrations and portraits. Ellis's original history of the congregation appeared in 1955.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the OCPL record: Cedar Grove (N.C.) -- Church History.
A. A. Ellis's short history of Eno Presbyterian Church at Cedar Grove in northern Orange County, published by the church in 1955, 22 pages with illustrations and portraits. Subjects include the religious aspects of the Civil War among Presbyterians, along with Presbyterian and church history for Orange County.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the OCPL record: Cedar Grove (N.C.) -- Church History.
Evan P. Bennett returns to the photographs Marion Post Wolcott made in 1939 in Cedar Grove, a Black farming neighborhood in northern Orange County that she documented for the federal resettlement program. Published in 2025 by the Historical Research Office in Raleigh, pages 384 to 406, with illustrations and portraits. Topics include rural African Americans in the Cedar Grove township and photographers in the state.
George Wynder Thompson's memoir of growing up during segregation in Orange and Alamance counties, around Cedar Grove, Mebane and Burlington. Thompson worked as a sharecropper and later for Burlington Industries. Published in 2013 by Brentwood Christian Press.
Why this is here: Catalog heading in the DigitalNC record: Cedar Grove (N.C.).
Recently indexed: Community service day, Cedar Grove, Saturday, May 15, 1915 (1915) · The prevalence of physical activity among African Americans in a rural community in North Carolina (1993) · Aloha · Examining the contributions of community gardens to social capital (2009) · InfoUSA City Directories Cross Reference Directory: Consumer and Business Guide for Durham, North Carolina and Vicinity · Cedar Grove, Orange County : an action-oriented community diagnosis : findings and next steps of action (2002)
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.
A 1980 edition, issued by the church, of A. A. Ellis's history of Eno Presbyterian Church at Cedar Grove, Orange County. Twenty unnumbered pages with illustrations and portraits. Ellis's original history of the congregation appeared in 1955.
The centennial history of Mount Adar Baptist Church at Cedar Grove in northern Orange County, marking 1889 to 1989 under the motto a century of remembrance, a future of vision. Prepared by a centennial committee co-chaired by Nancy Rogers and Jackie Oakley and published by the church in 1989, 36 unnumbered pages with illustrations. Topics include Baptists in North Carolina and church history for Cedar Grove.
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.
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