Schools and academies
In Hillsborough. 32 dated events, 1817–2026.
Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange and OpenStreetMap; town and community pins mark the middle of their mapped buildings.
Books, articles, records and pictures in the index about Burwell School, found by its names in titles, catalog subjects and the index’s descriptions, and read one by one. Those held at OCPL come first.
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.
The Historic Hillsborough Commission's account of slavery in antebellum Hillsborough and of the enslaved and free people of color who worked at the Burwell School, the female school the Burwells kept in town, between 1837 and 1857. African American history in Hillsborough and the school's own history are its two threads. Published in 2019.
Sylvia D. Hoffert's article on Margaret Anna Burwell, 1810 to 1871, and the work of being a Presbyterian minister's wife in North Carolina from 1835 to 1857, the years of the female school she and her husband kept in Hillsborough. Pages 245 to 275 with illustrations, facsimiles and portraits, issued by the Office of Archives and History in Raleigh in 2019.
Research by a committee at the Burwell School Historic Site, co-chaired by Janie Morris and Betty Eldenier, into the enslaved people and free people of color who worked at the Burwell School in Hillsborough between 1837 and 1857, the years it ran as a female school. Published in 2019, it covers slavery and education in nineteenth century Hillsborough.
A study by the Research Committee of the Burwell School Historic Site, compiled by Janie Morris, on the enslaved and free people of color who worked at the Burwell School in Hillsborough between 1837 and 1857. Presented in 2019 in 123 pages with illustrations and maps, it gathers evidence of slavery in the town during the years the Burwells ran their female school.
A register of Mr. and Mrs. Burwell's Female School, the girls' school that operated in Hillsborough from 1837 to 1857, edited by the Hillsborough Historical Society and printed in 1966. Fifteen pages with illustrations and portraits, it lists those connected with the school and touches on the Burwell family.
A 1965 leaflet from the Historic Hillsborough Commission on the Burwell School, the female school the Burwells ran in the town from 1837 to 1857, issued as part of the commission's restoration of the property. The General Assembly established the commission in 1963. One sheet of three unnumbered pages with illustrations and portraits.
Title page of 'The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin', one of the books on display at the Burwell School in Hillsborough. Photographed 6 April 2002 for the North Carolina ECHO project.
Photograph of the sign in front of the Burwell School in Hillsborough, taken 6 April 2002 for the North Carolina ECHO project, part of a set recording the historic school house and its grounds.
Front exterior of the Burwell School in Hillsborough, photographed on 6 April 2002 by the North Carolina ECHO project. The school was founded by the Reverend Robert Burwell, Hillsborough's Presbyterian pastor from 1835.
The gardens at the Burwell School in Hillsborough, one of a series of photographs the North Carolina ECHO project made at the historic school on 6 April 2002.
Unusual light fixtures in the common dining room of Hillsborough's Burwell School, photographed on 6 April 2002 as part of the North Carolina ECHO project's survey of the house.
Interior view of the formal dining room at the Burwell School in Hillsborough, from the North Carolina ECHO project's photographs of the house, 6 April 2002.
Inside the Burwell School in Hillsborough: one of the front rooms, photographed on 6 April 2002 for the North Carolina ECHO project.
A second view of a front room at the Burwell School, Hillsborough, taken the same day, 6 April 2002, by the North Carolina ECHO project.
An upstairs bedroom at the Burwell School in Hillsborough, photographed 6 April 2002 during the North Carolina ECHO project's visit to the historic house.
Exhibit on the history of the Burwell School and the people who lived there, photographed inside the Hillsborough house on 6 April 2002 for the North Carolina ECHO project.
April 2002 view of another sleeping chamber in the Burwell School at Hillsborough, one of the North Carolina ECHO project's interior photographs of the house.
Period furnishings in the Burwell School, Hillsborough, photographed 6 April 2002 for the North Carolina ECHO project. None of the pieces belonged to the house; they are the kind of furniture used there in the middle of the 19th century.
A needlework sampler by Mary Isabella Ogle, possibly dated 1852, on display at the Burwell School in Hillsborough. Photographed 6 April 2002 by the North Carolina ECHO project.
Bed chamber at the Burwell School in Hillsborough, furnished as a typical room of its kind, from a set of North Carolina ECHO project photographs taken on 6 April 2002.
Panel from the Burwell School's history exhibit in Hillsborough telling how Josiah Collins and his family came to live in the house during the Civil War. North Carolina ECHO project photograph, 6 April 2002.
Photograph from the Burwell School in Hillsborough, taken 6 April 2002 for the North Carolina ECHO project. Its caption recalls the school's founder, the Reverend Robert Burwell, who arrived in 1835 as the town's Presbyterian pastor.
A white musk rose, Rosa moschata plena, growing on the Burwell School grounds in Hillsborough and thought to be more than 150 years old. North Carolina ECHO project photograph, 6 April 2002.
Close view of a single bloom from the old white musk rose on the Burwell School grounds, Hillsborough, photographed 6 April 2002 for the North Carolina ECHO project.
Rare books displayed inside the Burwell School in Hillsborough, photographed on 6 April 2002 by the North Carolina ECHO project.
Handwritten inscription in a volume of 'The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin', one of the old books at the Burwell School in Hillsborough. North Carolina ECHO project photograph, 6 April 2002.
Written 16 February 1856, a letter from Margaret Anna Robertson Burwell in Hillsborough to her daughter Frances Armistead Burwell, known as Fanny, about family and daily affairs.
Letter dated 20 February 1856 from Margaret Anna Robertson Burwell to her daughter Frances Armistead Burwell, called Fanny, 1838 to 1856. Mrs. Burwell and her husband ran the Burwell School for girls in Hillsborough.
In a letter of 4 February 1856, Anna Burwell writes to her daughter Fanny. It belongs with her other Hillsborough letters to Fanny from 1855 and 1856.
Family letter of 8 February 1856 from Margaret Anna Robertson Burwell to Frances Armistead Burwell, her daughter, known as Fanny, touching on daily life in the Burwell household in Hillsborough.
Hillsborough mother to daughter: Margaret Anna Robertson Burwell's letter of 12 January 1856 to Frances Armistead Burwell, called Fanny, concerning daily life at home.
Letter of 19 January 1856 from Margaret Anna Robertson Burwell, 1810 to 1871, to her daughter Fanny (Frances Armistead Burwell), written in Hillsborough in the last year of Fanny's life.
Family letter of 25 January 1856 in which Margaret Anna Robertson Burwell writes from Hillsborough to her daughter Fanny Burwell, part of a series of letters to Fanny from 1855 and 1856.
On 5 January 1856 Margaret Anna Robertson Burwell wrote this letter to her daughter Fanny, Frances Armistead Burwell, one of several from the Burwell family of Hillsborough in the winter of 1855 to 1856.
Margaret Anna Robertson Burwell of Hillsborough writes to her daughter Frances, called Fanny, on 10 March 1856, one of a run of family letters from that winter touching on daily life.
Dated 15 March 1856, a letter from Anna Burwell of Hillsborough to her daughter Fanny, who died later that year.
Letter from Margaret Anna Robertson Burwell to her daughter Fanny (Frances Armistead Burwell), dated 4 March 1856 at Hillsborough, with news of home and daily life.
Letter from Anna Burwell, principal of the Burwell girls' school in Hillsborough, to her daughter Fanny Burwell, dated 10 December 1855.
Letter from Margaret Anna Robertson Burwell of Hillsborough to her daughter Frances Armistead Burwell, known as Fanny, written in December 1855 and dealing with daily life at home.
Margaret Anna Robertson Burwell of the Burwell School in Hillsborough wrote to her daughter Frances Armistead (Fanny) Burwell on 29 December 1855. Fanny died the following year.
Margaret Anna Robertson Burwell's letter of 27 November 1855 to her daughter Fanny Burwell, the earliest in a run of letters from the Burwell household in Hillsborough that continues into March 1856.
Margaret Anna Robertson Burwell writes to her daughter Fanny (Frances Armistead Burwell) on 15 September 1855, one of a run of family letters from the years the Burwells kept their girls' school in Hillsborough.
Letter of 17 August 1855 from Margaret Anna Robertson Burwell in Hillsborough to her daughter Mary Susan Burwell (1832 to 1859), who married into the Strudwick family.
Anna Burwell's diary for 1855, from 1 January to 17 December, written while she lived in Hillsborough and served as principal of Mr. and Mrs. Burwell's Female School, which she ran with her husband, Robert Armistead Burwell.
Surviving part of a letter Anna Burwell wrote from Hillsborough to her daughter Frances, called Fanny, on 25 October 1855. Fanny Burwell lived from 1838 to 1856.
Elizabeth Coit wrote to her sister from the Burwell School in Hillsborough on 10 April 1852, describing the new white linen bonnets given to all the school's girls and a pretty neck ribbon Mrs. Margaret Anna Robertson Burwell bought for her.
Elizabeth Coit writes to her sister on 29 May 1852 about the close of the school session at the Burwell School in Hillsborough.
Letter of 17 January 1846 from Margaret Anna Robertson Burwell, who ran the Burwell School in Hillsborough with her husband, to Mary Anderson Kirkland, touching on daily life.
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.
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.
Circular and list of pupils of Mr. and Mrs. Burwell's Female School in Hillsborough for the terms 1848 to 1851, printed in Raleigh in 1851 at the North Carolina Institution for the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind. Eleven pages.
Circular for Mr. and Mrs. Burwell's Female School in Hillsborough, 1848 to 1851, the only complete one known. It gives the course of study, tuition, patrons and a roll of students. Robert and Margaret Anna Burwell ran the school for young white women from 1837 to 1857.
Reward of Merit given to Mary Rebecca Jones about 1839 for reciting the multiplication table without error. Sarah Jane Kollock's name is attached to it, and it is thought to have come from the Burwell School in Hillsborough.
Report card from Mr. and Mrs. Burwell's School in Hillsborough on the studies of Emily Eliza Cooley, 1837 to 1869. It is undated, from the middle or later 1800s.
Not about Burwell School alone: the architectural surveys that cover its town or the county, and maps drawn while it stood. Several of the surveys can be read free online at NC Digital Collections.
Survey of Hillsborough's historic buildings by Heather Wagner Slane of hmwPreservation, completed in September 2017. The 40-page report covers the town's architecture and history with color illustrations and maps.
Cheryl Davis Warren's 2005 study of history and sense of place in Hillsborough, 216 leaves with illustrations, maps and a bibliography. Written as human geography, it treats the town's past alongside its social conditions and the ways residents understand where they live.
Plan of Hillsborough drawn in October 1863, showing the downtown blocks around the crossing of Tryon and Churton Streets, with the Eno River, spelled Enoe on the sheet.
Bird's-eye view of Hillsborough looking east, with houses and industrial buildings, on a postcard published by A. C. Bosselman & Co. of New York about 1905 to 1915. Card number 11116.
Found a book OCPL doesn’t own? You can often borrow it through interlibrary loan at OCPL.
Books in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection at the Main Library in Hillsborough whose titles, catalog subjects or descriptions are about this site. The Friends’ recommended starting points are labelled.
The Historic Hillsborough Commission's account of slavery in antebellum Hillsborough and of the enslaved and free people of color who worked at the Burwell School, the female school the Burwells kept in town, between 1837 and 1857. African American history in Hillsborough and the school's own history are its two threads. Published in 2019.
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.
These books don’t necessarily mention Burwell School, but they cover where it stands, its kind of building and the land, family and burial records behind it, and they are where a search for a place like this usually goes next. All are at OCPL, most in the Wall Collection.
A 1982 revision of Allen Alexander Lloyd's history of Hillsborough, now written with Pauline O. Lloyd and carried forward from the town's founding in 1754 to 1982. Published in Hillsborough by A. A. Lloyd, 310 pages with illustrations and a bibliography.
J. Chris Holaday's Images of America volume on Hillsborough (Arcadia, 2002), built mostly from photographs and postcards. Chapters cover homes, churches and schools, business and industry, local people, scenes around town, and sports, entertainment and events.
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.
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.
Catherine W. Bishir and Michael T. Southern's field guide to the historic buildings of the North Carolina Piedmont, arranged county by county from Wake and Franklin in the east to Mecklenburg and Gaston in the west. The Orange County section takes in Hillsborough, Chapel Hill and Carrboro along with the rural county, with entries on individual buildings and maps for finding them. Published 2003, 596 pages with illustrations and maps.
An inventory of the buildings in the Hillsborough Historic District, dated 2006. It concerns historic buildings and the buildings and structures of Hillsborough. Useful for anyone checking a particular property in the town's historic district.
Susan McArtor Bellinger's photographic survey of the buildings in the Hillsborough Historic District put up before 1950, self-published in Hillsborough in 1991. Arranged as a guidebook, it records houses and other structures in photographs. 142 pages with illustrations.
Lucile Noell Dula's guidebook to Hillsborough and its historic buildings, published by Pelican in 1989. It pairs a tour of the town with notes on its history, in 128 illustrated pages with a bibliography. Part of the Wall Local History Collection.
Stewart E. Dunaway worked through Hillsborough, N.C., lot by lot, giving each town lot a synopsis of its history, a plat showing where it sits and transcripts of the deeds he could locate for it. The second issue runs to 720 pages with illustrations, maps and facsimiles.
Stewart E. Dunaway's 2015 addendum to his history of Hillsborough's town lots, adding deed records arranged by lot number and further town history, with the expansion of the 1890s covered for the first time. Self-published in North Carolina as version 1.0, 446 pages with illustrations, facsimiles and maps. Topics include deeds, court records, land titles and real property in Hillsborough.
An index to the town lots of Hillsborough, Orange County, compiled in 1982 as a guide to the deeds and court records that trace each lot's ownership.
Background from selected state and local sources
Maps, surveys, and the ground itself
Newspapers, photographs, and records of the time
Other catalogs, databases, and guides worth searching
Local organizations that preserve the story and can help you go further
