Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries
In Chapel Hill. 3 dated events, 1854–1897.
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 Horace Williams House, found by its names in titles, catalog subjects and the index’s descriptions, and read one by one. Those held at OCPL come first.
A house tour booklet from the Chapel Hill School Art Guild for 14 to 19 April 1973, held as a benefit for the public school art program and featuring the Horace Williams home. Sixty pages with illustrations and advertising matter from local businesses. Topics include buildings and historic buildings in Chapel Hill and the Horace Williams House itself.
Amelia L. Gallo's 2010 paper on the historic house museum in North Carolina and the part it plays in presenting shared history and culture. The Horace Williams House in Chapel Hill is among the subjects, along with historic buildings and their conservation and restoration, so the study draws on Chapel Hill for its material.
An account of the Horace Williams House in Chapel Hill and of Henry Horace Williams, the university teacher whose home it was. Published in the town in 1989, it concerns historic buildings in Chapel Hill, university faculty biography and novelist Thomas Wolfe.
A 1977 poster reproducing a color photograph of the quilt that hangs in the Horace Williams House in Chapel Hill. The quilt depicts twenty two historic buildings in the town, and a typewritten key identifying them accompanies the sheet.
Exterior of the Horace Williams House in Chapel Hill, photographed on 29 May 2002 for the North Carolina ECHO project. The house, once the home of University of North Carolina philosophy professor Horace Williams, is now a historic house museum.
Outside view of the Horace Williams House, taken 29 May 2002 for North Carolina ECHO. The Chapel Hill house serves as the home office of the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill.
Parlor of the Horace Williams House in Chapel Hill, photographed from inside on 29 May 2002 as part of the North Carolina ECHO project.
Oil portrait of Horace Williams in the parlor of his former house in Chapel Hill, now a historic house museum. Photographed 29 May 2002 for North Carolina ECHO.
Dining room of the Horace Williams House, Chapel Hill, with carved woodwork in its vaulted ceiling. North Carolina ECHO photograph, 29 May 2002.
The hexagonal room at the Horace Williams House in Chapel Hill, which the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill uses as an art gallery. Photographed for North Carolina ECHO on 29 May 2002.
Close view of the parlor ceiling in the Horace Williams House, Chapel Hill, whose woodwork resembles the dining room ceiling. Taken 29 May 2002 for North Carolina ECHO.
Eleven photographs from 1970 of the Horace Williams House in Chapel Hill, named for the university philosophy professor Horace Williams. Views include the front, the side, and the back yard with its chairs and swings.
Newspaper clippings, photocopied articles, correspondence, and a report with notes on the Horace Williams House in Chapel Hill. Williams taught philosophy at the University of North Carolina. Undated, from the Historic Houses files of the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Vertical File Collection.
Not about Horace Williams House 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.
Margaret Ruth Little-Stokes's survey of Chapel Hill's town and campus buildings from 1795 to 1975, published by the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill in 2006. Chapters run from the first campus buildings through David Swain's romantic campus to midcentury modernism, followed by area surveys of the campus, east and west Chapel Hill, downtown, Northside and the suburbs.
M. Ruth Little's 2004 architectural history of Chapel Hill and the university campus from 1795 to 1975, written for the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill. A 99-page survey with a bibliography.
M. B. Gatza's final report of the 1992 Chapel Hill historic sites survey for the town Planning Department, with contributions by Beverly C. Kawalec and Catherine Bishir. It covers historic buildings and districts in Chapel Hill in 80 pages.
Kelly A. Lally's October 1992 final report on the architectural survey of Chapel Hill township, including Chapel Hill and Carrboro. Besides the report and a bibliography, most of its 56 pages form an annotated index of the historic buildings surveyed.
Cornelia Spencer Love's recollections of Chapel Hill as a village, published by the Chapel Hill Historical Society in 1976 with drawings by John V. Allcott. Love lived from 1892 to 1981, and the book covers Chapel Hill biography, the town's social life and customs, and the faculty of the university before 1962. viii and 87 pages with illustrations.
Henry Dennis Carter's reconstruction, drawn as a blueprint in 1934, of Chapel Hill as it stood between 1875 and 1885, showing the buildings of the village. A note on the map says the information came from old residents who gave it to Mary L. Thornton.
Dating from 1888 and attributed to Hunter Lee Harris, a map of Chapel Hill and its vicinity, reproduced as a photocopy measuring 22 by 37 centimeters. Harris died in 1893, which brackets the drawing to the late nineteenth century. An early depiction of the streets of the village and the land around it.
Pen-and-ink manuscript map of Chapel Hill dated 1852, with a table of measurements, showing the University campus, the village around it, street widths and layout, and the town limits. Later notes attributed to Kemp P. Battle give the longitude and latitude of landmarks as measured from atop New East Hall in 1880.
Found a book OCPL doesn’t own? You can often borrow it through interlibrary loan at OCPL.
These books don’t necessarily mention Horace Williams House, 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.
Steven Stolpen's pictorial history of Chapel Hill, one of the Donning Company's photographic town histories, published in Norfolk, Virginia in 1978. Photographs and portraits carry the story of the town and the university, including references to Thomas Wolfe's years as a student at Carolina. 156 pages with illustrations.
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.
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.
A pocket-sized guide to the historic buildings and landmarks of Chapel Hill, prepared by the Chapel Hill Historical Society and printed by Creative Printers in 1973. Forty pages with illustrations and maps, 14 by 22 cm. Topics include architecture, historic buildings and historic districts in Chapel Hill, and the guide is useful for a walking tour of the older parts of town.
Deed transcripts for the town lots of Chapel Hill and adjoining land from 1790 to the 1930s, compiled by Stewart E. Dunaway. Each transcript keeps only the working facts: grantor and grantee, price, acreage and the metes and bounds of the parcel. Self-published in 2014 as Issue 1G, 702 pages with maps and facsimiles.
Index to Orange County estate records for 1800 to 1880: inventories, sales and settlements filed when a resident died. Published in 2000, it points to the original probate files, which list property, purchasers at estate sales and heirs.
Maps, surveys, and the ground itself
Other catalogs, databases, and guides worth searching
Local organizations that preserve the story and can help you go further
Other sources to search and local organizations that can help.
