Businesses, mills and venues
In Chapel Hill. 3 dated events, 1976–1999.
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 Mama Dip’s Kitchen, found by its names in titles, catalog subjects and the index’s descriptions, and read one by one. Those held at OCPL come first.
Second cookbook from Mildred Council, Mama Dip, whose restaurant Mama Dip's Country Kitchen has fed Chapel Hill since 1976. Following her earlier Mama Dip's Kitchen, this 2005 collection of home-style Southern recipes is arranged by course: breakfast, soups and sandwiches, salads, breads, meat, poultry and seafood, vegetables, cakes, pies and other desserts, and a closing section on community suppers and party food. 297 pages, in an e-book edition.
Mildred Council, known as Mama Dip, cook and owner of Mama Dip's Country Kitchen in Chapel Hill, gathers her recipes in this cookbook from UNC Press, 1999, 230 pages with illustrations. Topics include American cooking and African American cooks in North Carolina, along with the restaurant itself.
Spring Council's cookbook of Southern recipes and stories, published in 2026. Council is the daughter of Mildred Council, the Mama Dip of Mama Dip's Country Kitchen in Chapel Hill.
Annette Marie Council's book about her family and Mama Dip's Country Kitchen, the Chapel Hill restaurant, published by NP Press in 2005. Subjects include African Americans in Chapel Hill, the restaurant's history and family biography. Fourteen introductory pages and 223 pages of text with illustrations, part local history and part family account.
Awards and television appearances of Mildred Council, the Chapel Hill cook known as Mama Dip and the founder of Mama Dip's Country Kitchen. Issued in 2004 by G-Tube Network Media and Television of Chapel Hill and classed as North Carolina biography, it gathers the public recognition Council's cooking brought her.
Mildred Council's papers, roughly 1,200 items in two linear feet spanning the 1990s to the 2010s, part of the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 05003-z. Topics include Mama Dip's Country Kitchen, her restaurant in Chapel Hill, and on African American women cooks, Black business enterprises and businesspeople in North Carolina, southern style American cooking, and African American families in Chapel Hill and Chatham County.
Mildred 'Mama Dip' Council, who founded Mama Dip's Kitchen in Chapel Hill and wrote cookbooks, is covered in newspaper clippings, copied newspaper and magazine articles, promotional pieces and a photograph. Undated folder, box 3 of the Individuals and Families series, CHHS.001 Vertical File Collection.
Mildred Council and her daughter at the storefront of Mama Dip's, her Chapel Hill restaurant, in an undated photograph from the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Prints and Photographs Collection (CHHS.002).
Not about Mama Dip’s Kitchen 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.
Found a book OCPL doesn’t own? You can often borrow it through interlibrary loan at OCPL.
These books don’t necessarily mention Mama Dip’s Kitchen, 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.
Maps, surveys, and the ground itself
Local organizations that preserve the story and can help you go further
Other sources to search and local organizations that can help.
