Moorefields

Start 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.

• Rebecca Wall Collection · NC 975.656 HISTORIC Historic Moorefields : Unique Event Space In Hillsborough, NC 2017

  A short promotional piece from 2017 presenting Moorefields, the historic house near Hillsborough, as a venue for events. Of interest mainly as a record of the property's recent use.

Where to look next on the shelf

These books don’t necessarily mention Moorefields, 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.

Histories of the town and county

• Foundational · NC 975.656 ORA Orange County--1752-1952 1953

  Hugh Talmage Lefler and Paul W. Wager's history of Orange County across its first two centuries, 1752 to 1952, prepared for the county's bicentennial. It covers government and politics, biography and the county's families, and doubles as a genealogical reference. Published in Chapel Hill by the Orange Printshop in 1953, 389 pages with illustrations and an index; this copy is a later reprint.

Buildings and surveys

• Foundational · NC 720.975 BIS A Guide to the Historic Architecture of Piedmont North Carolina Bishir, Catherine W. · 2003

  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.

• Foundational · NC 917.56 ORANGE An Inventory Of Sites Of Cultural, Historic, Recreational, Biological, And Geological Significance In The Unincorporated Portions Of Orange County Orange County (N.C.) · 1986

  County planning department survey of significant sites in the unincorporated parts of Orange County, published in 1988, 95 pages with maps. The survey covers cemeteries, church buildings and archaeological sites on the cultural side, and plants, animals, endangered species, wildlife refuges, geology and recreation areas on the natural side. Useful for local historians, genealogists tracing burial grounds and land planners alike.

• Foundational · NC 363.69 HIS Historic Preservation Element: Orange County Comprehensive Plan ; Orange County, North Carolina Orange County (N.C.) · 1996

  The historic preservation element of Orange County's comprehensive plan, prepared for the county Historic Preservation Commission and Planning Department by the Jaeger Company of Gainesville, Georgia, and adopted on 1 April 1996. Partly financed by National Park Service funds through the state Division of Archives and History, it sets county policy on historic buildings and sites and their conservation. 59 pages plus 50 unnumbered, with illustrations and maps, some folded and in color.

Land, family and burial records

• Start here · NC 333.16 CHILTON The Land Grant Atlas of Old Orange County Chilton, Mark · 2012

  Mark Chilton's oversized atlas plotting eighteenth-century land grants across the original Orange County, which stretched well beyond today's boundaries into what became Alamance and Durham counties. Published in Carrboro by Hand Made Books beginning in 2012, the set was planned in four volumes: Henry McCulloh's great tract number 11 and the land north of it; the Saxapahaw old fields (volume 2); Chapel Hill, Hillsborough and the Johnston Tract; and Durham, Rougemont and McCulloh's tract number 12. Maps and color illustrations, 41 cm.

• Start here · NC 306.097 KEN Kinship and Neighborhood in A Southern Community: Orange County, North Carolina, 1849-1881 Kenzer, Robert C. · 1987

  Robert C. Kenzer's study of kinship and neighborhood in Orange County between 1849 and 1881, the decades before and after the Civil War, tracing family ties and neighborhood networks through the county's records. Published by the University of Tennessee Press in 1987, 251 pages with illustrations, maps, portraits and a bibliography. Topics include kinship, neighborhoods and social conditions in the county in the nineteenth century.

• Foundational · NC 929.375 ORA Orange County, NC Estate Records Index: Inventories, Sales & Settlements, 1800-1880 2000

  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.