Churches and lodges
In Hillsborough. 6 dated events, 1759–1978.
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 St. Mary’s Chapel, found by its names in titles, catalog subjects and the index’s descriptions, and read one by one. Those held at OCPL come first.
Deborah Joy's archaeological assessment of St. Mary's Chapel Cemetery, a field report from 1995 on a burial ground in the Hillsborough vicinity of Orange County. It belongs with the cemetery and archaeological studies of the county and would interest anyone tracing burials at St. Mary's or the condition of the site.
Compiled in 2009 by Ben Franklin from the records of Saint Mary's Episcopal Chapel in Orange County, this genealogy came out of a service project by the young women of three Latter-day Saint wards in Chapel Hill and Durham. Topics include church registers, cemeteries, registers of births and wills for the county, so the volume gathers burial and family data on Episcopal families there.
A booklet from a three-day celebration, September 19 to 21, 2003, marking 250 years of Anglican and Episcopal presence in Orange County, North Carolina. A note summarizes its contents as the history of four congregations: St. Matthew's Church and St. Mary's Chapel in Hillsborough, and the Chapel of the Cross and the Church of the Holy Family in Chapel Hill. Sixteen unnumbered pages.
Hugh Conway Browning's notes on the history of St. Mary's Chapel, the Episcopal chapel near Hillsborough, gathered into 31 unnumbered leaves with plans and issued in Orange County in 1996, after Browning's death in 1983, apparently by Polly Cabe Roberts, who added a biographical sketch of him. Topics include Episcopal church history in Orange County.
Deborah Joy's archaeological assessment of St. Mary's Chapel Cemetery outside Hillsborough, prepared for the Committee on St. Mary's Chapel in April 1995. The report documents what survives at the burial ground. One volume in various pagings with illustrations, of use to anyone researching graves and families locally.
Not about St. Mary’s Chapel 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.
Richard L. Mattson's manuscript survey of the history and architecture of Orange County, completed in September 1996. Its 78 pages cover the county's historic buildings and structures and end with a bibliography.
National Register multiple property documentation form on the historic resources of Orange County, completed in 1993. Kelly Lally and M. Ruth Little led the first phase of the survey, and Jody Carter and Todd Peck the second. It runs 123 pages with a bibliography.
Historic building survey forms for Orange County gathered in 1974 by the state's Historic Preservation Section for a report on the Tar-Neuse River basin. About 400 pages of forms covering buildings in Chapel Hill, Hillsborough and the countryside; a form can carry a description, historical notes, location, a photograph and a floor plan.
Geoffrey B. Henry of GAI Consultants surveyed the historic buildings along St. Mary's Road (S.R. 1002) near Hillsborough in August 1999 and evaluated them for the National Register, for the Orange County Department of Planning. A 53-page report with maps.
Large manuscript map of Orange County on linen, tracing ownership and chains of title for notable tracts with the dates each passed to new owners. Hachures show relief, and it marks principal towns, roads, railroads, mines, creeks, rivers and lakes. The date is uncertain; both 1849 and 1913 have been given for it.
Facsimile, dated 1940, of George W. Tate's 1891 map of Orange County. It shows towns, roads, railroads such as the North Carolina Rail Road and the Chapel Hill line, residences, schools, churches, mills and mines, with portraits and pictures of buildings in the margins.
Marcus Cicero Stephens Noble drew this 1915 map to show how Orange County's original territory was divided, tracing the formation of Caswell, Person, Alamance, Durham, Chatham, Randolph, Guilford and Rockingham counties out of it. Topics include county boundaries and the history of political divisions in the Piedmont. Surviving as a photocopy on a sheet 31 by 23 centimeters.
Color soil map of Orange County issued in 1918 by the U.S. Government Printing Office at one inch to the mile, 68 by 46 cm. Besides soil types it marks roads and railroads, the Southern Railway among them, churches, schools, mills, stores, cotton gins, iron mines, cemeteries and the county home, and it names the townships of Bingham, Cedar Grove, Chapel Hill, Cheeks, Eno, Hillsborough and Little River.
Hand colored map of Orange County drawn by E. A. Stanaland and published at Parrott, Georgia, in 1939. It shows towns and townships, roads and railroads, and marks the schools and churches standing in the county. One sheet, 58 by 36 centimeters.
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.
Deborah Joy's archaeological assessment of St. Mary's Chapel Cemetery, a field report from 1995 on a burial ground in the Hillsborough vicinity of Orange County. It belongs with the cemetery and archaeological studies of the county and would interest anyone tracing burials at St. Mary's or the condition of the site.
These books don’t necessarily mention St. Mary’s Chapel, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Durward T. Stokes's transcriptions of tombstone inscriptions from private and abandoned cemeteries in Alamance and Orange counties, dated at Graham, N.C., August 25, 1979. A photocopied typescript of 60 leaves with 10 preliminary pages, it preserves names and dates from family and neglected burial grounds and is a genealogical source for both counties.
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
