Churches and lodges
St. Matthew's Episcopal Church is the Gothic Revival brick church that masons John Berry and Samuel Hancock built in 1825-1826 to a design by William Nichols, on the hill on Hillsborough's east side given by Thomas Ruffin. The parish, created with Orange County in 1752, was reorganized in 1824 with William Mercer Green as first rector.
Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange, Orange County GIS, OpenStreetMap and a few other published sources named on each site’s page; town and community pins show approximate locations.
People named in events about this site, ordered by number of mentions. Each example links to an entry with a source citation.
Books, articles, records, and images about St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church. Each has been reviewed for relevance; materials held at OCPL appear first.
Address by Bishop Joseph Blount Cheshire at St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough on 24 August 1924, marking the parish's hundredth anniversary. Printed in Durham in 1925 at the vestry's order, with a foreword by the rector. Cheshire discusses George Micklejohn, William Mercer Green and Moses Ashley Curtis.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Joseph W. Murphy's sermon on the history of St. Matthew's Episcopal parish in Hillsborough, preached at the church on 21 September and 5 October 1890 and printed in Washington, D.C., in 1900. Forty pages.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
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.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
A three-page printed program for the ordination services conducted at St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Hillsborough on Wednesday, August 7, 1872, set in two columns. An ordination sermon and an 1872 Hillsborough imprint, it is a small record of the Episcopal parish in the town in the years after the Civil War.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough, the brick Episcopal church with its spire, photographed in 1938 by Frances Benjamin Johnston for the Carnegie Survey of the Architecture of the South. One 8 x 10 inch safety film negative.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
St. Matthew's Episcopal Church on St. Mary's Road in Hillsborough, documented by the Historic American Buildings Survey after 1933: five photographs, three data pages and a caption page. Names linked to the brick church include John Berry, Thomas Ruffin, Bishop John Stark Ravenscroft, Moses Ashley Curtis, Tiffany and Company and the Cameron, Hill and Graham families.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Interior of St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough, with its altar, on a 1914 postcard. The back holds a note to Miss Primrose Lawrence with family news: a story sent to the Youths' Companion had earned a ten-dollar check.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Undated postcard of St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Hillsborough, published by A. A. Lloyd and Lowe of Hillsborough. The church dates from 1825 and stands on land given by Chief Justice Thomas Ruffin; its colonial parish was reorganized in 1824.
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Not about St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church 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.
Included because: A survey or map of the town or county where the site stands.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
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.
Included because: A survey or map of the town or county where the site stands.
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.
Included because: A survey or map of the town or county where the site stands.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Claude Joseph Sauthier's 1768 plan of the town of Hillsborough in Orange County, reproduced as a colored facsimile of the pen and ink manuscript on a sheet 43 by 53 centimeters. Relief is shown by hachures and the sheet is indexed for points of interest. The 1975 reproduction was made from negatives taken of the original in the Map Room of the British Museum.
Included because: A survey or map of the town or county where the site stands.
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.
Included because: A survey or map of the town or county where the site stands.
Fire insurance map of Hillsborough, spelled Hillsboro, drawn by the Sanborn Map Company in January 1905 on two sheets, from the Sanborn Maps collection.
Included because: A survey or map of the town or county where the site stands.
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.
Included because: A survey or map of the town or county where the site stands.
Found a book OCPL doesn’t own? You can often borrow it through interlibrary loan at OCPL.
These books don’t necessarily mention St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, 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.
Francis Nash's history of Hillsborough in colonial and Revolutionary times, first published in 1903 and reprinted in 1953 by Edwards & Broughton with an index and a sketch of the author. Topics include the Regulator Insurrection of 1766 to 1771, the Revolution and local genealogy.
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.
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.
Pauline O. Lloyd's history of the churches of Hillsborough from about 1766 to 1962, nearly two centuries of the town's congregations, with attention to the church buildings themselves. Published in Hillsborough in 1962, 151 pages with illustrations, maps and portraits, and a bibliography on the final page.
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.
Shirley Jones Mallard's abstracts of the death and marriage notices printed in the Hillsborough Recorder from 1820 to 1879 and in the Hillsboro Recorder of 1887 and 1888. Published by the compiler in Chapel Hill in 1997, 445 pages.
Storylines about this site, each with a page of its own:
A deed from the county’s deed books that bear on this site, from Mark Chilton’s published abstracts. The note under each says why: the site’s survey file or National Register nomination cites it, it names the site, or it passes the site’s land along the chain of title the survey traces. Each deed’s page links to its deed-book page at the Register of Deeds.
Sources cited in this site’s history, National Register documents, and places to get research help. Research guide: Investigate a school or community institution.
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