Houses, farms, parks and cemeteries
The Mountain was the hilltop plantation east of Chapel Hill where Christopher Barbee lived after buying his brother Francis's half of their father's 1753 land grant in 1779. A stone foundation at Meadowmont is thought to be his house; his goods were sold there in 1834, two years after his death.
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 The Mountain. Each has been reviewed for relevance; materials held at OCPL appear first.
Meadowmont, the planned development on the east side of Chapel Hill, in newspaper clippings, photocopied articles and a magazine article. Undated folder in the Neighborhoods series of the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Vertical File Collection (CHHS.001).
Included because: The site is named in the title, catalog subjects, or description.
Not about The Mountain 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Included because: A survey or map of the town or county where the site stands.
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.
Included because: A survey or map of the town or county where the site stands.
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.
Included because: A survey or map of the town or county where the site stands.
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.
Included because: A survey or map of the town or county where the site stands.
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.
Included because: A survey or map of the town or county where the site stands.
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.
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 The Mountain, 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.
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.
Sources cited in this site’s history, National Register documents, and places to get research help. Research guide: Research a house or property.
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