In September 1974 more than 50 tenants of the new Old Well Apartments in Carrboro, most of them students, met the developer, Roberts Associates, at a meeting arranged by the Student Consumer Action Union after moving in without the kitchen appliances the complex had advertised. On October 8 Mayor Robert Wells told the Carrboro aldermen the town would go to law against Roberts Associates, owner of most of the area's apartment complexes, unless about $8,000 in 1973 and 1974 taxes on Old Well was paid that week, and the company and its banks paid by the October 11 deadline. On November 13 Roberts Associates, the builder of about 5,000 apartments in the area, filed for reorganization under the federal Bankruptcy Act after missing its October mortgage payments, halting foreclosure auctions of the Kingswood and Booker Creek apartments in Chapel Hill and the Yum Yum, Estes Park and Royal Park apartments in Carrboro. That month a lender also began foreclosure on the Foxcroft and Chateau apartments in Chapel Hill and set an auction for December 18.
Further reading
No indexed work is about this storyline itself yet. These are the most widely held histories of the theme it is filed under, so they may not discuss it. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.
Kinship and Neighborhood in a Southern Community
Kenzer, Robert C. · 1987 · University of Tennessee Press
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.
Reviewed in Choice Reviews Online (1988), Journal of American History (1988), The American Historical Review (1989), The Journal of Southern History (1989), Civil War history (1989), Journal of Social History (1989).
African Americans of Durham and Orange counties : an oral history
Bolduc, Jean · 2016 · The History Press
Jean Bolduc's collection of oral history interviews with Black residents of Durham and Orange counties, published by The History Press in 2016, 125 pages with photographs and portraits. The narrators are the poet Jaki Shelton Green, civil rights lawyer Floyd McKissick, Walter Jackson, Nate Davis, Brenda Stephens, Diane Wright, Jackie Wagstaff and Michelle Johnson, and a closing chapter deals with the Ku Klux Klan. The interviews document Black life and race relations in the two counties across the twentieth century.
Rogers Road
Pearce, Emily Eidenier · 2009
Emily Eidenier Pearce's history of Rogers Road, the historically African American neighborhood on the edge of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, and of what happened to it after Orange County opened its landfill next door in 1972. Drawing on interviews with residents, the book records the neighborhood's origins, family life, churches and customs, and then the environmental and social burdens of decades beside the landfill. Privately issued in 2009, 298 pages with illustrations, maps and portraits.
The Copperline chronicles: a history of the Kings Mill-Morgan Creek neighborhoods
2020
Neighborhood history of the Kings Mill and Morgan Creek area of Chapel Hill, published by the Chapel Hill Historical Society in 2020. The project started in June 2014 when neighbors were asked over the community email list to share memories of life there, and replies came from current residents and from former residents raised there who had since scattered across the country. 268 pages with illustrations, color maps and portraits.
African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties
Bolduc, Jean · 2016
Jean Bolduc's 2016 collection of interviews with African American residents of Durham and Orange counties, presented as short biographies. The subjects are Floyd McKissick (1922-1991), the first African American admitted to UNC's law school, Walter Jackson, Brenda Stephens, Nate Davis, poet Jaki Shelton Green, Jackie Wagstaff, Diane Wright and Michelle Johnson, with a closing chapter on the Ku Klux Klan. 125 pages with illustrations.
"Whites only" : a pastor's retrospective on signs of the new South
Seymour, Robert E. (Robert Edward), 1925-2020 · 2011 · Chapel Hill Press
Robert E. Seymour, a Baptist pastor in Chapel Hill associated with Olin T. Binkley Memorial Baptist Church, looks back on segregation and race relations in the South from the pulpit. A clergyman's memoir covering church history in the town, Baptists in North Carolina and the segregation of African Americans. Published by Chapel Hill Press in 2011, 204 pages.
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Cedar Grove, 1939 : revisiting Marion Post's photos of a Black rural neighborhood
Bennett, Evan P. · 2025 · Historical Research Office, Office of Archives and History
Evan P. Bennett returns to the photographs Marion Post Wolcott made in 1939 in Cedar Grove, a Black farming neighborhood in northern Orange County that she documented for the federal resettlement program. Published in 2025 by the Historical Research Office in Raleigh, pages 384 to 406, with illustrations and portraits. Topics include rural African Americans in the Cedar Grove township and photographers in the state.
Making Carrboro home : user alteration of company space
Lachenman, Sara Regan · 2005
Sara Regan Lachenman's 2005 thesis on how the people living in Carrboro's company built housing altered it to suit themselves. It takes up domestic architecture, working class housing and the social side of the textile industry in the town, with 158 pages of text and illustrations.
James J. Freeland
Freeland, Maxine · 1999
Maxine Freeland's biography of James John Freeland (1918-1999), a Hillsborough man of the twentieth century, compiled in 1999.
Portrait of a southern community, 1849-1881 : family, kinship, and neighborhood in Orange County, North Carolina
Kenzer, Robert C., 1955- · 1982
Robert C. Kenzer's study of family, kinship and neighborhood in Orange County between 1849 and 1881, covering the county's households from the late antebellum years through the Civil War and Reconstruction. Completed in 1982 in 248 leaves with maps. Topics include kinship, neighborhoods, race relations and social conditions in the county during the nineteenth century.
Council on the Status of Women, Public Relations File, Orange County Commission for Women
Messenheimer, Judith M. · 1989
Public relations material on the Orange County Commission for Women, 1989 to 1992, from the files of the North Carolina Council on the Status of Women, 26 images, with Judith M. Messenheimer named as creator. Issues include child care, teenage pregnancy, abortion, older women, low-income housing, taxation, AFDC, and women's education and employment.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
Kings Mill-Morgan Creek Neighborhood Collection (Chapel Hill Historical Society)
2003
Material on the Kings Mill and Morgan Creek neighborhood of Chapel Hill, 2003 to 2019, gathered from residents and the neighborhood association while The Copperline Chronicles (Chapel Hill Historical Society, 2020) was being prepared. Three boxes, collection CHHS.017.
