Storyline · 1822–1846
In 1828 the Orange County Bible Society resolved to supply every household in the county that had no Bible. Hillsborough people had formed the society on January 7, 1822 as an auxiliary of the American Bible Society. Early in 1828 a committee visited every Hillsborough family and found one household without a Bible, which it supplied within the hour; that summer the managers turned to the whole county and named Dennis Heartt agent to collect gifts. In October 1829 the society reported about a thousand families in the county without a Bible and resolved to supply them through paid agents. In September 1846 citizens organized a new county Bible society at Hillsborough under Giles Mebane.
On January 7, 1822 Hillsborough people formed the Orange County Bible Society as an auxiliary of the American Bible Society, with the Rev. John Witherspoon as corresponding secretary. It was one of nine Bible societies founded in North Carolina in the first weeks of that year. At its first anniversary meeting on July 14, 1823 the society re-elected Judge William Norwood president, reported that it had given out 110 of the 100 Bibles and 75 Testaments received from the American Bible Society, and cut annual dues to one dollar. Early in 1828 a committee visited every family in Hillsborough and counted 477 white residents in 67 families with 261 Bibles among them; it supplied the one household without a Bible within the hour. That summer the managers resolved to supply every household in the county that had no Bible and named Dennis Heartt agent to collect gifts. Meeting at Salem meeting house on October 17, 1829, the society elected Norwood president and reported about a thousand families in the county without a Bible, which it resolved to supply through paid agents the next spring. On September 19, 1846 citizens met in the Presbyterian session house at Hillsborough and organized a new county Bible society, with Giles Mebane as president, David L. Swain among the vice presidents, Stephen Moore as treasurer and the Rev. Dr. Alexander Wilson as secretary.
Every statement above comes from these dated entries in the chronology. Each links to its source.
Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows the 1 with a known location.
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 with a page of their own whom the dated events above name, those named most often first.
No indexed work is about this storyline itself yet. These are about the sites and people its dated events name, those named most often first, so they may discuss the storyline only in part. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.
Anniversary history of Hillsborough Presbyterian Church marking its hundred and fiftieth year, from the congregation's founding in 1816 to 1966, published by the church in Hillsborough. 28 pages with illustrations, portraits and a facsimile. It includes Presbyterian experience of the Civil War.
Pipe organ and bench by Derrick and Felgemaker of Erie, Pennsylvania, dated 1831, with the makers' name imprinted above the keys. The pewter pipes stand in three rows, and those on view are decorated with gold leaf and flowers. The organ served the Presbyterian church in Hillsborough.
Historic American Buildings Survey documentation, compiled after 1933, of the brick Hillsborough Presbyterian Church at Churton and West Tryon Streets: three photographs, four data pages and a caption page. Names tied to the church's story include William Hooper, Archibald Murphy, William A. Graham, Frederick Nash, William J. Bingham and Edmund Strudwick, and its history touches on the Revolutionary War and slavery.
About 1810, the date in this card's title, belongs to the Hillsborough Presbyterian church building; the postcard carries no date of its own. The Paul C. Koeber Company of New York published it.
A sketch of John Witherspoon, the Presbyterian minister who died in 1853, written by Frederick Nash and identified as his in a note on page 137. It was detached from the North Carolina University Magazine for April 1888 and printed at Chapel Hill by the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies. Biography of North Carolina Presbyterian clergy is its subject.
Fragmentary letter of 3 March 1840 from John Witherspoon at Hillsborough to the theologian James Henley Thornwell. Witherspoon worries over the spread of Arminianism and antinomianism, urges Thornwell to answer them in print and takes up his views on church boards. Thomas Goulding is also named. From the Columbia Theological Seminary Manuscript Collection.
Seven items from the Hogg and Norwood families of Hillsborough, dated 1815 to 1841 and preserved as typed transcriptions whose originals have not been located, in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 2258-z. Subjects include William Norwood and Robina Hogg Norwood, Scottish American family life in the town, and opinion abroad on the Napoleonic Wars.
About 125 items from William Lytle, 1755 to 1829, dated 1773 to 1841 with the bulk before 1805, in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 445-z. Topics include the North Carolina militia in the Revolution, land tenure in Tennessee, migration out of the southern states, and Cherokee relations with government in the eighteenth century. Hillsborough history is the Orange County link.
Seven volumes from the Hillsboro branch of the Bank of Cape Fear, covering 1815 to 1846, in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 2926-z. Records and correspondence document branch banking in nineteenth century North Carolina and economic conditions at Hillsborough, with James Webb, 1774 to 1855, among the people represented. A master microfilm was made by the university's photographic service in 1995.
Dr. James Webb was a Hillsborough physician, a university trustee and the local agent for the Bank of Cape Fear. Most of his papers, 1781 to 1846, concern the bank: letters of 1827 to 1846 with other agents, cashiers and State Bank officers about discounts, the value of currency, the bank failures of 1839 and daily business. Revolutionary War supply and land grant papers also appear. State Archives of North Carolina, PC.127.
H. G. Jones follows the fortune of Mary Ruffin Smith (1814-1885), the unmarried heiress whose Orange and Chatham County lands passed at her death to the University of North Carolina and the Episcopal Church. Chapters profile her grandfather Francis Jones, then trace the bequest through a quarrel among Episcopalians over Price Creek, the Chapel of the Cross and the university's buildings. A December 1885 New York Times report called the gift money; Jones shows it was land. Published by McFarland in 2014, 231 pages.
Herbert Snipes Turner's history of Hawfields Presbyterian Church and its community from 1738 to 1960. Hawfields lies in what is now Alamance County, land that was part of Orange County until 1849, and the book gives a place to Henry Pattillo, the congregation's eighteenth-century minister. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1962, 297 pages with illustrations.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (1963).
Rev. D. I. Craig's history of New Hope Church, a Presbyterian congregation in Chapel Hill Township, Orange County, printed at Reidsville in 1891. A closing family history section covers the Strayhorn, Craig, Blackwood and Kirkland families.
Rosalind Rosenberg's 2017 biography of Pauli Murray (1910-1985), lawyer, poet and Episcopal priest, raised in Durham. Its six parts follow a Southern childhood, the move to New York, the 1938 application to the University of North Carolina that was refused because Murray was Black (the chapter is titled 'Members of your race are not admitted'), law school and the coining of the phrase Jane Crow, the Cold War years, the push toward 'an NAACP for women', and a late-life ordination. 494 pages with portraits.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (2018).
A congregational history of New Hope Presbyterian Church in Orange County, written by Barbara A. Murphy and published in 2006 by Chapel Hill Press. Chapters take up the five successive church buildings, the land itself, the ministers who served, the cemeteries, members who went to war, the church's organization, its music, gifts and memorials, and its outreach to the surrounding community. It also covers Presbyterian experience of the Civil War. 126 pages with illustrations and portraits.
A history of Orange United Methodist Church in Chapel Hill since 1832, prepared by the congregation's History Committee and edited by Margaret A. Blanchard with Julia Blackwood, Mildred Stout, Wiley Williams, Kay Creech, Andrea Stark and Shirley Mallard. Published by Taylor Publishing of Dallas in 1992, 161 pages with illustrations, some in color, a facsimile, maps and portraits.
Andrew Gardner's history of Binkley Memorial Baptist Church in Chapel Hill, named for Olin T. Binkley, covering the years between the late 1950s and the 2010s and tracing how a congregation with Southern Baptist roots came to be known for liberal Christianity. Published by the University of Tennessee Press in 2023, 213 pages with illustrations.
Samuel Tilden Habel's centennial monograph on the Baptist Church at Chapel Hill, covering its first hundred years from 1854 to 1954. It pairs a narrative of the congregation with membership lists. Published by the church in Chapel Hill in 1954, 58 pages plus sixteen pages of plates with illustrations, portraits and facsimiles.
A. C. Howell's history of the Baptist church in Chapel Hill from 1854 to 1924, published in 1945. Thirty-two pages with one plate; the story touches the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina as well as the congregation itself.
Archibald Henderson's history of the Episcopal congregation in Chapel Hill, the Church of the Atonement and the Chapel of the Cross, as the title names them. A short work of Chapel Hill church history and of the Episcopal Church in North Carolina, published in Hartford, Connecticut, by the Church Missions Publishing Company in 1938, 57 pages with illustrations and portraits. One copy carries the author's presentation inscription to the North Carolina State Library.
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.
Transcription of the first register kept by Chapel of the Cross, the Episcopal parish on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, with its entries from 1842 to 1881. Published by the Chapel Hill Historical Society in 2024 with an introduction and a bibliography, 142 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Each dated event above names its source, the place to start. For finding more on an event across newspapers, records and histories, see the research guide Follow an event across several accounts. Ask at the North Carolina Room of the Orange County Public Library for help with local sources.
Friends of the Orange County Public Library. “The Orange County Bible Society, 1822–1846.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/bible-society-storyline-1822/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
