Storyline · 1879–1899
After wind-driven woods fires burned Eno Presbyterian Church at its old site near the river in 1893, the congregation moved to Cedar Grove. Its frame church, built in 1878, had hosted Orange Presbytery in 1879, a meeting the Chapel Hill Ledger called the best attended since the war. In October 1893 the pastor, W. F. Wilhelm, died at Hillsborough after a long fever, and every business in town closed for his funeral. At Cedar Grove the congregation built its new church from 1897 to 1899, and the elder Robert W. Anderson became the first burial in its cemetery in 1898. H. S. Bradshaw was installed as pastor on the last day of 1899.
In 1878, under James L. Currie, Eno Presbyterian Church built a frame church near the Old Eno cemetery to replace earlier log and frame buildings. Orange Presbytery met there in late April 1879, with D. I. Craig preaching the opening sermon, and the Chapel Hill Ledger called it the best attended meeting since the war. On Saturday, April 1, 1893 wind-driven woods fires burned the church and its session house at the old site near the river. On October 24 the pastor, W. F. Wilhelm, who also served the Hillsborough, Little River and Fairfield churches, died at Hillsborough after a long fever, which the church's history calls typhoid. Every business in town closed for his funeral on October 26, and he was buried near the front door of the Hillsborough Presbyterian church. The congregation moved to Cedar Grove, where it built its new church on the A. T. Finley lot from 1897 to 1899. Robert W. Anderson, an elder, died at his Cedar Grove home on January 30, 1898 and was buried the next evening in the new Presbyterian cemetery beside the church, its first burial. On Sunday, December 31, 1899 the Rev. H. S. Bradshaw was installed as pastor of Eno Church at Cedar Grove; he was also pastor of the Presbyterian church at Hillsborough.
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 them all.
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.
A 1980 edition, issued by the church, of A. A. Ellis's history of Eno Presbyterian Church at Cedar Grove, Orange County. Twenty unnumbered pages with illustrations and portraits. Ellis's original history of the congregation appeared in 1955.
A. A. Ellis's short history of Eno Presbyterian Church at Cedar Grove in northern Orange County, published by the church in 1955, 22 pages with illustrations and portraits. Subjects include the religious aspects of the Civil War among Presbyterians, along with Presbyterian and church history for Orange County.
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.
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. “Eno Presbyterian Church moves to Cedar Grove, 1879–1899.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/eno-presbyterian-cedar-grove-storyline-1879/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
