Storyline · 1977–1996
Planning for a Carrboro farmers' market began in 1977, and the market opened in August 1978 in a Carr Mill parking lot, and a permanent open-air shelter was built with a state grant. In 1988 and 1989 Carrboro's aldermen paid to keep the market's leased site and planned a town commons beside Town Hall as its permanent home. A 1993 grant paid for new shelters, Carrboro broke ground beside Town Hall in 1994, and the market moved to the Town Commons in 1996.
Planning for a Carrboro farmers' market began in 1977, with UNC organizing and town funding efforts supporting a formal market. In February 1978, at the town's request and with the developers' consent, Carrboro amended the Carr Mill permit to let a farmers' market use the mill's second parking lot on weekends; a permanent open-air shelter was built with a $25,000 state matching grant, the town supplying the site. The Carrboro Farm and Craft Market opened on Saturday, August 5, 1978, with local produce, arts and crafts, open Saturdays from 7:30 a.m. behind the Sidetrack and next to the rescue squad.
In late September 1988 the Carrboro Board of Aldermen approved a plan to raise private money for a town commons on undeveloped land near Town Hall, with a bandstand, a park and a permanent home for the farmers' market, which then leased its site across from Carr Mill Mall on 90 days' notice. Town Manager Robert Morgan put the architect's estimate at $400,000, and the president of Orange Federal Savings and Loan was chosen to head the fund-raising task force. By early November the farmers' market had given $750, the village band $100 and the Carrboro Lions Club $500, and the town was starting a second phase seeking corporate gifts. On February 28, 1989 the aldermen agreed to a $1,000 rent increase, doubling the town's $1,000 yearly lease, in return for a one-year extension on the property where the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Farmers' Market met, and took the money from the contingency fund; Alderman Hilliard Caldwell objected that the landowner should give the site to the community. On April 4 the board unanimously endorsed building a $388,727 town commons, with a park, bandstand and farmers' market, on the ballfield next to Town Hall in six phases, each begun only after its money was raised, and on Alderman Judith Wegner's motion put the farmers' market ahead of the bandstand.
In 1993 a grant supported new farmers' market shelters and paid for preparing the Town Commons location. On September 25, 1994 Carrboro held a community celebration and groundbreaking on the town hall lawn for a new market on a 1.7-acre town site on West Main Street, planned with 36 vendor spaces, two shelters, a bandstand and a playground to replace the leased site off Roberson Street; the town had a $236,000 state grant from 1993 and had raised $48,250 more. In 1996 the market moved to the Town Commons, opening at its new town-center site.
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.
Guide to the Carrboro Farmers' Market issued for the summer of 1999, 98 pages under a subtitle about cultivating local agriculture and community. Topics include the market itself, farmers' markets in Carrboro and the marketing of farm produce in North Carolina. A record of how the market presented itself and its growers at the end of the 1990s.
Margaret A. Thomas wrote this 1979 report on the rehabilitation of Carr Mill in Carrboro for the Technical Preservation Services Division of the Interior Department's Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service. It presents the mill as a rehabilitation project under the Tax Reform Act of 1976, with attention to federal aid for historic sites and the restoration of historic buildings. 32 illustrated pages.
A short booklet on Carr Mill, the former Carrboro mill remodeled as a shopping village, issued around 1977. A note beneath the title names the owner, a limited partnership called Carr-Mill, the leasing agent Southern Real Estate of Charlotte, the architects Miller/Steever/Finch of Charlotte, and the contractor Wooten-Brawley of Statesville. Five unnumbered pages with illustrations, a map and a plan.
Photographs following the Carrboro mill site from about 1900 to the 1970s: the Carrboro Mill in the early 1900s, a group portrait of Durham Hosiery Company workers at Carr Mill, the Carr Mill Mall later built on the site, and the sign for Elmo's Diner there. Some of the pictures are by Jerry Cotten.
Organizational records of Friends of Old Carrboro, Inc., roughly 2,600 items in 4.5 linear feet spanning circa 1970s to 2000, part of the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 70171. Topics include historic preservation and architectural conservation in Carrboro, city planning, zoning and traffic calming, with names including Claudia Roberts Brown and Jay Bryan and sites such as Carr Mill and Weaver Street Market. Materials in English.
Papers of Ellie Kinnaird, born 1931, a North Carolina state senator, spanning 1987 to 2016 and running to roughly 6,400 items across 20.5 linear feet in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 5356. The papers focus on capital punishment in North Carolina and the campaigns against it, health insurance legislation, voting technology, and the work of women legislators in the General Assembly.
Eleanor Kinnaird beside an election campaign poster in an undated candid photograph. Kinnaird served as mayor of Carrboro and in the North Carolina Senate. From the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Prints and Photographs Collection (CHHS.002).
Edward G. Danziger's memoir of love and cooking, published by J. F. Blair in 1967. Danziger (1893 to 1972) ran Danziger's Old World Restaurant in Chapel Hill, and the book tells his life as a restaurateur in the town.
Annette Marie Council's book about her family and Mama Dip's Country Kitchen, the Chapel Hill restaurant, published by NP Press in 2005. Subjects include African Americans in Chapel Hill, the restaurant's history and family biography. Fourteen introductory pages and 223 pages of text with illustrations, part local history and part family account.
A cookbook put out in 1972 by the Colonial Inn of Hillsborough, ninety six pages with illustrations and a portrait. The recipes feature Southern dishes served at the inn, alongside material on its history. The title page verso records a fourth printing in 1979.
Cookbook compiled by the Hillsboro Presbyterian Women and published in Hillsborough in 1952, with 124 illustrated pages of local recipes.
Community cookbook from the Ridge Garden charge, the pairing of Clover Garden United Methodist Church in Chapel Hill and Chestnut Ridge United Methodist Church in Efland, published by Clover Garden in 2025. Topics include both congregations' histories as well as cooking in Chapel Hill and Efland. Seven preliminary pages and 130 pages.
Cookbook from the Chapel Hill Historical Society, published in 2009 and including recipes alongside local history. Topics include cooking and food in Chapel Hill and the history of both, so the collection doubles as a record of what town households put on the table. Of interest to readers of community cookbooks and to anyone tracing local foodways.
A community cookbook from Efland United Methodist Church in Efland, in western Orange County, published by the church in 2007, that also carries a history of the congregation alongside its recipes. 116 numbered pages with six unnumbered pages at either end, an illustration and a color portrait.
Community cookbook from Cross Roads Baptist Church in Hillsborough, printed by Morris Press Cookbooks in 2005 in a three-ring binder. Recipes are credited to their contributors. The book includes Southern cooking, church history and material on the Family House of Chapel Hill. 124 pages of recipes plus front and back matter, with color illustrations.
Recipes collected by members of the Church of the Holy Family in Chapel Hill and published by the church in 2000, a substantial community cookbook of 252 pages with front and back sequences at 23 centimeters. Topics include both cooking in Chapel Hill and the history of the congregation, which appears alongside the recipes. Volumes like this one preserve household cooking and contributors' names.
Community cookbook compiled by Palmer's Grove United Methodist Church near Hillsborough and published by the congregation in 1995. Along with the recipes it carries a history of the church. 124 pages of recipes with short front and back sections and an illustration.
A 39 minute video portrait of Fearrington Village, the planned village in Chatham County south of Chapel Hill, produced in 1994 by the village itself. Sound and color on half inch tape. The program covers the village's history and its restaurants.
A menu from the Rams Head Rathskeller, the Chapel Hill restaurant that opened in 1948, printed by the restaurant in 1993 with photographs and a short account of its history. 8 unnumbered pages with illustrations.
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. “Carrboro’s farmers’ market and the Town Commons, 1977–1996.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/farmers-market-town-commons-storyline-1977/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
