Storyline · 1753–1790
Orange County's Presbyterian settlers had congregations before they had ministers. Hugh McAden preached on the Eno and at the Hawfields in 1755 and 1756, and the settlements asked Hanover Presbytery for preachers, but none came regularly until Henry Pattillo became pastor of the Hawfields, Eno and Little River churches in 1765. Pattillo and his fellow ministers condemned the Regulators in 1768 and he preached to Tryon's troops; in 1770 they formed Orange Presbytery, which first met at Hawfields. In 1775 the Provincial Congress sent Pattillo to win former Regulators to the American cause, and about 1790 the old Pattillo field was split into two pastoral charges.
Lefler and Wager count Grier's Church at High Towers, founded in 1753 in the part of Orange that later became Caswell County, as the first Presbyterian church in the new county. In 1755 Presbyterians founded Hawfields Church, in what is now eastern Alamance County. The traveling Presbyterian licentiate Hugh McAden preached on August 10, 1755, the second Sabbath of the month, to the Eno settlement near the river, southeast of present Cedar Grove, lodging at John Anderson's house, and rode on to preach at the Hawfields on the fourth Sabbath; his journal is the earliest surviving description of either settlement. Heading home at the end of his year-long mission, he preached at the Hawfields on April 27, 1756 and at Eno the next day. That year the Hawfields and Eno Presbyterians applied to Hanover Presbytery for supply preachers, but none came regularly until 1765. Henry Pattillo, licensed in September 1757, preached at Eno on his first supply tour, and in 1758 the Eno and Hico churches asked the presbytery for him; he took a call in Virginia instead. McAden led the organization of Little River Presbyterian Church in 1761, and by church tradition the Eno congregation was formally organized during the Synod mission of 1764.
In 1765 Pattillo moved to Orange as pastor of the Hawfields, Eno and Little River churches. The Dictionary of North Carolina Biography calls him the first regularly installed minister at Eno; he served the three churches for nine years, became known as "Father Pattillo," and kept a classical school for men in his home. In August 1768 McAden, Pattillo, James Creswell and David Caldwell sent Governor Tryon a letter of loyalty condemning the Regulators and told the colony's Presbyterians to keep out of the movement; the letter was read to the Rowan militia and helped raise volunteers for the march on Hillsborough. That September Pattillo preached to Tryon's troops quartered in Hillsborough and was publicly thanked. In 1770 the synod granted the petition of Caldwell, McAden, Joseph Alexander, Hezekiah Balch, Creswell and Pattillo for a presbytery of their own, covering all the territory south of the Virginia line. Orange Presbytery, which Lefler and Wager call the first in North Carolina, met for the first time at Hawfields Church that fall.
Pattillo left in 1774. The New Hope families still belonged to the Hawfields then, and Craig believed Pattillo had organized New Hope church in its first meetinghouse. About 1775 the young minister John DeBow succeeded him at the Hawfields and Eno and preached at New Hope as he could. In August or September 1775 the Provincial Congress at Hillsborough named Pattillo, with Richard Caswell and Maurice Moore, to persuade former Regulators to join the American cause; William L. Saunders later remarked on the irony, since Pattillo had joined in denouncing the Regulators in 1768. Alexander McMillan held Presbyterian services in the Hillsborough courthouse jointly with the Little River and New Hope congregations until the presbytery deposed him for misconduct in September 1778, and for some years afterward the town had no regular Presbyterian services. When Jacob Lake left about 1790, the old Pattillo field was split: Hawfields and Cross Roads shared one pastor, and Eno and Little River another.
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.
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).
Elizabeth Chalmers's 74-page history of Hawfields Presbyterian Church, the old congregation in the Haw River country of what is now Alamance County, published in 1940 with illustrations. It includes Presbyterian experience of the Civil War. Hawfields lay within Orange County until Alamance was formed in 1849, linking the church to the county.
Ralph Lydron Biggerstaff's 1975 alphabetical listing of the identifiable graves in the second burying ground at Hawfields Presbyterian Church in Alamance County. Alamance County was formed from Orange County in 1849.
A history of Little River Presbyterian Church in Orange County, compiled in 1986. Topics include the church's history, Orange County church history and Orange County genealogy, along with the Presbyterian Church in North Carolina. A source for family historians with Presbyterian ancestors in the county.
Joint select committee reports and papers of the 1782 General Assembly at Hillsborough, covering 16 to 27 April. They answer the governor's messages and resolves of the Continental Congress and take up a petition from Wilmington inhabitants. Names include Alexander Martin, Abner Nash, Henry Pattillo, William Sharpe and John Springer; Quakers, slavery, soldiers' wages and the Continental Navy also appear. 116 pages.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
House joint resolutions of May 3 to 15, 1779, 146 images of resolutions, messages and petitions. The House appointed a chaplain and acted on requests from Walter Gibson of Bladen County, James Glasgow and Captain Francis Tartason, among many others, with matters of militia, taxation, land grants and schools.
NC Digital Collections record courtesy of the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
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.
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. “Hugh McAden, Henry Pattillo and the first Presbyterian congregations, 1753–1790.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/first-presbyterian-congregations-storyline-1753/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
