An ecumenical housing effort that began at Binkley Baptist Church in late 1982 became Habitat for Humanity of Orange County, incorporated in April 1984. In November 1985 its president, the Rev. David Stanford, told a Human Rights Week forum that the group had recently been given a 77-acre tract on West U.S. 54, where it hoped to build 44 to 48 houses for the working poor without interest or profit; he said 80 percent of University and town workers could not afford to live in Chapel Hill. Its first house was a donated building moved in three sections to a lot in Chestnut Oaks, a subdivision off Jo Mac Road given by Access Inc., and by July 1986 volunteers, with the first selected family working each Saturday, were rebuilding it.
On September 19, 1987 Habitat finished the home of a Carrboro couple with six children, whom the Daily Tar Heel called the first Orange County family to receive its help; they were to pay a mortgage of one-fourth of their income. On March 4, 1989 twelve students and two professors from Rostov State University, visiting on the UNC Soviet Exchange, helped raise the walls of a Habitat house outside Chapel Hill.
By November 1990 Habitat had families in 12 homes in the county, with three more under construction, and was planning a showcase "Street of Hope" of affordable houses in Chestnut Oaks. On February 23, 1991 it broke ground at Orange United Methodist Church for its 16th house, east of Hillsborough off U.S. 70, for a grandmother raising five children; six area Methodist churches and UNC's student Habitat chapter were building it together. On April 1 David Nichols began work as affiliate coordinator, the first paid employee of a group run until then by volunteers apart from a paid construction supervisor for each house; Habitat was in a three-year plan to finish 34 houses at Chestnut Oaks, where seven stood, and Nichols hoped to extend its work into northern Orange County. By late June about 40 volunteers a week from five partner churches and elsewhere had worked six Saturdays on its 18th house, built on land the family had owned for generations. By September 25 Habitat was building six houses at once on the Street of Hope at Chestnut Oaks, west of Carrboro, where work had stalled for lack of money; the first six were due in December and 11 were planned. The state gave a road and $175,000, Orange County gave $25,000 and staff time, and UNC's business school and student Habitat chapter raised money and volunteers. On November 9, 1992 Habitat for Humanity began raising $40,000 in the Pit for its first University Unity House, a home near campus for a low-paid UNC staff member, asking each member of the University community for $10 and hoping to build one every semester. On February 20, 1994 the chapter dedicated its 30th house, on Bradshaw Quarry Road, for a Hillsborough mother and son; the UNC Habitat Partnership of students in city and regional planning, business and public health raised $40,000 for materials and helped build it. On March 12 it broke ground for a four-bedroom house to be built entirely by women, which the Daily Tar Heel called the chapter's first, for a single parent of seven who had worked 14 years in University Mail Services. In April a partnership formed in 1992 by the Sigma Nu fraternity, the Omega Chi sorority and the Chapel of the Cross, which the Daily Tar Heel called the nation's first between campus Greek groups and a church, dedicated its first house. On October 20, 1996 Hillsborough novelist Allan Gurganus and Carrboro author Marly Youmans signed books at the Intimate Bookshop in Eastgate, with 15 percent of the evening's sales going to a new Habitat house sponsored by seven fraternities and sororities and four parishes.
Reading on the places and people in this storyline
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.
The Church of the Atonement and the Chapel of the Cross at Chapel Hill
Henderson, Archibald · 1938
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.
The first parish register of the Chapel of the Cross (1842-1881)
2024 · Chapel Hill Historical Society
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.
Chapel of the Cross : calendar 1996.
1996 · Chapel of the Cross
Wall calendar for 1996 made by two Chapel of the Cross choristers, Jane Hamborsky and Margaret Middleton, who photographed architectural details of the Gothic Revival church in Chapel Hill. Thomas U. Walter designed the chapel, which went up from 1843 to 1848. Black-and-white photographs, from the Images of North Carolina collection.
The word of love : preaching in the ministry of Stephen Elkins-Williams
Elkins-Williams, Stephen, 1944- · 2015 · iUniverse
Sermons preached by Stephen Elkins-Williams during his ministry at the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill, collected in 329 pages and published by iUniverse in 2015. Bishop Michael B. Curry and the Reverend Tambria Elizabeth Lee contributed forewords. Illustrations accompany the text.
The Intimate Bookshop re-opens on Franklin Street
1993 · The Bookshop Times
An announcement issued as the first number of The Bookshop Times on November 10, 1993, marking the reopening of the Intimate Bookshop on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. The Intimate was an independent bookstore on the town's main commercial street.
Communist underground printing facilities and illegal propaganda : hearings before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, eighty-third Congress, first session : March 6, 13, 31, April 10, May 28, June 11, and July 11, 1953
United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws; Abernethy, M. A. (Milton A.); Abernethy, Minna A.; Crouch, Paul, 1903-1955 · 1953 · United States G.P.O.
Hearings of 1953 before the Senate subcommittee that investigated the Internal Security Act, printed by the Government Printing Office. The sessions took up underground printing and illegal propaganda, and part of the testimony concerns the Intimate Bookshop in Chapel Hill, with Milton A. and Minna A. Abernethy and Paul Crouch among the witnesses.
Intimate Bookshop in Chapel Hill
1978
Photographs of the Intimate Bookshop on East Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. Milton Abernethy, its founder and owner, stands outside the shop; other views show the storefront in 1978 and at an unknown date, and later owners Wallace and Brenda Kuralt pose in front of it.
Studnets at Intimate Bookshop: photographs (Chapel Hill Historical Society)
1952
Browsing the shelves of the Intimate Bookshop in Chapel Hill, 1952: a group of university students among the books. From the student life pictures in the Chapel Hill Historical Society's Prints and Photographs Collection.
Wider background: Housing, Neighborhoods & Displacement · the most widely held histories of the theme this storyline is filed under; they may not discuss it
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.
