Storyline · 1960–1994
Ownership of the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery was long unsettled between the University and the town, and vandals damaged dozens of stones in 1974 and 1985. After Rebecca Clark showed the Town Council its neglect in 1985, the state let the town take charge in 1987, the council adopted a $290,000 improvement plan, and a 1989 deed settled ownership. In 1992 students held a candlelight march for the Black dead buried there and pressed the town to finish the repairs, and the cemetery entered the National Register in 1994.
In a letter of November 11, 1960 to J. A. Branch of the university business office, university attorney J. A. Williams reported no sign that the trustees had ever conveyed the land of the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery to the town. On the night of November 27, 1974 vandals broke or pushed over forty or fifty gravestones, and police patrolled for a week; cemetery committee chair Shirley Marshall then faulted the town for ignoring earlier requests about ownership and repairs. In 1982 the University, citing poor upkeep, proposed taking control of the cemetery from the town and extending it into the wooded grove on its east side for about 185 new graves, but it dropped the plan after opposition in the neighborhoods east of the campus.
On April 22, 1985 Rebecca Clark of Chapel Hill's Black community showed the Town Council slides of sunken graves, broken walls, trash and overturned markers. The council named a task force, which called for a phased master plan. On November 12 the council told Town Manager David Taylor to take whatever steps were needed to keep cars out, acting on a letter from Chapel Hill Preservation Society president Mary Arthur Stoudemire, who said well over 100 cars had parked on graves during the Clemson game on November 9; police counted about 30. Council member R. D. Smith proposed chains and a cable at the entrances. On Thanksgiving night, 1985, vandals smashed about 30 tombstones.
In July 1987, after the task force found that the town would care for the cemetery better, Governor James Martin and the Council of State settled who was responsible for it, letting Chapel Hill budget money for its upkeep. UNC property officer Grace Wagoner said a 1929 agreement had let the town keep it up by selling lots until they ran out in the mid-1950s. The master plan, revised by landscape architect David Swanson, first called for settling the cemetery's ownership. On October 12, 1987 the council voted 8 to 0 to accept the task force's proposal for the seven-acre cemetery: landscaping and lighting, repairs to rock walls, sidewalks, fences and grave markers, and operation by the public works department. Council member David Godschalk put the capital cost at about $290,000, with about $50,000 a year to run it and three new town employees.
By November 1988 the town had begun the work, spread over five years, under a master plan by the architects Hunter, Reynolds and Jewell, pruning and removing sick or leaning trees behind Connor and Winston residence halls, with sidewalks, monuments, turf, structures and signs to follow; a new gazebo and lawn came later. A quitclaim deed dated February 22, 1989 released the University's and the state's rights in the cemetery to the town, settling a question of ownership open since the 1920s.
On November 30, 1992, opening UNC's Kwanzaa week, students and other campus members held a candlelight vigil and march in honor of the Africans and African Americans buried in the cemetery, whom a Black Student Movement organizer called the unknown dead. In December the Collegiate Black Caucus began organizing students as Students for the Improvement of our Ancestry to demand that the town keep its promise, as the caucus gave it, to spend $250,000 over five years restoring the cemetery, especially its Black sections, where broken stones and sunken graves remained; the town had told a longtime advocate the work would take four more years. On January 14, 1993 a state committee put the cemetery on the Study List after staff answered a member's question about how it differed from other town burial grounds: its clearly bounded older sections and the importance of those buried there met the test for cemeteries. The National Park Service listed the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery in the National Register of Historic Places on June 3, 1994.
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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.
Directory and inventory of the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery compiled by the Chapel Hill Historical Society and issued by the Town of Chapel Hill in October 1990, in one looseleaf volume; one copy carries a 1987 map. The inventory lists graves in the historic cemetery on the university campus.
One volume of newspaper and magazine clippings about the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery, dated 2003, in various pagings with illustrations and portraits. Sources include the Chapel Hill Herald, the Daily Tar Heel, the Herald-Sun, the Chapel Hill News, Endeavors, Preservation Notes and the University Gazette. Subjects include cemeteries and historic sites in Chapel Hill.
Bland Simpson writes about the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery and the people buried in it, an eleven page illustrated magazine essay from 1999. The long subtitle describes a study of Chapel Hill through its characters.
A folding guide sheet to the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery, issued by the Chapel Hill Preservation Society in 1995, with illustrations and a map across six unnumbered pages. A note on the sheet gives 1798 as the date of establishment.
Lucile Noell Dula's guidebook to Hillsborough and its historic buildings, published by Pelican in 1989. It pairs a tour of the town with notes on its history, in 128 illustrated pages with a bibliography. Part of the Wall Local History Collection.
Robert Watson Winston's biography of Henry Horace Williams (1858-1940), who taught philosophy at the University of North Carolina for half a century, subtitled gadfly of Chapel Hill. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1942, 309 pages with frontispiece and portraits; this copy is autographed. Topics include educators in Chapel Hill and the university's history.
Reviewed in Social Forces (1943).
Margaret Ruth Little-Stokes's survey of Chapel Hill's town and campus buildings from 1795 to 1975, published by the Preservation Society of Chapel Hill in 2006. Chapters run from the first campus buildings through David Swain's romantic campus to midcentury modernism, followed by area surveys of the campus, east and west Chapel Hill, downtown, Northside and the suburbs.
Maurice M. Bursey's biography of Francis Preston Venable (1856 to 1934), chemist and president of the University of North Carolina, published by the Chapel Hill Historical Society in 1989. It also covers the history of the university's chemistry department. Illustrated, 111 pages, with bibliographies.
Reviewed in Isis (1992).
Architectural and historical inventory of Carrboro by Claudia Roberts Brown, published in 1983 by the Carrboro Appearance Commission and the town. The 48-page survey, with illustrations and maps, documents the town's historic buildings and their conservation.
John V. Allcott's history of the architecture of the University of North Carolina campus across two centuries, from the first buildings of the 1790s to the 1980s, published by the Chapel Hill Historical Society in 1986. A 108-page illustrated survey with a bibliography. Allcott taught art history at the university.
A history of the buildings on the University of North Carolina campus by John V. Allcott and JJ Bauer, published by the Chapel Hill Historical Society in 2019. It follows campus construction from the 1790s forward: the plans behind each building campaign, the architects, and the university figures who pushed projects through. 132 pages with photographs, maps and plans.
Jill Ridky-Blackburn's history of Coker Hills, a neighborhood in Chapel Hill, published by the Chapel Hill Historical Society in 2016. Chapters describe the land before the subdivision, the Coker who gave it its name, how the neighborhood began, the architects, builders and houses that shaped it, its legacy, memories of growing up there and the residents' later advocacy. Subjects include historic buildings in Chapel Hill. 242 pages with illustrations, portraits and a map.
Sarah Brandes Madry's history of the Old Well at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, treating both its architecture and the ideas attached to it. It takes in drinking fountains and water use in Chapel Hill and the university's history, with a chapter on Edwin Anderson Alderman, the president under whom the well took its present form in 1897, and one on water at the university. Published by iUniverse in 2003, 399 pages with illustrations.
Allen Alexander Lloyd's history of Hillsborough from the town's founding in 1754 to 1966, published by the author in Hillsborough in 1966. 306 pages with illustrations, maps and portraits, dedicated to the best interest of our town. Topics include Hillsborough's history and biography, its historic buildings and Orange County history.
Brian Burns's collection of lesser-known episodes from Chapel Hill's past, published by The History Press of Charleston, South Carolina, in 2023. Topics include the town's history, its buildings and structures, and the history of civil rights in Chapel Hill. 158 pages with illustrations and portraits.
Kemp P. Battle's University Day address of 1883, delivered as president of the University of North Carolina on the day marking the laying of the Old East cornerstone. Battle goes building by building through the Chapel Hill campus, telling how each was named and why it stands where it does. Fifteen pages. Electronic edition issued 2005 by the UNC University Library for Documenting the American South.
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. “Caring for the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery, 1960–1994.” Orange County Indexed, https://focplnc.org/orange-county-books/storylines/old-chapel-hill-cemetery-storyline-1960/. Accessed October 22, 2026.
