Storyline
Carrboro’s schools from a mill house on Center Street to a brick graded school: the frame Carrboro Public School of about 1908, the $25,000 bond vote of 1920, the new building of 1921, and the old schoolhouse’s move to the Methodists.
In briefCarrboro's school moved from a mill house to a brick graded school paid for with bonds, and the commissioners then called one school tax election after another. About 1898 a mill house on Center Street became the village school, until a frame school opened on West Main Street about 1908. In 1920 voters approved $25,000 in school bonds, and a new brick school went up in 1921. In 1923 the old schoolhouse was moved and became a Methodist parsonage and Sunday school rooms. Tax elections called for 1923 and 1924 were to supplement the six-month term, and in 1927 superintendent C. A. Hoyle said that without a tax shift Carrboro would have only six months of school.
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No works in the index are currently linked directly to this storyline. The works below provide background on Schools & Education.
About 1898 the Alberta Cotton Mill built a house at 109 Center Street, and it was soon put to use as the village school. It went back to being a house when the one-story frame Carrboro Public School opened at 114 West Main Street about 1908, teaching seven grades under Mr. McDuffie, who was also the Baptist pastor. On December 12, 1919, by order of the county commissioners, notice was given of a vote in the Carrboro school district on $25,000 in twenty-year school bonds, with a tax of up to 30 cents on the $100 to pay them. The commissioners moved the vote from January 6 to February 7, 1920, at L. R. Sturdivant's store, where the voters approved the bonds, and on March 1 the commissioners ordered them issued to the Board of Education.
In the summer of 1921 Carrboro's new brick school, which the News said would cost over $50,000, was going up. The graded school opened late in 1921, and the old schoolhouse was advertised for sale at the end of the year. In March 1923 it was moved: part became the Methodist parsonage at 114 West Main Street, which served until 1955, and part was added to the Methodist church for Sunday school rooms, with John T. Squires as contractor.
The commissioners called Carrboro school tax elections for September 12, 1923, on a local tax of up to 20 cents on $100, and for July 23, 1924, on an added tax of up to 10 cents, both to supplement the six-month school term. In June 1927 they set a July 19 vote on raising Carrboro's school maintenance tax by 15 cents on the $100 while cutting the bond rate by the same amount, after superintendent C. A. Hoyle said that without the shift Carrboro would have only six months of school the next year.
Events in this storyline, in date order. See these 9 dated events in the chronology →
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.
Background reading on Schools & Education. These works cover the broader subject and may not discuss this storyline. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.
A 2026 novel set in Carrboro. Frances, thirty and grieving her mother, and her husband Ben open their marriage, and the book follows what that decision does to them and to the people closest to them. The characters include college teachers and a ghostwriter. 296 pages.
An illustrated online timeline of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Nursing, issued by the school in 2025. One page with portraits.
A 2025 history of University of North Carolina baseball from its nineteenth-century beginnings to the program's rise as an ACC power. Chapters cover the early years on campus, the building of Boshamer Stadium, and the Mike Fox era. Self-published by the author, 288 pages.
Joanna Pearson's novel of a cold case at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Karlie Richards was a nineteen-year-old student when she was murdered; decades later her onetime roommate, divorced and in middle age, finds herself drawn back to the crime as online conspiracy theories about it multiply. A psychological thriller with a Chapel Hill setting, published by Bloomsbury in 2024, 275 pages.
The 2023 issue of Carrboro High School's literary magazine, featuring fiction and poetry written by its students.
William R. Burk's history of botany at the University of North Carolina, from its early natural scientists such as Denison Olmsted and Elisha Mitchell through later figures including George Francis Atkinson, Joseph Austin Holmes and Henry Van Peters Wilson, closing with a chapter on the Department of Botany itself. Published in Fort Worth in 2023.
Willis P. Whichard's biography of David Lowry Swain, governor of North Carolina from 1832 to 1835 and president of the University of North Carolina from 1835 until his death in 1868. The subtitle ties Swain, nineteenth-century North Carolina and the university together, and the book belongs with the lives of college presidents and governors. Published in 2022.
Jim Grimsley's coming-of-age novel about Ronny, who grew up in a trailer alongside his mother and a string of stepfathers, kept his head down, earned good grades and won a scholarship to UNC in Chapel Hill. On campus he finds his first love and begins to sort out who he is. Subjects include gay college students, first loves and mothers and sons. Published by Levine Querido in 2022, 322 pages.
Scott Madry's recollections of the student tech crew at Memorial Hall, the University of North Carolina's auditorium in Chapel Hill, presented under the banner of the Carolina Union, the campus student union. Published in Chapel Hill in 2021.
Geeta Kapur's history of race at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, from the enslaved labor that built the campus through desegregation and the Black student protests that followed. Twelve chapters, with a foreword by William Barber II, move from the founding era and the Great Depression controversies to the state's response to integration and the turmoil of later decades; North Carolina Central University also figures. Published 2021 by Blair in Durham.
Tracy Deonn's young adult fantasy about an African American teenager who arrives as a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill after her mother's death and finds a secret society bound to Arthurian legend, with demons, magic and her own family's past. Published by Margaret K. McElderry Books in 2020, 501 pages, for ages 14 and up. Winner of the 2021 Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent.
Reviewed in Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books./Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (2020).
Sylvia D. Hoffert's article on Margaret Anna Burwell, 1810 to 1871, and the work of being a Presbyterian minister's wife in North Carolina from 1835 to 1857, the years of the female school she and her husband kept in Hillsborough. Pages 245 to 275 with illustrations, facsimiles and portraits, issued by the Office of Archives and History in Raleigh in 2019.
Books in OCPL’s Rebecca B. Wall Local History Collection whose titles, catalog subjects, or descriptions match this storyline. The Friends’ recommended starting points are labelled. Books marked Wider context cover the broader subject rather than this storyline itself.
Donna Ruffin-Villines documents the school that served African American students in Hillsborough from 1936 until 1968, described as the first state supported school of its kind in Orange County. Published in 1998 concerning African American public schools and their history in the county. A starting point for anyone tracing segregated education in Hillsborough.
Irene Oliver Pender's history of the public schools of Orange County from 1752 to 1983, covering more than two centuries of schooling in Hillsborough, Efland, Cedar Grove and the rural districts of the county. Published in 1983, 186 pages with illustrations.
The Historic Hillsborough Commission's account of slavery in antebellum Hillsborough and of the enslaved and free people of color who worked at the Burwell School, the female school the Burwells kept in town, between 1837 and 1857. African American history in Hillsborough and the school's own history are its two threads. Published in 2019.
Ann Strudwick Nash's history of the Nash and Kollock School, the select boarding and day school the Misses Nash and Miss Kollock ran in Hillsborough from 1859 to 1890, mostly for girls with a few boys. Published in Hillsborough in 1964 with plans and portraits. Part of the Wall Local History Collection.
Ella P. Primrose's short sketch of the school kept by the Misses Nash and Miss Kollock in Hillsborough, a select boarding and day school for girls in the nineteenth century. Printed in Raleigh in 1926, 13 pages with a single plate.
Milburn Gibbs's history of Staley School and the community it served in Staley, a small Randolph County town, published by Five Hawks Press of nearby Liberty in 2000; 225 illustrated pages.
Vanessa Siddle Walker's case study of the Caswell County Training School, a school for Black students in segregated Caswell County, and of the community around it. Caswell was formed from Orange County in 1777, with Yanceyville as its seat. UNC Press, 1996; 259 pages with illustrations, a map, a bibliography and an index.
The history of North Carolina Retired School Personnel from 1961 to 1978, told by Alma Browning. The group, a division of the North Carolina Association of Educators, brings together retired teachers and other school employees. Printed by Heritage Printers in 1978; 99 pages.
M. C. S. Noble, dean of the School of Education at the University of North Carolina, traces the state's public schools from colonial apprenticeship of orphans and chartered academies through the Literary Fund of 1825, the common school law of 1839, Calvin H. Wiley's superintendency, Reconstruction, and the graded schools and the white and Black normal schools of the late 1800s. Published at Chapel Hill in 1930; 463 pages with portraits and an index.
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