Storyline
How the Chapel Hill Baptists built their church at Franklin and Columbia streets facing the campus: the site and the state board’s money, the contract and groundbreaking, Frank Milburn’s design, the formal opening in 1923, and Eugene I. Olive’s arrival as pastor.
In briefWith help from the state Baptist board, the Chapel Hill Baptist Church built a new church facing the campus. In 1921, after Charles E. Maddry of the state board won approval to buy a site, the congregation accepted the lot; members pledged more than $25,000, and the Home Board and state board gave about $100,000. Frank Milburn designed the tan brick and stone church at West Franklin and South Columbia streets, and it opened formally on October 7, 1923. The News put the cost at $136,000, said it seated 1,500 and expected it to serve about 600 Baptist students. Eugene I. Olive began his nine-year pastorate, the church's longest up to then, in April 1924.
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No works in the index are currently linked directly to this storyline. The works below provide background on Churches & Faith.
In 1921, after Charles E. Maddry, secretary of the state Baptist board, won approval to buy a site, the Chapel Hill Baptist Church in conference accepted the lot and agreed to pay $1,000 at once. Over the next year members pledged more than $25,000, and the Home Board and state board gave about $100,000. By December 1 the contract was let to Shipp and Poe, and early in 1922 ground was broken on Columbia Street near the campus. On February 17, 1923 the frame W. E. Lindsay store house next to the site was auctioned for a building committee, the buyer to move it off the lot. Frank Milburn designed the tan brick and stone church, with an Ionic portico on a raised basement, at the corner of West Franklin and South Columbia streets, facing the campus. It opened formally on Sunday, October 7, 1923, with a sermon by Maddry, a history of the congregation by Collier Cobb and an address by W. J. Brogden of Durham. The News put the cost at $136,000, $102,000 of it raised by the state convention, and said the church seated 1,500 and was expected to serve about 600 Baptist students. Eugene I. Olive began his pastorate on April 6, 1924; his nine years were the church's longest pastorate up to then.
Events in this storyline, in date order. See these 8 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 Churches & Faith. These works cover the broader subject and may not discuss this storyline. Follow a link to find a copy or view the material.
Nancy Learned Haines tells the story of the Quaker families who left Pennsylvania around 1750 for the Eno River valley near Hillsborough, where they farmed, traded and built a school, and asks how a community committed to peace fared through the unrest of the colonial years. Published by Pleasant Green Books in 2026, 122 pages with bibliography and index. Subjects include Quakers in North Carolina and the history of Hillsborough, Orange County and the Eno River valley.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Community cookbook from Hillsborough United Church of Christ, published by the congregation in 2019. A collection of recipes from Hillsborough cooks in the familiar form of the church cookbook, gathered from members of the congregation. 122 pages plus four preliminary pages, 22 cm.
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).
Sybil Austin Skakle's history of Amity United Methodist Church in Chapel Hill, combining the congregation's story with sketches of its members. Published by Righter Books of Graham, North Carolina in 2017. 218 pages.
Randy Biddix traces his Biddix ancestors across western North Carolina, including branches in Burke, McDowell, Mitchell, Yancey, Surry, Stokes, Randolph, Chatham and Orange counties, the Pendleton District of South Carolina and Chester County, Pennsylvania. The family's ties to the Cane River area of Yancey County and Cane River Baptist Church form part of the story. Self-published in 2016, 349 pages with illustrations, for Biddix family researchers.
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.
Anniversary tribute to Judea Reform Congregation, the Reform Jewish congregation serving Durham and Chapel Hill, published in 2011. The volume concerns the congregation's history and Jewish congregational life in the two towns.
Community cookbook from Mount Carmel Baptist Church in Chapel Hill, printed by Morris Press Cookbooks of Kearney, Nebraska, in 2008 and bound in a three-ring binder. Contributors are named with their Southern recipes. 376 numbered pages plus front and back matter, with illustrations.
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.
The centennial history of Mount Adar Baptist Church at Cedar Grove in northern Orange County, marking 1889 to 1989 under the motto a century of remembrance, a future of vision. Prepared by a centennial committee co-chaired by Nancy Rogers and Jackie Oakley and published by the church in 1989, 36 unnumbered pages with illustrations. Topics include Baptists in North Carolina and church history for Cedar Grove.
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.
Roger H. Crook's history of Pullen Memorial Baptist Church in Raleigh through its first hundred years, 1884 to 1984, published by the church's history committee in 1985. The congregation began in 1884 as a First Baptist Church mission, was organized as Fayetteville Street Baptist Church, and took the name of its lay leader John T. Pullen after his death in 1913.
Richard Joseph Moore's history of Front Street United Methodist Church, from its start in Company Shops, the railroad town renamed Burlington, to 1984. He covers early Methodism and Bishop Asbury in the county, the church's three buildings and its 1949 fire, its ministers, Sunday school classes, organs and music, and closes with a 1984 roll of the church family. Published by the church in 1984; 144 illustrated pages with an index.
Samuel Meek Rankin's 1934 history of the Presbyterian congregation on North Buffalo Creek near Greensboro, organized in 1756 by Scotch-Irish settlers. More than seventy pages are given to members and their families; other chapters cover the Nottingham colony, buildings, pastors, elders, the cemetery and Buffalo men in every war from the Regulator battle to the World War. Rankin used church records and deeds, wills and estates in Guilford, Anson, Rowan and Orange counties.
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