Storyline
How Chapel Hill’s Methodists built their James Gamble Rogers church on East Franklin Street: the building contract of 1924, the groundbreaking and cornerstone in 1925, the first services in May 1926, and the old Rosemary Street church’s new life as a garage.
In briefChapel Hill's Methodists built a new church on Franklin Street in 1925 and 1926, with much of the money coming from conference boards, alumni and friends. In December 1924 their joint commission gave the contract for a church designed by James Gamble Rogers to Jewel and Riddle of Sanford. Members broke ground in January 1925, and presiding elder M. Bradshaw set the cornerstone that April. The red brick church with white trim, replacing the older sanctuary at 150 East Franklin Street, was accepted from the contractors in April 1926 and held its first Sunday service on May 30. That July the long-closed 1853 Methodist church at Rosemary and Henderson streets became an automobile repair station.
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By December 6, 1924, with much of the money from conference boards, alumni and friends in hand, the Methodists' joint commission had given the contract for a church designed by James Gamble Rogers to Jewel and Riddle of Sanford for $156,550, and the heating contract to the Durham Heating Company for $14,500. On January 6, 1925 Louis Round Wilson, chairman of the stewards, joined pastor Walter Patten, Mrs. A. S. Barbee and other members to break ground on Franklin Street. On April 28 presiding elder M. Bradshaw set the cornerstone at a Tuesday service, with speakers for the joint commission, the architect's firm, the university and its students. The red brick church with white trim, replacing the older sanctuary at 150 East Franklin Street, was accepted from the contractors on April 12, 1926. It was first used for the District Conference on May 27-28 and held its first Sunday service on May 30. In July the long-closed 1853 Methodist church at Rosemary and Henderson streets was converted into an automobile repair station, the Club Service Motor Co., run by Montrose Tull, with a platform built from its rear door to Henderson Street for cars.
Events in this storyline, in date order. See these 5 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.
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.
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.
Pauline O. Lloyd and Allen A. Lloyd's history of Hillsborough Methodist Church from its founding in 1807 to 1961, published in Hillsborough that year, apparently by the church. 35 pages with illustrations, portraits and a short bibliography. Part of the library's Wall Local History Collection.
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.
Walnut Grove United Methodist Church at Walnut Grove, North Carolina, over its first 150 years, 1841 to 1991, in a history by Mike Parker, printed in 1991; illustrated and unpaged.
Pat Shaw Bailey's survey of the burial ground at Bethel United Methodist Church, which stands on the Snow Camp Road in southern Alamance County, covering graves from the 1840s to 1987. Compiled for the Bethel Memorial Association's sixtieth anniversary and printed in Burlington in 1987 as a limited first edition, it has 98 pages with illustrations, maps, genealogical tables and an index. Alamance County was cut from Orange in 1849.
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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