Storyline
How New Hope Presbyterian Church came through a divided session: Pleasant H. Dalton’s installation and departure, the year without a pastor, James L. Currie’s short pastorate, the estate case, the presbytery’s removal of all six elders in 1889 and James E. Fogartie’s joint pastorate.
In briefDisputes in the session, the elders who governed the congregation, kept New Hope Presbyterian Church unsettled from 1886 to 1890. Pastor Pleasant H. Dalton offered his resignation in 1886; most of the congregation would not accept it, but after the session fell into disagreement the relation was dissolved. James L. Currie became pastor in 1887. A quarrel over a member's settlement of an estate then went to Orange Presbytery, whose 1889 ruling deepened the split. Most members petitioned the active elders to resign, three refused, and the presbytery dissolved all six elders' relation to the church and ordered a new election. Currie's pastorate ended after new troubles, and in 1890 New Hope began sharing a pastor with Chapel Hill.
Read the full storyRead the 7 eventsAll storylines
Read the events and sources below.
No works in the index are currently linked directly to this storyline. The works below provide background on Churches & Faith.
On January 6, 1884, after nearly ten years as stated supply (serving the church without being installed as its pastor), Pleasant H. Dalton was installed as pastor of New Hope. He offered his resignation in February 1886, but most of the congregation would not accept it; after the session fell into disagreement the relation was dissolved that December, and the church stood vacant about a year while a presbytery commission settled the trouble. James L. Currie was installed as pastor on Sunday, November 20, 1887, the Rev. Mr. Wilhelm giving the charge. A quarrel over a member's settlement of an estate had come before the session, and on March 5, 1889 an adjourned meeting of Orange Presbytery decided it; the ruling deepened the split. Member David A. Claytor carried a petition, signed by most of the members, calling on the active elders to resign. Three agreed and three refused. On May 16 the presbytery, meeting at the church, dissolved all six elders' relation to the church and ordered a new election, and on May 25 the congregation chose Charles W. Johnston, John T. Hogan and William C. Claytor again. Currie's pastorate was dissolved that November after new troubles in the session. On November 30, 1890 James E. Fogartie, pastor of the Chapel Hill Presbyterian church, was installed at New Hope to serve the two churches jointly.
Events in this storyline, in date order. See these 7 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 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.
A 1980 edition, issued by the church, of A. A. Ellis's history of Eno Presbyterian Church at Cedar Grove, Orange County. Twenty unnumbered pages with illustrations and portraits. Ellis's original history of the congregation appeared in 1955.
Rev. D. I. Craig's history of New Hope Church, a Presbyterian congregation in Chapel Hill Township, Orange County, printed at Reidsville in 1891. A closing family history section covers the Strayhorn, Craig, Blackwood and Kirkland families.
Herbert Snipes Turner's history of Hawfields Presbyterian Church and its community from 1738 to 1960. Hawfields lies in what is now Alamance County, land that was part of Orange County until 1849, and the book gives a place to Henry Pattillo, the congregation's eighteenth-century minister. Published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1962, 297 pages with illustrations.
A history of Little River Presbyterian Church in Orange County, compiled in 1986. Topics include the church's history, Orange County church history and Orange County genealogy, along with the Presbyterian Church in North Carolina. A source for family historians with Presbyterian ancestors in the county.
Printed minutes of two 1939 meetings of the Presbytery of Orange in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.: an adjourned summer meeting at Broadway, in Lee County, on July 18, and the 340th session at Bethesda Presbyterian Church, Ruffin, in Rockingham County, on October 10. The Oxford Orphanage press printed the 37 pages, numbered 289 to 325, with an index. The presbytery was divided in 1989 into New Hope and Salem presbyteries.
Burials in the churchyard of Buffalo Presbyterian Church in Greensboro, compiled by Raymond Dufau Donnell after three years of research: graves with stones, stones recorded earlier but since destroyed, and unmarked graves known from records and family tradition, each with a site locator. Donnell drew on the Rankins' cemetery recordings of 1910 to 1931 and opens with a history of the congregation, founded in 1756. Published by the Guilford County Genealogical Society in 1994.
James Donald MacKenzie's history of two Presbyterian congregations: Barbecue Church in Harnett County and Bluff Church in Cumberland County. Barbecue, in a community named for Barbecue Creek, served Gaelic-speaking Scottish settlers, and Flora MacDonald worshipped there in colonial times. Privately printed at Olivia in 1969; xi and 149 pages with portraits. Victor E. Clark's 389-page Colorful Heritage of 1989, for the Harnett County Library, is built on this book and reproduces it.
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.
Sources and research tools for this storyline. Research guide: Follow an event across several accounts.
More to discover
The Friends connect people with new library materials, local writers and publishers, and resources documenting Orange County.
