Storyline
How Orange Methodist Church north of Chapel Hill built its present church: the 1923 homecoming that opened the campaign, S. J. Brockwell’s gift of the framing lumber, the opening of June 1924 before about a thousand people, and the 1925 homecoming that cleared the debt.
In briefA homecoming on Orange Methodist Church's 109th birthday in July 1923 opened a campaign for a new building north of Chapel Hill. S. J. Brockwell gave the framing lumber, and the new church, with four Sunday school rooms, opened on June 1, 1924 before about a thousand people, when Charles E. Maddry raised about $2,000 toward its debt. At the homecoming of June 1925 Brockwell gave the last $500 of the $800 still owed.
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No works in the index are currently linked directly to this storyline. The works below are about the places and people this story names.
On July 29, 1923, the church's 109th birthday, between 250 and 300 people gathered at Orange Methodist Church on the old Hillsboro road north of Chapel Hill for a homecoming that opened a campaign for a new building. The plan announced then was to move the 1814 house of worship back from the road and keep it as an annex to the new church. S. J. Brockwell of Chapel Hill started the building movement by giving the framing lumber. Between 900 and 1,000 people came to the formal opening of the new church on Sunday, June 1, 1924. It added four Sunday school rooms to what had been a one-room church. Charles E. Maddry, the Baptist leader, who had grown up near the church, preached and raised about $2,000 toward a debt of some $4,400. At a homecoming on June 14, 1925, with preaching and a dinner in the grove, the church took up a collection on the $800 it still owed. When pledges left $575 owing and $75 more was raised, Brockwell gave the last $500 and cleared the debt. The building was still the place of Sunday worship in 1989.
Events in this storyline, in date order. See these 4 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.
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.
Debra Pickrel's history of the Gamma Lambda Chapter of Phi Mu at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, produced for the chapter's fiftieth anniversary celebration of November 14 to 16, 2014. One hundred forty four pages with portraits and illustrations, some in color. Samuel J. Brockwell is discussed in the text.
A letter to the editor of the Chapel Hill News, printed in 1906, in which C. D. Turner defends Charles Maddry against the charge that he misappropriated school funds while serving as superintendent of schools for Orange County. Turner signs himself a candidate for clerk of Superior Court and dates the letter October 3, 1906.
Forty seven items dated 1903 to 1960 from Charles Edward Maddry (1876-1962), in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC, collection 3593. Topics include the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, church buildings in the state, and the church history of Orange County, with Mount Moriah Church in Orange County named directly. Josephus Daniels also appears among the subjects.
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.
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.
Reviewed in The Journal of Southern History (1963).
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.
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).
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 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.
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.
Samuel Tilden Habel's centennial monograph on the Baptist Church at Chapel Hill, covering its first hundred years from 1854 to 1954. It pairs a narrative of the congregation with membership lists. Published by the church in Chapel Hill in 1954, 58 pages plus sixteen pages of plates with illustrations, portraits and facsimiles.
A. C. Howell's history of the Baptist church in Chapel Hill from 1854 to 1924, published in 1945. Thirty-two pages with one plate; the story touches the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina as well as the congregation itself.
Archibald Henderson's history of the Episcopal congregation in Chapel Hill, the Church of the Atonement and the Chapel of the Cross, as the title names them. A short work of Chapel Hill church history and of the Episcopal Church in North Carolina, published in Hartford, Connecticut, by the Church Missions Publishing Company in 1938, 57 pages with illustrations and portraits. One copy carries the author's presentation inscription to the North Carolina State Library.
Address by Bishop Joseph Blount Cheshire at St. Matthew's Church in Hillsborough on 24 August 1924, marking the parish's hundredth anniversary. Printed in Durham in 1925 at the vestry's order, with a foreword by the rector. Cheshire discusses George Micklejohn, William Mercer Green and Moses Ashley Curtis.
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.
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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