snippets ~ chatham history BLOG

In February 1990, the Greensboro News and Record published an article about the dangers of the abandoned Siler City Mills. The mill was destroyed by fire just a few months later, in Sep 1990.

You can read Jerry Stone's excellent article about Siler City Mills it is working days on our website. 

#ChathamNCHistory#ChathamHistory#ChathamCountyNC#ChathamNC#SilerCityMills#fire#SilerCityNC#1990s

This photo shows the Yates and Thomas General Store in the Chatham County community of Merry Oaks. The photo was taken about 1893.

Additional Merry Oaks photos from the early 20th century to the 1970s can be seen in the photo gallery on our website: https://chathamhistory.org/Merry-Oaks-Photo-Gallery. The last photo in the gallery is of the Yates and Thomas Store as it looked in 1978.

#ChathamNCHistory #ChathamCountyNC #MerryOaksNC #GeneralStore #1890s

In the spring of 2026, the CCHA cemetery team, led by Julie King-McDaniel, made it a priority to thoroughly document the Napton cemetery, located off Siler City-Glendon Road in Matthews Township. This early cemetery was associated with the Quaker Napton Meeting, which split off from Cane Creek in 1780. Some believe that the church may have been established as early as 1751 and may have been the first church established in what is now Chatham County. Records show that a church and schoolhouse were active at Napton as late as 1864.

The Napton cemetery is noted for containing the Chatham grave marker with the earliest death date recorded on an original marker --1774. Hannah was the daughter of Charles and Margaretta Von Cullen White, immigrants from Pennsylvania who were very early Chatham inhabitants. Many of the unmarked burials in Napton are likely older than Hannah’s. It is not known when the site became used for non-Quaker burials.

For more about this early cemetery, there's an article on our webpage: Hannah White grave marker at Napton cemetery.pdf

#ChathamNCHistory #ChathamCountyNC #Cemeteries #Napton #1700s 

John Rosenthal snapped this photo of a dwelling in New Hope Valley in 1972, before it was flooded to create Jordan Lake. We thank him for allowing us to share it.

John notes: I've never exhibited this photograph or printed it. It was taken in 1972, when I was learning how to use my camera. This house was in the New Hope Valley, which is now Jordan Lake. Small farming communities, going back generations, disappeared. The Army Corps of Engineers offered compensation, but it was never enough. Bones in old cemeteries were disinterred and buried elsewhere. Or left behind. When there's a drought, steppingstones leading to a ghost house become visible. I make no artistic claims for this photograph. It's just a reminder.

#ChathamNCHistory #chathamcountync #JordanLake #NewHopeValley

Knights of Pythagoras

This photo was originally mislabeled as showing students in Chatham High School. Fortunately, many people have commented to provide a correction. Info obtained so far suggests that this was the Knights of Pythagoras group, led by Mr. Graves, probably around 1980.

If you can tell us more about this group, please do! 

According to the Knights of Pythagoras website: "The Order of the Knights of Pythagoras (KOP) is a community-based mentoring organization composed of youths ranging between the ages of seven to twenty years inclusive, working under the sponsorship and personal supervision of Prince Hall Masons, to provide beneficial use of their spare time, worthwhile companions, wholesome, educational environment, life skills and a program aiming to interest and aid youths, in their all-round development."

Photo from Cranford Studio. No date.

#ChathamNCHistory #ChathamCountyNC #BlackHistory #KnightsofPythagoras 

The Chatham Hotel in Siler City was built in 1897 and opened that year. The original owner was Caleb Johnson, who had operated a boarding house in Siler City before 1890. The hotel was a wooden, two-story building located on the east side of South Birch Avenue, near the middle of the first block and opposite the railway station. Mrs. J. M. Caviness was an early operator of the hotel, with John Aiken as cook. The building was destroyed in 1930 after having been vacant for several years.

Click on the image to enlarge. This image of the Chatham Hotel, circa 1900, was contributed to the Chatham County Historical Association digital collection by Jonus Nobels.

Information from Wade Hadley's The Town of Siler City, 1887-1987.

If you know more about the Chatham Hotel, please share what you know.

#ChathamNCHistory #ChathamHistory #ChathamCountyNC #ChathamNC #ChathamHotel #hotels #SilerCityNC #1890s

Bill Hamlet sent us this photo and story about his dad’s pet squirrel.

Around 1920 in Pittsboro, my dad, Chris Hamlet, found a very young fledgling squirrel on the ground under an oak tree in his front yard. He talked his mother, Martha Hamlet, into nursing the squirrel using an eyedropper and small spoon. The baby squirrel survived and became Dad's close pet. He would take the squirrel to school inside his shirt.

As it aged out it bit him several times on his chest. As kids our dad showed us the scar marks on his chest from the squirrel bites. We were not sure that we believed the story until I recently came across this picture as proof.

Any more vintage Chatham County pet stories out there? Send photos if you have them to history@chathamhistory.org!

#ChathamNCHistory #ChathamCountyNC #PittsboroNC #Pets #SquirrelPet 

The record for oldest person in Chatham County was set way back in 1877 when Benjamin Johnson died at the reported age of 115 to 120 years. Even the skeptics reported that he was 107. Well, newspapers often made errors, but he was likely quite old for the times.

At the time of his death, Benjamin was said to have 77 great grandchildren, so, many of you out there can probably claim him as an ancestor!

Newspaper clippings show what the papers had to say about him in 1876 and 1877. Benjamin is buried in the family plot in Oakland Township.

Thanks to Wincie Jane Hinnant for sharing the portrait and info about her great-great-great grandfather.

#ChathamNCHistory #ChathamCountyNC #ChathamHistory #ChathamNC #BenjaminJohnson #oldestperson #OaklandTownship #1870s

This photo ran in a 1943 edition of the Durham Morning Herald under the headline “Negro Farm Family Makes History in Chatham County.” Ollie and Flonnie Burnett became full owners of their farm in Williams Township after paying off a 40-year FSA loan in only five years. Phillip R. Jackson, FSA supervisor at left, presented the deed of trust to the Burnetts, making them perhaps the first black family in the nation to earn their farm under the Bankhead-Jones Tenant Purchase Act, administered by the Farm Security Administration. Standing behind the canceled papers is Clerk E.B.B. Hatch of Chatham Superior Court. In the rear, left to right are J. Vivian Harris and Lewis Norwood, Chatham FSA committee members and A.N. Tatum Jr., county soil conservationist. The loan which farmer Burnett repaid in record time was $3,022.

#ChathamNCHistory #ChathamCountyNC #Farming #BlackHistory #1940s

Phyllis Knight Coates grew up in Chatham and graduated from Horton High School in 1970. In August of 1982, Phyllis, the daughter of Lonnie Knight, Sr. and Patience Taylor Knight, became the first female deputy hired by the Chatham County Sheriff’s Department. She had previously been the first black female on the Pittsboro Police Department, Chapel Hill Police Department, Orange County Sheriff’s Department, and the Carrboro Police Department.

#ChathamNCHistory #ChathamCountyNC #FirstFemaleDeupty #HerStory #WomensHistory #BlackHistory #AfricanAmericanHistory #1980s