Chatham County, NC, Historical Association

Chatham Historical Museum

Tragedy Strikes the Historic Chatham County Courthouse

Late Thursday afternoon, March 25, fire broke out in the court house in the circle in Pittsboro. Most of the roof and much of the building's interior were destroyed before the fire was contained. Built in 1881, the building has undergone several additions and renovations. At the time of the fire the building was covered with scaffolding so that the windows could be replaced and parts repaired and repainted. In addition to the loss of the court room, judges and other offices, belongings of employees and some court materials, the Chatham County Historical Museum was located there. The extent of the damage to the CCHA collection is not yet known.

The Chatham Historical Museum came into being with the renovation of the Chatham County Courthouse in 1990, when the county commissioners approved the use of a small room in the southwest corner of the first floor by the Chatham County Historical Association, Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation. Cabinets that had once been part of the tax office were reworked for exhibit cases and storage by Dean Dreyer, and a discarded desk and chair were refinished for office use.

The museum is open on Wednesdays from 12 noon until 3 p.m., except holidays, and on the first Sundays of the months April through October from 1 p.m. until 4 p.m. Special arrangements can be made for tour groups on other days by request to history@chathamhistory.org.

Exhibits in the museum include artifacts from the museum’s permanent collection and topical displays that change three to four times a year. In the conference room next to the museum, one display illustrates the early settlement and formation of Chatham County and a second traces the history of the county courthouse.

Museum Collection

The museum’s collection contains a variety of artifacts and documents, from a colonial warrant signed by William Hooper, signer of the Declaration of Independence and first Chatham County Clerk of Court, to letters from Hadley children who had emigrated to Indiana writing home to their parents in Chatham County, to photographs of the construction of the now-dismantled dam at Carbonton, to labels made in Pittsboro’s silk mill. Primary source materials include such items as day books from various county businesses, tax listings by townships for 1912 and 1917, a minute docket for Superior Court, and a Sheriff’s monthly jail report. Secondary source materials include copies of Pittsboro High School Yearbooks, excerpts from 1880 census of agriculture, abstracts of land grants, early maps and photocopied material for Chatham County such as a selection of high school principals’ reports. A catalog of the museum’s holdings is in preparation.

Since its establishment, the museum has been a work in progress, nurtured by a series of volunteer curators—a position currently held by Jane Pyle. Volunteer docents staff the museum and answer questions on Wednesday afternoons and First Sundays. These volunteers and the many patrons who have donated artifacts to the museum’s collection, provide Chatham County with an exceptional resource—one that brings several hundred visitors to the courthouse every year.

How you can help

w offer items of significance to Chatham County’s history to the museum as gifts or loans for temporary exhibits

All but a few of the artifacts in the museum’s collection have been donated by patrons and others wishing to help preserve Chatham’s history. A lack of adequate storage and display space currently limits our ability to accept all donations, but CCHA is hopeful that a larger museum will someday be a reality. We encourage individuals with items of potential interest for the historical collection to contact Jane Pyle, museum curator, at history@chathamhistory.org. Items may be given to the museum as gifts or loaned for temporary special exhibits. We are particularly interested in early documents and old photographs, school yearbooks, diaries and letters, and maps.

w volunteer to be a museum docent

We need docents to staff the museum on Wednesday afternoons and First Sundays. Think you don’t know enough to help? We can fix that! Training on the museum holdings is provided to all new volunteers, and we also provide a list of people to whom you can refer any questions you are not equipped to answer. You’ll learn Chatham history and help pass it along to other interested people. For more information, contact Candace Burke, Docent Coordinator, at 880-2656 or history@chathamhistory.org.

Click to see what’s in the current exhibit.