snippets ~ chatham history BLOG

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

Gatha Horton was born in Chatham County in 1910 to Alford and Minnie Horton. Her father was a teacher. He died when she was 10. Three of her grandparents had been enslaved in Chatham.

Education was very important in her family. Her brothers all went to school, and because there was no high school for Black children in Chatham, had to go away for high school. Gatha herself completed the seventh grade early and repeated that grade because there was no eighth grade. She got a high school equivalency degree when in her 40s.

Gatha’s activism began when she was still in Chatham County—first in church and community activities. She didn’t become involved in politics until 1952 when she registered to vote in Pittsboro at age 42. The registrar in New Hope Township had announced that he wasn’t going to register any Black people. Gatha encouraged a Black teacher from New Hope to go to register to vote. The woman was turned down. Gatha let her brother, Rev. Rufus Vassie Horton, know and he called a representative of the NC NAACP. The next week there were headlines in the newspapers saying “Former School Teacher of Chatham County Refused Registration.” Gatha was informed by the registrar in Pittsboro that it would not happen again. She was asked to have her friend go to New Hope and to try again to register. Things went smoothly after that.

When Gatha was in her 40s, she moved to Chapel Hill where her activism blossomed. She found many ways to advocate for the poor and elderly—often speaking at public meetings. She heard Chapel Hill described as “the southern part of heaven” after moving there from Chatham. At a public meeting she said, “Now those of you all that know where the southern part of heaven’s line stops, I live a block on the other side. I have to tell you my view of the southern part of heaven, what I can see. I don’t live in it.” She advocated for sidewalks for Black children to get to their segregated schools, for families in low-rent housing, and the elderly.

In the 1970s she supported picketing (though her arthritis prevented taking part directly) to encourage integration of places like the Carolina Theater and Chapel Hill drug store. She volunteered at Memorial Hospital and noted that Black people were not offered jobs. She joined the League of Women Voters, noting that she was going to get in whatever she could get in because you couldn’t know what was going on on the inside if you were outside. She later said that picketing worked in its time, but that the ballot box had become more important. She believed that Howard Lee’s election as mayor of Chapel Hill in 1969 and 1971 helped open up traditional avenues of power for the Black community. She continued to attend public meetings and to counsel those in need until her death in 1988.

Gatha is buried in Holland Chapel AME Zion cemetery in Chatham County.

Our thanks to Mary Nettles for pointing us to this information.

#ChathamNCHistory #ChathamCountyNC #BlackHistory #WomensHistory #activist

Siler City was incorporated on March 7, 1887 by the North Carolina General Assembly. The story of how the town came to be is told in Wade Hadley’s book produced for the town’s centennial.

Hadley notes that the first settlers came into western Chatham in the 1750s. The area was populated by family farms for one hundred years before the town that was to become Siler City came into existence. The Siler family was one of the earliest to arrive in the area.

By 1805, John Siler was living on a farm of 615 acres situated where the town now is, and by 1815 he was operating a country store near his home. Two regional roads crossed nearby—one running east/west from Raleigh to Salisbury and the other north/south from Greensboro to Fayetteville. The crossroads is believed to have been where what are now North Chatham Avenue and Second Street intersect. The north-south road ran in front of the Siler house. Location, location!

After John Siler’s death, William W. Matthews bought the Siler home and land in 1842. He provided food and lodging to travelers on stagecoaches that passed on the roads near his house. The place began to be called Matthews Crossroads and was the place where people from surrounding areas came to vote and pay taxes. By 1880 a rural post office called Energy was opened at Samuel Siler’s store at Matthews Crossroads.

Hadley says that the opening of the railroad through the area of Matthews Crossroads was the stimulus which caused a town to develop there. The Cape Fear and Yadkin Valley Railway completed its track between Sanford and Greensboro in 1884. A local train depot was built and named Siler Station for Samuel Siler, who had deeded the land for it. The name of the post office was changed to Siler Station at this time.

When construction work for the railroad reached the area, the land between the Matthews house and the depot was under cultivation as a cotton field. That is where the central business district of Siler City developed. The advantages of rail over horse and wagon transportation were enormous. Rail allowed supplies to be brought in and regional products to be shipped to outside markets. Siler Station was where the transfer of freight to and from the railroad took place—leading merchants to open stores and warehouses to be built near the railroad. Streets were laid out and named. (Only Raleigh Street retains its original name.)

Starting in 1884, the town grew quickly. By 1887, the town had seven stores, a tobacco warehouse, three livery stables, three hotels, a planning mill, a sawmill, and a cotton gin. Twenty-five dwellings had been built since 1884. Although Pittsboro was one hundred years old when Siler City came into existence, Siler City’s population was twice that of Pittsboro by the time it was thirty years old.

The post office was renamed Siler City in 1886. On March 7, 1887, Siler City was incorporated. The town limits were defined as being one-half mile from the depot of the Cape Fear and Yadkin Valley Railroad and running with the four cardinal points of the compass. The town limits have since been extended.

From Wade Hampton Hadley’s The Town of Siler City: 1887-1987. Photo is the Siler-Matthews House.

This photo of Charlie Crump and his granddaughter is one of only two photos of formerly enslaved people from Chatham County who were interviewed in the 1930s for the Federal Writers Project. Charlie was born at Evan’s Ferry in Lee or Chatham Co. He was enslaved by Davis Abernathy and wife "Mis’ Vick." His parents were Ridge and Marthy Crump. His brothers were Stokes and Tucker, and sisters were Lula and Liddy Ann.

You can access his narrative, as well as the ten others who were enslaved in Chatham County, from a link on our website:

ChathamCountySlaveNarratives.pdf

#ChathamNCHistory #ChathamCountyNC #Slavery #BlackHistory

Shiloh School

Shiloh was a school for Black children that operated in the late 1920s into the 1930s—perhaps even earlier. It was located on the west side of Alex Cockman Road, between US 64 and Elmer Keck Road.

Barbara Pugh obtained some information about the Shiloh school in 2014 from Louise Womble, age 90. Ms. Womble recalled that the James Jackson family, which lived between her family and Highway 64, had a number of children who were similar in age to the Womble children. The Jackson children attended Shiloh.

The property for the school was likely sold to the Chatham Board of Education by a member of the Alston family, which owned much of the land in this area. After Shiloh ceased to be a school it was sold at public auction in 1948 to George Rogers, whose heirs still own the one-acre parcel in 2026. Ms. Womble reported that after it was no longer a school that it was, for a time, the residence of a family named Hopkins.

If anyone can share more about the Shiloh school, please do!

These photos by Duane Hall were taken in 2014 and are part of the CCHA collection.

#ChathamNCHistory #ChathamCountyNC #BlackHistory #ShilohSchool #Schools

A paper on the Chatham County Historical Association website focuses on the forty-seven households headed by free people of color who are listed in the 1850 Chatham County census -- the first census to provide the names of all family members in each household. The author researched each of those households to provide as much information as possible about those persons for anyone looking for information about their FPOC ancestors.

Learn more here:

EarlyFreePeopleofColorinChatham.pdf

The surnames of the free people of color who are highlighted in the paper include: Allen, Alston, Archy/Archey, Anderson, Bass, Bowden, Brewer, Brown, Burnett, Byrd, Chandler, Chavis/Chavey/Chavers, Evans, Glovers, Goins/Goens, Goodwin, Grymes, Harris, Hatwood, Hill, Jeffreys/Jeffries, Linn, Lewis, Michel, Powel/Powell, Read/Reed/Reid, Roe/Rowe, White.

The photos shown here are of George and Asenanth Jane Allen Burnett and Cyrus and Eliza White Bowden. The photos were provided by their g-g-grandson, Calvin Dark

#ChathamNCHistory #ChathamCountyNC #FreePeopleofColor #BlackHistory #AfricanAmericanHistory #NativeAmericanHistory #1850Census #FPOC

This photo of the Bonlee Baptist Church congregation was provided by Kim Beal, who also provided the following information about the church.

Bonlee Baptist was organized in 1912, and the church was constructed in 1914 at a cost of $1200 by a firm out of Sanford. So based on that, naturally, the picture is 1914 or after. It may be around that actual time, and that may very well be what this picture was all about, posing with the new church.

The Sunday school addition to the right is not showing in this picture. If there is a record of when it was added on, we could get even closer on the time of this photo.

Those windows were still being opened during warm weather in the early to mid-1970s.

My Great Grandfather James Atlas White was a carpenter, and he helped build it. My great aunt Blanche Phillips (his daughter) told me that he would come home each evening and tell about the construction that took place daily. She said he told her he could see Mt. Vernon Springs from atop the steeple. He passed away in 1920, along with four other men from the community from drinking bad water.

I grew up in this church. There were a lot of good people from the early families of Bonlee still attending here at that time. Ina Dunlap Andrews was one of those people. She often spoke of the early days of Bonlee. Her father Isaac Dunlap and his brother John Dunlap were the founders of the town. They built the town, the Bonlee and Western Railroad, the feed mill, and John donated land and loaned $10k dollars to build the first school which was chartered in 1914. I remember a small wooden sign that was out front of the drive at the entrance when I was a student there that read “Bonlee School founded 1914.”

#ChathamNCHistory #ChathamCountyNC #BonleeNC #churches