The Oxford Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988. Portions of the content on this web page were adapted from a copy of the original nomination document. [‡]
Graciously placed along the broad, shaded streets that radiate out from the stately 1838 Granville County Courthouse, the buildings of the Oxford Historic District have changed little in the past half century and continue to vividly evoke the life of a genteel, 19th and early 20th century North Carolina county seat and tobacco market. Architecturally varied and exceptional, the Oxford Historic District's residences, churches, businesses and tobacco buildings form a more evocative whole than any other tobacco town of the Bright Leaf Border Belt, including Henderson and Roxboro to the east and west and South Boston across the border in Virginia. The 246 buildings, objects and sites, only 32 of which were built within the past 50 years, stand at the town's commercial center and at the two residential neighborhoods that stretch from the courthouse to the north out from College Street and to the south out from Main Street. The Oxford Historic District illustrates the development and growth of Oxford during the antebellum Plantation Era, as well as the town's continued growth and ultimate ascendance in the county during the post Civil War years of the Bright Leaf Tobacco Era. Quality and variety of the historic architecture is preserved in the district, particularly its many fine Romantic, Victorian and Eclectic style residences.
Historic Contexts and Property Types
The Oxford Historic District is associated with two of Granville County's three historic contexts — the Plantation Era in Granville County, 1746-1865, and Bright Leaf Tobacco and the Ascendancy of Oxford, 1866-1937 — and five of its six property types: Georgian and Federal style dwellings; Greek Revival and Romantic style dwellings; Romantic, Victorian and Eclectic style buildings in Oxford; Commercial, Industrial, Institutional and Religious buildings — Bright Leaf Era Oxford; and Outbuildings. It embraces the first developed sections of Oxford and includes a majority of the town's surviving 19th century properties and most of its significant early 20th century properties as well. The majority of these properties are residential, though the Oxford Historic District also includes churches, banks, tobacco processing and storage facilities, schools and other non-residential buildings, and the town's commercial core. Physically, the Oxford Historic District retains its historical and architectural integrity. 205 of its 246 buildings, objects and sites contribute to its integrity. Only 32 of these properties have been built since 1937. The 246 properties include numerous well-maintained examples of virtually every architectural style and form, but for the very earliest, known to have been raised in the town. Associatively, the Oxford Historic District retains its historical and architectural integrity too, for it reflects, and continues to represent, the development of Oxford, Granville County and, more broadly, the tobacco towns of the Bright Leaf Border Belt.
The Oxford Historic District is associated with the plantation era in the town and county through its pre-Civil War buildings and plan, fitting within and vivifying the Plantation Era in Granville County, 1746-1865, historic context and the Plantation Era Properties in Oxford, 1866-1937, property type. It also fits within the property type Plantation and Bright Leaf Era Outbuildings in Granville County, 1746-1937, retaining a pegged, antebellum outbuilding, probably originally a smokehouse, behind the 1840s Kingsbury-Bryan House at 303 High Street — an outbuilding that hints at the rural nature of the town prior to the Civil War — and 27 other substantial outbuildings, most notably large garages with dwelling space atop and detached, former kitchens. All but two of its pre-Civil War buildings, the circa 1825, Georgian/Federal style, Bryant-Kingsbury House at 417 Goshen Street and the Georgian/Federal style, 1820s, Taylor-McClanahan-Smith House at 203 College Street, were built in the quarter century preceding the Civil War. Their size and Greek Revival style finish, similar to that of many plantation dwellings built elsewhere in the county at the time, suggest a town that was prosperous during that quarter century, but no more prosperous than the countryside around it.
Established as the county seat during the plantation era, the town retains two pre-Civil War institutional buildings, both located within the district, that reflect its earliest, and continuing, function as the center of county government the Greek Revival style, Flemish bond, 1838 Granville County Courthouse at 101 Main Street and the late 1850s former Granville County Jail to its rear on Court Street. The Oxford Orphanage, part of which is included within the district, stands on the site of the defunct St. John's College and connects the district with the town's early prominence as an education center. The street plan in the Oxford Historic District, much of which is unchanged from that shown on the two earliest maps of the town — the 1812 plan of Oxford and the 1826 map of Oxford — shows the historic outline of the town. Its uneven grid and many T-intersections also indicate the sites where some of the town's earliest buildings stood and where its springs once flowed.
The dwellings in the Oxford Historic District associated with the Bright Leaf Tobacco and the Ascendancy of Oxford, 1866-1937, historic context are predominantly larger, finer and more stylish than their country contemporaries, reflecting the ascendancy of Oxford during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This ascendancy was prompted, directly or indirectly, by the value of the county's bright leaf tobacco crop, much of which flowed through the town on its way to the consuming public. Some of the dwellings in the district were built by individuals directly associated with the tobacco trade: the John Henry Bullock at 310 Broad Street and John Z. Mitchell at 405 Broad Street, Queen Anne style houses, were raised during the boom years of the 1880s and early 1890s for the co-owners of the recently demolished Banner Warehouse; the Second Empire style Samuel M. Watkins House at 301 Main Street was erected by a local tobacco warehouseman; James M. Currin, a buyer for the American Tobacco Company, built his Queen Anne style mansion at 213 High Street; and Sidney Cutts, an auctioneer, built his more modest Period Revival house at 201 East Front Street. Those involved in trade not directly related to the tobacco business who built houses in the district include merchant Cameron H. Easton of the Colonial Revival/Bungalow style Easton-Hancock House at 109 West Front Street; lumberyard owner C.D. Ray whose Neo-Classical mansion stands at 404 College Street; mercantilist Frank Blalock, who raised his house at 107 East Spring Street; and James W. Horner, the owner of a farm supply business, whose large Colonial Revival style house stands at 201 Gilliam Street. Many professionals also made their home in the district, continuing a practice that existed during the plantation era. Col. Leonidas Compton Edwards (204 College Avenue), Thomas Lanier (410 College Avenue) and A.A. Hicks (503 College Avenue), all attorneys, built their Italianate, Queen Anne and Neo-Classical Revival style houses. Dr. W.N. Thomas, the president of Oxford's Brantwood Hospital, joined them on the street, raising his Colonial Revival house at 405 College Avenue.
Utilizing many of the stylish Romantic, Victorian and Eclectic styles, these houses are significant architecturally as well as historically, exemplifying the Bright Leaf Era Properties in Oxford, 1866-1937, property type. And their early garages, detached kitchens and other scattered outbuildings fit within the Plantation and Bright Leaf Era Outbuildings in Granville County, 1746-1937, property type. (The three stylistic terms are used here, as in Virginia and Lee McAlester's A Field Guide to American Houses, in a generalized sense to encompass a variety of styles from the latter third of the nineteenth and first third of the twentieth centuries.)
The non-residential properties in the Oxford Historic District also exemplify the ascendancy of the town over the county. Some, like the former L.H. Currin-American Tobacco Company Prize House on New College Street and the former Imperial Tobacco Company buildings at Broad and West streets, are directly related to the processing of tobacco. (Unfortunately, no old tobacco warehouses remain in the town or the district, the Banner Warehouse, the last, having been demolished in 1987.) The two-story, brick commercial buildings in the Oxford Historic District that stretch out along Main, College, Hillsboro and Williamsboro streets from the focal point of the courthouse also speak of the vibrancy of the town during the bright leaf era. Much more impressive and stylish than any other contemporaries raised elsewhere in the county, they run the gamut from the Italianate style Hunt Building and Herndon Block Number 2 raised at 117 Williamsboro Street and the corner of Hillsboro and College streets, respectively, to the Moderne former C & M Hosiery Mills offices at 118 Main Street. The size and style of the banks, churches, schools and other nonresidential buildings in the district also set them apart from their contemporaries elsewhere in the town and county. The former 1st National Bank of Oxford at 109 Hillsboro Street is Richardsonian Romanesque in style and of stone, while the former Union Bank & Trust Company building at 108 College Street, also of stone, is Beaux Arts in style. Exceptional in size and style, the Oxford Historic District's churches include the brick Queen Anne and Gothic Revival style Oxford Presbyterian Church at 221 Gilliam Street and Oxford Methodist Church at 149 College Street; the smaller but still handsome, similarly styled, brick-veneered Timothy Darling Presbyterian Church at 123 West McClanahan Street; the stone Richardsonian Romanesque, Gothic Revival and Stick style St. Stephen's Episcopal Church at 140 College Street; and the brick Colonial Revival and Neo-Classical style Oxford Baptist Church at 147 Main Street. As with the dwellings, the non-residential properties are architecturally as well as historically significant — exemplifying the Gothic Revival, Italianate, Queen Anne, Colonial Revival, Neo-Classical and Moderne styles.
The Oxford Historic District is distinguished from surrounding areas of the town by its inclusion of: the majority of Oxford's oldest buildings; the largest collection of significant late nineteenth and early 20th century dwellings in the town; the historical heart of the town; the town's central commercial district; its largest, finest and oldest churches; and its significant governmental buildings, including its antebellum courthouse and jail. All these elements together give the Oxford Historic Distoric an architectural cohesiveness and contribute to its feeling of time and place. The few intrusions and non-contributing properties, and the few properties that have been shifted on their lots or moved from one location to another in the district, do not impede its ability to convey a sense of significance.
The Oxford Historic District is unique in the county and reflects the historical development of the town, county and region. It retains a remarkable amount of integrity and evocative power. Its residences, churches, banks, schools, tobacco, commercial and other buildings, coupled with its relative lack of intrusions and non-contributing properties, convey the life, wealth and vibrancy of communities that blossomed under the bright leaf as well as or better than any other towns including — Henderson in Vance County, Roxboro in Person County and South Boston in Halifax County, Virginia — in the region that grew up with the bright leaf.
The physical appearance of Henderson, Oxford's sister town in adjacent Vance County, is an instructive contrast to Oxford. Henderson is a railroad town and its entire physical layout is derived from the railroad's linearity. The railroad came to Henderson in 1838 and it had become the market center for the region by the time the railroad came to Oxford in the 1880s. Therefore Henderson's commercial district, which is listed in the National Register, is much larger than Oxford's and separated physically from its residential areas by railroad tracks and 20th century commercial development. The Oxford Historic District, however, retains its early 19th century, county seat character, its commercial district still centered on its courthouse, its houses set back on wide tree-lined streets radiating out from that commercial and governmental core.
Historic Appearance
The historic appearance of the Oxford Historic District is suggested by its early history and maps, and by the location of its surviving early streets and buildings. Tradition holds that Oxford derives its name from that of the plantation of Samuel Benton. A member of the colonial assembly, Benton arranged for the Granville County seat to be moved in 1764 to his estate, where a new courthouse was built. The present courthouse stands on the same site as this early building. A 2000-acre tract of land, comprising some or all of Benton's estate, was acquired in 1805 by Thomas Blount Littlejohn. In 1812 he sold off fifty acres of land around the courthouse, at the behest of the legislature, to form a town. Four years later Oxford was officially incorporated.[1]
Although Littlejohn is said to have sold begrudgingly, the transaction turned out to be an extremely lucrative one for him as well as for the budding town. He received $2,636.00 for the land and was permitted to keep four lots totalling more than six acres, two of them opposite the courthouse, within the official bounds of the town. The commissioners, in turn, ultimately sold the 50 acres at auction for a total of $4,360.84. One lot alone, a single acre opposite the courthouse at the corner of present day College and Hillsboro streets a corner apparently as central to the town then as it is now — was sold by them for the staggering sum of $457.00.[2]
No buildings survive in the town or the Oxford Historic District that date from prior to the 1820s, but the original development of Oxford is suggested by the plan of it drawn on the 1812 deed in which Littlejohn sold his land to the commissioners. To this day the area on the plan represents the heart of Oxford and its historic district, almost all of which is encompassed by it. The town was centered, as it continues to be, on the courthouse, its limits defined as encompassing an area a "half mile from the courthouse in any direction." It included two springs, each surrounded by a common; 45 lots, 23 in its northern division, 22 to the south; and boarding houses, a school house, a store, a gin house and other unnamed buildings on lots 23, 18, 24 and 31, all of which were owned by and reserved to Littlejohn in the deed. Further, five lots were to be set aside for stores and taverns.[3]
In 1818 and in 1826 the town limits were expanded again "to include all the adjoining improved lots and such other lots and streets as they may lay off and annex thereto." No record of the actual change in town limits survives, but a map drawn in 1826 in conformity with an act of the legislature of that year shows the town having grown to include 79 renumbered lots. As with the plan of 1812, virtually all of these lots, but for the handful of estate size ones at the edges of the town, stand within the bounds of the Oxford Historic District. There was little redivision of the original 45 lots, although four tiny lots created near the courthouse suggest that businesses stood within its shadow.[4]
In the 14 years between the drawing of the maps the town had primarily expanded to the south and east. The lots in the eastern part of town that lie just outside the present bounds of the district are particularly generous, suggesting they were more like small farms or estates than town dwellings. An entry from the journal of Pamela Savage, a young woman from upstate New York who visited Oxford in 1826, describes the rural tranquility of one of the dwellings that stood on a substantial lot: "Visited Mr. Littlejohns' garden, the most elegant I ever saw; besides many rare flowers & plants, he has the Pomegranate, fig, Almond and filbert trees richly laden with fruit." The Littlejohn she refers to is Thomas Blount Littlejohn, who was probably living in lot 37 on the 1826 map, which stands just outside the eastern edge of the district. Small, new town lots stretched more to the south than the north on the 1826 map. The early concentrated development of the blocks between Front Street and Hillsboro and Williamsboro streets is still reflected in the town, for the southern part of the district, which encompasses these southern lots, contains a majority of the town's and district's oldest buildings.[5]
In addition to the two commons of the 1812 plan, a green had been added at the intersection of High, Gilliam (then Harrisburg) and Front streets. Reserved for public use, the green was not divided until the late 1870s. The map of 1826 indicates the major residences existing in Oxford at the time. Only one of these indicated dwellings still stands in Oxford, the Bryant-Kingsbury House. An imposing, seven-bay, Georgian/Federal style dwelling, it was moved outside the bounds of the Oxford Historic District from lot 31 at the northern head of Main (then Raleigh) Street to 417 Goshen Street at the western edge of the district around 1910. An almost exact duplicate of the house — the Williams House — which faced it from the other end of Main Street), was also moved, but in the 1950s it was demolished.[6]
The town was laid out in an irregular grid in 1812, a pattern continued in 1826 and maintained to the present. By 1812 the town had existed, at least as Samuel Benton's plantation and the seat of court, for 48 years, and its streets were likely laid out to accommodate existing buildings, Thomas Blount Littlejohn's holdings and, in the case of at least the town's two springs, geographic features. The original width of the streets, according to the 1812 deed and plan, was to be 90 feet, except for Gilliam Street, which was 60 feet wide. They were named for the towns or geographical features to which they led, and their early and subsequent names suggest the development of the town and the region. Present day Main Street, which then headed south towards the state capital, was named Raleigh on the two maps. Hillsboro Street was named Tar River in 1812, but by 1826 it had acquired the name of the Orange County town, rather than the river, to which it led; in the early 20th century it was briefly called Commercial Avenue, reflecting the tobacco and other business enterprises that lined it. Merrittsville (or Meritsville) Street on the two maps, named for a post office to the east of the town, is now named Williamsboro Street, for a community in neighboring Vance County towards which it runs. McClanahan Street was titled Goshen on the 1826 map, for the community in western Granville County to which it led. The present College Street is unnamed in the original plan of the town, but appears as Grassy Creek, a community near the northern edge of the county, in 1826; it acquired its present name after the building of St. John's College, now the Oxford Orphanage, in the late 1850s. Broad Street first appears on Gray's Map of 1882; it was then named Roxborough Road, for the county seat of neighboring Person County to which it ran. Present day Spring Street — Gum Spring Street on the 1826 map — now continues east through the vanished spring that gave it its name.[7]
Growth continued apace in Oxford and the district in the antebellum years. The decade between 1850 and 1860 saw Oxford's population increase by more than 30 percent, from 669 (278 white, 391 black) to 878 (364 white, 514 black). Its boundaries were accordingly expanded, in 1852, to encompass all property within a thousand yards of the courthouse. These city limits would remain the same until 1947. During this decade the Mason's St. John's College, which they converted to the Oxford Orphanage in the 1870s, was established and the town was an active commercial and court center. A list of commercial occupations from the Census of 1850 includes several merchants, lawyers, clerks and coachmasters, as well as a tailor, shoemaker, blacksmith and other craftsmen. Of the many Greek Revival style buildings raised during the antebellum years in the town, most of the survivors stand within the bounds of the district, particularly in its southern section south of Hillsboro and Williamsboro streets. Gray's New Map of Oxford of 1882 shows numerous houses along College Street (then Grassy Creek) that no longer exist, primarily replaced by buildings raised in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. No maps from between 1826 and 1882, or subsidiary accounts, survive that detail the appearance of the northern part of the district near and along College Street. Gray's Map of 1882 shows, however, that College Street was almost exclusively residential. Most of these houses were likely built prior to the Civil War.[8]
Gray's Map of 1882, when compared with the map of 1826, shows expansion in all directions. The most notable change within the Oxford Historic District is the growth along College Street. Growth also occurred to the southwest of the district along Granville, Orange and Sycamore streets, the site of the former plantation of Rhodes Nash Herndon. A primarily black neighborhood since at least the drafting of Gray's map, this area of town retains a few antebellum residences.[9]
The timely creation of Gray's Map captures a town on the verge of a dramatic transformation. The arrival of the railroad in 1881 and the growth of the bright leaf industry combined to irrevocably change the face of Oxford.. A newspaper article referring to a lost 1880 city directory lists Oxford as having three drug stores, one hotel, two boarding houses, four barrooms, two barber shops, one foundry, a carriage factory and three tobacco warehouses. This modest commercial sector would grow substantially in the years between 1880 and 1890, and Oxford would change from a small town and farm crossroads — a crossroads of which an 1876 newspaper could write "We trust our town authorities will take some action in regard to the many hogs that are allowed to perambulate our streets. It is quite a nuisance." — to a bustling tobacco center.[10]
Two devastating fires, one in November of 1886, the other in March of 1887, were also to change the face of town, at least its commercial district. The 1886 fire burned the west side of Main Street from Hillsboro Street to the former Herndon Street a block south. The 1887 blaze was even more destructive, destroying the same block of Main again, along with a half block of the west side of College Street (where Herndon Block Number 2 now stands) and both sides of Hillsboro Street from College Street west to the edge of the district and a half block beyond. Luckily neither fire jumped Main Street, leaving the town with two major, pre-Civil War, non-residential buildings, the courthouse and the jail. Where the commercial district had previously been almost exclusively frame, it was to be rebuilt in brick. Dr. Henry Clay Herndon, the brother of Rhodes Nash Herndon, was the prime developer of the town's and the historic district's new commercial buildings. He raised four commercial blocks Herndon Block Number 1, Number 2, Number 3 and Number 4 — near the intersection of College, Main, Williamsboro and Hillsboro streets, all of brick. Herndon Block Number 2 still stands largely intact on the northwest corner of College and Hillsboro Street.[11]
The arrival of the Oxford and Henderson Railroad in 1881, with its depot located on the northern side of Williamsboro Street east of the edge of the district, initiated the expansion of Oxford surrounding the historic district. (Both depot and tracks, now gone, had been shifted farther east by 1922.) The appearance of Railroad Avenue and the growth of streets to the east and west of College Street, as well as the creation of King Street (now Kingsbury Street) off Henderson Street southeast of the district, were the results of the town's attempt to meet the demands of its increasing population. The Southern Railway, which entered through the western section of the town in 1888, spawned development along Broad Street and the creation of Cherry Street in the northwestern part of the town. The former Imperial Tobacco Company at West and Goshen streets and the former Liggett & Meyers Prizery at 402 Goshen Street are reminders of the industry that grew up along this railroad, the depot of which no longer stands. Between 1896 and 1904 the Seaboard Air Line Railroad entered through the southeastern part of Oxford. Its depot, which was once located at the center of town on Littlejohn Street, as well as its town tracks, have also been destroyed.[12]
The hard times of the 1890s squelched much of the town's expansion, but by 1900 its recovery had begun and it could boast to having five tobacco sales warehouses, ten tobacco prize warehouses, two tobacco storehouses, three tobacco stemmeries and, its governmental functions not forgotten, 11 lawyers. By 1906 the town had a water works and electric lighting, and by 1916 much of its commercial section was being paved; a 1916 photograph shows crews at work, still using horse-drawn equipment, paving Main Street. Even though the town was expanding in all directions, commercial growth was still largely limited to the town's central intersection contained within the district and the largest and finest houses also continued to be built within the bounds of the district. [13]
Physical expansion after the early 20th century largely took place outside of the district and even the town limits, however. This expansion was recognized by the legal extension of the town boundaries in 1947. As Oxford changed so did its reliance on tobacco. The last Sanborn Map of Oxford done in 1928 shows six tobacco warehouses near the central commercial area of the town, three within the Oxford Historic District and three just at its edge. All standing well into the century, the last was torn down in 1987.
As the Oxford Historic District encompasses the oldest sections of Oxford, the pattern of its streets has, not surprisingly, changed little from those shown on the maps of 1816, 1822 and 1882. The only notable changes since the drafting of Gray's Map in 1882 are the creation of Rectory Street just south of the site of St. Stephen's Episcopal Parsonage on College Street and the swinging of Herndon Avenue to the southeast to connect with Spring Street, which name it now bears. The architecture within the district did change with the economic development of the town and the shift in popular styles, but few buildings were added to the historic district after 1930. Today the Oxford Historic District features the highest concentration of the oldest and finest dwellings in Oxford, as well as most of its early and significant churches and commercial buildings.
District Character
Dating from the post-fire years of the late 1880s to the early 20th century, a significant number of the predominately Italianate detailed, two-story brick commercial structures retain their architectural and historical integrity. The intersection centered at the courthouse where Main, College, Hillsboro and Williamsboro Street unite remains today, as it did in 1811, the hub of commercial and governmental activity in the town.
The two residential sections of the Oxford Historic District to the north and south of the commercial area vary somewhat in character. Southern Oxford, settled somewhat earlier than College Street, has a greater number of older homes situated on smaller lots. The streets in the southern section of the district often come together at T-intersections and the district has no single, major thoroughfare. The intersections create dramatic house lots, providing one with the unexpected pleasure of rounding a corner and having a vista of an avenue with a beautiful home rising at the end. Such already impressive dwellings as the Chateauesque Beverly S. Royster House (315 Raleigh Street) at the eastern head of Front Street and the James M. Currin House (213 High Street) at the northern head of Raleigh Street, make full use of their locations. College Street, to the north of the commercial area, is in contrast a major thoroughfare, a long, wide, tree-lined avenue bordered by beautiful homes and churches set back from the road on large lots. House after house, built from the 1820s through the 1920s, declare the prosperity of Oxford throughout much of its historic growth. Both residential areas share an astonishing collection of impeccably maintained homes representing a wealth of styles from the Georgian and Federal through the bungalow and Period Revival cottage.
Because the architectural and historical integrity of the older buildings within the Oxford Historic District remains intact, and few intrusions have taken place, it is possible to stroll the sidewalks of the historic district and view an Oxford not all together different from one 50 or 60 years ago. On one side of a street a Georgian/Federal style house evokes images of the village of Oxford built on Thomas Blount Littlejohn's land in the early 1800s; on the other one finds the Oxford of bright leaf tobacco embodied in a Queen Anne home built by a tobacco merchant in the 1880s, or a Neo-Classical mansion built by a beneficiary of tobacco dollars in the 1910s. And just as it did when the town was laid out in 1811, the Oxford Historic District orbits around its historic courthouse.
Endnotes
References
Carlson, Andrew J. "A Short History of Granville County, North Carolina." Unpublished history commissioned for Granville County inventory project, located at NC Division of Archives and History.
Granville County Deeds. Granville County Courthouse; Oxford, North Carolina.
Granville County Tax Records. Granville County Tax Department, Oxford, North Carolina.
Granville County Wills. Granville County Courthouse, Oxford, North Carolina.
"Gray's New Map of Oxford, Granville County, North Carolina." Philadelphia: O.W. Gray & Son, 1882.
Hays, Francis B., Collection. Unpublished collection of 135 scrapbooks on Granville County history located at Richard H. Thornton Public Library, Oxford, North Carolina.
Intensive architectural inventory of Granville County, North Carolina, 1986-1987, conducted by Marvin A. Brown, architectural historian, and Patricia A. Esperon, historian, and supervised by Davyd Foard Hood, state historic preservation officer. Files — which included computer inventory forms, field notes, extensive black and white photographs and color slides, research notes and narrative architectural/historical descriptions - located at NC Division of Archives and History.
Interviews with numerous homeowners, descendants of builders and others in Oxford, 1986-1987.
Oxford City Directories: 1929 (located in North Carolina Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), 1942, 1959, 1965, 1971, 1976, 1980, 1986 (located at Thornton Public Library, Oxford).
Salls, Helen Harriet, "Pamela Savage of Champlain, Healthseeker in Oxford," North Carolina Historical Review, Vol.XXIX, October, 1952.
Sanborn Map Company. "Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps for Oxford, North Carolina." New York: Sanborn Map Company, 1885, 1888, 1892, 1909, 1915, 1922, 1928.
United States Manuscript Censuses. Microfilm for Granville County located at Thornton Public Library, Oxford.
‡ Marvin Brown, Architectural Historian, Granville County and Patricia Esperon, Historian, Oxford Historic Survey, Oxford Historic District, Granville County, NC, nomination document, 1987, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, Washington, D.C.
Street Names
Broad Street • Cherry Street • Coggeshall Street • College Street • Court Street • Front Street East • Front Street West • Gilliam Street • High Street • Hillsboro Street • Littlejohn Street • Main Street • McClanahan Street East • McClanahan Street West • New College Street • Raleigh Street • Rectory Street • Route 15 • Spring Street East • Watkins Street • West Street • Williamsboro Street