A small family cemetery sits near East Corbin Street, shaded by large trees and enclosed by a sturdy fence. There are no headstones, but it is known who is buried there: 19th century Black carpenter Joseph Nichols, his wife Harriet, and eight descendants. Today, the numerous descendants of the Nichols family are an integral part of the fabric of Hillsborough and beyond.
Joe Nichols was born into slavery, likely about 1822. He worked as a skilled carpenter during enslavement and was the head house carpenter for John Berry, the prominent Hillsborough builder responsible for the 1845 Orange County courthouse and other buildings in town and across the state. After emancipation, Nichols continued a long career as a carpenter, for Berry and other clients. He and Harriet raised six children, several brought into the family from Nichols’ previous marriages. They lived on two acres he purchased in 1869 in the Mars Hill neighborhood (named for the road which led to Mars Hill church a few miles north of town). The community included many skilled Black craftsmen who helped to build Hillsborough and the surrounding areas in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Joe Nichols died in 1889. The Nichols cemetery is one of the original elements of the Mars Hill neighborhood to survive the changes of the 20th century. The cemetery became overgrown in recent years, and with the blessing and help of Nichols descendants, volunteers with the Preservation Fund of Hillsborough and the Historic Hillsborough Commission met in November, 2021 to clear the plot of vines, weeds and saplings. St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church funded the installation of a sign identifying the cemetery.
The sign stands in front of the cemetery, behind the Town offices on E. Corbin St. It was unveiled and dedicated on May 28, 2022 at an event organized by Dr. Shapeara Hall and Mrs. Doris Wilson, descendants of Joseph Nichols, and PFH board member Betty Eidenier. Many more Nichols attended the dedication on a beautiful spring morning along with other townspeople. Local historian Steve Peck provided a biographical overview of Nichols’ life, and Hillsborough Mayor Jenn Weaver honored the Nichols family’s contributions to the Town over the past 200 years. The event was crowned by beautiful music from singer Veta Neville and saxophonist Collin Williams, and a moving poem written for the occasion by NC Poet Laureate, Jaki Shelton Green.
The Preservation Fund of Hillsborough plans to continue to document and compile information on the Mars Hill neighborhood, in keeping with its mission to “direct attention to Hillsborough sites, buildings, residences and gardens and other places of historical or architectural interest to increase and diffuse knowledge about and appreciation of such places.”
Nichols Cemetery Dedication
Love Note to the Ancestors
We cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over our heads, but we can refuse to let them build nests in our hair. Who stops to record the whimpering of an ocean? I’ve seen you wrestling with the frozen tears of a moon. I know how you measure your own heart beats with the stretching of olive branches. I’ve heard you scolding the wind for changing her course, her song. I listen to you scrape your crystalized tears from the roof of your mother’s grave, from the hem of your sister’s shroud, from the womb of a raped daughter. I have watched prayers crawl up your arms and dig into your heart. I’ve become blinded by all the Light that lives there, all the Light that your hands continue to harvest. All the Light and love you offered to each Middle Passage morning when you decided to live and scatter your seeds.
Dear ancestors, thank you for being our mirrors showing us that we are not the stories that anyone has made of us. We never were. We are energy and matter untethered from those who meant to contain us, we are rearranging the structure of who we be, who we are becoming collectively in the face of any puny narratives thrust upon us.
Dear ancestors, we are here now bringing the light, the compassionate fight for justice and equity as your generations move into spaces that were denied to you. We are here now as the truthtellers ensuring that your unborn generations will know the story of your journey in this place of Orange County.
Dear ancestors, we are here now to nurture, manifest, and protect your wildest dreams that were muted, silenced, erased, and made invisible. We are here now standing on your sacred ground offering you the peace that your soul and heart yearned for.