About Dickerson’s Chapel AME Church orig.1790
This brick veneer structure originally served as the Orange County Courthouse from 1790 to 1844, built at the corner of Churton and King Streets. In 1845, the Rev. Elias Dodson, Hillsborough’s first Baptist minister, bought the discarded courthouse and had it moved up Churton Street to its present site.
It served as the First Baptist Church until about 1862. About that time three Philadelphia Quakers purchased the building and established a school for African-American children. In 1886 they conveyed the building to the trustees of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, known locally as Dickerson’s Chapel.