By Gene Galin
Pittsboro, NC – For the second time in its long history, the original New Salem chapel has been lifted from the ground and carried to a new location. The 1883 building’s latest move, completed on the church’s Old Graham Road property, clears space for a planned 10,000-square-foot family life center while preserving a structure that has served generations of worshippers. Church member Terry Herndon said the congregation raised more than $200,000 to relocate, stabilize and modernize the chapel rather than demolish it as the church expands.
The scene represented an unusual convergence of Chatham County history and modern engineering: a wooden chapel constructed 143 years ago resting on a moving framework while a specialized crew carefully repositioned it on the church campus.
For Terry, the operation was not simply about preserving lumber, windows or an old roofline. It was about maintaining a physical connection to the people who built the chapel, worshipped inside it, expanded it and, around 1920, moved it for the first time.
“We want to try to save it,” Herndon told me in our July 29th conversation about the project.
The relocation is part of a larger transformation at New Salem Church, located at 5030 Old Graham Road north of Pittsboro. The congregation currently holds two Sunday services, at 9 and 10:30 a.m., in its main sanctuary. Church leaders say attendance growth has created demand for more worship, fellowship and ministry space.
The old chapel, however, is not being retired or converted into a static exhibit. Plans call for it to return to daily church use after a new foundation is completed and its electrical, heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems are upgraded.
That continued use may ultimately be the most important part of the project. New Salem is not preserving the chapel as a monument to a vanished institution. It is preserving the oldest part of an active congregation that is preparing for another generation.
A building that has already traveled once
The precise details of New Salem’s early history have largely been passed down through the congregation, family memories and commemorative materials. According to Herndon, the original chapel was built in 1883 and remained near the road until approximately 1920.
Herndon was not present for that first relocation, but his mother was.
She was about 6 years old, he recalled, when workers used draft horses and logs to move the building away from what was then a dirt road. The chapel was raised, placed on logs and rolled across the property to the location it would occupy for approximately 105 years.
The account illustrates how rural communities moved structures long before hydraulic lifting systems, powered dollies and computerized leveling equipment became available. Buildings were valuable assets, and communities sometimes relocated them rather than abandoning usable materials or reconstructing from the ground up.
Herndon said the first move was prompted by a relatively new presence on rural Chatham County roads: automobiles.
As cars became more common, vehicles passed the chapel at speeds that may seem modest today but were considered fast on an unpaved road. Herndon said motorists traveled at roughly 20 to 25 mph, sending clouds of dust through the chapel’s open windows.
The congregation’s solution was practical. Instead of continually enduring the dust, members moved the building farther from the road.
They also turned it.
The chapel had apparently faced in the general direction of Pittsboro before the move. At its new location, it was repositioned to face the road, altering both its physical orientation and its relationship to the property.
Additions reflected changing church needs
The building that was lifted in 2026 was not identical to the one constructed in 1883.
After the first move, New Salem members gradually enlarged and adapted the chapel. Classrooms were added along its sides. A vestibule was constructed at the front, and the entrance was later extended to include a substantial porch.
Some of those spaces eventually served as offices for the church secretary and pastor. The modifications demonstrate that the chapel was never treated as an untouchable artifact. It changed as the congregation’s needs changed.
That history of alteration is common among rural churches. A simple worship building may later acquire Sunday school rooms, offices, kitchens, fellowship areas, porches, accessibility improvements and mechanical systems. Each addition records a different stage in the congregation’s development.
Those adaptations can also complicate preservation.
Before the latest relocation, the chapel’s side wings had to be removed. The front section, including its later additions, was retained. Church volunteers performed demolition and preparation work before the professional movers could begin lifting the primary structure.
The removal of the side additions was therefore not necessarily an attempt to make the chapel look exactly as it did in 1883. It was partly a practical requirement of moving the building and fitting it into a revised campus plan.
That distinction matters. The project is not a full historical restoration intended to reproduce one particular year. Instead, the church is preserving the main building while preparing it for continued service.
Herndon said New Salem’s two services, if combined into one gathering, would likely fill or exceed the available seating in the current sanctuary. The two-service schedule allows the church to distribute attendance and leaves room for visitors, but the underlying capacity issue remains.
New Salem has two Sunday worship times and promotes a range of ministries, including programs for children, youth, women, men, widows and Sunday small groups. Wednesday Bible study, children’s programming and youth activities are scheduled at 6:30 p.m.
Senior Pastor Chris Gambos has served the congregation since 2003. The church’s current leadership also includes associate pastors Bill Kolb and Tripp Harmon.
The chapel move is therefore one part of a broader campus plan shaped by attendance, programming and the practical requirements of an active church.
From horses and logs to structural movers
The latest relocation was handled by Oldham House Moving and Lifting, a North Carolina company specializing in the relocation and elevation of buildings.
The company describes itself as a third-generation operation with experience in historical preservation, residential moves and commercial projects. It reports working with frame, brick, truss and other structural types, including buildings removed from or positioned over basements.
Herndon described the moving crew as experienced and careful. He noted that the family associated with the business has a long history in structural moving.
The methods used in 2026 were considerably different from those remembered from the chapel’s first relocation.
In the earlier account, workers depended on draft horses, logs, manpower and mechanical leverage. The modern operation required a carefully designed support system capable of distributing the building’s weight and limiting flex as it was separated from its foundation.
The chapel did not have to travel down a public highway or cross a long distance. Even a short move on the same property, however, demands precision. A structure built in 1883 was not engineered with future relocation in mind, and decades of additions and alterations can create uneven loads or hidden weaknesses.
The goal is not simply to make the building move. It must arrive in a condition that allows it to be stabilized, repaired and reused.
That makes preparation as important as the visible moment when the chapel begins rolling.
Months of work before the move
To spectators, the most dramatic portion of the project may have appeared to occur over a matter of hours. Herndon said the actual process extended over several months.
Church members began preparatory work in late April or May after receiving authorization to proceed. Volunteers removed the side additions and completed demolition required before the moving company could begin its portion of the job.
Engineering and permitting consumed much of the schedule.
The project required engineered plans, along with detailed information about the proposed electrical and HVAC systems. Plans moved between engineers and Chatham County reviewers before the necessary permit was issued.
Herndon said approval arrived roughly two weeks before the move. Once the permit was in hand, work accelerated.
The delay reflected the complexity of putting an old building into active service under contemporary safety and construction requirements.
Not a museum piece
Once the chapel is secured at its new location, the church expects to return staff offices to the building.
Herndon said the secretary and pastor will probably use it again after the work is completed. That would restore a function the chapel served before the relocation.
The plan reflects a “living preservation” model: A historic building survives because it remains useful.
A permanent display could document the 1883 construction, the move around 1920, subsequent additions, the 2026 relocation and the families associated with the chapel. Photographs of the lifting operation, engineering drawings and oral histories from longtime members could help future visitors understand why the building stands where it does.
Herndon mentioned commemorative plates and cups produced for the chapel’s 100th anniversary. Some remain in the community, he said. Those objects, combined with church records, family photographs and newspaper accounts, could form the basis of a more complete historical archive.
The Chatham Community Library’s local history and genealogy collection includes church and community histories, family materials and access to digitized newspapers. The Chatham County Historical Association also maintains research collections and local-history resources that may help church members document details not preserved in current institutional records.
A family memory becomes community history
Herndon’s account of his mother watching the first move gives the New Salem story an unusually direct link between the two relocations.
A child who saw draft horses roll the chapel away from a dusty road passed that memory to a son who later helped prepare the same building for a modern structural-moving crew.
That connection illustrates how local history survives.
Official records, deeds, photographs and architectural surveys are essential, but personal recollections often preserve details that formal documents omit: the dust entering windows, the horses leaning into their harnesses, the direction the building originally faced and the sense of occasion surrounding a move.
Historic newspapers contain references to activities at New Salem, including a 1923 notice concerning a revival at the church. Cemetery records also identify New Salem Baptist Church at the present Old Graham Road address. Such sources can provide anchors for a broader timeline, even when they do not directly document the move.
The chapel’s next chapter
New Salem’s original chapel has now crossed the church property for what Terry Herndon hopes will be the final time.
Built in 1883, moved around 1920 and relocated again in 2026, the structure has survived because successive generations found ways to make it useful. It began as the congregation’s primary place of worship, acquired classrooms and offices, and will now be upgraded for continued service as a larger church campus develops around it.
The project required more than $200,000 in donations, months of demolition and preparation, professional engineering, county permitting and the work of an experienced structural-moving crew. The move clears the way for a proposed 10,000-square-foot family life center while preventing the chapel from becoming a casualty of expansion.
Much remains to be done. The building must be secured to its foundation, repaired, wired, climate-controlled and inspected. The old fellowship hall must eventually be removed, and plans for the new center and worship improvements must advance.
Yet the central preservation decision has already been made.
New Salem did not merely photograph the chapel before clearing the site. It carried the building forward.
When the chapel reopens, it will stand as evidence that preservation does not always mean freezing a place in time. Sometimes it means lifting the past, moving it carefully and giving it new work to do.