Annals of Progress: The Story of Lenoir County and Kinston, North Carolina. Raleigh: State Department of Archives and History, 1963.
Colonial North Carolina: A History. Co-author with Hugh Lefler. New York: Scribner, 1973.
The Carolina Charter of 1663. Raleigh: State Department of Archives and History, 1954.
Correspondence of William Tryon and Other Selected Papers, editor. Raleigh: Division of Archives and History, 1980-1981.
Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, editor. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979-1996. 6 vols.
Encyclopedia of North Carolina, editor. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press in Association with University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library, 2006.
England & Roanoke: A Collection of Poems, 1584-1987: People, Places, Events, co-compiler with Virginia W. Powell. Raleigh: America’s Four Hundredth Anniversary Committee, 1988.
The First State University: A Pictorial History of The University of North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972.
Higher Education in North Carolina. Raleigh: State Department of Archives and History, 1964.
John Pory, 1952-1636: The Life and Letters of a Man of Many Parts. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977.
North Carolina. New York: Franklin Watts, 1966.
North Carolina: A Bicentennial History. New York: Norton, 1977.
North Carolina: A Proud State in Our Nation. Lexington, Mass: D. C. Heath, 1993.
North Carolina Fiction, 1734-1957: An Annotated Bibliography, editor. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Library, 1958.
The North Carolina Colony. New York: Crowell-Collier, 1969.
The North Carolina Gazetteer. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968.
North Carolina Lives: The Tar Heel Who’sWho, editor. Hopkinsville, Ky.: Historical Record Association, 1962.
North Carolina: Our People, Places, and Past, with James D. Charlet and Dixie Lee Spiegel. Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 1987.
North Carolina: The Story of a Special Kind of Place. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 1987.
North Carolina through Four Centuries. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.
Paradise Preserved: A History of the Roanoke Island Historical Association and Related Organizations. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965.
The Proprietors of Carolina. Raleigh: Carolina Charter Tercentenary Commission, 1963.
The Regulators in North Carolina: A Documentary History, 1759-1776, co-editor. Raleigh: State Department of Archives and History, 1971.
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, 1753-1953. Salisbury, N.C.: St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, 1953.
When the Past Refused to Die: A History of Caswell County, North Carolina, 1777-1977. Durham, N.C.: Moore Publishing Company, 1977.