200 S. HILLSBOROUGH AVE. / BILLY STRAYHORN CHILDHOOD HOME (SITE)

Jobe L. and Elizabeth "Lizzie" A. (Craig) Strayhorn purchased Hillsborough town lot 232 in November 1889 from Edwin Dimmock. There likely was already a house on the lot. Jobe worked at one (or both) of the local cotton mills as a laborer.

Their grandson, famous jazz musician William "Billy" T. Strayhorn, lived with them for awhile during his early childhood, and attended grade/elementary school locally (circa 1920-1925). He learned to play music on his grandmother's piano. Years later, Strayhorn told an interviewer that his grandmother was the primary influence during his first ten years (she died when he was eight years old), and her house felt like his first real home.

Lizzie Strayhorn died in June 1923. Jobe Strayhorn sold the property in March/April 1925. He died January 22, 1951 at Lincoln Hospital in Durham. They are both buried in Maplewood Cemetery in Hillsborough.

The house now on the site was likely built in the 1930s, but maybe as late as 1946.

(Below in italics is from the National Register listing; not verified for accuracy by this author.)

This one-story, front-gabled, Craftsman-style house is three bays wide and triple-pile with a brick veneer and stucco in the pedimented gables. The house has three interior brick chimneys and projecting, gabled bays on the right (north) and left (south) elevations. It has three-over-one, Craftsman-style, wood-sash windows with yellow-brick windowsills and lintels. There is also a yellow-brick soldier-course watertable and a yellow- brick band at the fascia. The fifteen-light French door is sheltered by a full-width, hip-roofed porch supported by tapered wood posts on stone piers. A pair of five-light windows are located in the front gable. County tax records date the building to 1946.

07.31.2016 (G. Kueber)