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Local figure

Alfred David Barbee Sr.

Alfred David Barbee Sr. (1909–1993) was an African American stonemason and bricklayer from Carrboro. He learned the trade from his father, Fred Barbee, and his grandfather Toney H. Strayhorn, helping Strayhorn finish a stone dam across Morgan Creek in 1928. From 1945 to 1947 he built his own fieldstone house on Jones Ferry Road. With his brother Willis and his son Alfred Jr., he built walls, dams and chimneys around Chapel Hill and Carrboro.

Source: NC State Historic Preservation Office

Orange County Indexed has not yet linked an indexed work directly to Alfred David Barbee Sr. The biography and the dated events on this page provide sources about Alfred David Barbee Sr.’s life and work. If you know a useful source, tell us.

Research sources

Life and Orange County connections

Dated events connected with this person, earliest first. See these 3 dated events in the chronology →

  1. Mason Toney Strayhorn and his grandson Alfred Barbee finish a stone dam across Morgan Creek Toney Strayhorn, a formerly enslaved Carrboro mason and preacher, completed a thirty-foot-wide stone dam spanning Morgan Creek near University Lake with his grandson Alfred Barbee, whose first masonry job it was. Alfred and his brother Willis Barbee went on to build walls, dams and chimneys around Chapel Hill and Carrboro for sixty years. People: Toney Strayhorn, Alfred David Barbee Sr.Search the index · NC Historic Preservation Office: Heather Fearnbach, Troy M. and Roberta C. Andrews House, National Register nomination (draft, 2026)
  2. Mason Alfred Barbee builds his own house on Jones Ferry Road After working at the Carrboro munitions plant during the war, the African American mason Alfred Barbee spent three years building his own house on Jones Ferry Road near the Strayhorn family homes, using his carpentry as well as his masonry skills. People: Alfred David Barbee Sr.NC Historic Preservation Office: Heather Fearnbach, Troy M. and Roberta C. Andrews House, National Register nomination (draft, 2026)
  3. Black masons build Troy and Roberta Andrews's Sidler-designed house on the family farm Working from plans by Swiss architect Franc Sidler, a former Frank Lloyd Wright apprentice, builder Carl Ellington and the African American masons Willis, Alfred Sr. and Alfred Jr. Barbee raised the Andrews House from stone gathered on the farm, starting in 1965 and finishing in 1967. It is Sidler's only building in the United States and one of the few architect-designed Modernist houses in rural Orange County. People: Roberta C. Andrews, Alfred David Barbee Sr., Troy Monroe AndrewsSearch the index · NC Historic Preservation Office: Heather Fearnbach, Troy M. and Roberta C. Andrews House, National Register nomination (draft, 2026)

Places in this person’s story

Buildings, schools, churches and other sites named in the dated events on this page, the most often named first. The map shows them all.

Map tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors. Site locations from the N.C. State Historic Preservation Office survey, Open Orange and OpenStreetMap; town and community pins mark the middle of their mapped buildings.

All places and the county map →

Named with them in the chronology

People named in the same dated entries as Alfred David Barbee Sr., those sharing the most entries first. Each line links one of the shared entries in the chronology, where its source is cited. A shared entry shows these people in the same event, not how well they knew each other.

Research sources

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Collections and databases

  • NC LIVE: prepared search for Alfred David Barbee Sr. Library card An advanced search of the state’s shared databases already scoped to Orange County’s places and this subject; edit it freely, and sign in through your North Carolina library to read
  • Ancestry Library Edition In the libraryOrange County Public Library Census, birth, death and marriage records, and more, free on the public computers at OCPL libraries

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Books about Alfred David Barbee Sr.

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