Mary E. Strayhorn Berry

Life and Orange County connections

Dated events connected with this person, in date order. See these 4 dated events in the chronology →

1. May 1870 Henrietta Heartt is appointed Hillsborough's postmaster Henrietta Heartt becomes the first woman on the list of Hillsborough postmasters, succeeding Dennis Heartt. The Hillsborough Recorder reported on May 25, 1870 that Governor Holden had offered the office to the Heartt family and that it had been declined, and on June 1 that Arch. C. Hunter of University Station had been appointed postmaster. Harriet H. Strayhorn in 1873 and Mary E. Berry in 1882 followed her. People: Dennis Heartt, Mary E. Strayhorn Berry Place: Hillsborough · Also named: Henrietta Heartt, Harriet H. Strayhorn · Also mentions: University StationSearch the index · Lefler and Wager, Orange County, 1752-1952 (1953), p. 370 · Also: Hillsborough Recorder, May 25, 1870, p. 3; Hillsborough Recorder, June 1, 1870, p. 2
2. 1883 The Berry family moves to Sunnyside south of Hillsborough Dr. John and Mary Strayhorn Berry moved from their West King Street house, now known as Two Chimneys, to Sunnyside, the Berry family plantation two miles south of town. Mary Berry tutored her daughter Harriet at home until she was twelve. People: Harriet Morehead Berry Place: Hillsborough · Also named: Dr. John Berry, Mary Berry · Also mentions: Sunnyside, West King StreetSearch the index · NC DNCR: Harriet M. Berry 1877-1940 (G-100)
3. 1934 Mary Strayhorn Berry's recollections of antebellum Hillsborough are typed A typed transcription of Mary Elizabeth Strayhorn Berry's "Reminiscences of the Old South" records the names, family ties and skills of many people enslaved by the Strayhorn, Nichols and other Hillsborough families, and her father's store and cobbler shop. People: William Strayhorn Place: HillsboroughSearch the index · UNC Wilson Library: Mary E. Strayhorn Berry Papers, 1841-1944
4. July 31, 1934 Mary Elizabeth Strayhorn Berry dies and is buried in Chapel Hill Mrs. John Berry, born Mary Elizabeth Strayhorn, a daughter of William F. and Harriett Nichols Strayhorn of Hillsborough, died at 80 at her daughter Harriet's home at Little Switzerland in the mountains, and the next evening she was buried in the Chapel Hill cemetery beside her husband, Dr. John Berry. She had put up the monument over the grave of her uncle, Lieut. Thomas Jackson Strayhorn, at New Hope Church, and his Civil War letters to her mother passed from her to the historian H. M. Wagstaff, who published them in 1936. Place: Chapel Hill · Also named: Thomas Jackson Strayhorn, H. M. Wagstaff · Also mentions: New Hope Church, Chapel Hill cemeterySearch the index · Internet Archive: Henry McGilbert Wagstaff (ed.), "Letters of Thomas Jackson Strayhorn", North Carolina Historical Review 13 (1936), p. 312 · Also: Chapel Hill Weekly, August 3, 1934, p. 4