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Local figure

Robert L. Strowd

Robert L. Strowd was a Chapel Hill farmer and merchant, the son of William F. Strowd, a Populist congressman from Chatham County. He married Fannie Headen of Pittsboro and built a two-story house on family land at what is now Davie Circle. He kept a general store on East Franklin Street, and in 1926 he sold his farm to developers who laid out Davie Woods and Davie Circle.

Source: NCpedia: Strowd, William Franklin

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

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Life and Orange County connections

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

  1. Robert L. Strowd marries and likely builds a two-story L-plan house on land from his father Strowd, a farmer who also kept a store on Franklin Street, received the tract from his father in 1886 and married Frances (Fannie) Headen that year; the house at 51 Davie Circle probably went up then. It stood alone at the edge of town until the area filled in during the 1910s and 1920s. People: Robert L. StrowdSearch the index · NC Digital Collections: Chapel Hill Historic Sites Survey: Final Report (1992), p. 82
  2. Robert L. Strowd runs a general store on Franklin Street Robert L. Strowd had a general store in the building where Charles L. Lindsay had sold furniture, dry goods and groceries. In 1901 he bought the building and its lot from Adele Tankersley. People: Robert L. StrowdSearch the index · Bernard Lee Bryant Jr., Occupants and Structures of Franklin Street, Chapel Hill (1998; Chapel Hill Historical Society, 1999), scan p. 161
  3. Robert L. Strowd's two-story brick Strowd Building goes up on East Franklin Street The Strowd Building was new and already taking tenants in January 1923, when a law fraternity moved in; by March a print shop was planned for its basement. The University Cafeteria had announced in June 1922 that it would open that fall in a larger new building. People: Robert L. StrowdSearch the index · DigitalNC: The Tar Heel, January 12, 1923, p. 4

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.

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Research sources

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Collections and databases

  • NC LIVE: prepared search for Robert L. Strowd 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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