Book Launch: The Life and Times of Job Berry September 26, 4:00-5:30 pm, St. Matthew’s Education Building

Here’s your chance to experience life in Hillsborough in the latter half of the 19 th century. Imagine walking by the county courthouse at Churton and King, watching lawyer and legislator Frederick Strudwick rubbing shoulders with other policy makers of the day. Smell the pungent aroma of tobacco in the nearby warehouse. Stop by Henry Brown’s mercantile shop down the street for some tea or snuff. Listen quietly on the corner to the latest rumblings about the Ku Klux Klan. Pick up the most recent issue of the Hillsborough Recorder for the latest news and gossip. You might make plans to attend Job Berry’s upcoming fair to raise money for the new Freedmen’s School at Churton and Queen. If you’re lucky, you might hear the girls at the Nash and Kollock School practicing the piano for their upcoming soiree. And at the nearby Eno River, you could even see Peggy Faribault on her way to help birth a baby.

You can experience all this and more in The Life & Times of Job Berry, a collaborative work of fifteen local authors singing the praises—and the failures—of Hillsborough of the time. This historical biography tells the stories of interesting people from slavery to freedom, from war to peace, and from Jim Crow to Civil Rights. You’ll read about politics, education, music, art, literature, love, kidnapping, murder, real estate, commerce, tragedy, and hope.

Join the authors at St. Matthew’s the last Saturday in September to learn their stories of Hillsborough, North Carolina, from the late nineteenth century, plus events a hundred years later. Writers include Managing Editor Betty Eidenier, Jan Irwin, Janie Morris, Bryce Little, Beverly A. Scarlett, Deirdre Barone, Christine Benoodt, Doris Wilson, Brooks Graebner, Kate Faherty, Steve J. Rankin, Kathie Lynch Brown, Courtney Soling Smith, Horace Johnson, Jr., Kelly Arnold. Kevin Bell provided illustrations.