Past owners of this house include H.H. Poole, for whom a middle school in Stafford County is named.
Owners of this lot have included Andrew Jackson, one of the earlier members of the street’s Black community; Henry Crismond, Fredericksburg’s postmaster and owner of Crismond’s Shoe Store; noted local Black educators Addie and Henry Harrison Poole; and beloved radio host Brian Strobel and his wife, Jennifer, a former Free Lance-Star staff writer.
Jackson bought the lot in 1887 at a public auction, according to research conducted in 2008 by Cynthia Helton for the Historic Fredericksburg Foundation’s marker committee. He worked at John Hurkamp’s tannery, which was one of the local businesses that employed Blacks after the Civil War, for at least 35 years, and died in 1900.
A relative, Mary Eliza Jackson, bought the lots and lived there with her son, James Thompson. The Fredericksburg City Directory for 1910-11 lists Mary as a laundress and her son as a driver.
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In 1927, James Thompson took out a loan for $1,200 and built the house that currently sits on the lot. Ten years later, he sold the house to the Crismonds. H.F. Crismond had been appointed Postmaster to the City of Fredericksburg by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935 and his and his wife’s social activities were frequently written up in the paper.
The Crismonds didn’t live at 1109 Douglas Street but had rented it since 1937 to Addie and H.H. Poole, and the Pooles bought the house in 1948, for $4,500, from the Crismonds’ son.
Both the Pooles were teachers in Stafford County. Addie Poole was “one of three teachers at a three-room school in Hartwood for Blacks, which went through the seventh grade,” according to Helton’s research.
Her husband, Henry Harrison, or H.H., Poole, taught school in Maryland and Virginia, was the supervisor of Stafford Negro Schools in 1923, and was later supervisor of King George Schools. H.H. Poole Middle School is named for him.
In 1980 the house was sold to Brian Strobel, who hosted the 5 a.m. morning show on WFLS radio for 30 years, though it seems Addie Poole continued to live there until her death in 1986 at the age of 97. Her obituary in the Free Lance-Star gives her address as 1109 Douglas Street.
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