Foster-Ervin House

(The information below in italics is from the Preservation Durham Plaque Application for the Foster-Ervin House)

Samuel Mark Foster and his wife Ella Irene High Foster purchased the property at 1207 N.  Gregson Street in April 1929 and had the handsome brick bungalow constructed soon thereafter,  occupying it by the time the 1930 Durham city directory was printed. Foster was a longtime shoe  salesman in Durham. His WWI draft cards describes him as tall and slender with brown eyes and light  hair. He was born in Mecklenburg County in 1891 but had moved to East Durham with his family before  1911 when he married 18-year-old Bessie Holt. The couple had two children, Anne Lois Foster, born  January 10, 1913, and James Wallace Foster, born March 7, 1917. Just two months after the birth of their  son, Bessie died suddenly, while she slept. Her death certificate describes her death as sudden and the  cause unknown. S. M. Foster married Ella High of Durham two years later, in August 1919. The Fosters  lived in East Durham until they moved into their new home on Gregson Street in late 1929 or early  1930. At the time, Foster was vice president of Dickey-Bobbit-Foster, Inc. at 114 W. Main Street in  downtown Durham, the present site of Gurley’s Pharmacy. Dickey-Bobbit-Foster was a full service shoe  store and sold women’s Ready-To-Wear clothing. Around 1933-34, Foster went to work with Harry van  Straaten at The Durham Men’s Shop at 111 W. Main. This business would become known as van  Straaten’s and move to 118 W. Main where it remained for many years. During the Foster’s time on N.  Gregson Street, their daughter, Anne Lois Foster, graduated from Durham High in 1929 and from Duke University with a teaching degree in 1933. After her graduation from Duke, she lived at home at 1207 N.  Gregson Street and taught school. 

Whether for reasons financial or familial, the Fosters sold 1207 N. Gregson Street to Spencer  and Mary Louise Ervin in April 1938. The Fosters returned to East Durham, where they resided at 605  N. Driver Avenue. 

Spencer and Louise Ervin bought 1207 N. Gregson Street in April 1938, four years after their  marriage in 1934. Both had grown up in North Carolina, Spencer in the western part of the state, and  Louise, as she was called, in the eastern part of the state. Spencer graduated from Duke University in  1927, and Louise attended (and likely graduated from) the North Carolina College for Women in  Greensboro (now UNC-G). Yearbooks show her as a freshman in 1924 and a junior in 1926, making the  year of her graduation also 1927. The 1927 Duke Chanticleer states that Spencer would be beginning “his  business career with one of the large tobacco corporations,” and indeed he went to work as a foreman  for Liggett & Myers Tobacco Corporation and spent his entire career with Liggett & Myers in that role.  Louise spent her career as a teacher in several Durham public schools. The Ervins had one child, Mary  Alice Ervin, born on October 11, 1943. Spencer died in 1975 when the Ervins were still living at 1207 N.  Gregson Street, and Louise sold the home in 1980 to Rosalind Amy Schaefer. 

Rosalind Schafer grew up in and around New York City and earned her undergraduate degree  from Johns Hopkins University. She received her doctoral degree in clinical psychology from Duke  University around the time she purchased the Gregson Street house from Mrs. Erwin. Schaefer married  Jonathan Abram in 1981, and they resided in the home until 1987. Abram had also grown up in and  around New York City. He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and had his own  company developing commercial real estate while living on North Gregson Street. The Abrams continue  to live in the area (Chapel Hill) at the time of this writing (2021). Rosalind teaches and practices clinical  psychology at UNC, while Adam Abram is non-executive chairman of the board of the James River  Group Holdings, Ltd. in Chapel Hill. 

 
The Abrams sold 1207 N. Gregson in 1987 to Kevin Fallon and Kathy Sikes. Kevin Jerome Fallon  was born in Rochester, New York, on November 5, 1949. He graduated from Honeoye Falls High School  in 1967 and received his New York State Regents diploma from St. John Fisher College in Rochester,  New York. Kevin was a right-handed pitcher signed by the Geneva (NY) Senators in the NY-Pennsylvania  League in the Washington Senators organization in 1968. He played single A baseball for two years in the  minor leagues, ending his career with the Shelby (NC) Senators in the Western Carolinas League in 1969.  Kathy Lynn Sikes was born December 25, 1958 in Stanly County, NC. She graduated from East  Mecklenburg High School in Charlotte in 1977. Kevin and Kathy are currently (as of 2021) longtime  Trinity Park residents living at 1020 Urban Avenue. They have three grown children.