The original owner of 154 Holbrook Avenue, Lysander Braddus Conway, was born in 1871 at Laurel Cliff Farm in Pittsylvania County, the sixth of eight children born to Lysander Blaire Conway and Elizabeth Jones Gouldin. Like his brother, Danville developer and president of Danville Lumber & Manufacturing Company, Powhattan Fitzhugh Conway, he was educated in Danville’s public schools. Mr. Conway was married twice, firstly to Maria Louise Anderson in November of 1894. She died suddenly in August of the following year. In 1901, Mr. Conway married Mildred Merrill Hoge of Staunton, Virginia.

Mr. Conway began work at the age of eighteen, operating a store in Caroline County. He next went into banking and was employed by W.S. Patton & Co. bank for thirteen years. In 1903 he began employment as treasurer of Danville Knitting Mills. Four years later he commissioned the construction of a Georgian Revival home at 154 Holbrook Avenue.

In 1922, Mr. Conway returned to Laurel Cliff farm, though he never surrendered his Danville interests. He continued to serve as acting director of the First National Bank of Danville. He also served on the boards (including as acting president) of the Danville Traction and Power Company (that which ran the streetcar) and the Perpetual Building and Loan and Savings Company, and organization from which the money to build many of the Old West End’s homes was borrowed. For fourteen years he was a member of the city council.

Laurel Cliff Farm was located ten miles outside of Danville on the Ferry Road, and it was here he died and was buried in 1934 following a stroke.

The new owners of the Holbrook Avenue property were Strathmore and May Owens. Mr. Owens was born in North Danville in 1883. He married May Skinner Shuff in 1904 and was employed as a salesman in a hardware store at that time. By 1920 he was a wholesale merchant dealing in automobile parts and accessories. By 1930, he had risen to the position of president in that enterprise. Sometime before 1940 he changed careers and was employed in the banking industry. The Owens family maintained the Holbrook Avenue property until around 1947 when the house became a parsonage for Mt. Vernon United Methodist Church for which function it served until it was purchased by Fitzhugh and Sara Hiltzheimer who spent the next twenty-two years restoring and maintaining the home until it became the property of Bob and Mona Beecy, well-known in Danville and in the Old West End for their multiple restoration efforts.

The stately Georgian Revival home is presently the property of Frank and Denise Van Valkenburg.

Sources:
Census and Vital records found at Familysearch.org
Images and vital information, including biographical sketches found at FindaGrave.com
Death notices and other information found in the Danville Register, Danville Bee and other newspaper archives at Newspapers.com and GenealogyBank.com
Census, Directory, Newspaper, and other information compiled by Paul Liepe