This house [Strawberry Hill] was in all likelihood built shortly after 1792 by William Barksdale, owner of a tobacco warehouse which stood on North Market Street. In 1800 the property was purchased by William Haxall, descendant of an English family from Exning in Suffolk, and with the name of Haxall the house became most prominently associated. Across Friend Street (as this block of modern Hinton Street was then called) was an area also owned by the Haxalls and called the "Garden Lot"; there the family had their private cemetery although the bodies have long since been transferred elsewhere by descendants.

William Haxall, an eager patron of the turf, became indebted to George Keith Taylor, brother-in-law of Chief Justice John Marshall, in the sum of five thousand eight hundred and forty-two dollars, thirteen cents, “current money of Virginia", a debt which was secured to the executors of Taylor's estate, who were Marshall and Benjamin Watkins Leigh, by a deed of trust on "Strawberry Hill" made out in 1827 to Philip Haxall of Richmond and John E. LeMoine of Petersburg. William Haxall died in 1834 in November of which year a deed of release from the deed of trust was granted to the executors of his estate, Robert William Haxall and Richard Barton Haxall. On this same day the executors sold the property to John Maben who, with his wife, took up residence here.

On New Year's Day, 1839, Maben sold "Strawberry Hill" to John Young Stockdell who died in September, 1840. His widow, who had been Charlotte Meade of the prominent Virginia family of that name, sold the place on December 12, 1846, to James Mcllwaine, a younger brother of Archibald Graham Mcllwaine. During the Stockdell occupancy two famous visitors stayed here: John Randolph of Roanoke and the historian, Bishop William Meade, both kinsmen of Mrs. Stockdell. In 1841 two Stockdell daughters were married: Elizabeth Randolph Stockdell to William A. Madison, a great nephew of President James Madison, and Charlotte Meade Stockdell to Edward Randolph.

James McIlwaine, the next owner of the property was married to the former Fanny Dunn, a sister to Martha, the wife of his brother, A. G. McIlwaine. When James McIlwaine died intestate in 1857, "Strawberry Hill" passed to his three children: John T. McIlwaine, Mary F. McIlwaine (afterwards Mrs. W. S. Archer) and Sally W. McIlwaine (afterwards Mrs. W. Roane Ruffin), subject to the dower of his widow who, by a second marriage, became a Mrs. Poindexter. The result of this situation was that the property was divided into thirds, although John T. McIlwaine died unmarried and intestate and his interest passed by operation of law to his sisters.

Even before the house was physically divided about 1880 into three parts it was occupied by two or three families at the same time. Among these was the family of Lucius Green, Confederate soldier; Professor Frederick Charles Hahr, distinguished pianist and composer, who gave lessons in the house; and of Henry V. L. Bird, father of the late Professor Richard Montgomery Bird of the University of Virginia. The late Miss Mary Harrison Bird wrote that the original stairway had to be removed and "a curving one built in each of the parts". She also remembered seeing "three granite pillars on the ground near the street that had supported the iron gate". The east wing, No. 231, was acquired in 1884 by Charles H. Cuthbert, II, whose wife had been Annie McKenney, descendant of Governor Alexander Spotswood and a sister to William Robertson McKenney; the middle section, No. 235, owned by Mrs. W. Roane Ruffin, was occupied for some years by the family of Thomas Whyte; and the west wing, No. 237, was bought in 1868 by Mrs. Samuel Weisiger who had been Miss Lucie A. Leigh.

From the virginia department of historic resources:

As built for William Barksdale in 1792, Strawberry Hill followed a tripartite Palladian form, consisting of a two-story center section flanked by one-story wings. William Haxall, who purchased the house in 1800, enlarged it in 1815-16 by raising the wings to two stories. Despite this change, the house retains its rich early appointments, including a delicately carved pedimented doorway approached by marble steps with scrolled wrought-iron railings. The drawing room woodwork is noteworthy for the shell-carved niches flanking a paneled chimneypiece with a broken pediment. The house underwent significant alterations in the 1880s when it was partitioned into three separate residences, and the entrance was placed off center. The disfiguring changes were removed during a long-term restoration which has returned the house to its former position as one of Petersburg’s finest late Georgian residences. Strawberry Hill contributes to the city of Petersburg’s Folly Castle Historic District.