People are very particular about their barbeque. For the Faribault family, barbeque means smoky pork.

For decades, the smell of barbeque wafted up the street on Faribault Lane in Hillsborough. Generations of Faribaults used a “barbeque building” there to cook meat that would fuel a catering business, a stand, and short-lived restaurant over the years.

The Faribault family cooking tradition goes back generations to formerly enslaved Henderson and Peggy Faribault. Henderson cooked for several locations in the Piedmont before settling in Hillsborough. Henderson Faribault made sure each of his eight children attended school and provided them with land on what is now known as Faribault Lane.

Census documents show a line of Faribaults living on their namesake lane and listing their occupation as cook. The talent flowed to Edwin Faribault and then Walter Faribault, Sr., who worked as cooks at a barbeque stand, according to the 1930 census.

Walter Faribault, Jr. is in the fourth generation of Faribault barbeque cooks. He remembers his father being very adamant about the methods used to cook good barbeque – a legacy that was passed down to him.

While the family no longer smokes pork there, the building remains on Faribault Lane. Whether you got your food at the family stand, from its catering business, or at the short-lived restaurant, if there was Faribault barbeque around then people were gathering and enjoying themselves.

“I’m talking about cooking barbecue pigs. He was very adamant about how it should be done. He passed that legacy down to us, to me. I’m the fourth generation of barbecue cooks.”

— Walter Faribault, Jr.