Northampton County, located along the fall line between the Coastal Plain and Piedmont regions of North Carolina, was formed in 1741 from Bertie County and named for James Compton, earl of Northampton. It is bordered in part by the state of Virginia. Early inhabitants of the county were the Tuscarora and Meherrin Indians, followed by Scottish, Scotch-Irish, French Huguenot, and English settlers. The county seat, Jackson, was established in 1742 as Northampton Courthouse; the name was changed in 1823 in honor of U.S. president Andrew Jackson. Other communities in Northampton County include Gaston, Garysburg, Rich Square, Seaboard, Vultare, Severn, Margarettsville, and Milwaukee. Notable physical features of the county include the Roanoke River, Roanoke Rapids, Occoneechee Neck, Taylors Mill Pond, and Gumberry and Panther Swamps.

The Peebles House (nineteenth century), Lee-Grant Farm (ca. 1830), Cedar Grove Quaker Meetinghouse (1868), and Duke-Lawrence House (mid-eighteenth century) are a few of Northampton County's historic attractions. The region hosted an active horse racing scene in the early nineteenth century, which predated that in Kentucky. Sir Archie, a noted thoroughbred, died in 1833 and is buried at Mowfields. Cultural institutions include the Jackson Museum and Northampton Memorial Library. Northampton County also hosts annual events such as the Northampton County Farm Festival June Jubilee.

Important agricultural products of Northampton County include peanuts, soybeans, corn, cotton, broilers, and hogs. Manufactured goods such as chemicals, foodstuffs, farm machinery, lumber and other wood products, and apparel are also produced in the county. In 2004 Northampton County's estimated population was 21,500.

Moore, Godwin Cotton

7 Nov. 1806–16 May 1880

Godwin Cotton Moore, physician and political and religious leader, was born in Hertford County, the oldest of three children of James Wright and Esther Cotton Moore. The elder Moore had moved to Hertford from Nansemond County, Va., on his marriage to Esther. Godwin's maternal great-grandfather, Arthur Cotton, is said to have settled near the village of St. Johns in what is now Hertford County on his marriage to Elizabeth Rutland, the daughter of James Rutland. He was the builder of Mulberry Grove, the brick plantation house that young Moore later inherited.

Godwin Moore was prepared for college at the Hertford Academy, Murfreesboro (then operated by Thomas O'Grady), and at the Bingham School, Hillsborough, entering The University of North Carolina in 1822. His studies were interrupted prior to completion of his junior year. Subsequently, he studied medicine with his brother-in-law, Dr. N. P. Fletcher, in Brunswick County, Va. He then enrolled in the Medical College of the University of Pennsylvania, receiving the M.D. degree in 1828. Afterwards Moore attained considerable success as a general practitioner in Hertford, Northampton, and Bertie counties.

Although he was a Democrat residing in predominately Whig territory, Moore was elected to represent Hertford County in the House of Commons in 1831 and in the senate in 1842. He lost bids to serve as a delegate to the state convention in 1835 and to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1837. In later years, he served successive terms in the state house of representatives (1866–67 and 1867–68).

Deeply concerned with religion and education, Moore made his most significant contributions in these two areas. For thirty-six years he was the influential moderator of the annual sessions of the Chowan Baptist Association, an organization that consisted of sixty-eight churches in northeastern North Carolina at the time of his death. He was elected to numerous leadership posts in the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, including membership on its board of managers (1842–44), vice-president (1847–54), and trustee (1849–67). He was also a member of the board of trustees of Wake Forest College (1838–60).

In connection with his work among the Baptists of the Chowan Association, Moore is credited with being the leading spirit behind the founding and early operation of Chowan Baptist Female Institute (now Chowan College). As the first chairman of the institution's board of trustees (1848–67), he was given much of the responsibility for securing and maintaining adequate facilities and instructional staff. He contributed liberally to the financial support of the school during its fledgling years and was instrumental in devising methods that saved the debt-plagued institution from early bankruptcy.

In the late spring of 1832 Moore married Julia M. Wheeler, the daughter of John Wheeler of Murfreesboro. They had eight children: John Wheeler, James Wright, Esther Cotton (Mrs. Richard Thomas Weaver), Charles Richard (died in infancy), Thomas Longworth, Julia Wheeler (died in childhood), William Edward, and Sallie Wood (Mrs. Samuel James Calvert).

Mason, Thomas Williams

3 Jan. 1839–15 Apr. 1921

Thomas Williams Mason, planter, judge, railroad commissioner, and orator, was born at Brunswick plantation in Brunswick County, Va. He was the youngest child of Dr. Nathaniel, Jr., and Temperance Arrington Mason, the daughter of Mourning Ricks and Joseph Arrington, sheriff of Nash County, N.C. Thomas Williams Mason was the grandson of Judith Stewart and Captain Nathaniel Mason of the Fourth Virginia Regiment of the Continental line. He was the great-grandson of Mary Eppes and Colonel David Mason, of Shell Bank in Sussex County, Va., who was a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses and of the Virginia Revolutionary Convention (1775–76) and colonel of the Fifteenth Virginia Regiment of the Continental line.

Young Mason was named for his first cousin, Nathaniel Thomas Williams, of Bloomfield plantation in Southampton County, Va., who, it is said, was visiting Brunswick at the time. Out of pleasure at the name, Williams gave his namesake Huon, a cotton plantation on the Mississippi River in Madison Parish, La. In the fall of 1851, at age twelve, after being taught by private tutors in Brunswick, Mason was sent to boarding school in Ridgeway, Warren County, N.C., where he spent his first night away from home. In 1854 he entered The University of North Carolina. At Chapel Hill he became a charter member of Delta Kappa Epsilon and a member of the Philanthropic Society.

In the spring of 1858 Mason was graduated from the university and gave the salutatory address. By then he had decided to study law at the University of Virginia and to pay court to Elizabeth Marshall Gray, the daughter of William Henry Gray of Longview plantation near Garysburg in Northampton County. In 1860 Mason was graduated from law school, and, with war approaching, he and Betty Gray were married at Longview on 25 September.

With the outbreak of the Civil War, Mason, who had gone to Louisiana on business, returned from Huon and was soon commissioned lieutenant and aide-de-camp on the staff of Brigadier General Robert Ransom. In June 1862 Ransom's brigade was ordered to Virginia, and in September Mason fought at Sharpsburg in what became the bloodiest battle of the war. Mason's letters paint a vivid picture of the carnage and its enormous impact on him. In 1863 he returned to North Carolina with Ransom's brigade to protect the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad. After the engagement at Boone's Mill near Jackson in late July 1863, Mason did not return to Virginia until the brigade joined General Robert E. Lee's forces near Petersburg in May 1864. From then until May 1865, the brigade held the line from the Appomattox River to the Crater. Following the surrender at Appomattox, Mason, by then a captain, returned to Northampton County.

Making his home at Longview with his wife's parents, he began to oversee his farming operations in Virginia and Louisiana. During these years Mason often spent the winter at his Louisiana plantation. In 1876 he was admitted to the bar of Northampton County and in 1877 was chosen presiding judge of the inferior court for Northampton County, an office he held until 1885. In the fall of 1884 he was elected to the North Carolina Senate for one term; he served again in the senate in 1905 and in the house in 1915. From 1891 to 1894 he was a member of the North Carolina Railroad Commission. A noted orator and classicist, Mason gave a number of memorable speeches, including addresses at the celebration of The University of North Carolina's centennial and at the laying of the cornerstone of the Confederate monument on the west front of Capitol Square in Raleigh in May 1895.

In 1894 Mason was the nominee of the Democratic caucus for U.S. senator but lost to Marion Butler. In 1896 he ran unsuccessfully as the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor, carrying the burden of the entire campaign because of the illness of the gubernatorial candidate, Cyrus Watson. He was a member of the board of trustees of The University of North Carolina from 1885 to 1909.

Mason and his wife were the parents of four children: Sally Williams (3 Nov. 1861), who, on 20 Dec. 1884, married William Williams Long of Union Hill plantation in Warren County; Betty Gray (22 Aug. 1863), who, on 20 Dec. 1883, became the wife of Lemuel McKinne Long, a first cousin once removed of William Williams Long; Ruth (21 Nov. 1864), who lost her sight in childhood and never married; and Nathaniel Thomas Williams (17 Sept. 1866–16 Sept. 1869).

A lifelong Methodist, Mason was a member of the Garysburg Methodist Church and an active layman whose family had, since the early nineteenth century, helped build the Methodist church from its earliest circuits in the Roanoke Valley. He died at Longview and was buried in the Garysburg Methodist churchyard. On 9 Nov. 1959 a portrait of Mason was unveiled at the Northampton County Courthouse in Jackson. Other portraits hang at Longview and at the residence of a great-granddaughter.

Jones, Willie

25 May 1741–18 June 1801

Willie Jones, Revolutionary patriot, consummate politician, Jeffersonian Democrat, and ardent states' righter, was born in Surry County, Va., of Welsh and English parentage. His father, Robin Jones, was sent to Eton where he is said to have attracted the attention of Earl Granville, who later appointed him as his agent for the province of North Carolina. Robin married Sarah Cobb of York County, Va., in 1737 or 1738. They were the parents of five children, including Willie's prominent, conservative brother, Allen, whose daughter, Sarah, married William Richardson Davie. In the early 1750s Robin Jones and his family moved to present Northampton County, N.C., about six miles from the then thriving and important borough town, Halifax. As Granville's land agent and as attorney general of North Carolina, he was probably the largest landed proprietor on the Roanoke River.

Willie (pronounced Wiley) was named for one of his godfathers, the Reverend William Willie of Albemarle Parish, Va. He and his brother Allen both attended their father's alma mater, Eton, which Willie left in 1758 to make the continental "grand tour." On his return to North Carolina, he found that Allen had built his home, Mount Gallant, on the Northampton side of the Roanoke and that his father had left him his large colonial home, The Castle, three miles south of present Jackson. Preferring to live in Halifax, he is said to have torn down his paternal home and built from these timbers, many of which may have come from England, a new home in the southern end of the town—The Groves, behind which was one of the finest race tracks in the colony. This home (which collapsed in the early 1900s) soon became the council hall of many stirring political meetings and the focal point for the belles and blades of the section—both groups of which sought Halifax as the political and social mecca of northeastern North Carolina.

Despite the imminence of war, Jones married Mary Montfort, the daughter of Colonel Joseph Montfort, appointed by the Duke of Beaufort as the first and only "Grand Master of Masons of and for America." Willie and his wife had thirteen children, only five of whom lived to maturity. Of those who survived, two were sons who died unmarried. Thus there was not one to carry on the name of Jones. The three daughters who lived to maturity all married. Anna Maria married Joseph B. Littlejohn, who served as secretary to William R. Davie on the French mission of 1800. Martha (or Patsy) married U.S. Senator John Wayles Eppes of Buckingham County, Va., whose first wife was Maria, daughter of Thomas Jefferson. The third daughter, Sally Welch, married, first, Hutchins G. Burton, later governor, and second, Andrew Joyner of Poplar Grove near Weldon, N.C.

Willie Jones lived the life of a typical aristocratic planter of the times. According to the records of 1790, he owned, in District 9 of Halifax County alone, 9,942 1/2 acres and 120 slaves, being one of the largest slaveholders in the state; his brother Allen owned 170 slaves. His first political venture was at age twenty-six when he represented Halifax County in the House of Commons in 1767, followed by another session in 1771. As might be expected from his heritage, he was identified during these early years with the royal governors, William Tryon and Josiah Martin, and their clique. He marched with Tryon's colonial militia to Orange County and was appointed Tryon's aide-de-camp on 15 May 1771, the day before Tryon's victory over the Regulators at the Battle of Alamance. Several days later Captain Jones was sent to raid the plantation of Herman Husband, a leading Regulator. When Tryon left North Carolina to become governor of New York, Jones "publicly lamented his removal . . . as a calamity to the province." As a further indication of his allegiance to the royal clique, he was appointed, on Governor Martin recommendation, to His Majesty's Council of the Province of North Carolina on 9 Mar. 1774.

Jones's apostasy to the Whig cause in the approaching American Revolution was swift. He promptly refused the Council appointment and took his place among the leading radical elements of the Whig faction, which opposed the more conservative elements led by Samuel Johnston, William Hooper, Archibald Maclaine, and Jones's brother, Allen. He was elected to each of the five Provincial Congresses, but could not attend the fourth because he had been appointed superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Southern Colonies. At the Fifth Provincial Congress, he served on the committee to draft the state constitution and has been credited by many as its chief author.

Jones rapidly emerged as the acknowledged leader of the radical, democratic element in the state. He represented the borough of Halifax in the House of Commons in 1777 and 1778 and the county of Halifax in 1779 and 1780. He was senator in 1782, 1784, and 1788. He also served for a year in the Continental Congress (1780).

States' righter that he was, Jones refused appointment as a delegate to the Federal convention in 1787. His excuse to Governor Caswell was that he did not "think it will be in my power to attend there at the Time appointed." When the Constitution was submitted to the Hillsborough convention in 1788, he led the Anti-Federalist forces against its adoption. On the first day he proposed a vote without debate, declaring that "all the delegates knew how they were going to vote and he did not want to be guilty of lavishing public money." Defeated on this issue, he yielded to a full-scale, eleven-day debate in which he seldom participated, but exerted his influence against adoption behind the scenes. Particularly deploring the absence of a bill of rights, he cited a letter from Thomas Jefferson in Paris to James Madison at the Virginia convention, in which Jefferson wrote that he wished nine states would adopt it, not because it deserved ratification but in order to preserve the Union. Jefferson hoped, though, that the other four states would reject it—to ensure the adoption of amendments. Jones, in agreement, concluded: "For my part, I would rather be eighteen years out of the Union than adopt it in its present defective form."

When the final ballot was taken, the Anti-Federalists, by a vote of 184 to 84, carried a resolution neither rejecting nor ratifying the Constitution, but proposed a bill of rights of twenty parts as well as twenty-six amendments. Perhaps realizing that the efforts of such leading Federalists as William R. Davie and James Iredell had turned the tide, Jones did not run as a delegate to the Fayetteville convention of 1789, which ratified the Constitution by a vote of 195 to 77.

North Carolina's entrance into the Union marked Jones's retirement from the political arena, except that in 1796 he ran, and was defeated, for the post of presidential elector. The Jones tradition, however, was carried on by Nathaniel Macon, like Jones a man of aristocratic background imbued with a democratic attitude, who assumed leadership of the Jeffersonian party in the 1790s and held it for over three decades.

Jones's political retirement did not mean that he had forsaken other areas of public service. Not the least of these was his role as "the real founder of Raleigh." He served on the committee, appointed by the legislature in 1791, to locate the capital within ten miles of Isaac Hunter's plantation in Wake County. The committee purchased 1,000 acres of land from Joel Lane and laid off a city containing 400 acres. (It has been suggested that a statue be raised in Raleigh in honor of Jones, who actually parceled out the land. His name and those of other commissioners have been perpetuated in the names of the city's streets.) Soon afterwards he bought sixteen one-acre lots and later built a summer residence, Welcome, where he reportedly spent much of his time.

Still following the Jeffersonian tradition, Jones worked to carry out the constitutional mandate for a state university and served on the original board of trustees. Representing the Halifax judicial district, he also sat on the committees to select the location of the university and to choose its president. After donating $100 to support The University of North Carolina, he and his erstwhile political opponent, William R. Davie, issued a joint appeal in the North Carolina Journal for donations to the institution.

Because of his sympathy for the transmontane frontiersmen, the town of Jonesborough, "the oldest formally established town in Tennessee (1779)," was named for this "warm friend of over-mountain people." It was the first capital of the state of Franklin and is still the seat of Washington County. Also, Jones County in North Carolina was named for him.

The sudden decline in Jones's health was first revealed in a letter of 24 May 1801 from Nathaniel Macon to Thomas Jefferson, in which he wrote: "Your acquaintance, Mr. Willie Jones, is, I fear not long for this world. He is unable to walk, and there is no probability that he ever will again." Within a month Jones died at his seat in Raleigh. The Raleigh Register concluded his obituary with the statement that "it may with the greatest truth be said that Carolina has not produced a son of greater mental endowment than Mr. Jones, no one who lived more universally and deservedly respected or died more affectionately and sincerely regretted." He was buried on land now occupied by St. Augustine's College, but there is no trace of his grave. A search for it made in 1860 by Thomas Sherwood Haywood and others was unsuccessful.

Jones's will is a remarkable document. He directed that, if he died in Halifax, he should be buried beside his little daughter; or, if he died in Raleigh, he should be buried beside another small daughter. Reflecting his deistic philosophy, no monument or tombstone was to be placed over his grave. The will further stated: "No priest or other person is to insult my corpse by uttering any impious observations over my body. Let it be covered sunny and warm and there is an end. My family and my friends are not to mourn my death, even with a black rag—on the contrary, I give my wife and three daughters, Anna Maria, Sally and Patsy, each a Quaker-colored silk, to make their habits on the occasion."

Perhaps no man in North Carolina more aptly exemplified the eighteenth-century concept of noblesse oblige than did Willie Jones. An aristocrat and a man of great wealth, he was no demagogue or office seeker, but was instead a statesman whose guiding principles were the independence of sovereign people and the social and economic well-being of the masses, who looked to him as a father. Ingrained with this concept of service to the state and to the people, he devoted thirty years of his life to the application of this philosophy. A liberal in politics, education, and religion, he was indeed an "aristocratic democratic," cut from the same pattern as Thomas Jefferson.

Horton, George Moses

by Richard Walser, 1988

a. 1797–ca. 1883

George Moses Horton, poet, was born in Northampton County, the property of William Horton who also owned his mother, his five older half sisters, and his younger brother and three sisters. As a child, he moved with his master to Chatham County, taught himself to read, and began composing in his head a series of stanzas based on the rhythms in Wesley hymns. In 1814 he was given to William's son James, at whose death in 1843 he passed to James's son Hall.

By the time he was twenty, George Moses Horton had begun visiting the campus of The University of North Carolina eight miles away. There he sold students acrostics on the names of their sweethearts at twenty-five, fifty, and seventy-five cents. For several decades he "bought his time" from his masters through the sale of his poems and through wages collected as a campus laborer. Caroline Lee Hentz, novelist and professor's wife, encouraged him; his first printed poem, "Liberty and Slavery," appeared in Mrs. Hentz's hometown Massachusetts newspaper, the Lancaster Gazette, on 8 Apr. 1829. Soon plans were made to purchase his freedom and transport him to Liberia. To raise funds, Horton's The Hope of Liberty, the first book published in the South by a black man, came later that year from the press of Raleigh's liberal journalist Joseph Gales, but profits were inconsiderable and the plans were dropped. From time to time, Horton won the admiration and support of such men as Governor John Owen, presidents Joseph Caldwell and David L. Swain of The University of North Carolina, and newspapermen William Lloyd Garrison and Horace Greeley.

In 1845 Dennis Heartt of the Hillsborough Recorder brought out The Poetical Works of George M. Horton, The Colored Bard of North-Carolina, To Which Is Prefixed The Life of the Author, Written by Himself. Seldom was Horton without a manuscript for which he was gathering subscriptions from admiring students and friends. In April 1865 he attached himself to Captain Will H. S. Banks, and thereafter followed Banks's Michigan cavalry unit to Lexington and Concord. Banks sponsored Horton's third book, Naked Genius, published several months later from the press of William B. Smith in Raleigh.

Horton's last years were spent in Philadelphia writing Sunday school stories and working for old North Carolina friends who lived in the city. Details of his death are unrecorded. Through Horton's unhappy marriage to a slave of Franklin Snipes, he was the father of a son Free and a daughter Rhody, both of whom bore their mother's name. Horton's poems are traditional in vocabulary and style. His academic imitations and the love poems he wrote for student sale are less appealing than the rural pieces and those on slavery. His poetic protests of his status are the first ever written by a slave in America.

Hill, Theophilus Hunter

31 Oct. 1836–29 June 1901

Theophilus Hunter Hill, poet and librarian, was born near Raleigh at Spring Hill plantation in the home of his maternal grandfather, Theophilus Hunter, Jr. His great-grandfather was the Reverend William Hill, a chaplain in the American Revolution; his grandfather, also William Hill, was North Carolina's secretary of state for more than forty years; and his father, Dr. William G. Hill, was an eminent physician. His maternal great-grandfather was Theophilus Hunter, pioneer Wake County settler. Hill's mother, Adelaide, was the daughter of Theophilus Hunter, Jr. Young Hill received his early training from an aunt, Eliza Hill, who later conducted a private school in Raleigh. He then attended the Raleigh Male Academy while it was under the direction of J. M. Lovejoy. In 1852 he entered The University of North Carolina but because of family financial reverses was obliged to complete his studies at home.

In 1853 Hill became editor of a Raleigh newspaper, The Spirit of the Age. At the time he was encouraged by Judge Daniel Fowle, who later became governor, to take up the study of law. Having read law under Fowle, Hill was licensed in 1858, but because he did not care for the law he never opened a practice, preferring instead a literary life. In Raleigh in 1861 his first volume of poems, Hesper and Other Poems, became the first book published under the copyright laws of the Confederate States. His second volume, Poems, was published in New York in 1869, and his final volume, Passion Flower, was published in Raleigh in 1883. Other poems appeared in newspapers and periodicals.

From 1871 to 1873 Hill served as state librarian until he became editor of The Century, published in South Carolina although he remained in Raleigh. He also represented several book concerns and insurance companies. Hill was a lifelong Democrat and kept fully informed on political issues, but he never ran for public office.

His first wife, whom he married on 22 Jan. 1861, was Laura Phillips of Northampton County; she died in 1878. Their children were Theophilus Hunter, Frank E., and Rosa. In September 1879 he married Mattie Yancey of Warren County, and they had one child, Tempe. She painted a portrait of her father for the State Library. Hill died of a fever in Raleigh at age sixty-four. He was buried in Oakwood Cemetery.

Harris, Bernice (Christiana) Kelly

By Richard Walser, 1988

8 Oct. 1891–13 Sept. 1973

Bernice (Christiana) Kelly Harris, writer, was born in eastern Wake County. Both of her parents, William Haywood and Rosa Poole Kelly, came from a long line of sturdy, independent farmers. She had two older sisters and four younger brothers. Her girlhood was centered on the Mt. Moriah Academy, where she was educated, and the Mt. Moriah Baptist Church. Her aunts and uncles and cousins lived nearby, and the families frequently assembled at neighborhood box suppers, hog killings, Saturday night parties, baseball games, Sunday school excursions, and Christmas celebrations. After attending Cary High School for one year as a boarding student, Bernice entered Meredith College and was graduated in 1913. The quotation beside her picture in the annual was from Tennyson's The Princess : "A rosebud set with little willful thorns." Following a brief term as principal of a school at Beulaville in Duplin County, she taught for three years at the South Fork Institute, near Maiden in Catawba County, an academy for training rural Baptist preachers. From there she went to Seaboard High School in Northampton County, where she taught English from 1917 to 1927 except for a year in Rich Square (1921–22).

Meanwhile, Miss Kelly had attended summer school at The University of North Carolina, studying playwriting in 1919 and 1920 under Frederick H. ("Proff") Koch. Inspired by his fervor for the folk play, and recalling her childhood excitement in writing poems and stories, she returned to Seaboard determined to spread the "folk gospel," as well as to do some writing of her own. Her marriage in May 1926 to Herbert Kavanaugh Harris, a Seaboard farmer with associated agricultural interests, did not sidetrack her enthusiasm. Into the living room of her new home, where she continued to be called "Miss Kelly," she invited the women of the town for classes in playwriting; these were moderately successful whenever the ladies could be turned aside from swapping recipes and local gossip. She was instrumental in organizing the Northampton Players among the younger people, its purpose to write and produce plays at home before moving the best of them to the state drama festival.

At first, the publication of her own work and that of her group was not a goal, but after 1930 Mrs. Harris took playwriting more seriously. Too, she began sending human-interest stories and feature articles to the Norfolk and Raleigh newspapers. Four of her character sketches appeared in These Are Our Lives (1939), a Federal Writers' project. It was Jonathan Daniels who suggested that she try a novel. Purslane (1939), some eighteen months in the writing, won the Mayflower Society Cup as the best North Carolina book of the year. Based on the author's happy, nostalgic memories of her youth, the episodic narrative relates the home and community events of "Pate's Siding," twelve miles east of Raleigh. The success accorded Purslane prompted the publication of Folk Plays of Eastern Carolina (1940), seven one-act plays written during the prior eight years.

After Purslane, six more novels were published with fair regularity.Portulaca (1941), named for the plant that is a cultivated variety of the wild-growing purslane, transported some of the rural characters of the earlier book into town, where bridge parties supplanted candy-pullings. Sweet Beulah Land (1943) was about a freedom-loving wanderer and his unavoidable confrontations with the conservative people in an agricultural community. Sage Quarter (1945) was Mrs. Harris's pastoral romance, a novel about twin girls with broad and circumscribing family ties. In Janey Jeems (1946), saga of an ambitious, hard-working, religious country family, the author cleverly and only inferentially indicated that it was a black family of whom she was writing. When most reviewers missed the point, the publishers circularized a notice that Janey Jeems was the only book ever written about blacks to have the humanity not to mention race. Hearthstones (1948) concerned a Confederate soldier who was "read out" of the church for his desertion; then it moved to World War II for a similar incident in the same family. Wild Cherry Tree Road (1951) returned to the scene of Purslane .

Mrs. Harris's husband died on 13 July 1950, at age sixty-six. Once again she became involved in community dramatics, with informal classes in the writing of plays and their eventual production in the county towns and at the state festival. In 1957, a dramatization of "Yellow Color Suit," her 1944 short story that had been expanded into Hearthstones , was televised over a national network. Wake Forest University presented her an honorary Litt.D. in 1959, as did The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1960. In 1961, she was president of the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association, and in 1966 she was the recipient of the North Carolina Award for "notable accomplishments," presented by the governor. She wrote two little Christmas-gift booklets, The Very Real Truth about Christmas (1961) and The Santa on the Mantel (1964). In these years she served on the board of trustees of the State Library Commission and the North Carolina Arts Council, and was active in the North Carolina Writers Conference and the Roanoke-Chowan Group.

In 1963, Mrs. Harris started teaching a noncredit course in creative writing at nearby Chowan College, and there she met with imaginative people from all walks of life. "People, not books," she often said, "have always been my first interest in life." From her classes at Chowan came two collections in which she seemed to take more pride than in anything she had written herself. Southern Home Remedies (1968) prescribed cures and frequently appended a narrative as corroborative evidence. Strange Things Happen (1971) collected sixty-eight stories about ghosts, reincarnation, coincidences, and other odd events. For these two books, she received a Brown-Hudson Folklore Award posthumously from the North Carolina Folklore Society.

Mrs. Harris was a Democrat and a Baptist. Her portrait in oil was painted by Marguerite L. Stem. She died in Durham several weeks before her eighty-second birthday, and was buried in the city cemetery at Seaboard.

Dawson, John

ca. 1690–1761 or 1762

John Dawson, member of the Assembly for Bertie and Northampton counties, justice of the court, and member of the governor's council, was born in Isle of Wight County, Va. His grandfather, William Dawson, had come to Virginia about 1621. His father, Henry Dawson, lived first in Warwick County, Va., and later in Isle of Wight. His mother was Martha (probably Shepard) of Warwick.

Dawson, the second son of his parents, came with his family to Bertie County about 1732. He first represented that county in the Assembly of 1735. After the formation of Northampton County, he continued as representative of the new county. He became justice of the peace in 1739 and later sheriff. He was a member of the commission to lay out the town of Windsor. During the Spanish alarm of 1748, he was made colonel of the Northampton Regiment. He became an associate justice of the North Carolina court in 1751. In the same year, Governor Johnston proposed his name to the Board of Trade as a member of his council; Dawson was sworn in on 28 May 1752. He remained a member of the council until his death, serving under both Governors Johnston and Dobbs.

Dawson married first Elizabeth Thomas Boddie, sister of Barnaby and Philip Thomas and widow of John Boddie (d. 1720). By Elizabeth, he had a son, Henry, and a daughter, Mary. By his second wife, Charity Alston, he had two daughters, Charity and Elizabeth, and a son, John. His second wife having been an heiress of considerable fortune, a marriage settlement was made to provide equitably for the children of the first wife and for the possible issue of the second. The family lived in Northampton County on the banks of Bridgers Creek. Dawson's will suggests a ménage of more than usual comfort, if not elegance, for that period in North Carolina. His two sons served in the North Carolina Assembly: Henry, from 1766 until his death in 1770; and John, from 1780 to 1782 and again from 1787 to 1798.

Chris Daughtry

1979-

Written By Emily Horton

Related Entries: Clay Aiken; Fantasia Barrino; Kellie Pickler; Bucky Covington; Scotty McCreery; Anoop Desai

Rock singer Chris Daughtry, born December 26, 1979, grew up in Lasker, a small town in north-eastern North Carolina. His parents are Sandra and Pete Daughtry.  In North Carolina, Daughtry began exploring his musical interest in alt-rock as a member of two rock bands, Cadence and Absent Element.  Prior to auditioning for American Idol, he was a service advisor at a car dealership in Goldsboro, NC.

Chris Daughtry first gained public notice in 2006 when he placed fourth on the fifth season of American Idol. After leaving Idol, he formed the band Daughtry. The band’s debut album, self-titledDaughtry (2006), went quintuple-platinum. Daughtry was nominated for Best Rock Song at the 2008 Grammy awards for Best Pop Performance By A Duo or Group With Vocals for “It’s Not Over” and “Home”, and for Best Rock Album for Daughtry. This album broke music history as the fastest selling rock album of all time.

In 2009, Daughtry released its sophomore album, Leave This Town,which was followed by Break The Spell in 2011. Leave This Townfocuses largely on Daughtry’s childhood growing up with his older brother, Kenneth, in small town North Carolina. In 2010, Chris was nominated for the Choice American Idol Alum award at the Teen Choice Awards.  Chris was the first Idol contestant to have two consecutive number one albums with Daughtry and Leave This Town.

Daughtry is an active participant in the ONE campaign, which aids in the global fight against AIDs and poverty. He married Deanna Robertson on November 11, 2000, and they have four children. He continues to pursue his career in rock music.

References:

Chris Daughtry Official Homepage. Last modified 2012. Accessed March 22, 2012.http://www.daughtryofficial.com/us/home

Internet Movie Database, Chris Daughtry.  Last modified 2012. Accessed March 22, 2012. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0202322/bio

TV Guide Biographies, Christ Daughtry. Last modified 2012. Accessed March 22, 2012.http://www.tvguide.com/celebrities/chris-daughtry/bio/280407

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Saren, Ben. Photo taken August 4, 2009. Available from http://www.flickr.com/photos/bsaren/3809123788/ (accessed March 23, 2012).

Video courtesy of DaughtryVEVO. "Daughtry-It's Not Over." Posted October 2, 2009. Available from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQ92eyxnxmQ (accessed March 23, 2012).

Darden, Mills (or Miles)

7 Oct. 1799–23 Jan. 1857

Mills (or Miles) Darden, innkeeper and farmer, was reputed to be the heaviest human on record until the twentieth century. He was born on a farm near Rich Square in Northampton County but moved to Madison County, Tenn., about 1829. By 1840 he was living in Henderson County, Tenn.; ten years later he was operating a hotel on the square in Lexington, the seat of Henderson County. He also owned a farm in the county.

Darden's first wife, Mary, died in 1837 and was buried on his farm in the Chapel Hill community of Henderson County. The name of his second wife was given in the census as Tameria. In 1850 the household included Tameria, age thirty-eight, and seven children whose ages ranged from one to twenty-one.

Although Darden apparently refused to be weighed after moving to Tennessee, his neighbors, by testing the tension on his ox wagon springs while he was aboard and then piling on rocks for a corresponding tension, estimated his weight to be a little over 1,000 pounds. The Guinness Book of World Records (1977 ed.) accepts his weight as 1,020 pounds, second only to that of Robert Earl Hughes of Illinois, who died in 1958.

Darden's height was 7 feet, 6 inches; his waist measurement was 6 feet, 4 inches. The records of William Brooks indicate that he furnished 16 yards of cambric for Darden's shroud. The coffin required 156 feet of lumber, 3 pounds of nails, 4 boxes of tacks, 17 yards of flannel lining, and 44 feet of trimming ribbon. Seventeen men were required to put the body in the coffin. Darden was buried on his farm beside his first wife.

Cox, Jonathan Elwood

1 Nov. 1856–29 Mar. 1932

Jonathan Elwood Cox, banker and manufacturer, was born on his father's farm in Rich Square, Northampton County. He was the son of Jonathan Elliott and Elizabeth Hare Cox, who had met while students at New Garden Boarding School near Greensboro in Guilford County. The Cox family of Perquimans County and the Hares of Suffolk County, Va., were Quakers and had been in America since the early years of the eighteenth century. The elder Cox moved to Guilford County in 1859 to become superintendent of the New Garden School. His son attended classes there and then entered Earlham College, a Quaker college in Richmond, Ind. After two years at Earlham, he took a business course in Baltimore. Following a brief career as a rural schoolteacher and another as a traveling salesman of fruit trees, he settled in High Point in 1880 and remained there until his death. Shortly after his marriage in 1878, he entered into business with his father-in-law, William Henry Snow, and established the firm that eventually became the J. Elwood Cox Manufacturing Company, a firm engaged in manufacturing wooden shuttles and bobbins for the textile industry. The firm expanded rapidly and soon developed into a major producer for both domestic and foreign markets. After controlling the firm for nearly forty years, Cox incorporated it and turned it over to his nephew, Joseph D. Cox, who became its principal officer.

Cox contributed greatly to High Point's development from the rural community of seven hundred citizens he found when he moved there into one of the South's major industrial centers. In addition to his interests in manufacturing, he also achieved prominence in banking and established one of the principal financial institutions in High Point. In 1891 he founded the Commercial National Bank, remaining its president until it was forced to close in January 1932, at the height of the depression. He also served as president of the High Point Savings and Trust Company; as a director of the First National Bank of Thomasville, the Greensboro Loan and Trust Company, the Virginia Trust Company in Richmond, and the Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Company; and as an officer or director of numerous other manufacturing, commercial, and railroad companies in North Carolina and elsewhere. Active in the North Carolina State Bankers Association, he was also a member of the executive council of the American Bankers Association for fifteen years and in 1917 was elected president of the National Bank section of the organization. In 1923 he was elected treasurer of the national group for a term of two years. He was a director of the Southern Exposition Building and of the High Point Hotel for a number of years.

A loyal Quaker and an active member of the Central Friends Society, Cox was appointed in 1893 a trustee of Guilford College, the institution developed by the Society of Friends from the New Garden Boarding School, to which Cox's family had such close ties. He was chairman of the board of Guilford from 1903 until his death and chairman of the city school board in High Point for nineteen years. He served as a trustee of George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville, Tenn., and was selected by James B. Duke, who with his brother, Benjamin N. Duke, had been Cox's schoolmates at New Garden School, as an original trustee of the Duke Endowment.

Cox ran as a Republican in the gubernatorial election of 1908 and through his unsuccessful campaign, substantially reduced the Democratic majority. He was appointed by Governor Cameron Morrison to the first state highway commission in 1921 and served as commissioner for the fifth district for ten years. He was also a representative from North Carolina on the War Finance Corporation.

On 23 Oct. 1878, Cox was married to Bertha Emily Snow, the daughter of William Henry Snow, a former captain in the Union army who had moved to North Carolina from Vermont after the Civil War. Snow successfully experimented with various woods for use in textile manufacturing equipment and was instrumental in organizing the Asheboro Railroad. The Coxes, who had been schoolmates at New Garden, had one daughter, Clara I., who with her mother spent the season at the family's winter home in St. Petersburg, Fla. In 1929, Cox built a handsome estate in the fashionable Emerywood section of High Point. He died after an illness of two months caused by a weak heart and was buried in the family mausoleum in Oakwood Memorial Park in High Point.

Copeland, Oliver Perry

23 Nov. 1816–?

Oliver Perry Copeland, portrait artist, was born in Suffolk, Va., the son of Benjamin and Sophia Jones Copeland. He was still living at Suffolk in 1840, when he delivered a Fourth of July oration there, but soon afterward he moved to Northampton County, N.C., where he had married Sarah Hill in April 1839. For the next twelve years he supported himself as a portrait artist in Northampton and neighboring counties in Virginia and North Carolina. In 1850 he exhibited at Richmond, Va., a canvas entitled "The Death-Bed of Wesley"; in 1853 he toured various North Carolina towns with the same painting and three others, "Faith,""Hope," and "Charity." After showing these pictures in Hillsborough, Greensboro, and elsewhere, he took his works to the first North Carolina State Fair (1853) and won first prize for the Wesley scene.

After the fair closed, Copeland opened a studio in Raleigh and offered lessons in drawing and painting. In 1857 he moved to Oxford to take a position as drawing instructor at Oxford Female Academy. His wife died in Oxford on 16 Feb. 1858, and he soon afterward resigned his position. He found similar work at Louisburg Female Academy in the same year and also appears to have worked for a time at Warrenton. In February 1861 he married Henrietta C. Gambol of Warwick County, Va.; thereafter, he appears to have lived and worked at Norfolk, where he is known to have had a studio in 1871.

Copeland's North Carolina subjects included Samuel Wait, first president of Wake Forest College, and Mrs. Wait; the Reverend Charles Force Deems of Greensboro; Dr. W. R. Scott of Raleigh; and members of the Gray family of Northampton, the Gatling family of Hertford County, and the Ridley and Shands families of North Carolina and Virginia. A large canvas by Copeland, entitled "Old Rip Van Winkle Wide Awake," depicted North Carolina's progress in agriculture, industry, commerce, and so on and attracted a good deal of attention at the North Carolina State Fair in 1854.

Copeland was a lifelong supporter of the temperance movement and sometimes gave public readings of a long poem of his own composition entitled "Poetic Essay on Dram Drinking." He was also a professional daguerreotypist. The date of his death is not known. Of the ten children borne by his first wife, three survived their mother; the census of 1850 lists a son named Raphial and a daughter named Eumuke.

Bragg, Thomas

9 Nov. 1810–21 Jan. 1872

See also: Thomas Bragg, Research Branch, NC Office of Archives and History

Thomas Bragg, lawyer, governor, U.S. senator, and Confederate cabinet member, was one of six sons of Thomas and Margaret Crossland Bragg of Warrenton. Two brothers, Braxton and John, had distinguished careers. For a brief family history, see the biography of Braxton Bragg.

Bragg attended Warrenton Academy for nine years and was for three years thereafter a student at Captain Alden Patridge's Military Academy at Middletown, Conn. As had his elder brother, John, he followed his formal education by studying law under the tutelage of Judge John Hall of the North Carolina Supreme Court; he was admitted to the North Carolina bar in 1832. He established a successful law practice in Jackson, Northampton County, and entered politics as a Democrat. Success did not come as quickly in politics as it did in law, however, partly because Northampton was a stronghold of Whiggery. Bragg persevered and was elected in 1842 to a single term in the North Carolina House of Representatives, where he served as chairman of the judiciary committee. He became one of his party's leaders, serving as a delegate to the Democratic conventions of 1844, 1848, and 1852, and in 1854 he won an uphill battle for the North Carolina governorship. He served two terms as governor, championing a wider franchise, internal improvements, and an improved banking system. As a states' rights Democrat, he expressed opposition to federal encroachment but counseled moderation in resistance to it.

In 1859 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he served until his withdrawal 6 Mar. 1861, before North Carolina's secession from the Union. He made few public comments on secession but revealed privately and in his diary that he considered it an impractical, unwise proceeding, no matter how justified.

Following his withdrawal from the Senate, he returned to his native state. There he was engaged in helping to prepare North Carolina's military forces for the looming conflict when he was asked by Confederate President Jefferson Davis to succeed Juda P. Benjamin as attorney general of the Confederacy, after Benjamin had been switched to another post. Bragg accepted, serving ably from 22 Nov. 1861 until 18 Mar. 1862, when he fell victim to internal political bickering. He resigned in order to allow Davis to appoint Thomas H. Watts of Alabama to the position, in response to a demand by former Union Whigs for a post in the Davis cabinet. As attorney general, Bragg drafted a plan for the organization of his department and was active in attempts to solve such problems as disloyalty to the Confederacy, the activities of Unionists within the South, the relations of the central government with the various Confederate states, treaties to be negotiated with the Indians, and the naturalization of aliens by the Confederacy.

Following his resignation from the cabinet, he moved to Petersburg, Va., the ancestral home of his wife, Isabelle Cuthbert Bragg, whom he had married in October of 1837. He lived there until 7 Nov. 1862, when he returned to North Carolina, working in Raleigh as both a personal representative of Davis and the chairman of a citizens' effort to keep the state committed to the Confederate cause. Despite his private belief that disaster was ultimately in store, he was effective in keeping North Carolina behind the Davis government.

After the conflict was over, he resumed the practice of law and again became involved in state politics, fighting for the realization of his ideals of good government. One of the last acts of his career, shortly before his death, was to serve as counsel for the impeachment of former friend and political ally Governor William W. Holden; he helped to secure convictions resulting in Holden's removal from office.

Boon's Mill, Battle of

Located in Northampton County, Boon's (or Boone's) Mill was the site of a Civil War Federal repulse by Confederate forces under Brig. Gen. Matt W. Ransom on 28 July 1863. Boon's Mill was situated on the main road from Jackson, the county seat, to Garysburg and Weldon, where the vitally important Wilmington & Weldon Railroad ran north to Petersburg, Va. It was by this road that the Federal force hoped to capture and burn the Weldon Bridge, thus disrupting the flow of supplies from Wilmington to Petersburg, Richmond, and the Army of Northern Virginia.

On 26 July Federal ships off Winton unloaded regiments from Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island commanded by Maj. Gen. John G. Foster to support Col. Samuel P. Spear and a brigade of cavalry expected hourly from Virginia. This combined Union force totaled approximately 5,000 men.

Spear's arrival on 27 July, as well as Foster's the day before, was quickly discovered by Confederate intelligence. Orders were then passed to recently promoted Brig. Gen. Matt W. Ransom to move his brigade southward from its camp near Petersburg, where it had been helping to defend Richmond from Federal forces that occupied Williamsburg.

Ransom's brigade, consisting of elements of the 24th, 35th, and 49th North Carolina Regiments and two guns of Georgia Artillery, reached Garysburg around daybreak of 28 July. Ransom ordered his force of about 200 men to Boon's Mill, choosing this site because it was located on the main road running through Gumberry Swamp. The pond and swamp made it an excellent defensive position. Ransom and his staff left the men and rode to Jackson in an attempt to gather information about Spear's Federal force. On their return, one-half mile from Jackson, Union cavalry exploded from the county seat to give chase. With the Federals not more than 250 yards behind, it was literally a horse race back to the mill for Ransom and his staff, who were fired upon the entire way. Dashing across the bridge at Boon's Mill, Ransom ordered his men to take up the planks and to form ranks.

Spear brought up his artillery and shelled the Confederate position for over an hour. Then he ordered his dismounted cavalrymen to attack down the road toward the mill; however, concentrated Confederate fire broke this initial advance. Next Spear attempted flanking movements to the left and right, hoping that the dense undergrowth of the swamp would offer cover. But Ransom moved his guns forward and swept the woods with grape and canister. This maneuver, along with Confederate infantry fire, forced Spear to call off his assault after five hours of fighting. Convinced that he could not break through and aware that the entire area was aware of his presence, Spear retreated back to Jackson under the cover of darkness.

Federal casualties from the fight at Boon's Mill were listed at 11 dead, buried on the field. Confederate losses were reported as 1 soldier from the 49th Regiment killed and 3 from the 24th Regiment wounded.

Blunt (or Blount), Tom

by F. Roy Johnson

ca. 1675-ca. 1739

Tom Blunt (or Blount), a head chief and king of the North Carolina Tuscarora Indians, of obscure parentage, lived in the Upper Towns. During his time these numbered seven and formed one of three confederacies of the Tuscarora nation; they were located in the upper coastal plains on the Tar and Roanoke rivers and their tributaries and were frequented by Virginia traders during Blunt's boyhood. In a matrilineal society, he rose to political power, as a member of the bear clan, through his mother and her people. Whether because of blood ties or admiration, his name is the same as that of two Englishmen, Thomas Blount of Chowan Precinct in North Carolina and Tom Blunt, who from 1691 to 1703 served as Virginia's official interpreter to the Indians south of the James River. Blunt acquired a speaking knowledge of English.

The English of Carolina in particular were indebted to Tom Blunt for minimizing the Tuscarora War of 1711-13, by leading the Upper Towns on a neutral course, and for keeping the peace on the frontier for a quarter of a century afterward. By 1711 he was in high repute throughout the Tuscarora nation. The head men of the hostile towns consulted him as to what should be done with Christoph de Graffenried and John Lawson.

Virginia claimed much of the credit for keeping Blunt neutral during the war. His people had become dependent on Virginia traders: they had abandoned their bows, and control of their powder supply controlled their take of game for food and skins. After Virginia invoked trade restrictions, Governor Thomas Pollock of North Carolina wrote Governor Alexander Spotswood of Virginia that Blunt was "very earnest for peace and to have trade as formerly." And de Graffenried, who credited Blunt with saving his life, said that this king and chief was "full of sense" and much inclined toward the English.

Near the end of the Tuscarora War, Blunt was persuaded to assist the English by bringing in King Hancock, ringleader of the 1711 massacre, for execution and by taking nearly thirty scalps of other leaders and enemies.

Immediately after the Indian hostilities had been crushed, the North Carolina council recognized Blunt for his faithfulness and good service and made him chief of all Indians to the south of the Pamlico River. About three thousand of the Tuscarora had survived the war. Of these, about one thousand subjected themselves to Blunt, and the remainder fled beyond the frontier and began migrating to the North. So reduced in strength, the Tuscaroras under Blunt found themselves exposed and open to attack by the Catawbas and other enemy Indians. In 1717, for greater safety, the North Carolina council permitted them to settle on their old Skanwaknee hunting grounds north of the Roanoke River in present Bertie County. Here they established two towns, one of which was Resootska, or "to our grandfather," named in honor of King Blunt.

The English treated Blunt as an absolute monarch. The few matters of misconduct of his Indians were taken directly to him, and he acted effectively to preserve the peace. In 1723 he informed the council that a group of northern Indians were expected that fall "to seduce the young men of the nation from him in order to Comit mischief." Following the Indian custom of hospitality, Blunt gave the unwanted visitors food and shelter, and they did no injury to the English of North Carolina.

Within a few years, Blunt, on the threshhold of old age, saw his nation weakening. Whites, hungry for land, began to encroach upon his reservation; by 1731 northern Indians had enticed away all but six hundred of his people; and an undetermined number had left to work for the whites.

Blunt was dead before 5 Mar. 1739. At this time the great men of the Tuscarora nation petitioned the North Carolina council to elect a new king.

Of the king's family, we know that his wife and two of his children and a sister's son were captured by the Meherrin Indians during the Tuscarora War and redeemed for him by the Carolina government.

Knight, Edgar Wallace

9 Apr. 1886–7 Aug. 1953

Edgar Wallace Knight, university professor and distinguished historian of American education, was born in Northampton County near the town of Woodland. His parents were John Washington and Margaret Davis Knight, small farmers whose chief crop was tobacco. Knight received his early education at the local schools and at Trinity Park, the preparatory school for Trinity College (now Duke University). He was graduated from Trinity College with a bachelor's degree and membership in Phi Beta Kappa in 1909, and with a master's degree in 1911. From Trinity he went directly to Teachers College, Columbia University, where he earned the Ph.D. degree in 1913.

Both at Trinity and Columbia, Knight studied under teachers who exerted a profound influence on his future. At Trinity professors Edwin Mims and John Spencer Bassett were his instructors and Dean Samuel Fox Mordecai of the law school was his warm friend. At Columbia, where he minored in history, he was a student of James Harvey Robinson and William A. Dunning, with the latter undoubtedly influencing his choice of dissertation topic; the study was completed under Professor Paul Monroe and published as a monograph entitled, The Influence of Reconstruction on Education in the South.

Knight's first experience in the classroom was at Trinity Park, where he taught English and history for two years while enrolled part-time as a graduate student at Trinity College. In the summer of 1910 he taught history at East Carolina Teachers Training School in Greenville. After graduation from Columbia, Knight returned to Trinity with an appointment as assistant professor of education; he was promoted to professor and remained in that position until 1917, when he became superintendent of Wake County Schools. In 1918, with the nation involved in World War I, he was appointed assistant educational director for the southeastern states of the Committee on Education and Special Training for the War Plans Division of the General Staff. In 1919 Knight joined the faculty of The University of North Carolina, and from that date Chapel Hill remained his home even though he held visiting professorships at a number of colleges and universities, including Darmouth, Columbia, Michigan, and Duke. In 1934 his reputation as a teacher and scholar was recognized by his appointment to one of the university's distinguished chairs, a Kenan professorship. Duke University, in 1952, conferred on him the degree, doctor of literature.

Knight was a magnificent teacher—unorthodox but inspiring, understanding and sympathetic, but demanding, and possessing little patience with careless or second-rate work from students or colleagues. In every respect he was a scholar; his enthusiasm for research in the history of American education seemed boundless, and to a remarkable degree he was able to transmit this to students, a fact that made his afternoon seminars particularly valuable. When a student's research efforts deserved recognition, Knight was quick to give praise and generous in giving credit when a reference was made to the student's work.

His research was directed chiefly towards the history of education in the antebellum South. He wrote extensively in that field, but in addition published numerous articles reflecting his awareness of the educational problems of the twentieth century. Throughout his career he was a critic of educational practices that he regarded as superficial, and in his writings treated them in a highly amusing fashion. Educational workshops, college and university administrators, enthusiasts for curriculum revision, and the proliferation of college degrees each were exposed to his sharp wit in books and articles such as "Consider the Deans, How They Toil,"What College Presidents Say, "The Butter Curriculum," and "Getting Ahead by Degrees."

Friends and former students have fond memories of Knight's humor, for it was a quality very much a part of him. He was convinced that humor had a place in the classroom as well as in life, and he frequently used it to illustrate the weakness of an educational fad, to emphasize an important point, or to dispel Monday's gloom after the Saturday defeat of a Carolina football team. The humor was sudden and sometimes devastating, but never vengeful or designed to hurt. In the classroom there was almost an informal atmosphere, yet it was controlled informality that never degenerated into idle or pointless chatter as might have been the case under a less skillful person.

As a productive scholar Knight wrote more than 30 books and 150 articles, while also giving freely of himself to the university, to the community, and to the numerous agencies that called on him for advice. For twenty-eight years he was an active member of the Administrative Board of The University of North Carolina Graduate School, and served on numerous other university boards and committees. Within the state he was a member of the board of trustees of Louisburg College and of North Carolina College (now North Carolina Central University), a member of the state Library Commission and of the state Textbook Commission, assistant superintendent of Orange County Public Schools for several years (without pay), and for thirty years (1922–52) a member of the Chapel Hill School Board. The U.S. government on more than one occasion called on his services. At the beginning of World War II he was asked to become director of the qualifying tests for civilians in the Naval Training College Programs, and in the years immediately following he was active in the work of the Educational Policies Commission. During the years of military occupation in Germany and Japan, Knight resisted any invitations to participate in the educational programs. The lessons of Reconstruction were on his mind, and he quite frankly feared the errors that our government might again make.

In 1925, by virtue of a grant from the Social Science Research Council, Knight spent some time in Denmark observing the rural and folk schools. An account of this trip appeared in book form under the title, Among the Danes. During the academic year 1930–31 he was in China as a member of a special commission organized by the Institute of Social and Religious Research to study educational conditions in that country. In 1933, with his friends professors Paul Monroe and William C. Bagley of Teachers College, Columbia University, he went to Iraq, where the three worked as a commission to assist the government with its schools. And then Knight spent some time studying the educational systems of England and France. There was, indeed, nothing provincial about his scholarly interests.

Knight's monumental work was his Documentary History of Education in the South Before 1860, published in five volumes, the first of which appeared in 1949. Unfortunately, he did not live to see the final volume which was released from the press in December 1953, a few months after his death. The main body of his writings dealt with the history of education, and his most widely known work was the textbook, Education in the United States, which appeared first in 1929 and in revised editions in 1934, 1941, and 1951.

On 28 June 1916 Edgar Knight and Annie Mozelle Turner, a native of Orange County, were married in Durham Memorial Methodist Church. They were the parents of two daughters, Ann (Mrs. Strother Calloway Fleming, Jr.) and Jane (Mrs. James Minor Ludlow). Death came as the result of a heart attack, and he was buried in the Chapel Hill Cemetery.

Knight was intensely loyal to his state and to The University of North Carolina. As an individual, he was in every respect a gentleman; as a historian, he ranked with the best; and as a scholar, he retained a clear perspective. Knight was no reformer, but for forty years, in the midst of changing educational theories and philosophies, he spoke and wrote about the need for good teaching and sound learning. So far as he was concerned, there was no substitute; nor was there a substitute for excellence.

Fanning, William

26 Oct. 1728–1782

See also: Edmund Fanning, brother.

William Fanning, clergyman of the established church, was born at Riverhead, Long Island, N.Y., the son of Captain James and Hannah Smith Fanning. On 10 Mar. 1754 he was ordained priest by the Bishop of Gloucester in England, and seventeen days later he left for America at the direction of the Bishop of London. By 1758 the Reverend Mr. Fanning had assumed his duties as the first rector of St. George's Parish, Northampton County. This parish had been established by the North Carolina Assembly in that year by a division of Northwest Parish. On 3 Jan. 1759 Joseph Thomas sold "The Revd. Doct. William Fanning of the parish of St. George" 350 acres on the Roanoke River. Among the witnesses to the deed was William's younger brother Edmund, later to play a stormy role in the history of the colony.

Unlike the majority of the colonial clergy in North Carolina, Fanning was not a missionary under sponsorship of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. His stay in Northampton was a short one for on 4 Mar. 1761, as "William Fanning, present minister of the parish of Tilletson" in Albermarle County, Va., he sold his North Carolina lands. On 3 Oct. 1765, however, he again purchased land in Northampton on the Meherrin River near the Virginia border. This bears out a tradition mentioned by Bishop William Meade that Fanning had become rector of Meherrin Parish in what is now Greensville, the Virginia county just above Northampton.

In 1772 Fanning married Mary Gray, the widow of Littleton Tazewell and the daughter of Joseph Gray, of "the White House," a prominent citizen of Southampton County, Va. During the American Revolution he was in Greensville County, Va., as from there he wrote Thomas Jefferson asking for a passport for his relative John Wickham, a loyalist, who was a prisoner of the patriots and wanted to leave the country. Jefferson replied that Wickham must be considered an enemy and prisoner of war. He added that the Virginia government was "thoroughly satisfied of the decided principles of Whigism which has distinguished the Character of the revered Mr. Fanning that they shall think this young Gentleman perfectly safe under his Care." Jefferson was to hear of Wickham again many years later. As a brilliant Richmond lawyer, Wickham was chief defense attorney for Aaron Burr at his trial for treason in 1807.

Fanning died at the residence of his sister-in-law, Mrs. John Flood Edmunds, in Brunswick County, Va. The only record of issue was a daughter who married the John Wickham mentioned above. A son of this marriage, William Fanning Wickham, resided at Hickory Hill, Hanover County, Va. During the Civil War, General Robert E. Lee's son, "Rooney," was captured by the Federals while recuperating from war wounds at the Wickham home.

Jones, Robert ("Robin"), Jr.

1718–2 Oct. 1766

Jr. Jones, Robert ("Robin"), attorney general of North Carolina, legislator, and agent of Earl Granville, was born in Surry County, Va., the son of Robert Jones, who practiced law in Surry County and served in the House of Burgesses. Educated at Eton, Robin Jones returned to Virginia where he also practiced law in Surry County. A resident of Albemarle Parish, he was a close friend of William Willie (pronounced Wiley). Sometime between 1750 and 1753 Jones moved to Northampton County, N.C., where he built a large residence, The Castle, the exact location of which is unknown. A member of the Assembly from Northampton County from 1754 to 1761, Jones was a man of wide learning and culture who took an interest in the evolving court system of the province. As collector of quitrents in the Granville District for Earl Granville, he acquired vast tracts of land and was soon one of the largest landowners on the Roanoke River.

In 1756, on the recommendation of Governor Arthur Dobbs, Jones was appointed attorney general of the province. Soon after taking office, he became embroiled in the controversy surrounding the administration of the Granville District. In November 1758 several residents of the district, dissatisfied with the high fees and poor administration of its land office, appealed to Jones to petition the Assembly on their behalf for redress. The Assembly ordered an investigation, and a committee concluded that both Francis Corbin and Joshua Bodley had generally followed Granville's instructions in the management of the land office. Corbin, it was determined, had been engaged in questionable practices, but the Assembly was satisfied with Bodley's conduct. The only immediate result of the investigation was the publication of the schedule of fees charged by Granville's agents.

The petitioners were not mollified, however, and, soon after the new year, the smoldering anger of the farmers in the district erupted in violence. On 24 Jan. 1759 a posse of embattled and intoxicated farmers led by Colonel Alexander McCulloch kidnapped Francis Corbin in Edenton and took him to Enfield, where he and Joshua Bodley were held captive and forced to give bond for the reformation of the Proprietary land office.

Many of the disaffected yeomen were especially hostile towards the eloquent and elegant Robin Jones. Following his 1756 appointment as attorney general, Jones earned the enmity of the Granville "courthouse ring" because of his identification with Governor Dobbs's removal from office of Robert Harris, a Granville justice who had openly expressed contempt for the governor. In retaliation, the Granville justices often refused to hold court. Pursuant to his duties as attorney general, Jones reported these actions to Dobbs who followed Jones's recommendations in making his next appointments of Granville justices, much to the displeasure of those already sitting.

On 23 Mar. 1759, "The Petition of Reuben Searcy and Others" was presented to the county court of Granville and read in the presence of the justices. In this document, representing the views of "Sundry of the Inhabitants" of the county, "that Eloquent Gentleman" Robin Jones was accused of taking exorbitant legal fees, of preventing the appointment of justices of the peace favored by the petitioners, and "through his wiles and false insinuations to which art and chicanerie he owes his great success and high preferment in this Province" of imposing on "the inferior class of mankind" and on Governor Dobbs. The petitioners asked that Jones be prohibited from pleading at the Granville bar. Nothing directly resulted from the petition, but on 14 May Jones testified under oath before the governor and Council that "he had heared that it was intended by a great number of rioters to petition the court at Granville to silence him . . . and that if no such order was made, to pull him by the nose and also to abuse the court." Following a formal address to the governor by the Assembly on 15 May, a proclamation was issued and several rioters were jailed. During disorders in Enfield, farmers from surrounding counties broke into the jail and the prisoners escaped.

Meanwhile, after the disturbances, Francis Corbin had failed to bring the ringleaders to justice, and in England, as a result of the disorders and mismanagement of the land office, Thomas Child had persuaded Earl Granville to remove Corbin and Bodley from office. In September Child returned to North Carolina as the new attorney general, replacing Jones who then became Proprietary collector of quitrents for the district during the next year, when Child reformed many of the practices of the land office.

In the Assembly during 1760 and 1761 Jones was allied with Thomas Child, Thomas Barker from Edenton, and Francis Corbin, newly elected from Chowan County, in supporting the political and economic interests of the northern counties and in opposing the administration of Arthur Dobbs. Governor Dobbs denounced the group as "the northern Junto," in part reflecting his particular dislike of Child. Nevertheless, in July 1761 Jones once more received a commission from the governor as attorney general. Child, who was moving to Suffolk, Va., had recommended Jones as his successor, and in August 1761 he left active management of Proprietary affairs in Jones's hands. Jones also continued to serve as collector of Proprietary quitrents until the land office was closed in 1765.

During the next several years disorders continued sporadically in Granville and elsewhere, leading eventually to the August 1766 mass meeting at Sandy Creek, Orange County, where Regulator Advertisement Number 1 appeared. Jones may well have learned of the meeting, but in the summer of 1766 he was confined to his bed. On 20 August Samuel Johnston wrote to Thomas Barker in London, "your old friend R. J. is I am told on his last leggs." Johnston promised to visit Jones and to provide Barker with an account of his business affairs and Jones's health. When Johnston arrived in Halifax to settle with Jones for some monies received for land, he found Jones "so low as to be quite incapable of transacting that or any other business." According to Johnston, Jones "continued in that condition till about the middle of Sept. when a mortification was begun in his ankle and his surgeons at his request thought it proper to take off the limb above his knee. He underwent the operation with great firmness but survived it only a few days." Thus Jones did not serve in the 1766 Assembly to which he had been elected.

As late as 1773, Jones's role in the Granville disorders was criticized in the Virginia Gazette in Williamsburg. Willie Jones was loyal to his father's memory, and his published reply was characteristically blunt: "You, sir, are a liar."

Unlike the will of his freethinking son, Willie, which reflected an acerbic disbelief, Robin Jones's will, dated 4 Apr. 1764, in which he left his considerable property to his wife and children, exhibited the pious standard form language of the time. Father and son did, however, share an aversion to mournful funerals. Robin Jones directed that no one go into mourning on his death, and that his funeral be "decent without any pomp according to . . . the Church of England& that on the occasion a few friends only . . . be assembled to attend my obsequies." In leaving Mary Eaton Jones a life estate in his Occoneechee Neck plantation, Jones berated his second wife, stating that "her conduct has been so void of the duties enjoined by the conjugal estate & the injuries she has done me so many & so great that I am conscious this provision far exceeds her merit."

In 1737 or 1738 Jones married Sarah Cobb of York County, Va., the daughter of Robert and Elizabeth Allen Cobb. They became the parents of five children: Allen (b. 24 Dec. 1739), Willie (b. 25 May 1741), Martha (b. 22 Aug. 1743), Charlotte (b. 7 Sept. 1746), and Robert (b. 2 Feb. 1749). After the death of his first wife, Jones married Mary ("Molly") Eaton, by whom he had one daughter, Elizabeth (b. 13 June 1766).

Robin Jones was connected by descent and marriage to some of the most influential members of the colonial Halifax circle. His oldest son was the Federalist general Allen Jones of Mount Gallant, whose daughter Sarah married Governor William R. Davie. A younger son, Willie Jones of The Grove, was an enigmatic Jeffersonian, whose daughters included Sally, who married Governor Hutchins G. Burton, and Martha Burke ("Patsy"), who married John Wayles Eppes of Buckingham County, Va., whose first wife had been Maria Jefferson. Robin Jones's daughter, Martha, married Dr. Thomas Gilchrist and their daughter married Colonel William Polk. Jones's youngest child, Elizabeth, married Jeffersonian Benjamin Williams, twice governor of North Carolina, who in 1799 ironically succeeded in office his wife's niece's Federalist husband, William R. Davie.

Jones, Cadwallader

17 Aug. 1813–1 Dec. 1899

Cadwallader Jones, lawyer, legislator, planter, and Confederate officer, was born at Mount Gallant, the Northampton County home of his paternal grandfather, General Allen Jones. The son of Cadwallader and Rebecca Edwards Long Jones of West Hill near Hillsborough, he was graduated in 1832 from The University of North Carolina, of which he became a trustee (1840–57). Jones began his legal career in Hillsborough in 1836, and was elected to the North Carolina House of Commons as a Democrat for the 1840 and 1842 sessions. He resigned on 20 Apr. 1843 to become solicitor of the Fourth Judicial District but was returned to the General Assembly for the 1848 and 1850 sessions. For a time he also served as a U.S. magistrate.

In 1857 Jones moved his young family to a cotton plantation overlooking the Catawba Valley near Rock Hill, S.C. His father had bought the 5,000-acre estate, also named Mount Gallant, in 1810, but it had remained unoccupied by the family during subsequent years. Jones represented South Carolina at the Richmond Democratic Convention of 1860 which nominated John C. Breckinridge for president.

On 13 Aug. 1861 Jones accepted a commission as captain in the Confederate Army so that a local volunteer company could be raised. His first engagement was at Hilton Head in 1861, and he continued to fight in many of the well-known battles of the early years of the war: Mechanicsville, Malvern Hill, Second Manassas, and the Seven Days Campaign before Richmond. After the Battle of Sharpsburg in 1862, he was promoted to colonel in the Twelfth South Carolina Volunteers. Poor health forced him to resign from Gregg's Brigade before the end of the war, but he left four sons in the army: First Lieutenant Iredell Jones, who was stationed at Fort Sumter; Captain Cadwallader Jones, Jr., and Private Allen Jones, who served in the same company as their father; and Johnstone Jones, who had been a cadet at the Citadel and enlisted in the Confederate Army at age fifteen with the Arsenal Cadets of Columbia.

Soon after Jones's return home from the war, he was elected York District's representative to the South Carolina Senate. In 1865 he was a delegate to the state constitutional convention called to repeal the secession ordinance, free the slaves, repudiate the war debt, and draw up a new constitution. Like other slaveholders, Jones was financially ruined by the war. He continued to plant cotton but lost money every year and was forced to sell off his land piece by piece until nothing was left of Mount Gallant.

On 5 Jan. 1836 Jones married Annie Isabella Iredell, the daughter of Governor James Iredell. They had ten children, nine of whom lived to maturity. In addition to the four sons who served in the war, there were two younger sons, Halcott Pride and Wilie (or Willie), who was later a brigadier general in the South Carolina state militia. The four daughters were Frances Iredell (Erwin); Rebecca Cadwallader, who died in her youth; Annie Isabella (Robertson); and Helen Iredell (Coles). Despite his poor health in middle age, Jones lived to the age of eighty-six and was the author, in the year of his death, of A Genealogical History. An Episcopalian, he died of natural causes in Columbia, S.C., at the home of his daughter Annie Robertson.

Jones, Allen

24 Dec. 1739–14 Nov. 1807

Allen Jones, colonial and state official and Revolutionary War officer, was born in Edgecombe (now Halifax County), the son of Robert ("Robin") Jones, colonial attorney general, and his wife, Sarah Cobb. Like his father, Allen was educated at Eton College in England. He was clerk of Superior Court for the Halifax district and from 1773 to 1775 represented Northampton County in the Assembly. By 1775 he actively opposed royal power in the colonies as a member of the Committee of Safety for Halifax. The following year Jones served as vice-president of the Provincial Congress that met at Halifax on 4 Apr. 1776. In that body he presided over or participated on the committee to empower North Carolina delegates in the Continental Congress to concur with those of other colonies in declaring independence, the committee to provide for the national defense, and the committee to establish a temporary form of government.

In 1778 Jones presided over the North Carolina Senate as speaker. He was a delegate to the Continental Congress meeting at Philadelphia in 1779–80. In 1782 he served as a member of the North Carolina Council of State, and in the years 1783, 1784, and 1787 he again represented Northampton County in the state senate.

As a man of military acumen, Jones professed to know little about the role he played. In a letter to Governor Richard Caswell on 8 Sept. 1777, he wrote: "I do not know whether my return is proper, for I confess my ignorance in military affairs." Nevertheless, the Halifax Congress had seen fit to name him a brigadier general on 22 Apr. 1776. He did have some military experience, however, for in 1771 he had assisted in the suppression of the Regulators at the Battle of Alamance. During the American Revolution he saw action in the fall of 1780, when for a time his forces were combined with those of General Horatio Gates.

Allen Jones had an equally prominent brother, Willie, who also took part in the Revolution. Surprisingly, the political views of the two men diverged after the war. Allen became a staunch Federalist, whereas Willie advocated states' rights.

Jones was married first, on 21 June 1762, to Mary Haynes; his second wife, whom he married on 3 Sept. 1768, was Rebecca Edwards, the sister of Isaac Edwards, formerly secretary to Governor William Tryon; and his third wife was Mary Eaton. His son, Robin, died suddenly at age eight; his daughter, Sarah, married William R. Davie. Jones died and was buried at Mount Gallant, his plantation in Northampton County.