Copyright USGenNet Inc., 2014 All Rights Reserved USGenNet Data Repository Please read USGenNet Copyright Statement on this page: Transcribed and submitted by Linda Talbott for the USGenNet Data Repository http://www.us-data.org/ =========================================================================== Formatted by USGenNet Data Repository Chief Archivist, Linda Talbott All of the above information must remain when copied or downloaded. =========================================================================== Biographical History of North Carolina, Vol 7 by Samuel A'Court Ashe pub. Charles L. Van Noppen, Greensboro, N.C. - 1908 [p. 2-6] WAIGHTSTILL AVERY ----------------- COLONEL WAIGHTSTILL AVERY was born at Groton, Conn., May 10, 1741, and died at Swan's Pond, in Burke County, N.C., in 1821. The first of his ancestors who settled in this country was CHRISTOPHER AVERY, who with his young son JAMES crossed the ocean in the ship Arabella and landed at the place where now stands Boston, in the year 1631. When JAMES AVERY grew to manhood he married JOANNA GREENSLADE. The youngest of ten children of his marriage was SAMUEL, who was born August 14, 1664, and married SUSANNA PALMES, daughter of WILLIAM PALMES, of the province of Munster, Ireland, on October 27, 1686. WILLIAM PALMES married Miss ANN HUMPHREY, who was a daughter of SIR JOHN HUMPHREY, of Lynn, Mass. Dr. ELROY McK. AVERY, who is now writing a "History of the United States," is also preparing a second edition of the "Averys of Groton." He has received in re- cent years a duly certified statement from the proper custodian of records in England, which traces the genealogical line of ANN HUM- PHREY through a number of earls and through EDWARD I, II and III, and through HENRY III, kings of England, and through KING ALFRED to EGBERT, the first king of England. HUMPHREY AVERY, the sixth child of SAMUEL AVERY and SUSANNA PALMES, who was born July 4, 1699, married JERUSHA MORGAN and had twelve children. The tenth son, WAIGHTSTILL AVERY, is the subject of this sketch. WAIGHTSTILL AVERY and his younger brother, after- ward REV. ISAAC AVERY, were prepared for college by REV. SAMUEL SEABURY (father of SAMUEL, the first Episcopal bishop in America, who, when he was ordained bishop in Scotland, took with him ISAAC AVERY to be ordained a minister). WAIGHTSTILL AVERY graduated at Princeton (then called the College of New Jersey) in 1766, and taught in the college for a year after graduating. A book recently published shows that he was awarded the first honor in his class and delivered the Latin salutatory. OLIVER ELLSWORTH, afterward chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, was his classmate, roommate, and lifelong friend. He read law with LYTTLETON DENNIS, a prominent lawyer of Maryland, and came to North Carolina in 1769. He entered the colony at Edenton, with letters of introduction, as his journal shows, to her most prominent men, and, beginning with IREDELL and HEWES at that place, he mentions in it the leading men whom he met as he came west. He met FANNING at Salisbury, with whom he formed a friendship that lasted some years. He found in Mecklenburg DR. EPHRAIM BREVARD, ADLAI OSBORNE, and REV. HEZEKIAH J. BALCH, all of whom he had known at Princeton. He settled at Charlotte, and was a boarder at the house of HEZEKIAH ALEXANDER, where he lived until 1778, when he married and removed to Jones County. He was an early and ardent friend of liberty, and was doubtless an active promoter of the movement which culminated in the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, on May 20, 1775, as the minutes of the Council of Safety and many other public docu- ments show. He signed that immortal embodiment of patriotic prin- ciple and defiant spirit. COLONEL AVERY'S learning, talent, and wisdom made him at once a leading man in Mecklenburg. He was elected a member from Mecklenburg to the Provincial Congress, which met at Hillsboro, August 21, 1775, and also a member of the Con- gress that met at Halifax, November 12, 1776, and formed the first state constitution. He was one of the committee who drew and re- ported the provisions of our first organic law, under which our ancestors lived for sixty years. The late GOVERNOR SWAIN, who had more thorough knowledge of the history of our State than any man of his day, asked a grandson of WAIGHTSTILL AVERY in 1867 if he knew the handwriting of his grandfather, and said that if he did, he would find from an examination of the archives at Raleigh (pointing at the time to where they were stored away), that more of the Con- stitution of 1776 was in the handwriting of WAIGHTSTILL AVERY than in that of any other member of the committee appointed to draft that instrument. Especially is it understood that he was the au- thor of the clause requiring the legislature to establish one or more universities. After the formation of the state government he was elected to the first General Assembly, which met at New Bern in 1777, and by that body was made first attorney-general of North Carolina. He met at New Bern, and married, in 1778, a young widow, LEAH FRANKS, who was a daughter of WILLIAM PROBART. His wife had a large farm in Jones County, upon which he settled. Her mother was the daught- er of SIR YELVERTON PEYTON, of Maryland, from whom descended the family of PEYTON'S, well known in Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. In 1779 he resigned the office of attorney-general and accepted that of colonel of the militia of Jones County, in place of NATHAN BRYAN, resigned. In this capacity he was engaged for more than two years or until CORNWALLIS went to Yorktown. In 1781 he employed HARVEY WILLIAMS, the father of the banker, GEORGE WILLIAMS, of Charleston, S.C., to take charge of his wife and two little daugh- ters and his negroes, and remove them to Swan Ponds in Burke County, N.C., which place he had bought from "Hunting John" McDOWELL, of Pleasant Gardens. He joined his family late in the year 1781, after it became apparent that our ancestors had won their independence. In 1780, while CORNWALLIS was occupying Charlotte, he caused COLONEL AVERY'S office, with his books and papers, except such as were in the house of his friend HEZEKIAH ALEXANDER, to be burned. This evidence of displeasure was visited upon only a few of those whom CORNWALLIS considered leading offenders. COLONEL AVERY was not a stranger to the people of Burke County, and hence, after his removal to that county, represented it in the house of commons in 1782, 1783, 1784, 1785 and 1793, and in the senate in 1796. In the year 1801 he was rendered helpless in his lower limbs by paralysis, but continued to practice his profession from Raleigh to Jonesboro (now Tennessee) until a few years before his death, in 1821. He had been rendered speechless by a third stroke of paralysis some months before the first account of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence was published in the North Carolina papers, and hence we are deprived of the benefit of his testimony as to that instrument. It was only when the Declaration was printed that such men as GENERAL GRAHAM began to realize the importance of the movement as evincing the dogged and daring spirit that animated the people of Mecklenburg. They had never learned before to look upon that movement through the glasses of the suc- ceeding generation, and had never realized that they had been actors in one of the grandest scenes in our history. The family of COLONEL AVERY, except his brother, REV. ISAAC AVERY, who also came south, remained in New England and were all patriots. In a letter to COLONEL AVERY from his brother SOLOMON, written July 11, 1783, the latter said: "Eleven AVERYS were killed in the fort at Groton and seven wounded. Many AVERYS have been killed in this county, but there have been no Tories named AVERY in these parts." The monument at Fort Griswold erected to those who were killed there by BENEDICT ARNOLD'S men has inscribed upon it more names of AVERYS than of any other family. SOLOMON AVERY was the great-grandfather of JOHN D. and WILLIAM E. ROCKEFELLER, the multi-millionaires. REV. ISAAC AVERY came as far south as Virginia, where he preached at Norfolk and at Bethel. He was a colonel of a Virginia regiment from Northampton County, and held the office of lieutenant of that county, a position which made him, under the laws of that State, the ranking officer of the county. One of his daughters married JOHN MURPHY, the only son of JAMES MURPHY, who distinguish- ed himself as a soldier at Ramseur's Mill, King's Mountain and Cow- pens. MARGARET STRINGFELLOW MURPHY was the mother of MRS. THOMAS G. and MRS. WILLIAM M. WALTON, who reared large families in Burke County; of MRS. LORETTA GASTON, who married GENERAL ALEXANDER F. GASTON, the only son of JUDGE GASTON; and by a subsequent marriage was the mother of DR. W. A. COLLETT, of Morganton. COLONEL WAIGHTSTILL AVERY was one of the most thorough and accurate lawyers in the State. In one of the earliest volumes of the "North Carolina Reports," when law books were not very abun- dant, one of the judges said in an opinion that he had been unable to find authority upon a certain point, but rested his decision upon what COLONEL AVERY told him was laid down in a volume which the latter had in his private library. GOVERNOR SWAIN said that, until the time of his death, COLONEL AVERY had the most extensive library in western North Carolina. He was a thorough classical scholar, and during the war for independence and after it was ended bought, as entries on blank leaves show, copies of many of the works of the Latin writers, and entertained himself, even after his second stroke of paralysis, reading them in the original. One of the evidences of the subserviency of all classes of men to an unfortunate public sentiment was found in the fact that COLO- NEL AVERY, an avowed Presbyterian of Puritan extraction, accepted a challenge from ANDREW JACKSON, then a young lawyer at Jonesboro court, went on the field, and allowed JACKSON to shoot at him, though he did not return the fire. After JACKSON had fired COLONEL AVERY walked up to him and delivered him a lecture. JACKSON had known COLONEL AVERY in Mecklenburg, and had applied to him for board in his family and instruction as a law student. This was after COLONEL AVERY came to Burke in 1781. COLONEL AVERY had de- clined to take charge of him as a student because he was living in a small house in the country and had no room for boarders, where- upon JACKSON went to Salisbury and read law with SPRUCE MACAY. COLONEL WAIGHTSTILL AVERY was a gentleman of the old school, and wore knee-breeches, powdered wig and full dress of the time of WASHINGTON up to his death. He was a man of great dignity of demeanor, but was remarkably courteous in his language and manner, even toward young people. Writing of him when he first came to the State, WHEELER says: "He was truly an acquisition to any State. He was a gentleman and a scholar." COLONEL AVERY had four children - three daughters and a son. His daughter ELIZABETH married WILLIAM LENOIR, settled at Lenoir City, Tenn., and was the founder of a large and influential family, now scattered from Bristol to Chattanooga. His daughter LOUISA married THOMAS LENOIR, and settled first on Pigeon River, in Hay- wood County, and afterward at Fort Defiance, the old Lenoir home- stead. The other daughter married first a MR. POOR, and then MR. SUMMEY, and lived on Mills River, in Henderson County. W. S. 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