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Samuel Ashe |
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Samuel Ashe was born in Beaufort County in North Carolina in the year 1725. His father was John Baptiste Ashe, a speaker in the Beaufort Precinct Assembly, and his mother was Elizabeth Swann. John Baptiste was a representative of the lower house of the assembly and served as its speaker for a time. He married Elizabeth for her connections to a clique of planters who wanted to settle the Cape Fear area with whites. In 1727 the couple moved to a Cape Fear plantation with Samuel, his brother John, and one daughter. His parents died before he was ten and he and his siblings were raised by their Uncle Sam Swann, who was a speaker in the Assembly and head of the Popular party. Sam Swann urged Ashe to get an education and he was sent to Harvard to be educated in law. He finished his studies under his uncle and in the 1770’s he returned to the Wilmington district to become assistant attorney to the Crown. Despite his close working relationship with the British he was one of the first prominent patriots and began organizing revolutionary groups around 1774, when the colonial governor refused to call the legislature. Ashe and seven other men were chosen to send out the notice to the counties to send delegates to meet August 20th at Johnston Court House, the first revolutionary meeting of the state. January 1775 Ashe and his brother John were appointed members of New Hanover’s committee of safety, which had complete power over North Carolina’s military and civil issues. By August 1775 Ashe became president of the Committee of Safety. From the years 1775 to 1778 Ashe was a member of the Provincial Congress. In the August of 1776 he organized an expedition against the Native Americans of North Carolina. November the same year he was chosen to be a member of the committee that was to frame the North Carolina Constitution. After it was adopted Governor Richard Caswell appointed him judge of the first court under the authority of the State of North Carolina, an appointment he held from 1777 to 1795. Ashe also became the first Speaker of the state senate in 1777. His most important decision as a judge was to declare a recently passed law invalid under the state constitution that refused court hearings to those trying to claim back Loyalist property. This verdict on Bayard vs. Singleton (1785) established the precedent of judicial review of a legislative decree. In 1795, at the age of seventy, Ashe was elected the ninth Governor of North Carolina and served for three one-year terms, the constitutional limit. He also served on the board of Innes Academy in Wilmington and was president of the board of trustees of the University of North Carolina. Ashe was the first man to hold court in N.C. by popular choice and his brother was the first man to receive a military commission from the people of the state. In his early career Ashe was a Federalist, but softened over time and became a Jeffersonian, strongly supporting state’s rights. Still, he could set aside his political beliefs in times of crisis, such as when he supported President John Adam’s policies during the 1798 quasi war with France. After the problem was over he strongly campaigned for Thomas Jefferson, the Republican candidate for President in 1800. Ashe’s son Samuel became a firm Federalist when he entered politics, going against his father’s opinions. Ashe married his first cousin Mary Porter in 1748, and they had three sons, John Baptiste, Cincinnatus, and Samuel. His son John was a speaker of the House and a member of the Continental and U.S. Congresses, and was elected governor but died before he could take the post. When Mary died in 1767 Ashe remarried to Mrs. Elizabeth Jones Merrick, with whom he had several children. Only one child of that marriage survived to adulthood, Thomas Ashe. There is no known portrait of Samuel Ashe. He was described by James Sprunt, who was quoting G. J. McRee, as being “of stalwart frame, endowed with practical good sense, a profound knowledge of human nature, and an energy that eventually raised his to the bench and the post of governor."1 He died at Rocky Point, Pender County in North Carolina, February 3rd, 1813. By the time of his death he owned at least 1, 390 acres throughout North Carolina and Tennessee. His grave is on his former plantation, The Neck. |
"...for whom Asheville was named, was born in North Carolina [New Hanover County] in 1725; educated at Harvard; became a lawyer; was one of thirteen members of the council which governed North Carolina after the commencement of the Revolution and prior to the adoption of her first Constitution, and part of that time president of that Council of Thirteen; was a member of the convention which adopted that Constitution; was speaker of the Senate in the first legislature which assembled under that Constitution; was by that legislature elected presiding judge of the Supreme Court of the State, which court was composed of three judges; and continued in that office until 1795 when he became and was for three years, governor of the State. (1922. Sondley, F. A. Asheville and Buncombe County, p. 89.) "In his honor the name of Morristown was changed to Asheville. This new name became common some time before any legal action upon the subject was had....Finally in July...or October 1796 or in January, April, or July 1797, the name of the town was duly changed from Morristown to Asheville. (1922. Sondley, F. A. Asheville and Buncombe County, p. 89.) "He was a member of the [Supreme] court when it decided, in the celebrated case of Bayard v. Singleton, that an act of the legislature was void because contrary to the Constitution; and he was governor when the land frauds of John Glasgow, Secretary of State, were discovered and created such a great excitement in North Carolina. At his plantation on Rocky Point he died in 1813." (1922. Sondley, F. A. Asheville and Buncombe County, pp. 89, 90.) |
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Bibliography Carnes, Mark C., and Garranty, John A., editors. American National Biography, Volume 1. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Lanman, Charles. Biographical Annals of the Civil Government of the United States. During its first century; from original and official sources. Washington, DC: James Anglim, 1876. Reprint. Detroit: Gale Research, 1976. Powell, William S., ed. Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, Volume 1. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1979. 1 Sondley, Forster A. Asheville and Buncombe County. Asheville, NC: The Citizen Co., 1922 The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography Vol. 4. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms, 1971 |
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