NEWS

Local angles: Avery, Burke counties; Bossier City, La.

By JENA WITTKAMP
UNC News Services

CHAPEL HILL –One of western North Carolina’s most powerful families through the 18^th and 19^th centuries is profiled in an exhibit at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

"The Avery Family of North Carolina," on Wilson Library’s fourth floor, presents 32 documents and three photos that trace plantation life, service in the Revolutionary and Civil wars and much more. The free public exhibit, sponsored by the Southern Historical Collection, will run through March 31.

"The Averys typify powerful families in the state at that time who were involved in a variety of things, including law, politics and business," said Laura Knodel of Bossier City, La., exhibit curator and a graduate student in the School of Information and Library Science.

For the exhibit, she chose items from among many in the Southern Historical Collection. The Avery Family Papers are representative of many family collections available for research in Wilson, said Tim West, Southern Historical Collection director and curator of the manuscripts department.

Dating from 1786 to 1894, the items exhibited include family letters – some from sons who were away fighting for the Confederacy -- plantation registers, land grants, bills of sale for land and slaves, property inventories and wills. The other side of the 19^th-century debate on slavery appears in an 1832 letter from a business associate, who declared the institution "a great political, as well as moral, evil."

Photos are of the family plantation in Burke County; William Waightstill Avery, who gave the 1850 commencement address at Carolina and was on the university’s Board of Trustees; and Alphonso Calhoun Avery, an N.C. Supreme Court Justice from 1888-1897.

The dynasty began when William and Alphonso’s grandfather, Waightstill Avery, moved to North Carolina in 1769. Born in Connecticut, he had graduated from Princeton and studied law in Maryland. By 1818, he owned vast amounts of land in western North Carolina -- 13,000 acres in Burke County alone. Avery County, northwest of Burke, is named for Waightstill.

Under colonial rule, Avery was a member of the provincial assembly and attorney general for the Crown. He resigned those positions in the 1770s and began working for independence. He led the Jones County militia during the Revolutionary War, until 1781, earning the rank of colonel. During that time, Avery bought Swans Pond Plantation in Burke County and sent his family there.

He was on committees that wrote the Mecklenburg Resolves in 1775 and North Carolina’s constitution in 1776. The resolves declared English laws that had governed the county "null and vacated" and set forth new laws for "the present alarming period." The constitution, now in the state archives in Raleigh, is mostly in Avery’s handwriting.

Avery was elected to the first N.C. General Assembly in 1777 and named North Carolina’s first attorney general. In 1788, while trying a case in Tennessee, Avery was challenged to a duel by Andrew Jackson, a lawyer for the opposing side (later to become president, from 1829-1837). Jackson, reputed to have a fiery temper, was insulted by Avery’s comments in the courtroom. After meeting at the dueling ground and firing above each other’s heads, the two left as friends.

Avery’s descendents were active in agriculture, law, state and local politics and business ventures including railroad construction. Avery’s only son, Isaac Thomas Avery, acquired more than 50,000 acres in Mitchell and Avery counties, where he raised more cattle and horses than anyone else in western North Carolina. By 1850, he owned more than 140 slaves and several gold mines in Burke and Rutherford counties.

Several of Isaac Thomas’ six sons attended Carolina. Of five who fought for the Confederacy, only one, Alphonso Calhoun Avery, survived. Three died in battle – including the former UNC trustee William Waightstill -- and one after the war, from combat injuries.

Isaac Erwin Avery led two regiments against the Union position at Cemetery Hill in the Battle of Gettysburg. Struck by a bullet at the base of the neck, he wrote a note to his officer as he lay dying: "Major, tell my father I died with my face to the enemy."

The exhibit opens from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays. For more information, call 962-1345.

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(Wittkamp, of Raleigh, is a December 2003 UNC graduate, with degrees in women’s studies and journalism and mass communication.)

Contact: Tim West or Laura Knodel, 962-1345, timwest@email.unc.edu, lacapell@email.unc.edu

News Services Contact: L.J. Toler, 962-8589, laura_toler@unc.edu