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Collection Number: 00272

Collection Title: William Gaston Papers, 1744-1950 (bulk 1791-1844)

This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held in the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in our reading room, and not digitally available through the World Wide Web. See the Duplication Policy section for more information.


This collection was rehoused and a summary created with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities; this finding aid was created with support from NC ECHO.

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Size 4.0 feet of linear shelf space (approximately 1,400 items)
Abstract William Gaston (1778-1844) of New Bern, N.C., was a lawyer, state legislator, United States representative, and North Carolina Supreme Court judge. The collection consists of the papers of William Gaston, including personal, business, and political correspondence, 1791-1844; law notes and other papers; notes, 1896-1915, of Judge Henry Groves Connor (1852-1924) for his proposed biography of Gaston; and pictures. Topics include the Catholic Church in America; banks and banking; family life; national elections; preparations for war with France in 1800 and subsequent negotiations with France; financial affairs of the United States; anticipated effects upon the United States of the ending of the Napoleonic wars; Federalist Party strategies; legal matters concerning the outbreak of the War of 1812; the nullification controversy; proposals for the appropriation of public lands for the support of public education; internal improvements; life in West Florida in the 1830s; and an 1832 speech in Chapel Hill, N.C., in which Gaston condemned both the nullification scheme and the institution of slavery. Major correspondents include George E. Badger, John Fanning Burgwyn, Thomas Pollock Devereux, Robert Donaldson, Alexander Hamilton, Francis Joseph Kron, Willie Person Mangum, Matthias Manly, John Marshall, Thomas Ruffin, Marcus Cicero Stephens, David Lowry Swain, Roger B. Taney, and Daniel Webster. The Addition of February 2001 is a Gaston family register dated through the 1880s, along with enclosures, 1834-1901.
Creator Gaston, William, 1778-1844.
Curatorial Unit
Language English
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Restrictions to Access
No restrictions. Open for research.
Restrictions to Use
No usage restrictions.
Copyright Notice
Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.
Preferred Citation
[Identification of item], in the William Gaston Papers, #272, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Alternate Form of Material
Microfilm copy (filmed 1966) available.
Alternate Form of Material
Typed transcriptions of some letters available, and filed with originals if both are present.
Acquisitions Information
Received from R. D. W. Connor before 1940; Isobel Busbee of Raleigh, N.C., in 1952; Mrs. Lyman Cotten in 1965; the family of John Steele Henderson in 1969; the estate of Archibald Henderson in 1971; Chalmers Davidson of Davidson, N.C., in 1974; and from Katharine Vaux McCauley and Mary Vaux in December 1999 (Acc. 98538), March 2000 (Acc. 98595), and February 2001 (Acc. 98848)
Additional Descriptive Resources
A copy of the original finding aid for this collection, including an index of proper names (people and places) appearing in the collection compiled by SHC staff in 1967, is filed in folder 1a.
Sensitive Materials Statement
Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.
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Processed by SHC staff

Encoded by Linda Sellars, June 2000

Updated by: Adam Fielding and Jodi Berkowitz, April 2011; Nancy Kaiser, October 2020.

This collection was rehoused with support from a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Office of Preservation, Washington, D.C., 1990-1993.

This collection was rehoused and a summary created with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This finding aid was created with support from NC ECHO.

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The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

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William Gaston (1778-1844) of New Bern, N.C., was a lawyer, state legislator, United States representative, and North Carolina Supreme Court judge.

William Gaston was born in New Bern, N.C., on 19 September 1778. His father, Alexander Gaston, was a prominent physician of the New Bern region who received his medical degree from the University of Edinburgh, and served as a surgeon in the British navy. The elder Gaston, a Protestant Irishman of Huguenot descent, settled in North Carolina in 1765. He was married in 1775 to Margaret Sharpe, a convent-educated Englishwoman from a family of devout Catholics. The couple had three children: William; his sister Jane, three years his junior, who married John Louis Taylor; and an elder son who died in infancy.

With the outbreak of the American Revolution, Alexander Gaston became active in the patriot cause. On 19 August 1781, he was killed by the leader of a band of Tory raiders at New Bern. Margaret Sharpe Gaston, left with the care of two infants, raised her children in the Catholic faith.

In the spring of 1791, the twelve-year-old William Gaston was sent to Philadelphia, Pa., to be prepared for college. The following fall, he went to Georgetown College to become its first student. He returned to New Bern in 1793 due to poor health, and studied for a year at the New Bern Academy before he enrolled at Princeton, where he was graduated in 1796 with highest honors. He studied law in New Bern under the direction of Francois Xavier Martin, and, on 22 September 1798, he was admitted to the bar. Later in the year, when Gaston's brother-in-law, John Louis Taylor, was appointed judge of the North Carolina Superior Court, Taylor diverted a large part of his practice to Gaston.

In political matters, Gaston was a Federalist and then a Whig. He served four terms in the North Carolina Senate and seven terms in the North Carolina House of Commons. Gaston was a Federalist presidential elector in 1808, and, from 1813 until 1817, he was a member of the United States House of Representatives. As a congressman, Gaston acquired a reputation for the eloquence of his speeches, especially those supporting the Bank of the United States and opposing the Loan Bill. He denounced the War of 1812. He voluntarily retired from national politics in 1817 and on at least one subsequent occasion refused nomination to the United States Senate.

Gaston remained active in North Carolina politics. He served as chair of the judiciary committee of the North Carolina Senate and chair of the joint legislative committee that framed the act creating the North Carolina Supreme Court. In the North Carolina House of Commons, 1827-1833, Gaston served on the judiciary committee and as chair of the finance committee, a position that coincided with his interest in banking. In 1828, he was appointed president of the Bank of New Bern, and while in the House of Commons cooperated with conservative financial groups in an effort to maintain sound banking policies for North Carolina. He helped to lead the fight in North Carolina against the nullification doctrine in 1832.

Gaston took a lively interest in internal improvements for North Carolina. In July 1833, he attended an internal improvements convention in Raleigh, serving as chair of the committee to prepare an address to the state and to lay the convention's proceedings before the state legislature. The address stressed the need for colleges, railroads, hospitals, and asylums for the handicapped. As a member of the House of Commons, Gaston introduced the bill to charter the North Carolina Central Railroad.

In 1835, Gaston was an influential delegate to the North Carolina Constitutional Convention, where he fought to have religious qualifications for office holding dropped and where he attempted to protect the voting privileges of free people of color. Gaston also supported federal representation as the basis for representation in the House of Commons and biennial meetings of the state legislature.

Gaston's law practice was very successful and recognized nationally. Daniel Webster and John Marshall, among others, consulted with him on legal questions. In 1833, Gaston was elected by the state legislature to a post as an associate justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, where he served until his death in 1844. Gaston's most famous decision on the bench came in 1834 with the case of State v. Negro Will. Gaston ruled that a slave had the right to defend himself against an unlawful attempt of a master, or an agent of a master, to kill him. In the significant case of State v. William Manuel in 1838, he held that a manumitted slave was a citizen of the state and thus entitled to the guarantees of the constitution. Gaston purchased a library for the state Supreme Court while on a trip to New York City in 1835.

In addition to his service as legislator and judge, Gaston served the public as a trustee of the University of North Carolina from 1802 until his death in 1844. For many years, he was chair of the trustees of the New Bern Academy.

Gaston received many honors during his lifetime. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1817 and of the American Academy of Languages and Belles Lettres in 1821. He received honorary degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in 1819, from Harvard and Columbia in 1825, and from Princeton in 1835.

Gaston owned a plantation and slaves (163 at the time of his death) in Craven County, N.C., and a town house and a law office in New Bern. During the sessions of the Supreme Court in Raleigh, Gaston stayed at the home of Mrs. James F. Taylor. At his office nearby, in 1840, he wrote the words for "The Old North State," the music for which he apparently adopted from a melody sung by a group of Swiss bellringers who had visited the capital. "The Old North State" was first performed in public at the Whig state convention in Raleigh in October 1840 and has been North Carolina's official state song since 1927.

Gaston was married three times: on 4 September 1803 to Susan Hay (d. 1804); on 6 October 1805 to Hannah McClure (d. 1813); and on 3 September 1816 to Eliza Ann Worthington (d. 1819). With his second wife, he had one son, Alexander (1807-1848), who married Eliza W. Jones and then Sarah Lauretta Murphy, and two daughters, Susan Jane (1808-1866), who married Robert Donaldson, and Hannah Margaret (1811-1835), who married Matthias E. Manly. With his third wife, Gaston had two daughters, Elizabeth (1817-1874), who married George W. Graham, and Catherine Jane (1819-1885), who did not marry.

William Gaston died in his office in Raleigh in 1844.

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The collection consists of William Gaston's papers, including personal, business, and political correspondence, 1791-1844; law notes and other papers; notes, 1896-1915, of Judge Henry Groves Connor (1852-1924) for his proposed biography of Gaston; and pictures. Also included are some items relating to other members of Gaston's family, including several letters to Robert Donaldson. Earlier items include "Instructions for Mr. Corbin going to N. Carolina 14th Novr. 1744" (typed copy only); two items relating to William McClure; and an account, undated, of the death in 1781 of Alexander Gaston.

The papers cover a variety of topics, with numerous items concerning the history of the Catholic Church in America, as well as items relating to banks and banking. Gaston's letters to members of his family and to his personal friends are revealing of family and social life in North Carolina, and political affairs are the subject of much comment. Topics include national elections between the years 1800 and 1844, preparations for war with France in 1800, subsequent negotiations with France, financial affairs of the United States, the possible effects upon the United States of the ending of the Napoleonic wars, De Witt Clinton's presidential candidacy, plans for a meeting in New York of Federalists from all parts of the nation for the purpose of considering a Federalist course of action in the 1812 elections, legal matters concerning the outbreak of the War of 1812, the nullification controversy, proposals for the appropriation of public lands for the support of public education, internal improvements, and some discussion of scientific matters.

Major correspondents include George E. Badger, John Fanning Burgwyn, Thomas Pollock Devereux, Robert Donaldson, Alexander Hamilton, Francis Joseph Kron, Willie Person Mangum, Matthias Manly, John Marshall, Thomas Ruffin, Marcus Cicero Stephens, David Lowry Swain, Roger B. Taney, and Daniel Webster.

Letters to Gaston from Marcus Cicero Stephens describe life in West Florida in the 1830s, including information concerning the Seminole wars. A letter from Washington Irving to Gaston in 1837 asks for help finding a job for Irving's nephew. A letter, 15 October 1792, from Alexander Hamilton to John Steele, acquired by Gaston in an effort to help John C. Hamilton collect documents pertaining to the life of Alexander Hamilton, speculates on the coming federal elections, anticipating that Washington would be re-elected and giving Hamilton's opinions of the possible vice-presidential candidates--John Adams, George Clinton, Aaron Burr, and Thomas Jefferson.

Also in the collection are a number of items relating to Gaston's speech in Chapel Hill, N.C., on 21 June 1832, in which he condemned both the nullification scheme and the institution of slavery. There are a number of letters concerned with the suit for the recovery of land in North Carolina owned prior to the Revolution by Lord Carteret, Earl of Granville, in which Gaston served as attorney for the Carteret heirs. The Carteret materials consist, with the exception of a manuscript draft of Gaston's argument in the case, of typed copies of items from the Walter Clark Papers, North Carolina Department of Archives and History.

Other items include two printed forms, 1776 and 1778, pertaining to William McClure of Craven County, N.C.; three letters, 1 August 1833, 30 August 1833 (with enclosure), and 17 July 1834, from William Gaston to John Church Hamilton (typed copies in the collection at time of microfilming); a letter, 31 March 1832, from Gaston to David F. Caldwell of Salisbury, N.C.; a letter, 25 February 1834, from Gaston to Stephen F. Miller of Marion, Ga. (typed copy in collection at time of microfilming); three letters, 10 July, 16 September (with a typed copy attached of a letter, 22 October 1826, from Joseph Story to William Sullivan about Gaston), and 31 October 1908, from Henry Groves Connor to George W. Gage about Gaston.

Also included are a letter book, 1816-1836, of Gaston's business correspondence relating primarily to his law practice, and a late 18th- or early 19th-century manuscript volume that apparently belonged to William Gaston, but was probably transcribed by a law student of an early "reporter" of English law. Undated material includes copies of Gaston family records, letters and notes, drafts of speeches and of letters to newspapers, newspaper clippings, copies of biographical sketches of Gaston, and drafts of Henry Groves Connor's writings on Gaston. Pictures are of William Gaston, Zebulon Baird Vance, William A. Graham, Willie Person Mangum, John Motley Morehead, and John Louis Taylor. There are also pictures of places associated with Gaston, including his law office in New Bern, his law office in Raleigh, and Gaston Hall at Georgetown University.

Included are typed copies made for Henry Groves Connor of many of the letters and of Gaston letters from other collections. Copies are filed with originals if both are present. While these copies may aid in reading the originals, there are errors in transcription and any doubtful reading should be carefully checked.

The Addition of February 2001 is a Gaston family register dated through the 1880s, along with enclosures, 1834-1901.

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Contents list

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expand/collapse Expand/collapse William Gaston Papers, 1744-1950 and undated.

Arrangement: chronological.

Folder 1a

Original finding aid

Folder 1

1744; 1776; 1778; 1781; 1791

Folder 2

1792

Folder 3

1793

Folder 4

1794

Folder 5

1795

Folder 6

1796-1797

Folder 7

1798-1799

Folder 8

1800

Folder 9

1801-1802

Folder 10

1803

Folder 11

1804

Folder 12

1805

Folder 13

1806

Folder 14

1807

Folder 15

1808

Folder 16

1809-1811

Folder 17-18

Folder 17

Folder 18

1812

Folder 19-20

Folder 19

Folder 20

1813

Folder 21

1814-1815

Folder 22-23

Folder 22

Folder 23

1816

Folder 24

1817

Folder 25-26

Folder 25

Folder 26

1818

Folder 27

1819

Folder 28

1820

Folder 29

1821

Folder 30-32

Folder 30

Folder 31

Folder 32

1822

Folder 33-34

Folder 33

Folder 34

1823

Folder 35

1824

Folder 36

1825

Folder 37

1826

Folder 38

1827

Folder 39-41

Folder 39

Folder 40

Folder 41

1828

Folder 42-44

Folder 42

Folder 43

Folder 44

1829

Folder 45-47

Folder 45

Folder 46

Folder 47

1830

Folder 48-50

Folder 48

Folder 49

Folder 50

1831

Digital version: Letter from Samuel B. Stephens to William Gaston, 11 July 1831

Folder 51-55

Folder 51

Folder 52

Folder 53

Folder 54

Folder 55

1832

Folder 56-60

Folder 56

Folder 57

Folder 58

Folder 59

Folder 60

1833

Folder 61-67

Folder 61

Folder 62

Folder 63

Folder 64

Folder 65

Folder 66

Folder 67

1834

Folder 68-71

Folder 68

Folder 69

Folder 70

Folder 71

1835

Folder 72-75

Folder 72

Folder 73

Folder 74

Folder 75

1836

Folder 76-77

Folder 76

Folder 77

1837

Folder 78

1838

Folder 79

1839

Folder 80-82

Folder 80

Folder 81

Folder 82

1840

Folder 83-84

Folder 83

Folder 84

1841

Folder 85-86

Folder 85

Folder 86

1842

Folder 87-88

Folder 87

Folder 88

1843

Folder 89-90

Folder 89

Folder 90

1844

Folder 91

1845-1885

Folder 92

1896-1908

Folder 93

1910-1915; 1950

Folder 94

See separated items P-272/1-12

Image P-272/1

William Gaston, ca. 1830-1840

Reproduction of engraving from painting.

Image P-272/2

William Gaston, ca. 1830-1840

Photograph of painting.

Image P-272/3

Zebulon Baird Vance, ca. 1880-1890

Reproduction of engraving.

Image P-272/4

William A. Graham, undated

Reproduction of engraving.

Image P-272/5

Willie Person Mangum, ca. 1825-1835

Reproduction of engraving.

Image P-272/6

John Motley Morehead, ca. 1830-1840

Reproduction of engraving.

Image P-272/7

John Louis Taylor, undated

Carte-de-visite of painting.

Image P-272/8

Exterior view of William Gaston's law office, New Bern, N.C., undated

Photograph.

Image P-272/9

View across small public square to mission-style church, New Bern, N.C., 18--

Mounted albumen print.

Image P-272/10

"William Gaston's law offices and room where he died," Raleigh, N.C., undated

Drawing.

Image P-272/11

Gaston Hall, Georgetown University, Washigton, D.C., undated.

Color postcard.

Image P-272/12

View of front of unidentified home, undated

Postcard, possibly Gaston's home in New Bern, N.C.

Folder 95-98

Folder 95

Folder 96

Folder 97

Folder 98

Undated

Undated material includes copies of Gaston family records, letters and notes, drafts of speeches and of letters to newspapers, newspaper clippings, copies of biographical sketches of Gaston, and drafts of Henry Groves Connor's writings on Gaston.

Folder 99

Undated and clippings

Folder 100

John London: Letters and notes

Folder 101

Notes: Gaston in congressional legislature

Folder 102a-102b

Notes

Folder 103

Granville land case

Folder 104-108

Folder 104

Folder 105

Folder 106

Folder 107

Folder 108

Manuscript draft of writings on William Gaston by Henry Groves Connor

Folder 109

Letter book of William Gaston, 1816-1836

Folder 110

Manuscript book of law reports

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expand/collapse Expand/collapse Microfilm (1966).

Reel M-272/1-8

M-272/1

M-272/2

M-272/3

M-272/4

M-272/5

M-272/6

M-272/7

M-272/8

Microfilm

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expand/collapse Expand/collapse Addition of February 2001 (Acc. 98848)

The Addition is a Gaston family register dated through the 1880s, along with enclosures that include genealogical notes; an invitation to William Gaston for a public dinner in his honor in New Bern, N.C., 1834; an inscribed document with quotations to George W. Graham, 1839; and a small notebook, 1901. Register is only 11 pages, and possibly belonged to Kate Gaston.

Folder 111

Family register

Folder 112

Family register enclosures, 1834-1901

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