Governors

Nathaniel Alexander (1756-1808) Encyclopedia

A surgeon and Revolutionary War Patriot, Alexander was a Jeffersonian who incorporated Federalist policy into his politics.  He championed internal improvements and played an instrumental role in the repeal of the Court Act of 1806, thereby allowing each county to have a court.  Charlotte Motor Speedway sits on what was his homestead.

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Samuel Ashe (1725-1813) Encyclopedia

The Judge presiding over the landmark case Bayard v. Singleton (1785), Ashe served three one-year terms as Governor and was an ardent Federalist at the beginning of his term.  He soon supported state’s rights and Jeffersonian ideals.

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Thomas W. Bickett (1869-1921) Encyclopedia

Thomas W. Bickett, a native of Monroe and graduate of Wake Forest College, studied law at the University of North Carolina. After a brief tenure in the state House of Representatives, he served as North Carolina attorney general from 1909 to 1917. In 1916 he was elected governor. Inaugurated on January 11, 1917, Bickett's gubernatorial administration included the beginning of a juvenile court system, the expansion of the state's roads and improvements in education, and the prison system.

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Thomas Bragg (1810-1872) Encyclopedia

 Thomas Bragg served as the governor of North Carolina from 1855-1859. Bragg's terms have been noted for the broadening of manhood suffrage and for internal improvements, most notably the North Carolina Railroad.

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John Branch (1782-1863) Encyclopedia

A Jacksonian turned Whig politician, John Branch served as three terms as Governor of North Carolina and championed internal improvements in the Tar Heel State.  He later held federal posts, including Secretary of Navy, Congressman, and territorial governor of Florida.  After the scandalous Eaton Affair, a disenchanted Branch left the Democratic Party to help create a new Whig Party in North Carolina.

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Curtis Hooks Brogden (1816-1901) Encyclopedia

Curtis Hooks Brogden served the state of North Carolina for half a century as a state representative, state senator, state comptroller, U.S. Congressman, lieutenant governor, and finally as the 42^nd governor.

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Brookings Plan Encyclopedia

The Brookings Plan was a collection of reforms proposed by the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C. think tank. Searching for economic solutions to the state’s financial problems, Governor O. Max Gardner commissioned the plan shortly after the onset of the Great Depression.

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J. Melville Broughton (1941-1945) Encyclopedia

J. Melville Broughton was elected to the North Carolina governorship amidst rising anxiety over the war in Europe. Broughton, nonetheless, successfully introduced extensive legislation that improved public education, mapped out the state’s natural resources, and created the Good Health program. His greatest legacy is considered to be extending the school term from six to nine months. Broughton is the only governor to be a Wake County native. 

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Thomas Burke (1744-1783) Encyclopedia

A native of Ireland, Thomas Burke served as the third governor of North Carolina under the 1776 constitution.  He played an instrumental role in the committee that submitted the Halifax Resolves to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia.  A one-term governor, he was imprisoned by Loyalists, taken to Charleston, South Carolina, escaped and resumed the governorship, and then resigned in 1782.

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Thomas Burke (1747-1783) Encyclopedia

Born in Ireland in 1747, Thomas Burke protested the Stamp Act, served in the North Carolina provincial congresses, at the Halifax Convention, and at the Continental Congress, and served as Governor of North Carolina.  His perseverance at the Continental Congress was instrumental for the inclusion of Article II in the Articles of Confederation.  If he had lived, Burke undoubtedly would have been an Antifederalist during the ratification debates and a formidable intellectual foe for James Iredell.

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Hutchins G. Burton (1774-1836) Encyclopedia

A three-term governor, Hutchins G. Burton is noted for encouraging a system of public education to ensure that young North Carolinians received at least a rudimentary education.    He also served as the state’s attorney general (1810-1816) and as a U.S. House of Representative (1819-1825).

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Tod Robinson Caldwell (1818-1874) Encyclopedia

Tod Robinson Caldwell is noteworthy in North Carolina history for at least three reasons: he was the first lieutenant governor of North Carolina; he was the second Republican governor of the state; and he assumed governor’s duties after William Woods Holden, the first North Carolina Republican governor, was impeached.

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Elias Carr (1839-1900) Encyclopedia

Never politically ambitious, Elias Carr represents what some scholars have called the last in a “fading tradition of planter governors.”   The Edgecombe County native and Democrat with Populist tendencies served as governor from 1893 to 1897.   During the last two years of his administration, Carr’s vision was tempered by Fusion politics.

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Charles B. Aycock (1859-1912) Encyclopedia

Charles B. Aycock served as Governor of North Carolina (1901-1905), when a “strange amalgam of views toward race and reform,” writes historian Milton Ready, “came together in the move by Democrats to do away with the black vote without violating the Fifteenth Amendment or eliminating a vast number of white illiterate voters through the suffrage amendment.”  

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Henry Toole Clark Encyclopedia

Henry Toole Clark was governor of North Carolina during the Civil War from 1861-1862.  He was a Democratic leader in the state senate in the critical decade of the 1850s and for a brief time during Reconstruction.

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