Avery, Alphonso Calhoun, 1835-1913

Alphonso Calhoun Avery of Burke County, N.C., was a lawyer, a judge in the North Carolina Superior Courts, a North Carolina Supreme Court justice, and a major in the 6th North Carolina Regiment during the Civil War. He married Susan Washington Morrison in 1861 and Sallie Love Thomas in 1888. He had eleven children, including Isaac Erwin Avery and Gladys Avery Tillett.

From the description of Alphonso Calhoun Avery papers, 1761-1977 [manuscript]. WorldCat record id: 27183539

Alphonso Calhoun Avery (1835-1913), the fifth son of Isaac Thomas Avery and Harriet Erwin Avery, was born at Swan Ponds in Burke County, N.C., on 11 September 1835. He attended the Bingham School in Oaks, Orange County, N.C., and was graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1857. After two years spent overseeing one of his father's farms in Mitchell County, Avery studied law under Richmond Pearson and obtained his license to to practice in the county courts in June 1860.

On 27 February 1861, Avery married Susan Washington Morrison (1838-1886), daughter of the Reverend R. H. Morrison of Lincoln County, N.C. In May 1861, Avery was commissioned a first lieutenant in Company F of the 6th North Carolina Regiment, which was commanded by his brother, Colonel Isaac Erwin Avery (1828-1863). Avery saw action at the Battle of Manassas and was promoted to captain after the Battle of Seven Pines. In December 1862, Avery was transferred to the staff of his brother-in-law, General D. H. Hill, where he was promoted to major. In 1864, Avery went with Hill to the Army of the West and then served on the staffs of generals John C. Breckenridge, Thomas C. Hindman, and John B. Hood. In the summer of 1864, Avery received a leave of absence to return home, due to his father's illness and the battle-related deaths of his three older brothers. He was then transferred to the Department of North Carolina and formed a regiment to protect the state's western frontier. Avery was captured by Union troops in the spring of 1865 and imprisoned at Camp Chase in Tennessee until he was paroled in August 1865.

After the war, Avery returned home to Swan Ponds, began practicing law in Morganton, and obtained his license to practice before the North Carolina Supreme Court. In 1866, he was elected to represent Burke, Caldwell, and McDowell counties in the North Carolina Senate, where he served as chair of the Committee on Internal Improvements. Avery was also a contractor for the Western North Carolina Railroad. He lost his political office in 1867 when the Republican party gained control of state government, and he became a member of the Ku Klux Klan in western North Carolina. In 1875, Avery was elected as a delegate to the North Carolina Constitutional Convention, and, in 1876, he was a Democratic Presidential Elector. In 1876, Avery and his family moved to Morganton, which was more convenient for his legal work, and the estate at Swan Ponds was divided among his father's heirs. Following the return of the Democrats to power in 1878, Avery was elected to serve as a judge in the North Carolina Superior Court. He filed over 500 opinions; those of note deal with the homestead, ejectment and boundaries, fraud, and insurance. In that same year, he became a member of the First Presbyterian Church in Morganton, and was ordained a ruling elder in 1879.

Susan Washington Morrison Avery died on 24 March 1886, leaving him with six of the couple's eight children: Mary Graham (1862-1863), Harriet Eloise (b. 1864), Morrison Robert (1868-1890), Anna Julia (1869-1871), Isaac Erwin (1871-1904), Susan Washington (b. 1873), Alphonso Calhoun (b. 1874), and Alfred Lee (b. 1876). On 31 December 1888, Avery married Sallie Love Thomas (1862-1954), the daughter of Colonel William Holland Thomas and Sarah Jane Burney Love Thomas of Haywood County, N.C. Avery and Sallie had three children: Lenoir Thomas (b. 1889), Gladys Love (1892-1984), and Edith Calvert (b. 1894).

After serving as a Superior Court judge for ten years, Avery was elected to the North Carolina Supreme Court in 1888. In 1892, Avery also acted as the dean of the law school at Trinity College. Following his retirement from the Supreme Court in 1897, Avery resumed his private law practice and taught law classes in Morganton. In addition to his legal work, Avery also wrote prolifically on legal topics, the Civil War, and western North Carolina history. After struggling with diabetes, Alphonso Calhoun Avery died in Morganton on 13 June 1913.

William Holland Thomas (1805-1893), the only child of Richard Thomas and Temperance Calvert Thomas, was born on 5 February 1805 in Haywood County, N.C., shortly after the death of his father. In 1823, he opened a store in Qualla Town, and, by the end of the decade, he had opened two more stores and acquired large tracts of land. Familiar with the Cherokee language, Thomas befriended Yonaguska, the chief of the North Carolina Cherokee. Thomas studied law and became the attorney for the North Carolina Cherokee, and, in 1839, Yonaguska named Thomas the new chief of the North Carolina Cherokee. Thomas represented the North Carolina Cherokee in Washington, D.C., 1836-1848, working to secure their rights under the Treaty of New Echota of 1835. As a result of his efforts, the United States government officially recognized the Eastern Band of Cherokee in 1848 and granted many of their claims. However, because North Carolina did not allow the Cherokee to sign contracts, Thomas used much of the award money to purchase land for them under his name.

Thomas was an influential figure in Western North Carolina because of his work for the North Carolina Cherokee and his extensive land holdings. He served in the North Carolina Senate, 1849-1861, and was a member of the Committee on Internal Improvements. However, Thomas began to neglect his business affairs, and fell increasingly into debt. In 1857, he married Sarah Jane Burney Love of Haywood County, and the couple had three children: William H. (b. 1858), James R. (b. 1860), and Sallie Love (1862-1954), the second wife of Alphonso Calhoun Avery.

During the Civil War, Thomas served as a colonel in command of the 69th North Carolina Regiment, known as Thomas's Legion. Following the war, Thomas faced increasing financial and personal hardships. He was declared insane in 1867 and spent the remainder of his life in and out of mental hospitals. He died on 10 May 1893 at the state mental hospital in Morganton.

In the decades after the war, almost all of Thomas's land was sold in order to pay his debts. Decades of legal battles ensued, as the courts worked to sort out which lands belonged to whom. Thomas's creditors fought to settle his debts, the Cherokee Indians wanted to gain control of land Thomas had purchased for them in his name, and his heirs sought to protect their rights to his lands. Alphonso Calhoun Avery acted as attorney for the Thomas heirs until his death in 1913, and Charles Walter Tillett, husband of Gladys Avery Tillett, represented the Thomas heirs until his death in 1952.

(Avery family sources: Edward W. Phifer, Saga of a Burke County Family,   The North Carolina Historical Review 39 (Summer 1962); William S. Powell, ed., Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, Vol. I, 1979.)

From the guide to the Alphonso Calhoun Avery Papers, 1761-1977, (Southern Historical Collection)