charge of the Louisburg Eagle. He next established the Henderson Index, and became afterwards connected with the Norfolk Courier,and the Raleigh Sentinel.In 1872 he became editor of the Asheville Citizen.He was reading clerk of the Senate of the State Legislature of 1876. He holds, also, the position of clerk to the United States Senate Committee on Railroads, of which General Ransom is chairman.
Thomas Dilliard Johnston resides at Asheville; born 1st April, 1843, at Waynesville, educated at Colonel S. D. Lee's Academy and the University, but from ill health did not graduate; entered the army in Z. B. Vance's company, 14th North Carolina, and at the battle of Malvern Hill was severely wounded, which disabled him from active service in the field. After war was over, he read law with that accomplished jurist and noble hearted gentleman, Judge J. L. Baily, and was licensed to practice in 1866. In 1870 he was nominated to the House, and carried the county by 400 votes, a gain of 600 for the party. He was one of the managers in the impeachment trial of Governor Holden. He was re-elected in 1872, and elected to the Senate in 1876.
CHAPTER VIII.
BURKE COUNTY.
Waightstill Avery, born 1741, died 1821. There is no name in the annals of North Carolina that is more deserving of being perpetuated than the subject of this sketch. His family were the devoted friends of liberty, and many of them martyrs to its cause. In the Revolutionary war there were eight brothers of this name and family, all patriots. Some of them were massacred at Groton, Connecticut, and at Fort Griswold; some perished at Wyoming Valley. Some of this family still reside at Groton, Connecticut, (where the subject of this sketch was born;) some reside at Oswego and Seneca Lake, and some came to Virginia.
It was early in the year 1631 that the ship Arabella arrived in Massachusetts Bay, from London, and landed passengers at the place where now stand Boston and Charlestown, and where Governor John Winthrop, senior, had commenced an English settlement the year before. Among the passengers were Christopher Avery, of Salisbury, England, and his little son James, then eleven years of age. They proceeded to the point of Cape Ann, where Gloucester now stands, which was at that time one of the most flourishing fishing establishments along the shore, where fish were cured for the European markets by fishermen from England, and in connection with which were agricultural and other profitable industries.
Christopher settled there as a farmer, and became the possessor of valuable and productive lands, which he cultivated to advantage. He had left his wife in England, like many of the leading men who first came over "to spy out the land," for it was not easy to persuade their wives to leave their comfortable English homes and venture off upon the ocean on a passage of nearly a hundred days in a small
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