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- William Gaston of North Carolina entered Georgetown on Nov 22 1791 as the first student to enroll. Though health forced his transfer to Princeton, where he was placed in the third year of studies after a year and a half at Georgetown, Gaston remained close to the faculty throughout his life. He served in the U.S. Congress 1813-15, where he introduced the legislation chartering the college, and served as Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court 1833-44. In 1817, he voluntarily retired from Congress and never again entered national politics, declining in 1840 the offer of the U.S. senatorship and in 1841 the offer of a seat as Attorney General in the cabinet of President Harrison. He wrote the state song of North Carolina, where the city of Gastonia and the county of Gaston are named in his honor.
http://gulib.lausun.georgetown.edu/dept/speccoll/case5.htm
"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 his reputation in legal circles was of national scope. 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. "
http://www.lib.unc.edu/mss/inv/g/Gaston,William.html#
Some accounts put his two older children, Alexander and Susan, as being by his first wife, Susan Hay, but according to his biography, "William Gaston, Carolinian," by J. Herman Schauinger (Bruce Publishing Co, Milwaukee, WI, 1949), Susan died just eight months after they were married. Because his second wife, Hannah, died in 1813, it is clear that his first three children were by her, and his last two by his third wife, Eliza Ann Worthington, daughter of the college physician. [5]
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