Ashe Family Papers

The Ashes were a prominent family in eighteenth and nineteenth century North Carolina. Samuel Ashe served as Governor of North Carolina from 1795 to 1798, and he helped draft the state's first Constitution. He was the presiding judge over the Bayard v. Singleton case in 1787, which has stood as legal precedent for determining if laws are unconstitutional in North Carolina and the United States. Samuel Ashe was also on the Board of Trustees that founded the University of North Carolina. He was born in Beaufort, North Carolina and lived in Pender County. He was the son of Elizabeth Swann and John Baptista Ashe, who served in the local assemblies and as public treasurer in New Hanover County.

Samuel A'Court Ashe, born in Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina in 1840, was a Confederate infantry captain, historian, and state legislator. Prior to his death in 1938, he was the last surviving commissioned officer of the Confederacy. He is the son of William Sheppard Ashe, who was the director of the Transportion Department for the Confederacy during the Civil War. His duties were to manage the railroads that transported supplies to troops and military stores.

The Ashe family has contributed to the public service of North Carolina for centuries, and these efforts were documented by the Ashe women through their written diaries and letters during the mid-nineteenth century. Sarah Anne Ashe was married to William Sheppard Ashe in 1836. Rosa Hill Ashe was William's sister-in-law, and she lived with him and his family for a brief period of time when her husband Thomas Henry Ashe died in 1859. During the Civil War, she lived with her mother and half-sister Fannie Waddell in Petersburg, Virginia.