Thomas Jordan Jarvis

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Thomas Jordan Jarvis (18 January 1836 -- 17 June 1915) was the Democratic governor of the U.S. state of North Carolina from 1879 to 1885. Jarvis later served as a U.S. Senator from 1894 to 1895.

Born in Jarvisburg, North Carolina, in Currituck County, the son of a Methodist minister, Jarvis was educated locally and went on to attend Randoph-Macon College, earning an M.A. in 1861. An educator by training, Jarvis opened a school in Pasquotank County and would later be one of the founders of East Carolina University.

Jarvis enlisted in the military at the beginning of the American Civil War and served in the Eighth North Carolina Regiment. Captured and exchanged in 1862, Jarvis, by then a Captain, was injured and permanently disabled at the Battle of Drewry's Bluff in 1864.

In 1865, Jarvis returned home and opened a general store before being named a delegate to the 1865 state constitutional convention. Active in the Democratic Party, Jarvis was elected to the State House in 1868 and served there for four years, two of them (1870-1872) as Speaker of the House. An opponent of federal Reconstruction policy, Jarvis was elected lieutenant governor in 1876 on a ticket with Zebulon Vance. Jarvis also married Mary Woodson in December 1874.

In 1879, Vance resigned the governorship to serve in the United States Senate, and Jarvis filled the vacant position. He won election in his own right in 1880, defeating Daniel G. Fowle for the Democratic nomination and narrowly winning over Republican challenger Ralph Buxton.

Term-limited, Jarvis stepped down as governor in 1885, but was appointed United States Minister to Brazil by President Grover Cleveland. Jarvis held this post for four years, after which he practiced law in Greenville, North Carolina. Following Senator Vance's death in 1892, Jarvis again succeeded him in office, serving as a U.S. Senator from until 1895, but was not elected to a term of his own.

In 1896, Jarvis was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, where he supported William Jennings Bryan, his last major political act before his death in Greenville in 1915.

[edit] External links

• Thomas Jordan Jarvis at Find A Grave

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