for two years, and then went to Princeton, where he graduated in 1819. He then studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1821.

        He settled in Oxford, and in 1832 was elector on the Jackson ticket, and again in 1836 on the VanBuren ticket, with Nathaniel Macon and others. This was the last public act of Macon's long and eventful career in politics.

        Mr. Venable was elected, in 1847, a member of congress, over Judge Kerr; and again in 1849, elected over Henry K. Nash, and re-elected in April, 1851.

        He was again a candidate for congress in 1853, but from some dissatisfaction of his party as to Cuba and other questions, another democrat (Lewis,) was put in nomination, and Honorable Sion H. Rogers was elected.

        During the civil war, Mr. Venable was a member of the confederate congress; when this closed he retired from public life. His health had for some time failed, and he died at Oxford, February 24th, 1876, leaving a son, Major Thomas B. Venable, and other children, to inherit his fame and virtues.

        Robert Potter was a resident of Granville County. In early life he was a midshipman in the navy, from which he resigned; studied law and entered the legislature in 1826, as a member from Halifax, and in 1828 he was elected from Granville. His course in the legislature was marked by a violent and vindictive assault on the banks of the state, which he pursued with such adroitness, that his bill to to raise a committee to prosecute the banks was carried by one vote, but the speaker, Thomas Settle, sr., voting with the minority, the bill failed to pass. Such had been the course of the banks that great prejudice existed against them amongst the people. Mr. Potter was elected to the Twentieth Congress the next year, and reelected to the Twenty-second Congress. But this brilliant career was brought to an ignominous close by Potter himself. He committed a brutal mayhem upon two of his wife's relations, for which he was fined and imprisoned. He then went to Texas and there was killed in a private brawl.

        Memucan Hunt was born in this county. He served in the provincial congress at New Berne, August 25, 1774, and at Halifax, April 4, 1776, and November 12, of that year. He was treasurer of North Carolina from 1777 to 1787, senator in the legislature in 1788, and was a man of distinction and much usefulness.

        William Hunt, his son, a distinguished officer in the revolution, was appointed major in Colonel Philip Taylor's regiment of state troops. He was the father of Memucan Hunt, who was sent by the Republic of Texas as Envoy to Washington city.

        There are many other names connected with Granville worthy of memory and record, as Amis, Bullock, Eatons, Hargrave, Hillman, Hunt, Littles, Littlejohn, Pulliam, Robards, Sneed, Taylor, Wyche, Yancey, and others; but want of sufficient material to form a sketch, and the limits of our work, compel us to leave this pleasing task to some son of Granville, who will gather up the rich memorials of this grand old county, and present her sons in their true light to the admiration of posterity.

Page 184 of 471 Index - Contents

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