conferences of said church. In 1876 he was appointed by the Bishops of the M. E. Church South as one of the Cape May commission which settled important matters between the Northern and Southern Methodist Churches.
General Vance has given many years of his life to the work of delivering lectures on temperance, and the education of children in Sunday schools.
General Vance was married to Miss Harriet V. McElroy, daughter of General John W. McElroy, of North Carolina. Six children--four sons and two daughters--were born to them, four of whom are living.
Such is a brief but accurate sketch of General Vance.
There are few public men in or out of Congress who possess that respect and regard of all who know him, more than General Vance. As a man he is true, sincere and frank in all the relations of life. As a Representative he is faithful, honest, attentive and active. His talents and success are duly appreciated in Congress; being placed chairman of the important Committee on Patents in the 45th and 46th Congresses, and second on the Committee on Coinage, Weights and Measures; A. H. Stephens, of Georgia, being chairman in the present Congress.
As a friend he is faithful, obliging and sincere, and above all, as a Christian he is a "burning and shining light," and a prominent and consistent member of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
James Love Henry, late one of the judges of the Superior courts of law and equity, was born in Buncombe County, in 1838. He received only such education as the schools of Asheville afforded.
His father, Robert Henry, was a patriot of the Revolution, and was in the battle of Kings Mountain, and practiced law for more than sixty years, with much success.
His father died in 1862, aged 97. The maternal grandfather of Judge Henry, Robert Love, was one of the earliest pioneers in the settlement of Western Carolina, and prominent in the early history of this section. He figured in the rise and fall of the State of Frankland, which Governor Sevier attempted to establish, out of a portion of North Carolina, now in Tennessee, (in 1785,) and with General Tipton and others, arrested Sevier, under the charge of high treason,*
* See Wheeler's History of
North Carolina, vol. I. 97.
and conveyed him to jail at Morganton.
Robert Love is progenitor of the large and influential family of that name which
pervades this and other sections of the west, and who have occupied positions of
prominence in every walk of life.
Judge Henry presided as judge with great acceptability, from 1868 to 1878, having previously acted as solicitor for this (the 8th,) judicial district.
He was editor, at the early age of 19, of the Asheville Spectutor, and served in the Confederate States army as adjutant of the 1st North Carolina cavalry, (General Robert Ransom,) and on Hampton's and Stuart's staff, and as colonel of cavalry.
He now resides at Asheville, engaged in the practice of his profession.
Augustus Summerfield Merrimon, lately one of the Senators in Congress from North Carolina, was born (in that part of Buncombe County since erected into Transylvania,) on the 15th of September, 1380.
His parents were Rev. Branch Hamline Merrimon and Mary E., nee Paxton, whose father, William Paxton, was the brother of Hon. John Paxton, Judge of the Superior Courts from 1818 to 1826, and whose mother (Sally,) was the daughter of General Charles McDowell.
The subject of this sketch was the eldest of a family of ten children--seven sons and three daughters.
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