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North Carolina's Governors
Thomas Jordan Jarvis (1836-1915) has the distinction of sharing his name with an ancestor, Thomas Jarvis, proprietary governor from 1691 to 1694. Born at Jarvisburg, the "Plough Boy of Currituck" graduated from Randolph Macon College. A captain in the Eighth Regiment, Jarvis received a crippling arm wound at Drewry's Bluff. In 1868 he won a seat in the legislature representing Tyrrell County. Reelected in 1870, he was the party's choice for speaker of the house and oversaw the impeachment trial of William Woods Holden. Jarvis received the nomination for lieutenant governor on the ticket with Zebulon B. Vance in 1876. Two years into the term, Vance resigned to serve in the Senate, thrusting Jarvis into the governorship. Jarvis's background instilled sympathy to the plight of farmers. As governor, Jarvis sought to reduce the costs of government, eliminate corruption, and lower taxes. He sold the state's interest in several railroads to private enterprise and urged state agencies to make use of convict labor. Jarvis persuaded the legislature to establish five normal schools for teachers; played a role in the creation of the State Board of Health; pushed for funding for the Deaf and Dumb Asylum and for Oxford Orphanage; and proposed new mental health facilities in Goldsboro and Morganton. President Grover Cleveland in 1885 appointed Jarvis U.S. minister to Brazil, an office he resigned in 1888 to return to law practice in Greenville. The next year he turned down an offer to be first president of what is now North Carolina State University. Governor Elias Carr appointed him to fill the Senate seat vacated by the death of Zebulon Vance in 1894. Elder statesman Jarvis quietly withdrew from public life and concentrated on his legal practice. In 1907 he helped push through the legislature a law establishing a teachers' training school in Greenville (present-day East Carolina University). He died in June 1915 and was buried in Cherry Hill Cemetery in Greenville.
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