Prominent people of North Carolina: brief biographies of leading people for ready reference purposes

20 PROMINENT PEOPLE OF NORTH CAROLINA gene Morehead, the pioneer banker of Durham, who organized the first bank ever operated in Durham under the firm name of Eugene Morehead & Co. Mr. Wily is a deacon in the First Presbyterian church of Durham. ROBERT WATSON WINSTON Was born in Windsor, North Caro¬ lina, September 12, i860. His father was Patrick H. Winston, an attorney who was several times a member of the State Legislature and a delegate to the convention of 1865, having been a Confederate judge and president of the council of state of Governor Worth. His mother was Miss Martha Elizabeth Byrd, daughter of Francis Wilder Byrd, a farmer. Judge Win¬ ston was educated in the Horner school and at the University of North Carolina, from which lie graduated with the class of 1879, taking the Wil¬ lie P. Mangum medal for oratory. He was admitted to the bar in 1881 and began practice in 1881 at Oxford, North Carolina. After five years’ ractice, he formed a partnership with udge A. W. Graham, the style being Graham & Winston, and this associ¬ ation continued until Judge Winston went on the Circuit Court bench in 1891, where lie remained four and a half years and resigned. He then in 1895 moved to Durham, N. C, and formed a partnership with W. W. Fuller to practice law under firm name of Winston & Fuller. This firm was dissolved in 1903 and Judge Winston associated with him Victor V. Bryant, the new firm being called Winston & Bryant, and still continues. In 1885 Judge Winston was a member of the State Senate from the 19th senatorial district and judge of the Circuit court from 1890 to 189s and said to be the youngest judge ever elected, his age then being twenty-nine years. He was married in 1882 to Miss So- phronia Horner, a daughter of J. H. Horner, LL. D., and founder of the Horner school of Oxford, N. C-, and a sister of Bishop J. M. Horner, of the Asheville Diocese of the Episco¬ pal church, and is the father of four children. His eldest, James Horner Winston, was the first Cecil Rhodes student to go from the United States to the University of Oxford, England, and has become the champion tennis player of that ancient scat of learning. Judge Winston was for many years president of the Durham Chamber of Commerce, and was one of the first trustees of the Durham Public Li¬ brary. He is a trustee of the State Fair Association, attorney and direc¬ tor of the First National Bank of Durham and Chapel Hill. He was one of the leading attorneys who de¬ fended Josephus Daniels on the charge of being guilty of contempt and defended Kilgo. He recovered the largest amount of money ever given by a jury in North Carolina for personal daamge for С. H. Norton, from the North Carolina Railroad, the sum of principal and interest be¬ ing $22,000. J. A. TAYLOR Born in Marion, S. C., 1862, at which place his mother was refugee from vellow fever then epidemic in Wil¬ mington; son of Col. John D. Taylor, rice planter on the Cape Fear river, the subject of this sketch resided in Brunswick county with his parents until he was 15 years of age, when his family moved to Wilmington, where he has since resided. He was educated in the public schools and entered commercial life at 18 as a bookkeeper. At the age of 22 he was admitted as partner in the wholesale grocery house of J. C. Stevenson, the firm conducting busi¬ ness under the name of J. C. Steven¬ son & Taylor, which business relation existed until 1899, when the firm dis¬ solved, and Mr. Taylor began busi¬ ness on his own account in the same line. He was president of the Wilmington Tariff Association, an organization formed to relieve the traffic situation at Wilmington, and which accom¬ plished substantial results for that city. Was for a number of years pres¬ ident of the Wilmington Wholesale Grocers’ Association, and is now pres¬ ident of the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce, which institution was re¬ organized under his direction several years ago with the object of broad¬ ening its field of endeavor and taking up questions of larger pubjic moment, the repeal of compulsory pilotage laws on Cape Fear river and Bar being an illustration of the work undertaken. Is a director in the Southern National