April 14, 1934
THE STATE
Page Twenty-one
LEGISLATIVE
PERSONALITIES
N) MAN or woman in recent years,
I venture to sny nt. the begin¬
ning of this personality sketch,
got more enjoyment out of being a
member of or Wing connected with the
North Carolina General Assembly than
Thaddeus Armio Eure, member of the
1029 House of Representatives from
Hertford County and principal clerk of
the House during the past two sessions.
And I dare say that no man or
woman has made a larger political ac¬
quaintance in recent years than Thad-
dcus, who henceforth will be known as
Thad as we piece together the sketch
of one of the most personable fellows
the author has ever known in following
the members of the past four sessions
of the Legislature.
When Thad Eure packed up his
socks and shirts in Winton, his home
town, early in January, 1929, and set
out for Raleigh to take his seat as Hert¬
ford County’s member of the House, he
was hardly known outside the confines
of his county. But before that so-called
“Hoover session” of the House ad¬
journed sine die in March the “Gentle¬
man from Hertford” had become one
of the best known members and he rode
into the spotlight to a great extent over
a local piece of legislation.
Thad first saw the light of day in
Gates County, which was represented in
the 1925 House by his father, Taze¬
well A. Eure, but when Thad convinced
the State Supreme Court he knew
enough law to hang out his legal shingle
he moved across the Chowan River and
settled in Winton, which just happens
to W the county seat of Hertford be-
cause the citizens made it the county
seat Wfore Thomas Jefferson and other
patriotically-minded citizens gathered
to write the Declaration of Inde¬
pendence.
Thad rose to the mayorship of Win¬
ton in 1923 and later on joined the
Ahoskie Kiwanis Club. The Ahoskians
apparently liked him, because they
elected him president of the club in
1927. They voted for him in 1928 for
the House.
Now all this historical matter is
necessary to show that Mr. Eure was
soon to find himself between the devil
and the deep blue sea.
Early in the 1929 session he was vis¬
ited by a potent delegation of citizens
from what is still known as “the Ahos¬
kie end” of Hertford with the request
'THAD" EURE
- ★ -
that he father a bill to uproot the court¬
house at Wintou so that it could be
taken to Ahoskie. Was not Ahoskie
the largest town in Hertford? Did
Winton have a railroad? Was not
Ahoskie rapidly becoming widely known
as a tobacco town ? Wouldn’t Mr. Eure
introduce a removal bill?
Then and there the perpetual smile
that always seems to be playing about
the face of Thad Eure vanished, to be
replaced by the semblance of a frown
and he said “No” to the request that
he take away Winton’s best known struc¬
ture. Appeals vanished into something
that resembled threats, but Mr. Eure
stood like the fellow on the burning deck
and refused to budge an inch — not even
a half inch.
Whereupon the Ahoskians raged.
They fumed. They pleaded and they
informed Mr. Eure that the more popu¬
lous section of Hertford, which i>
Ahoskie, of course, would endeavor to
see that it that he would be a “one-
termer” if he refused to let Winton’s
courthouse be moved.
Finding Mr. Eure more determined
than ever to stick by Winton even
though he had been the head-man among
the Ahoskie Kiwanians at one time, the
Ahoskie group induced H. M. Jackson,
then serving ns a member of the House
from Lee County, to introduce the rc-
No. 27
Thaddeus Annie Ktirc
By
Wade II. Lucas
nmvnl bill. House members, however,
>tuck by Representative Eure and never
would allow the measure to pass.
In 1930 Mr. Eure ran for re-election.
His friends tell me that in the June,
1930, primary he rode into Ahoskie
with a majority of about -100 or so over
his opponent, Henry H. Jones, but when
they got through counting the votes in
tho Ahoskio precincts Mr. Eure’s lead
over Mr. Jones had not only vanished
into the eastern mists, but he was de¬
feated. Ahoskians, it seemed, were still
mad with Mr. Eure because he wanted
elderly Winton to keep the courthouse.
Mr. Eure then set out to get himself
elected principal clerk of the House, a
job that Alex Lassiter, of Aulander,
had held since Thad was a mere in¬
fant. At first it seemed as though he
had set out to travel the road of defeat
again, but Thad Eure could not |«-
discouraged. He defeated Mr. Lassi¬
ter and for the past two sessions lie has
teamed with LeRoy Martin, the Senate’s
principal clerk, in giving the type of
service that even fault-finding news¬
paper reporters have approved of most
heartily.
По
was selected as presidential elector
of the First District in the 1932 presi¬
dential campaign and his sum total of
speeches for Mr. Roosevelt was 32. In
the gubernatorial primary campaign of
1932 he fought for J.
С.
B. Ehringhaus
in a territory in which R. T. Fountain
was mighty popular.
Newspaper men wrote reams of copy
speculating on the place he would fill
in the Ehringhaus administration, but
the weeks and months slipped by and
he still practiced law at Winton.
There came at last the day when h-
was named escheats officer for the Uni¬
versity of North Carolina to visit the
county scats and see about collecting
money due the university under the law
that provides where there are no heirs
the money reverts to the state. In that
capacity he has gone into every court¬
house in North Carolina and those of u>
who know Thad Eure know that when
and if — and there is good reason to be¬
lieve he will — he runs for a state- wide of¬
fice there will be people in every county
seat in the state who will remember
that once upon a time a smiling, good-
natured and hearty handshaking fellow
by the name of Thad Eure greeted them
just like he had known them all their
lives.
