Dick/Douglas Family Papers

NOTE:  The numbers cited in parentheses, e.g. 1:5, refer the researcher to the Series#:Folder# in which that name/topic will be found.

INTRODUCTION

This collection contains the papers of two distinguished attorneys and judges related through marriage, Robert Paine Dick and his son-in-law, Robert Martin Douglas. The pairing provides a two-generation perspective on legal and political life in North Carolina in the second half of the 19th century. Although imbalanced in its coverage and dominated by household financial records, the collection also contains many materials that reveal political, business, and legal controversies, the handling of estates, the array of judicial cases, and the intellectual range of two state leaders. Of particular note are several depositions from Robert P. Dick’s involvement in cases investigating alleged lynching and violence after the Civil War. A reluctant Confederate during the war, he supported much of the Republican reform afterwards. Robert M. Douglas was the son of Stephen A. Douglas, who lost the presidency to Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Raised a Democrat, he became a Republican after the Civil War to fulfill his father’s dying wish that he support the Constitution.

Arrangement: This collection is organized into two groups with series and folders arranged by document type or subject. The groups are: Dick, Robert P., 1850s-1928; and Douglas, Robert M., 1857-1903.

Provenance: This collection was donated by Virginia Vanstory in July 2024 and assigned the accession number 2023.58.1. The donor is a direct descendant of Robert Paine Dick and Robert Martin Douglas through the latter’s son, Robert Dick Douglas Sr.

Processing: This collection was organized and the finding aid was completed by volunteer Ann Koppen in January 2025.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Robert Paine Dick (1823-1898) was born in Greensboro to Parthenia Paine Williamson and John McClintock Dick. His eight siblings included Susan Dick Bell (1826-1889) and William A. Dick (1830-1879). After attending the Caldwell Institute and graduating from the University of North Carolina in 1843, Robert P. Dick read law under his father and George C. Mendenhall. Licensed in 1845, he began his practice in Wentworth, the seat of Rockingham County, North Carolina. In 1848, he married Mary Eloise Adams, daughter of Justinia Madeleine Watkins and George Adams of Pittsylvania County, Virginia. The couple moved back to Greensboro and later built Dunleath.

Dick was appointed a U.S. district attorney by President Franklin Pierce in 1853. Active in state politics, he was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1852 and 1860, when he endorsed the candidacy of Stephen A. Douglas as the best way to secure the union. Although pro-union, he ultimately voted for secession at the 1861 state convention. A member of William W. Holden’s “peace movement,” he was elected to the North Carolina Senate on that platform in 1864 and declined appointment in 1865 to the U.S. district judgeship for North Carolina because he could not take the test oath, having served in the state legislature during the war. Nevertheless, he became an active member of the new Republican Party, a leading advocate for the Fourteenth Amendment, and a continued ally of provisional governor William W. Holden. He served as an associate justice on the state supreme court from 1868 to 1872, when President Grant appointed him a federal district judge for the western district of North Carolina, a post he resigned shortly before his death in 1898.

In 1878, Dick and Judge John Dillard founded the Greensboro Law School, which operated from 1870 until 1883. Noted for his scholarship in history and biblical literature, he was the author of a book on Hebrew poetry consisting of 16 lectures. A gifted orator, he was in much demand for public speaking. He was also an active member of First Presbyterian Church, where he served as a ruling elder. He and Mary had five children: George Adams Dick, Jessie Madeleine Dick Douglas (1855-1935), Susan Dick Stone, Emma Dick Williams, and Samuel Weir Dick. Their eldest daughter, Jessie Madeleine Dick, married Robert Martin Douglas.

Robert Martin Douglas (1849-1917) was born in Rockingham County to Martha Denny Martin and Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, a U.S. senator and presidential candidate who opposed Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Raised primarily by his stepmother, Adele Cutts, in Washington, D.C., he became a Roman Catholic and was educated at Loyola College and Georgetown University, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1867, a master’s degree in 1870, and an honorary doctor of laws in 1897.

Douglas moved to North Carolina in 1867 to oversee property that he and his brother had inherited from their maternal grandfather, Robert Martin. Although his father had been a Democrat, he decided that the Republican Party would better further his deathbed promise to his father to “support the Constitution,” and he became active in Reconstruction politics. Governor William W. Holden appointed him as his private secretary in 1868, and then President Ulysses S. Grant, a family friend, appointed him assistant secretary to the president. In 1873, he settled in Greensboro as U.S. marshal in North Carolina’s new Western District of the United States Circuit Court.

After marrying Jessie Madeleine Dick in 1874, Douglas studied law under his father-in-law and Judge John H. Dillard. He practiced for twenty years and served as the standing master in chancery of the Western District of the U.S. Circuit Court before he was elected an associate justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court in 1897, aided by the Republican-Populist fusion. As a judge, he was known for his knowledge, fairness, patience, and impartiality. But he and another court Republican, David M. Furches, were impeached on a technicality in 1901, because the Democrats, returning to power in the state, feared that the Republicans would overturn the suffrage amendments deterring the African American vote. Both Furches and Douglas were acquitted in the subsequent trial, and Douglas served until defeated in the 1904 election. Returning to Greensboro to practice law, he engaged in business and civic affairs as an organizer of Greensboro’s first chamber of commerce and director of the city’s first streetcar company, while also serving on the North Carolina Corporation Commission.

Douglas was a well-known orator and writer. Several of his historical addresses were published, the best known being The Life and Character of Governor Alexander Martin (1898). A few speeches published in newspapers are in this collection. Douglas was a principal contributor to the building of St. Agnes Church, to which he was devoted. He and his wife had four children: Robert Dick Douglas, Madeleine Douglas Myers, Stephen Arnold Douglas, and Martin Francis Douglas.

Biographical Sources: The biographical information on Robert P. Dick was gathered from the article about him in the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, Vol. 2 D-G, edited by William S. Powell (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986); his biography on Documenting the American South; the biography in the museum’s finding aid for the Dick Family Papers (Mss. Coll. #9); Ancestry.com; and obituaries in this collection.

The information about Robert M. Douglas was obtained from the article about him in the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, Vol. 2 D-G, edited by William S. Powell (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986, updated online in October 2022); “Speech of Col. Robert M. Douglas, of Washington, D.C.” (Delivered at a Republican mass meeting held at Smithfield, N.C., July 12, 1870); “Supreme Court of North Carolina, a brief history,” by Martin M. Brinkley, archived by the Wayback Machine, March 21, 2008; “Douglas, Robert Martin,” The Catholic encyclopedia and its makers (New York: The Encyclopedia Press, 1917); Ancestry.com; and the obituary titled “Judge Robert M. Douglas of Greensboro is dead” (The Wilmington Morning Star, February 9, 1917).

SCOPE & CONTENT NOTE

This two-part collection consists of correspondence, legal documents, financial records, and newspaper clippings relating to Robert Paine Dick and Robert Martin Douglas. Dominated by household financial records, the collection also provides samples of legal work and political controversy in North Carolina in the years surrounding the Civil War. In particular, it gives glimpses of the political climate after the Civil War, when ardent Reconstruction Republicans clashed with resisting Democrats (primarily ex-Confederates). Of special note are several depositions describing lynching and violence from Dick’s cases investigating these activities (I 4:2). Both Dick and Douglas became moderate Republicans and therefore experienced the advantages and disadvantages of moderation in a polarized climate.

The items in the Robert Paine Dick group supplement materials in the museum’s Dick Family Papers. Although many documents present interesting aspects of Dick’s legal career, particularly in his later years as a U.S. district court judge, they are not comprehensive. However, the folders containing court documents and Dick’s handwritten opinions, as well as the materials pertaining to estate settlements, provide a sampling of his legal work. The most complete series is financial, which holds many years of Dick’s household records. Those interested in Dunleath will find itemized accounts of building materials, as well as plans for the orchards and grounds. His activities as an orator, biblical scholar, and law school founder are also evidenced in this collection.

Financial documents also dominate the Robert Martin Douglas group. The profusion of invoices and receipts captures the necessities and costs of nearly every aspect of a leading figure’s daily life in late 19th century Greensboro. The newspaper clippings evidence Douglas’s keen interest in politics, business, real estate, and civic life, as well as his activities while serving on the circuit court and practicing law. He also saved a few articles that concerned him or his father or contained his speeches, which display his oratorical skills and ability to capture inspiring truths about his native city and state. The transcribed documents about the Mississippi plantation he inherited from his grandfather reveal maneuverings as slavery ceased, as well as the complicated nature of requesting compensation for property stolen/lost/destroyed during the Civil War. The single photograph in the collection is a portrait of Douglas with his three sons.

SERIES DESCRIPTIONS

I. Dick, Robert P.

1. Correspondence.  10 folders (ca. 170 items).  1855-1897.

Legal correspondence dominates this series, but one folder contains a few personal letters addressed to Dick. The legal correspondence is organized chronologically with the exception of two large subject-specific folders.

The clerkship appointment folders (1:1-2) hold letters and petitions composed in December 1896 to Robert P. Dick in his capacity as U.S. district judge and endorsing candidates or personally applying for appointment to the federal clerkship at Asheville. Candidates include W.A. Breese, Edgar Candler, G.P. Clayton, J.A. Fulmer, Robert M. Furman, W.S. Hyanis, J. Gibbon Merrimon, C.B. Moore, Walter E. Moore, J.H. Murphy, O.M. Pace, D.C. Pearson, and Henry B. Stevens. Most are Republican, on the assumption that Dick would appoint a Republican, but one Democrat did apply: James. J. Osborn. One letter was written to Hon. David Schenck asking for his influence on R.P. Dick. These letters reveal the behind-the-scenes maneuvering involved in judicial appointments, including by the family of the deceased judge causing the vacancy. The collections folder (1:3) holds letters mainly from John H. Watson and his collection house requesting payment from Robert P. Dick’s clients as the result of legal settlements or negotiations.

The chronological general incoming files cover Dick’s legal career, first as a practicing attorney in Wentworth and Greensboro and later as a U.S. district judge in Asheville. Many important judges who were his colleagues are represented (e.g., R.O. Patterson, Charles A. Moore, and Charles H. Simonton). Their quick rise to his defense after a critical 1894 article appeared in the newspaper is also captured, as is an extended controversy with U.S. Attorney R.B. Glenn over Dick’s verdict in a court case (1:5). A series of letters from 1887-1888 addressed to Mrs. Bell, likely Robert P. Dick’s sister, from her daughter and from an attorney concern the settlement of her husband’s estate (1:8).

In the personal correspondence folders, an unhappy set of letters from the wife of Robert’s brother, William, describes his drinking and their financial troubles (1:9). A long letter from this brother in 1877 describes his imagined conspiracy by both political parties against “the Greensboro Ring,” of which R.P. Dick was a member. Also of note is a letter from Prof. John Bassett of Trinity College in Durham asking about Dick’s experience as a Union sympathizer during the Civil War (1:9).

2. Financial.  13 folders (ca. 145 items).  1855-1895.

Bills and receipts associated with the running of Dick’s household comprise the bulk of this series (2:2-10). Organized by subject, these folders include post box rental and freight, subscription, and tax receipts (property, poll, county, and state), as well as bills and receipts for general household and farming supplies and expenses. A tuition receipt from Greensboro Female College highlights the education of Sue and Emma Dick (2:4). Together, these records reveal daily needs — building and farming supplies and repairs, utilities, home furnishings, food, and clothing. Like the journal in the miscellaneous series, the invoices for lumber and nursery items almost certainly record the creation of Dunleath. Although some blacksmith bills are included in both the farming and household sections, the source for the Dunleath ironwork in the museum’s collection is not apparent. The banking folder holds an assortment of checks, bank statements, and deposits (2:1). Two items reflect Dick’s stock purchases, one notably for five shares of N.C. Railroad Co. stock in 1854 (2:13), while insurance materials include correspondence, premium statements, and receipts from Aetna (2:11).

3. Greensboro Law School.  1 folder (10 items).  1870-1883, 1896.

A school flyer and receipts for advertising, tuition, printing, and law books comprise this series covering the years Dick and John H. Dillard ran this law school. One letter reflects unpaid tuition finally collected in 1896, after the school had closed.

4. Legal.  10 folders (ca. 200 items).  1850s-1890s.

This series includes accounts and receipts, court documents, legal drafts handwritten by Robert P. Dick, and some specific cases, primarily estate settlements, including the one for his mother.

The accounts are primarily “Gael Notes,” recording amounts for each prisoner, including notes, bonds, and interest, from the early days of Dick’s legal career (1850s; 4:1). One other account lists all of his income and expenses for a period in 1892 when he was judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina.

The documents from court cases range from debt settlements (including one regarding the building of the Guilford County Courthouse in 1858; 4:2) and quit claims to subpoenas and sworn testimonies. Jeremiah Bason Jr. and Lucian Murray of Alamance County testified that they were arrested in 1874 by a regiment of the North Carolina State Troops as military prisoners and detained and tortured without warrant or charge even though they were not members of any military organization. Five 1870 depositions (when Dick was an associate justice on the state supreme court) describe incidents in which several named masked individuals beat and terrified “colored” men. In one instance, the victim was killed (4:2).

Two other court cases from the last year of Dick’s judgeship in 1897 involve complaints against Southern Railway and the Southern Building & Loan Association (4:3). The first is represented by a motion before Judge Dick to remand the case from district court to state court because Southern Railway was a non-resident. The case against Southern Building & Loan Association orders the failing organization into receivership to recover monies owed its stockholders. Despite a similar issue of non-residency pertinent to the railway case, Dick apparently moved ahead with this complaint. The legal drafts provide his reasoning for specific cases, including the Southern Railway case (4:5). Other papers list relevant precedent, rules of the court, and central “issues” of a case.

Robert P. Dick was executor for his mother, Parthenia P. Dick, and one folder (4:6) contains her will, some accounting from her execution of her husband’s will, and many records of payments to or sums received from her heirs, primarily Sallie Neall Dick, the daughter of Robert’s brother, William A. Dick, for whom Robert was trustee. Letters from Sallie’s mother in the correspondence series suggest reasons for the trusteeship: Sallie was mute, and her father struggled with alcohol abuse (1:8). Another relative, Thomas Dick, held a number of guardianships, and promissory notes from Robert relate to notes held by Thomas for some of his charges (4:4).

An estate case for William Hussey, early in Dick’s legal career, involves a protracted settling of Hussey’s affairs after he died intestate (4:7). Dick, previously named trustee for Hussey’s daughter Lydia and her husband, E.J. Dean, sued Hussey’s widow for unlawfully possessing and mishandling William’s “considerable” estate, including the questionable sale of some of his slaves. The folder includes the original bill of complaint, as well as responses from William’s wife Beulah and their other daughter, Rebecca, and her husband. On Beulah’s death two years later, Dick filed a supplemental complaint against her executors, Stephen Hunt and Alexander Lindsay, which is also included along with their response. In the years preceding William Hussey’s death, Lydia’s husband accrued considerable debt. Dick became trustee to supervise the exact split of their finances and later the administration of their portion from Lydia’s father’s estate. Beulah’s accounts and receipts in the year just before and after her husband’s death, as well as many court orders for E.J. Dean to satisfy debtors, are included, as are some financial transactions between E.J. Dean and Beulah Hussey, including a “master’s report” on the sale of slaves after her husband’s death.

For the estate of W. McConnel(l), Dick served for 15 years as guardian for two children who lived in Massachusetts, and a folder contains correspondence regarding the income from Greensboro real estate bequeathed to them (4:9). Tax records related to this guardianship can be found in the journal (5:2). Papers from another early estate case include “letters of attorney” appointing representation for the many heirs of Samuel Maxwell who died intestate (1850; 4:8). The receipts record the settling of debts in estate cases and guardianships — and for one retailer — sometimes including bonds and taxes, as well as legal fees and law books (4:10).

5. Miscellaneous.  4 folders (10 items).  1861-1897, n.d.

An informative journal, minutes from a Masonic lodge, a few medical records, and a speech draft comprise this series. The journal (5:2), apparently begun as a resource for court documents and arguments, with a table of contents, also contains tax records for Dick’s many guardianships, as well as detailed accounts for house and farm building and furnishing materials and the layout and planting of his orchards and gardens, most certainly at Dunleath. Some records relate to estate files in the legal series, most prolifically Charles and Lola McConnel. Dick’s guardianship of Alex and Emily Okey, not represented in the legal series, is also prominent in the journal. Two sets of Masonic lodge minutes record the case against and decision to expel H.W. Weeden from Lodge 199 in High Point for forgery, perjury, and extortion (5:3). Dick is not named but was perhaps of counsel to the proceedings, which took place at the beginning of Reconstruction. [According to a record in the financial series, Dick was a member of Lodge No. 76 (2:8).] The medical records include a receipt for medical services for Dick’s father, a prescription for a “sluggish liver,” and an 1897 letter from a doctor asking Dick’s support in promoting his cancer cure, with attached pamphlets (5:4). Dick died the next year of nephritis, then known as Bright’s Disease. His draft introduction to a speech about the Acts of the Apostles and Christian values is accompanied by a notepad listing the many supporting biblical citations (5:1).

6. Printed Material.  5 folders (17 items).  1871-1928.

Items in this series include booklets (Paul’s Practical Plant Points and Notes on Patents; 6:1), an invitation to a decoration of the graves of Confederate soldiers (with memorial oration given by Robert P. Dick), and concert ticket stubs (6:2). One folder contains flyers for a few publications (The Arena, The Literary Digest, and Rand-McNally’s Great Atlas of the World) and an advertisement from The Continent offering Dick’s volume on Hebrew Poetry (6:5). Newspaper clippings concern the Greensboro Law School, commemorated in a 1928 article, and a gift from the U.S. Commissioners to Dick (6:3). Also included are numerous obituaries for Dick from newspapers in Charlotte, Raleigh, Asheville, and Greensboro, as well as two accounts of his funeral in the Greensboro Record and Greensboro Telegram (6:4).

II. Douglas, Robert M.

1. Correspondence.  3 folders (17 items).  1877-1898.

These few items of legal and general personal correspondence include a series of letters from Sarah W. Conner inquiring about estate money due Jane Morrison King, a note from John A. Gilmer warning that a lawsuit between Douglas and William Watson & Co. had been compromised, a note from Harper’s Magazine stating that a copy of Sheahan’s Life had been mailed, a personal letter acknowledging receipt of a pamphlet of Douglas’s addresses (based on the date of 1898, almost certainly The Life and Times of Governor Alexander Martin), and a letter from Douglas’s doctor explaining his prescription. The most significant folder contains condolences on Robert P. Dick’s death, primarily letters and telegrams sent to Robert M. Douglas (1:3). These include heartfelt notes from Douglas’s sister and D.M. Furches, associate justice on the North Carolina Supreme Court. Telegrams are from H.C. Cowles, Dick’s colleagues Judge Charles H. Simonton and Charles A. Moore, and Father Benard of St. Mary’s College. An earlier letter from one of Dick’s students, V.C. McAdoo, to Jessie M. Dick Douglas anticipates Dick’s death from Bright’s Disease.

2. Financial.  18 folders (ca. 715 items).  1865-1894.

Invoices and receipts dominate this series. Also included are a fire insurance policy (2:3) and a few bank notes payable to and from Douglas, the latter primarily for bonds or the interest thereon (2:2). Some informal accounting records list expenses for clothing, dinner costs, “work on rooms,” and three years of unidentified credit/debit activity (2:1).

The invoices and receipts provide an excellent summary of typical expenses for all aspects of Douglas’s life — office supplies, books, legal expenses, and rent for his law practice (2:4); upkeep, furniture, and literature for his church (2:5); tuition costs (at Lina Porter’s school and St. Mary’s College), school supplies, and lessons for his children’s education, including musical (2:6); farming and nursery supplies, repairs, and labor costs, as well as tobacco sales (2:7); the cost of a tombstone, grave digging, and hearse rental for a funeral (2:8); a full range of household expenses for clothing, furnishings, building supplies, freight, toiletries, and groceries (2:9-12); the cost of lodging and indications of Douglas’s frequent trips to Washington, D.C., in the 1870s, as well as guests he boarded at Greensboro hotels (2:13); medical costs, including medications and doctor and dentist bills (2:14); subscriptions, from newspapers to religious periodicals and monthly or annual digests (2:15); taxes on land he owned in multiple counties in North Carolina and Texas (2:16); and telegrams related to his legal and business dealings, ranging from central and western North Carolina to New Orleans, Jacksonville, Philadelphia, Chicago (including several to S.A. Douglas there), and Washington, D.C (2:17). A small number of receipts are made out to a third party, including three to R.P. Dick for furniture freight and one to Nettie Settle for tuition at Greensboro Female College (2:18). Many telegram receipts show Thomas Settle Jr. as the recipient (2:17); his daughter Henrietta is listed as Nettie in the 1870 census. Note that this series is missing records from the 1881 to 1886.

3. Miscellaneous. 1 folder (5 items).  1871, n.d.

The miscellaneous items consist of two blank but signed prescription forms, a NC Supreme Court letterhead, and a page torn from a memo book listing addresses and some budget items. Also included are the first four pages of a manuscript for a short story entitled “The Price,” an unattributed and undated allegory about empty striving.

4. Mississippi Plantation.  1 folder (5 items).  1857-1868 (transcriptions).

This series involves a cotton claim submitted by Robert M. Douglas and his brother, Stephen A. Douglas Jr., for cotton seized and lost during the Civil War. They inherited a Mississippi plantation and enslaved laborers from their grandfather, Robert Martin. Their father sold that plantation, and the enslaved workers were transferred to another plantation, with the cultivation supervised by overseers. The cotton grown on the plantation was the subject of the claim. The documents are typed transcriptions of two letters written by James A. Strickland, the man supervising the work on the new plantation, an agreement between Stephen A. Douglas and J.A. McHatton who owned the land, and a letter to Robert M. Douglas advising on how to proceed with the cotton claim. A summary of the story, unsigned and undated, concludes that the two brothers received nothing from the claim. Note that the summary misstates the date of a Strickland letter as 1837 when the transcribed letter is dated 1857.

5. NC Steel & Iron Co.  1 folder (4 items).  1889-1893.

This series contains a charter and by-laws, reports, and prospectus that comprise the documents and supporting reports necessary to incorporate in the state of North Carolina. They are contained in an envelope postmarked October 1893 and addressed to Robert M. Douglas, with his name stamped on the documents. He was an associate justice on the state supreme court at the time, so these materials were probably in his possession in that capacity.

6. Photograph.  1 folder (1 item).  ca. late 1890s.

The only photograph in the collection is a portrait of Robert M. Douglas with his three sons, Martin F. Douglas (incorrectly named on back of photo), Robert Dick Douglas Sr., and Stephen A. Douglas. Judging by the age of his sons, the photograph was likely taken in the late 1890s.

7. Printed Material.  8 folders (ca. 170 items).  1867-1903, n.d.

The printed material consists exclusively of newspaper clippings, most of which revolve around business and national, state, and local politics. While Douglas was a U.S. marshal for North Carolina and master in chancery to the U.S. Circuit Court, he focused on business and real estate (7:1). He clipped reports of the city government’s proceedings during the 1890s (7:5), but he also followed national and some state politics, especially during Reconstruction and the Republican James. G. Blaine’s campaign for the presidency in 1884 (7:6). One folder holds several of his speeches (7:7). His impeachment in 1901, when he was a justice on the state supreme court, is featured among articles that refer to him or his father, Stephen A. Douglas (7:3). Douglas and his fellow defendant, Chief Justice David Furches, were not removed, but the growing sentiment against Republicans by the combined ranks of Democrats and Populists is evident. A prominent politician, Walter Clark, became chief justice in 1902 in spite of an ardent campaign against him on ethical grounds, which is the focus of another folder (7:2). A handful of tributes (7:8) and two poems (7:4), one by Douglas’s son, are also included in the series.

FOLDER LISTING