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330 Chromeles of the Cape Fear River

 

ambulance train the next day, he was captured. .He was con-
fined on Johnson’s Island, a prisoner of war, until March,
1865, when he was paroled, together with a number of other
prisoners, but he was never exchanged.

The war over, he returned to Kenansville to the practice of
law and served in the Legislature of 1865-66 and 1866-67, and
his wisdom was shown in those sessions of the General Assembly,

made up of the best men in the State, who sought patriotically
to conform the laws of the State to the changed conditions that
resulted from the war. Of course when Reconstruction came
on he was retired to private life, but then, as during the war,
he was regarded as the natural leader of his people. In 1868
he led the party fight as the Democratic candidate for Congress
in his district.

In 1869 he moved to Wilson to practice his profession, and
shortly afterwards he became mayor of the town and the most
progressive citizen of that growing community. To this day
the people of Wilson point with pride to the fact that he was
the first mayor to introduce progressive measures, to light the
town, to improve the streets, and to make it what he always
loved to think it, “the village beautiful.”

In 1876, in the great campaign led by Vance for governor,
the campaign that redeemed North Carolina, the Democrats
put up a ticket of superior men. “There were giants in those
days.” The ticket made up of Vance and Jarvis and Kenan
and Saunders and Worth and Love and Scarborough represented
the brains and chivalry and sterling worth of the State, and the
character of those men had much to do with the victory that
was won in the election. Vance, of course, towered above all,
but none of that great combination stood higher in all the vir-
tues of noble manhood than Thomas Stephen Kenan. When he
was elected attorney general, he measured up to the duties of
that great office and broadened and deepened the respect of the
people of the State, which had been given him in full meas-
ure in every community in which he had lived and in every
station to which he had been called. For eight years he was
attorney general, and upon the conclusion of this period re-
turned to Wilson to the practice of his profession. But in
February, 1886, Colonel Kenan was selected by the Supreme
Court as clerk of that court. He was learned and wise enough
to preside over the court itself. He made a distinguished and
faithful official. Conscientious in the highest degree, faithful

   

  

The War Between the States 331

in the smaller as well as the greater duties, a master of detail,
he let nothing come between him and public duty, and he set
an example of official conduct worthy of lasting emulation.

In 1904 he was elected president of the State Bar Association,
and his address upon that occasion contained words of wisdom
as the result of long experience and wide observation. He held
the highest ideals of his profession, and by precept and example
sought to inspire a devotion to the highest ethics in its practice.

Colonel Kenan was a trustee of the University College of
Medicine, at Richmond, Va., took deep interest in the organiza-
tion of the Oxford Orphan Asylum, of which he was a director,
and held the highest offices in the gift of the Masonic Order, of

which he became a member in early life.
On the 20th of May, 1866, Colonel Kenan married Miss

Sallie Dortch, a daughter of the late Dr. Lewis Dortch, of
Edgecombe County, and their home was ever the center of a
delightful social life illustrative of the best hospitality and hap-
piness of the South. Having no children of their own, the
home of Colonel and Mrs. Kenan was the home of their nieces
and nephews, to whom Colonel Kenan maintained a fatherly
relationship that was most beautiful and endeared him to them
as if he had been in truth their father. His niece, Mrs. Henry
M. Flagler, during childhood and young womanhood was always
in his home, and was to him as a daughter.

Colonel Kenan was the oldest of five children, the sons of
Owen Rand Kenan and Sarah Graham. He was born February
12, 1838, and was nearly 73 years old at the time of his death.

From the day he graduated at Chapel Hill in 1857 the master
passion of his life, outside his own family, was his love for the
University of North Carolina. He was one of those who led in
the reopening of the University in 1875, after its doors had
been closed under Reconstruction, and he was one of its trustees
thirty years or more. Never when in health did he miss attend-
ing a meeting of the trustees of the University or a commence-
ment at Chapel Hill. For many years he was a member of the
Executive Board. For nearly a quarter of a century he was

also the president of the Alumni Association and looked forward

to its annual meetings with joy and delight. Except Dr. Kemp
P. Battle, no one in the State did as much for the University
as Colonel Kenan.

Knowing for months that the end was near, Colonel Kenan
not long before his death selected in Oakwood Cemetery, in