Abstract:
William Johnston Dawson, a native of Edenton, NC, was educated in England and returned to North Carolina to begin a political career. He was a delegate to the Hillsborough Convention of 1788 and a member of the NC House of Commons in 1791 which chose Joel Lane’s plantation as the future site of Raleigh, NC. From 1793 to 1795 he represented the Eighth Congressional District in the US House of Representatives.