Politics and Public Service
Lenoir, an anti-federalist, served for many years as a justice of the peace and Clerk of Court for Wilkes County, North Carolina. He was a founding member (and briefly, the first president) of the Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where Lenoir Hall is also named for him.
From 1781 to 1795, Lenoir was also a member of the state Legislature representing Wilkes County and served as Speaker of the North Carolina Senate from 1790 to 1795. He was a member of both the state convention of 1788, which rejected the United States Constitution, and the convention of 1789, which ratified it. Lenoir was suspicious of the new constitution and argued that it needed an amendment guaranteeing religious freedom (which it later received).
General Lenoir died on May 6, 1839, two days shy of his eighty-eighth birthday. His epitaph, written by Governor David Swain, read in part, "A genuine Whig whose highest eulogy is the record of his deeds."
Read more about this topic: William Lenoir (general)
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