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Saturday, April 10, 2021

Judge Pritchard to be Buried in Asheville, April 12, 1921

Bury Pritchard in Asheville Tuesday

By the Associated Press

Asheville, N.C., April 11—With a proclamation from Mayor Roberts requesting all businesses in Asheville to suspend business tomorrow afternoon, this city, together with several small towns in western North Carolina and Tennessee, plans to pay its last respects to Judge Jeter C. Pritchard, presiding officer of the United Staes circuit court of appeals, whose death occurred Sunday morning.

Prominent men form Raleigh, Greensboro, Richmond, Charleston, W.Va., and Washington and New York are en route here to attend the funeral to be held here Tuesday afternoon at 3 o’clock at the First Baptist Church, of which he was a member.

Interment will be in Riverside cemetery, this city, where also rests the remains of another distinguished North Carolinian, Zebulon H. Vance, war governor and four 25 years senator from this state.

Judge Pritchard succeeded Mr. Vance as United States senator.

Messages of condolence continued today to pour in from all sections of the country.

Judge Pritchard, son of Wm. H. Pritchard, was born in Jonesboro, Tenn., April 12, 1857, his father being of Irish and Welsh ancestry, and his mother, Elizabeth Browne, of Irish parentage.

Facing the problem of obtaining an education during the trying days of reconstruction in the south, and following the death of his father at Mobile, Ala., his mother instilled into his mind and heart those stern precepts of morality by which he has ever been governed. Judge Pritchard, yet in his teens, walked 35 miles across the mountains of east Tennessee and western North Carolina to Bakersville, where he arrived with 10 cents and nothing more save the clothes he wore. Eking out his subsistence through toil in the print shop by day, a desire to achieve fame prompted him by night to search for such text books as were obtainable.

Entered Politics in 1885 <\B>

It was then that he received by attention of statesmen in North Carolina and identifying himself with the Republican party, began a career, the prominence and limitations of which were only stopped by his calling to a reward for services rendered humanity.

Entering politics he was elected to the North Carolina house of representatives from Madison county in 1885 and again in 1887. Pursuing his method of home study of Blackstone and legal procedure he obtained his law license in 1887.

In 1888 he was nominated as Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of this state. He then became the caucus nominee of his party for the Senate of the United States, and re-elected to the legislature in 1891.

He was elected for a two-yiear term to the United States Senate in 1895, which he served and was elected to the six-year term in 1897, which he also served.

The establishment of the farmers alliance at this time and its coalition with the populist party brought about a change in the political situation and he succeeded in consolidating the faction into a cooperative campaign and the state went Republican.

On April 1, 1903, he was appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt to the supreme Court bench of the District of Columbia. Upon the death of Judge Imonton? The president advanced Judge Pritchard to the judgeship of the United States circuit court for the fourth district, April 9, 1904, which position he held until his death.

As national committeeman and as federal judge the jurist received national note and in the campaign last fall was prominently mentioned for vice-president of the United States, and at the Republican national convention was given a complimentary vote.

He is survived by his widow, a daughter, wife of Thomas A. Rollings, three sons, Dr. Arthur T., Solicitor George M. and Attorney McKinley Pritchard, and a sister, Mrs. J.T. Harris, all of Asheville.

From the front page of The Hickory Daily Record, April 9, 1921. The photo, taken in 1912, is from The Library of Congress.

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