The Green Ba VOL. XII.
No. 4.
BOSTON.
APRIL, 1900.
JAMES IREDELL.1 BY JUNIUS DAVIS OF THE NORTH CAROLINA BAR. TAMES Iredell was born in the quaint and I historic old town of Lewes, Sussex County, England, on the 5th October, 1751. He was the oldest child of Francis Iredell, a mer chant of Bristol, who had married Margaret McCulloh. Through his mother he was nearly related to Henry McCuiloh and his son Henry Eustace McCulloh, who owned immense bodies of land in North Carolina in the last century, and this relationship was destined to have important influence upon his after life. When he was about sixteen years of age, his father, through misfortune and ill health, became so reduced in estate that his relatives came with loving care to his aid. It was but natural that they should seek to advance the eldest son, and secure for him a position in which, in time, he could be a help and prop to his parents in their declin ing years. Through the influence of his rela tive, Sir George McCartney, on the 29th of February, 1768, Iredell was appointed Comp troller of the Customs at Edenton, to which place he came in the latter part of 1768. And, as an incidental duty, the McCullohs put upon his shoulders the supervision of their interests in Carolina, without any suggestion or thought on their part of recompense to him for the labor. It seems that in the effort to secure this appointment for him, his youth was studiously concealed in the very reasonable fear that knowledge of it would be death to the hope. The very suggestion of a lad of sixteen to be 1 From an address delivered in presenting the portrait of Justice Iredell to the Supreme Court of North Car olina.
Comptroller of His Majesty's Customs would have seemed ridiculous even to the careless Charles. But how shall we speak our ad miration of the high spirit, the stout heart, the self-reliant courage of this boy, who, ten derly reared and carefully nurtured, in obed ience to the call of duty leaving all that were near and dear to him, crossed 3,500 miles and more of ocean to assume the unknown duties of a responsible office in a wild and new country, where the red man yet boasted him self the master and the white man barely clung to the shore by the tips of his fingers! But it was duty that called him, and duty and filial love that impelled him to promise to send to his parents all the salary he should receive from his office. And it is pleasing to know that this promise was religiously kept and that he faithfully remitted all his salary to England, only reserving the scanty fees of the office for his maintenance. And so was the boy the father to the man. Edenton was then but a village of a few hundred inhabitants, but in and around it dwelt many gentlemen of means, of culture and of learning, who were among the first in the Province and destined to be leaders in the coming movement which lost Great Britian her great plantations. Here he met Har vey, Hewes, Jones, Charlton, Dawson, the Johnstons and others, and soon became their friend and constant companion. Among them was Samuel Johnston, of the family of "the gentle Johnstones of Annanclale,v whose sister, Hannah, Iredell afterwards married, and whose example and influence more than all else shaped his future career.
