Waightstill Avery

Waightstill Avery (10 May 1741 – 15 March 1821) was an early American lawyer and officer in the North Carolina militia during the American Revolution. He is noted for fighting a duel with future U.S. president Andrew Jackson in 1788. Family Avery married Leah Probart Francks (d. 13 January 1832) on 3 October 1778 in New Bern, North Carolina. A grandson, Isaac E. Avery, served as a colonel in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War, perishing at the Battle of Gettysburg. Another grandson was William Waightstill Avery, speaker of the North Carolina Senate and a member of the Confederate Congress. Career Avery enrolled at Yale in 1763. After two years, unhappy with the oppressive discipline of the college's unpopular president, Thomas Clapp, he and his friend Oliver Ellsworth transferred to the College of New Jersey (today's Princeton University). Ellsworth would go on to become a congressman, a framer of the Constitution, and a Justice of the Supreme Court; the two remained fast friends, even after Avery moved to North Carolina following graduation.