Location: NC 32 (East Church Street) in Edenton
County: Chowan
Original Date Cast: 1973
Thomas Courtland Manning was born to Joseph and Sarah Haughton Manning on September 12, 1825, in Edenton. He attended the University of North Carolina and then read law, obtaining a license to practice. Manning returned to Edenton where he worked both as a lawyer and a teacher. He served on the faculty of Edenton Academy in the Latin and Greek Department. Thomas Manning left his home state in 1855 and moved to Louisiana, opening a law firm in Rapides Parish.
Manning was appointed to Louisiana’s secession convention in 1861, and soon afterward began his Confederate military service. In 1863 he was chosen to be the state’s adjutant general, and with that office attained the rank of brigadier general. The following year Manning was appointed an associate justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court but returned to private practice at the close of the war. In 1877 Manning returned to the Supreme Court as chief justice. His term ended when a new state constitution in 1880 reformed the court. Two years later Manning again returned to the Supreme Court and served until 1886, when he was appointed United States minister to Mexico.
Thomas C. Manning married Mary L. Blair in Edenton in 1848. Together they had eight children. Manning died on New York City October 11, 1887, while attending a meeting. He was buried in New Orleans.
References:
William S. Powell, ed., Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, IV, 215—sketch by John T. Manning
Dumas Malone, ed., Dictionary of American Biography, XII
Thomas Manning Letters, Southern Historical Collection, UNC-Chapel Hill: http://webcat.lib.unc.edu/search~S1?/amanning+thomas+c/amanning+thomas+…