Location: NC 78 (West Main Street) in Sanford
County: Lee
Original Date Cast: 1948
Aaron Ashley Flowers Seawell, state supreme court justice, was born 1864 near Jonesboro, the son of A. A. F. and Jeanette Buie Seawell. In 1888 part of his family moved to Chapel Hill, and he entered the University of North Carolina. After graduation he taught school briefly in Wilmington before attending law school in Chapel Hill.
After obtaining his law license in 1892, Seawell opened a practice with his father in Jonesboro. The following year his father and two siblings were struck down by typhoid fever, leaving Seawell as the mainstay of the family. Seawell entered politics at the turn of the century, serving in the North Carolina house in 1901, 1913, 1914, and 1931, as well as the state senate in 1907 and 1925. Legislation credited to Seawell, the Seawell Bank Bill, provided for the development of a state banking board to oversee and supervise financial institutions within the state.
In 1931 Seawell was appointed the deputy to the state Attorney General Dennis G. Brummitt. When Brummitt died in 1935, Governor J. C. B. Ehringhaus appointed Seawell to fill the position. Three years later, upon the death of Associate Justice George W. Connor of the state supreme court, Governor Clyde R. Hoey appointed Seawell to fill the position. He was reelected to the position at the end of Connor’s term and then again in 1944. Seawell died at his home in Raleigh six years later.
References:
Frank Porter Graham, “Memorial Address on the Occasion of the Presentation of the Portrait of Justice Aaron Ashley Flowers Seawell to the Supreme Court of North Carolina” (1954)
John L. Cheney, ed., North Carolina Government, 1589-1979 (1981)
Aaron Ashley Seawell Flowers Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, online finding aid at: http://webcat.lib.unc.edu/search~S1?/aseawell+ashley/aseawell+ashley/-3…-