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| Date Born: April 19, 1813 |
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Date Died: June 19, 1891 |
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| Place Born: Later Named Reidsville, NC |
Place Buried: Greenview Cemetery, Reidsville, NC |
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| Residence: Rockingham County, NC |
Occupation: Lawyer |
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David Settle Reid (April 19, 1813 – June 19, 1891) was a two-term Democratic governor of the U.S. state of North Carolina from 1851 to 1854 and a U.S. Senator from December 1854 to March 1859. His uncle was Congressman Thomas Settle. He was born in what would later be Reidsville, North Carolina, an unincorporated town named for his father, Reuben Reid. At age 16, David Reid became the first postmaster for the town. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1833. From 1835 to 1842, Reid served in the North Carolina Senate. He was a U.S. Representative from 1843 to 1847. In 1848, Reid was an unsuccessful candidate for Governor, losing to Charles Manly by only 854 votes. In 1850, Reid defeated Manly by 2,853 votes, returning the Democrats to the governor's office for the first time since 1836, when the state constitution changed so that the people, rather than the legislature, chose the Governor. In his campaigns, Reid promoted the now-obscure cause of "free suffrage," i.e. that there should not be different standards for who could vote for members of the North Carolina House of Commons and of the North Carolina Senate. In the Senate, Reid was chairman of the Committee on Patents
and the Patent Office. He sought but was denied a full term in
the Senate when he lost a three-way internal party fight with
Thomas Bragg and William W. Holden in 1858. He returned to the
practice of law and was a delegate to an 1861 peace convention
to try to prevent the American Civil War. Reid was a member of
a state constitutional convention in 1875. He died in Reidsville
in 1891. Reid, David Settle, (nephew of Thomas Settle), a Representative and a Senator from North Carolina; born near Reidsville, Rockingham County, N.C., on April 19, 1813; attended the common schools and an academy; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1833 and commenced practice in Wentworth, N.C., the following year; member, State senate 1835-1842; elected as a Democrat to the Twenty-eighth and Twenty-ninth Congresses (March 4, 1843-March 3, 1847); was not a candidate for renomination; unsuccessful candidate for governor in 1848; elected Governor in 1850 and 1852; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate to fill a vacancy in the term commencing March 4, 1853, caused by the failure of the legislature to elect, and served from December 6, 1854, until March 3, 1859; unsuccessful candidate for reelection; chairman, Committee on Patents and the Patent Office (Thirty-fifth Congress); delegate to the peace convention held at Washington, DC, in 1861 in an effort to devise means to prevent the impending war; member of the State constitutional convention in 1875; practiced law at Reidsville, NC, and died there June 19, 1891; interment in Greenview Cemetery. |
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