On September 9, 1775, the NC Provincial Congress appointed Samuel Spencer as Colonel/Commandant over the Anson County Regiment of Militia. He resigned his commission in February of 1776.

Samuel Spencer, the son of Samuel Spencer and Jerusha Brainerd, was born on January 21, 1734 in East Haddam, CT. He graduated from Princeton College (Nassau College at the time) in 1758, and soon moved to the Cheraws District in South Carolina. He married Philippa Peques in 1766, and they had four known children - Mary, Nancy Anne, Claudius, and William Samuel. One source asserts that Philippa died giving birth to their first child and that Samuel married a second time to Sybil Tisdale, who bore his other children. Still another source asserts that Philippa's nickname was Sybil and there was no second wife. Samuel Spencer died in 1794 in Anson County, NC.

Samuel Spencer was a lawyer by trade. He acquired over 2,000 acres in Anson County near the Pee Dee River. He represented Anson County at the First Provincial Congress of August 1774 in New Bern, the Third Provincial Congress of August 1775 in Hillsborough, and the Fourth Provincial Congress of April 1776 in Halifax. In 1777, he was one of three Judges appointed to the newly-created NC Superior Court. He was a member of the Board of Trustees, University of North Carolina, 1789-90.

He recieved a LL.D from his Alma Mater, Princeton, in 1783. Samuel Spencer was a leader of the Anti-Federalists in North Carolina at the Hillsborough Convention, 1788, and the Fayetteville Convention, 1789. He felt states rights were insufficiently protected by the proposed Constitution. He succeeded with his debate at Hillsborough, but the Fayetteville Convention ratified the Federal Constitution on Nov. 21, 1789, and North Carolina became the 12th state to join the union. He was one of three jurists who heard the Bayard vs. Singleton case, the first case tried before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Click Here for a decent online biography of Samuel Spencer provided by northcarolinahistory.org.

Click Here for another good online biography of Samuel Spencer provided by Mary Louise Medley.

Click Here for the NC Historical Marker about Samuel Spencer, with some additional biographical info.