Tom Perry and Judge Peter Hairston in 2004 at Cooleemee under the portrait of the Judge’s grandfather, J. E. B. Stuart’s brother-in-law, Peter Hairston.
In 1990, Judge Peter Hairston of Cooleemee, North Carolina, invited me to his home and assisted me in contacting Burke Davis and J. E. B. Stuart IV along with supporting the efforts to preserve Laurel Hill by giving me access to his papers and his knowledge of the Stuart Family. In 1990, Judge Peter Hairston took me with him to Chapel Hill to the meeting of the North Carolinian Society, who were presenting Burke Davis an award. I explained to Burke Davis my plans to preserve Stuart’s Birthplace in Ararat. Davis and Judge Hairston heartily endorsed our efforts. Although not descended from J. E. B. Stuart’s sister Columbia, who married Judge Hairston’s grandfather also named Peter, his enthusiasm for history was at one moment realistic and yet joyous. He was one of the best men it has been this my pleasure to know.
“Peter W. Hairston, 93, the former Superior Court judge and member of the North Carolina General Assembly, died Sunday (February 4) at his ancestral home, Cooleemee Plantation, on the Yadkin River in Davie County. Mr. Hairston was born August 2, 1913, at Cooleemee Plantation, a son of Peter Wilson Hairston and Elmer George Hairston, and lived there most of his life. In 1949, he married Lucy Dortch in Washington, DC, and they moved to Cooleemee. Mrs. Hairston preceded him in death in 1998. Judge Hairston lived a life of service to his nation, state, and community. Among the highlights of his public service are three terms in the North Carolina House of Representatives and appointment by Governor James B. Hunt and subsequent election as a Superior Court Judge. He was a decorated veteran. He fought in Europe in World War II, leaving the U.S. Army in 1946 as a captain with the Bronze Star, Purple Heart and five Battle Stars. Mr. Hairston received his early education at home through the Calvert School method. He later attended Virginia Episcopal School in Lynchburg, VA, graduating in 1930 with scholarship medals from his junior and senior years. In 1933, he received the A. B. degree from the University of North Carolina, where he was Phi Beta Kappa, and in 1935, the L.L.B. degree from the University’s Law School, where he was on the board of the Law Review. One of Mr. Hairston’s fondest memories of Chapel Hill was being greeted as a freshman by Dr. Frank Porter Graham, who helped carry his trunk to his dormitory room. He was admitted to the North Carolina Bar in 1935, and in the years just prior to and after the war, he practiced law and was with a major insurance company in Charlotte and later in Washington. In 1948, Mr. Hairston returned to Cooleemee to assume responsibilities of managing the plantation. He devoted the next six years to restoring the house, which is designated a National Historic Landmark, and to beginning to bring back the land to its earlier productivity. To conserve the property for posterity, Judge Hairston in 1996 placed Cooleemee Plantation in the Land Trust for Central North Carolina, making it one of the largest agricultural properties under land trust protection in North Carolina. In 1954, he established a law practice in the county seat of Mocksville and maintained it until being appointed to the bench in 1977. A life-long Democrat, Mr. Hairston was respected as a principled citizen who related to farmers and working people and was their advocate. He supported candidates of his party who held what he considered progressive views, such as former Congressman and gubernatorial candidate L. Richardson Preyer. With Mrs. Hairston, he traveled throughout much of the world, including several trips to Scotland, where he visited the region where his ancestors lived, and to Morocco and the African subcontinent, to China and the then-Soviet Union, and across Europe. Wherever and however he and Lucy traveled – by barge down the canals in France or on safari in Kenya, they made friends whom they invited to Cooleemee and entertained there. But Judge Hairston was just as comfortable driving a tractor on hayrides to entertain guests at the Forest Lake Campground he and Lucy established on part of the family farm in 1968. Judge Hairston was a voracious reader, a keen observer of current affairs, and a devotee of classical music. He was particularly fond of the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan, from which he derived great enjoyment. He was a gracious and entertaining host and notables from the political, educational, literary and entertainment worlds found their way to his table. Each Wednesday night for the last decade, he presided over dinner at Cooleemee for a small group of devoted friends, prompting lively discussion and providing insights and wise counsel. Always a scholar and conscientious historian, Mr. Hairston wrote articles for historical journals, magazines and newspapers, and sections of other books. Much of his writing was about Cooleemee and other plantations that had been owned by members of the Hairston family. When descendants of former slaves at Cooleemee established the Hairston Clan, Judge Hairston was one of their strongest advocates. For many years, he attended the annual meetings of the Hairston Clan and on occasion was the keynote speaker. He spent countless hours compiling genealogical records which he shared with Hairston Clan members. The Hairston Clan honored both him and Lucy for their contributions to humankind. Mr. Hairston is survived by two sons, Peter W. Hairston who has followed in his father’s path at Cooleemee, and George R. Hairston of Winston-Salem, whose woodworking has been integral to the restoration of the home place,. He is also survived by a brother, Nelson Hairston of Chapel Hill, granddaughter, Maggie Hairston, of Seattle, and two grandsons, Thomas Hairston of Greensboro, and Cordell Hairston of Winston-Salem. The Family will receive people at the home on Friday, February 9, 2007 from 5 p.m. until 7 p.m. A memorial service for Judge Hairston will be held at 11:00 a. m., Saturday, February 10, 2007 at the Episcopal Church of the Ascension in the Fork community of Davie County, a parish his family helped establish near Cooleemee Plantation with Rev. Sealy Cross officiating. “He had a deep interest in history, but he was particularly interested in Civil War times,” said Doris Frye, the retired History Room librarian at Davie Public Library. The emancipated slaves of the plantation formed a Hairston clan, and Hairston hosted a gathering at the Cooleemee Plantation. Charles Kuralt was there and a segment about it aired on CBS News. Hairston was a strong advocate of the clan’s founding.”
“As far as I’m personally concerned, he was such a help on the publishing of the county history, information and proofreading and so forth,” said Davie County Historian James W. Wall, who wrote, “The History of Davie County.”
“He was a big, big help and made it a much better book than it would have been otherwise,” Wall continued. “And, of course, he was a highly respected lawyer and Superior Court judge.”
“Hairston was remembered fondly by Retired Superior Court Judge Lester P. Martin Jr. of Mocksville. “He and I go way back,” Martin said. He said he and Hairston both started practicing law in Mocksville at about the same time and both served in the legislature. They also interacted as judges. “I guess he came about as close to being Davie County’s version of the Renaissance man as anybody I know of,” Martin said. “He was well-versed in law, and he understood and appreciated good music and good literature and good art and good food.”
“Peter W. Hairston, a namesake descendant of the founder of Cooleemee plantation in Davie County, could have joined many of his contemporaries in shoving his family’s slaveholding history under the rug. Instead, Hairston, who died at the plantation last week at the age of 93, bravely confronted that history, helping to preserve a record that whites and blacks can learn from for generations to come. Hairston, a former judge and legislator, was candid, too candid for some. For example, in 1991 he told the Journal that, while he hoped he wouldn’t have owned slaves, “it was the labor system of the time, and anybody who grew up and saw the mill villages of the early part of this century knows full well that the slaves were far better treated … It would have been very easy, I think, for someone now to have a guilt trip, except that the effort, the sheer effort of looking after these people, letting them come and go but also keeping them in very old age … has long since bridged any gap of who owes whom what.” Yet this was the same man who talked his local school-board members into submitting to integration without a fight in 1969 by appealing to their sense of practicality.” Henry Wiencek writes in The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White. Hairston, a central figure in that 1999 book, freely opened his family’s history to Wiencek, wanting nothing but the truth. “He encouraged me to dig into it no matter where it would lead … Someone else would have just as soon let these things stay silent,” Wiencek said last week. The result was a groundbreaking work that eloquently chronicled the histories of the white Hairstons, the slaveowners; and the black Hairstons, their slaves - including their shared blood. Hairston’s honest grappling with history wasn’t limited to helping Wiencek. He opened the plantation to meetings of the black Hairstons and spoke at those meetings. He freely welcomed black Hairstons to his home and shared with them what he knew of the past. One of those visitors was Stephen Hairston, the president of the Winston-Salem Chapter of the NAACP. “It’s this country’s history. Whether we like it or don’t like it, that’s just the way it is,” Hairston said last week. Peter Hairston knew that well. Wiencek writes of asking Peter Hairston if he felt any guilt about his family’s slaveholding history: “You can’t repeal history!” he thundered. And then, in a quieter voice, he said, “I can’t go back and unwind it.” But we can honestly confront history, and Peter Hairston set a fine model for that.
“My father died in the bed he was born in … that’s what he wanted to do,” said his son, who also is named Peter. “He was a true, gracious Southern gentleman…. He crossed social lines, racial lines, and just believed in doing what was correct.”
Judge Peter Hairston’s Connection To J. E. B. Stuart Elizabeth Letcher Pannill Stuart gave birth to Columbia Lafayette Stuart on May 28, 1830, at Laurel Hill. She married Peter Wilson Hairston (1819-1886) on November 8, 1849. Peter, born at the Hairston home called Sauratown, received his education at the University of North Carolina receiving a Master’s Degree in 1837 and then spent two years at the University of Virginia’s Law School. The family groomed Peter to take control of the vast Hairston land holdings. Columbia found herself mistress of the 4,200 acre plantation named Cooleemee from the Creek Indian word “Kulimi.” The Anglo-Grecian villa built between 1853 and 1855 stands today near the banks of Yadkin River. Columbia or “Lummie” died on August 2, 1857, after seven years of marriage and giving birth to four children of her own. Her grave is at Berry Hill in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, along with her children. Peter married Fanny Caldwell in 1859. Columbia’s death sent shock waves through the Stuart family. Many of her siblings took her death to heart. In 1858, Victoria wrote that Mary went to Cooleemee to take care of her nieces and nephews. In another letter Victoria wrote, “I feel dear sister Lummies loss more and more every day. She is never absent from my thoughts.” – From Stuart’s Birthplace: The History of the Laurel Hill Farm
Click here to see the photos and read the rest of the story. 
The Great Wagon Road: From Philadelphia To The South by Parke Rouse tells the story of this Indian Trail that became a pathway for settlers into America including J. E. B. Stuart’s family.Naturalist William Bartram visited Augusta denoated by this marker along the Riverwalk.
