ERNEST ROBERT WARREN (1895-1969) was born in a house on Main Street in Gastonia, North Carolina, on December 2, 1895, a son of pioneer Gastonia citizens Robert C. Warren (1869-1920) and Nellie Belle Hoey Warren (1874-1927). After his early education in the Gastonia schools, he attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he graduated from its Law School in 1919. That same year he began the practice of law in his hometown, where he continued in that profession for the rest of his life.

As an attorney, he was respected widely for his honesty, ability and personality. His contemporaries acknowledged him as “Dean of the Gaston Bar.” He was Gastonia city attorney for 22 years, president of the Gaston County Bar, was permanent counsel for several of Gastonia’s largest and most successful corporate clients and had a wide and influential patronage throughout the region. As a nephew of North Carolina Governor and United States Senator Clyde R. Hoey and close associate of North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Emery B. Denny, he had powerful political connections in the Democratic Party.

Like his famous kinsman Clyde Hoey, Ernest Warren had style. He would not have considered himself properly dressed without a three-piece suit, watch chain and rosebud in his lapel. “On the surface a gruff, old-time Southern courthouse lawyer, he disclosed a real gentle soul to close friends and associates,” said those who knew him best.

Warren’s wife, Alice Phillips Warren (1899-1943), whom he married in 1921, died at the age of 42, leaving him with three young daughters to rear -- Carolyn Warren Sumner (1925-1999), Nell Hoey Warren Aldridge (1928-2002) and Louise Warren Fuller (1930-2009). Ernest Warren died of a massive stroke on Wednesday, June 4, 1969. His funeral was held from his home on South York Street, followed by burial in the family plot in Gastonia’s Oakwood Cemetery.

Contributed by Robert Ragan, a Gaston County historian, May 1, 2016.