United States Senator, U.S. Congressman, North Carolina Governor. David Stone received a place in American history after being elected by the North Carolina General Assembly to be the 15th Governor of North Carolina, serving from 1808 to 1810. During his term as governor, he supported an increase in the salaries of judges, property rights, agricultural and industrial development, improvement of the state's higher education facilities as well as the education for all social classes including women. While he was governor, the heirs of Sir George Carteret, one of the original Lords Proprietor of the Province of Carolina, brought suit against the State of North Carolina claiming most of the northeast portion of the state belonged to the Granville family, hence Stone fought for a clear title to this land for the American settlers. Before being governor, he served in the United States Senate from 1801 to 1807. After being governor, he returned to the North Carolina House of Commons, where he called for the election of the electors by the voters of North Carolina instead of the General Assembly. He returned to the Senate from 1813 to 1814. He was not elected to a third term as senator as he had not supported the War of 1812. Unhappy with this situation and guided by his convictions, he resigned the United States Senate in December of 1814 retiring from his political career to his plantation. Besides having a career in law and managing two plantations, his interest turned to improvements within North Carolina, especially in river navigation. He was elected as president of the Neuse River Navigation Company in May of 1819, which was shortly before his sudden death. Starting his thirty-year political career in 1789, he was a member of the convention in Fayetteville, which ratified the United States Constitution. He represented Bertie County in the North Carolina House of Commons until 1785 and was named to the North Carolina Superior Court in 1795. In 1798 he was elected to serve in the United States House of Representatives for one term. While serving, he changed political parties from Federalist to Democratic-Republican Party. At that point, he cast his vote for Thomas Jefferson, when the 1800 United States Presidential Election was contested in the House of Representatives. He served on the nation's first ways-and-means committee. In 1801 he was elected to the office of United States Senator from North Carolina. In 1807 he resigned his Senate seat, returning to the North Carolina Superior Court for one year before being elected governor of the state by the legislature. Born to a New England father who had migrated to North Carolina in 1769, his parents were Zedekiah Stone and his wife, Elizabeth Shivers Hobson, who was a widow. He was educated locally at Windsor Academy before graduating first in the class of 1788 from the College of New Jersey, which is now Princeton University. He studied law in Halifax under William R. Davie, receiving his law license in 1790. Several weeks before this March 13, 1793 marriage to Hannah Turner, his father gave him 1051 acres of land, on which he build a large manor house. The land had originally been his mother's first husband, Francis Hobson. Today, the house is the restored “Historic Hope Plantation,” which is opened to the public for tours. Stone also had a second plantation, the “Restdale,” which was located on the Neuse River with dams and mills. Today, “Restdale” Plantation is a rural wooded area with only the Stone family cemetery on the property. Stone was one of the wealthiest men in North Carolina with over 137 slaves. His home had the largest library in North Carolina with 1,400 books on various subjects. He and Hannah had eleven children with five dying young. Of the surviving six children, he had one son and five daughters: David Williamson, Rebecca, Hannah, Elisabeth, Sarah, Anne. After his first wife's death in 1816, he married Sarah Dashiel in June of 1817. A resident of Washington, D.C., Sarah survived him by twenty years. In honor of him, on August 16, 1942 the liberty ship, S.S. "David Stone," was launched at Wilmington, Delaware and was scrapped in 1966. A large collection of family papers, including original documents, is available at the North Carolina Archives.