Office of the Treasurer

North Carolina's twenty-five Treasurers comprise a unique group of public servants. Patience, perseverance, endurance and integrity are qualities which they shared. Most of them possessed a genuine love for North Carolina and a devotion for its people that was reflected in the care with which they guarded the public purse during their terms of office.

During the early days of the Carolina Colony, a Treasurer's Court was established, beginning in 1669, to handle public money. The office of Treasurer was created by the legislature and appointments to the office were filled by the lower house of the Colonial Assembly. Between 1740 and 1779 there was one treasurer for each of the Northern and Southern Districts. Four additional treasurers were added in 1779 for a total of six, each serving a specifically defined geographical district. In 1782 an additional treasurer's district was added. In 1784 the General Assembly eliminated the multiple districts and assigned the duties of the office to a single State Treasurer who was to be elected by a joint vote of both houses for a two-year term. This arrangement continued until 1868 when a new Constitution provided for the Treasurer to be elected by the people of North Carolina for a four-year term.

The longest serving Treasurer was John Haywood, who held the office for 40 years, from 1787 until his death in 1827. For much of his tenure, Treasurer Haywood dispensed funds from the "Public Chest" kept in his office before there was ever a bank and even for years after the bank was established. William Sloan served just six weeks, at the end of the Civil War, and during that brief time, was accused of malfeasance. His accusers said he had stolen a warehouse full of cotton. John Stedman served 11 months in 1932, during the burgeoning days of the Great Depression. In this century Ben Lacy served the longest, 28 years. The average length of service has been eight years, not including of course, the situation of Robert H. Burton who was elected to the post but declined to serve a single day. John S. Haywood was elected Treasurer but declined to serve in the wake of an unfolding scandal involving missing funds from his father's tenure.

Only one State Treasurer, Jonathan Worth, a Whig, has ever been elected Governor, though many have aspired to become the State's chief executive. Worth had been a Whig in the 1840s and 1850s, but the party dissolved during the Civil War. Worth was a Conservative when he ran for Governor. The Conservatives became the reorganized Democratic Party during the mid-1870s. (Two district treasurers, Richard Caswell and Samuel Johnston, served as Governor in the late 1700s.) One incumbent Treasurer, Charles M. Johnson, ran for Governor in 1948 as the favorite of the wing of the Democratic party in power then but lost in a spirited primary runoff election to W. Kerr Scott.

Without question, almost all of North Carolina's Treasurers have been honorable men who safeguarded the State's financial resources in an exemplary manner. In all of the 210 years of this office there have been fewer than a half dozen incidents of alleged malfeasance, and in only one of these was the amount of funds involved significant. In one case when a clerk was discovered embezzling funds in the Treasurer's office, he admitted the error of his deed, full restitution was made and the offender was hustled off to prison. In another case, the first singular Treasurer Memucan Hunt was accused of paying too generously soldiers who had fought in the Revolutionary War, and in some cases, paying soldiers who had not fought at all. The controversy arose as he was up for re-election and he lost to John Haywood. Haywood himself was accused of the most serious malfeasance but even in his case, though a substantial sum of public funds was lost, no personal dishonesty was ever proved against Haywood. Yet, the bulk of the missing money was repaid by Haywood's estate.

Four Treasurers died in office, four were defeated in re-election campaigns and four resigned from office. For many years, in fact until very recently, the Treasurer's position was an obscure post, since the State's budget was so small. Now, with annual budgets exceeding $17 billion and trust funds under management of some $30 billion, the work that the Treasurer and his staff does to account for and manage public funds is one of the most important duties in the State. Here is a brief account of the men who have served as the keeper of North Carolina's public purse for the past two centuries

Treasurers of North Carolina