Richard Clauselle Puryear

Richard Clauselle Puryear (February 9, 1801 – July 30, 1867) was a planter, state legislator, and United States Congressman from North Carolina who served in the U.S. House of Representatives between 1853 and 1857. Over the course of his public life he held multiple local and state offices, including service in the North Carolina House of Commons and the North Carolina Senate, and later participated in Confederate and postwar peace deliberations.

Puryear was born on February 9, 1801, in Mecklenburg County, Virginia. During his childhood, his family moved south to Surry County, North Carolina, where he was raised. In this rural Piedmont setting he came of age in an agrarian society that would shape his later career as both a planter and a political figure. Details of his formal education are not extensively documented, but his subsequent roles as magistrate, militia officer, and legislator indicate that he attained the standing and experience typical of local elites in early nineteenth-century North Carolina.

As a young adult, Puryear established himself as a planter near Huntsville in what was then Surry County. He developed his plantation, later known as “Shallow Ford,” and became a prominent figure in local affairs. Before entering statewide office, he served as a magistrate of Surry County, exercising judicial and administrative responsibilities at the county level, and held the rank of colonel in the local militia, reflecting both his social position and his involvement in community defense and order.

Puryear’s formal political career began in the North Carolina House of Commons, where he served multiple, nonconsecutive terms. He was first elected to the House in 1838 and returned for additional terms in 1844, 1846, and 1852. During this period he also served a term in the North Carolina Senate, further broadening his legislative experience. As a member of the state legislature, he participated in debates over internal improvements, state development, and the evolving sectional issues that increasingly influenced North Carolina politics in the antebellum era.

In 1852 Puryear was elected as a Whig to the United States House of Representatives, representing North Carolina in the Thirty-third Congress, and he took his seat in March 1853. He was re-elected in 1854 to the Thirty-fourth Congress as a member of the American Party, also known as the Know-Nothing Party, and served continuously in Congress from 1853 to 1857. As a member of the American Party representing North Carolina, he contributed to the legislative process during two terms in office, participating in the democratic process at a time of mounting national tension over slavery, immigration, and sectional balance, and representing the interests of his constituents in the western part of the state. He ran unsuccessfully for a third term in 1856, marking the end of his federal legislative service.

After leaving Congress, Puryear returned to North Carolina and remained active in public affairs as the nation moved toward civil war. In 1861 he served as a delegate to the Provisional Confederate Congress, taking part in the organization of the Confederate government following North Carolina’s secession. Following the end of the American Civil War, he was also a delegate to the Peace Congress, reflecting his continued engagement in efforts to shape the political settlement and reconstruction of the South in the postwar period.

In his later years, Puryear resumed his primary occupation as a planter at his “Shallow Ford” plantation, which by that time lay in Yadkin County, formed from part of Surry County. He lived there until his death on July 30, 1867. Puryear’s career, spanning local magistracy, state legislative service, national office in the U.S. Congress, and participation in Confederate and postwar peace bodies, placed him among the significant political figures of mid-nineteenth-century North Carolina.