Thomas J. Jarvis: Governor, Diplomat, Senator

The land near this marker is where Thomas Jordan Jarvis was born in eighteen thirty-six. He went on to hold three of the highest offices the state and nation could offer. When Governor Zebulon Vance resigned in February of eighteen seventy-nine to take a Senate seat, Jarvis stepped up as lieutenant governor and assumed the governorship.

He was then elected to a full term of his own, serving until eighteen eighty-five. From there, President Grover Cleveland appointed him Minister to Brazil, a post he held through eighteen eighty-eight. Later he served in the United States Senate from eighteen ninety-four to eighteen ninety-five.

Jarvis came from Currituck County stock, this coastal corner of North Carolina, and never strayed far from his roots even as his career carried him from Raleigh to Rio de Janeiro.