1. Locke Craig was named for the Scottish philosopher John Locke.
17 Facts About Locke Craig
2.
Locke Craig attended the Horner Military Academy in Granville County run by former Confederate officer James Horner.
3.
Locke Craig graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1880.
4.
Locke Craig taught chemistry at the university for one year, then studied law.
5.
Locke Craig married Annie Burgin on November 18,1892, in McDowell County, North Carolina.
6.
Two of the boys graduated from the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, and George Locke Craig would become a lawyer and member of the North Carolina General Assembly.
7.
Locke Craig served as Buncombe County attorney and the Asheville city corporation counsel.
8.
Locke Craig became known as an orator, despite his small physical stature, and was nicknamed "The Little Giant of the West" in tribute to former Democratic presidential candidate Stephen A Douglas.
9.
In 1899 Locke Craig won election to the North Carolina House of Representatives and was re-elected in 1901.
10.
Meanwhile, Locke Craig twice failed in attempts at higher office, losing in a bid for his party's nomination for the US Senate in 1903 and in 1908 withdrew from his first run for the North Carolina governorship after three days of deadlock in the state's Democratic convention between his supporters and those of William Walton Kitchin and Ashley Horne.
11.
Finally winning the Democratic nomination in 1912, Locke Craig won the general election in another three-way race and became North Carolina's governor, although his ally, former governor Aycock had died in April 1912.
12.
Locke Craig presided over other reforms and formed the state's first highway commission as well as established many forestry and fishery conservation policies.
13.
Locke Craig served on the Appalachian Parks Commission, which promoted creation of the Pisgah National Forest.
14.
Locke Craig acted decisively when floods ravaged western North Carolina in 1916.
15.
Locke Craig encouraged private contracts for prisoners to perform road and railroad labor, using a model which in 1880 had led to completion of the Western North Carolina Railroad to Swannanoa Gap.
16.
Locke Craig died at the age of 63 on June 9,1924, survived by his wife Annie, sons and grandchildren.
17.
Locke Craig was buried in the Riverside Cemetery in the Montford Area Historic District, in Asheville, North Carolina, where Annie joined him 30 years later.