"M" Surnames

Means, Paul Barringer

Paul B. Means was born two and a half miles west of Concord, April 7, 1845, a son of General Wm. C. Means, a very progressive and successful farmer.  His mother was Miss Catherine Jane Barringer, a daughter of General Paul Barringer, and Elizabeth Brandon.  Her father was a farmer and successful merchant who was several times a member of the State Legislature and a brigadier general in the war of 1812, commissioned by Governor William Hawkins, December 23, 1812, and ratified by both houses of the General Assembly.

He was educated in the high schools in Concord until 1859, then at the famous school of Dr. Alexander Wilson at Melville, Alamance county, N. C., and at the University of North Carolina, from which he graduated June 4, 1868, in the last class under Governor Swain's administration, having left the university in 1863 and volunteered as a private in Company F, 5th N. C. Cavalry, and served as a soldier until the end of the war.  After leaving college he studied law with Chief Justice Pearson and was licensed to practice in January, 1870, and has been in continuous practice in Concord since January 17, 1870.  He represented Cabarrus county in the State Legislature in 1874-1875 and was a State Senator in 1885 and again in 1889.  Since February 4, 1876, he has continuously been counsel of the Southern and old Richmond & Danville Railway Companies.  

He married, November 27, 1894, Miss Moselle Foard, a daughter of Maj. R. W. Foard, a prominent merchant of Concord and an extensive farmer.

Source:  Prominent People of North Carolina: Brief Biographies of Leading People for Ready Reference Purposes (Asheville, North Carolina: Evening News Publishing Company, 1906), 77.

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