Elizabeth City State University founder, Mr. Hugh Cale, who was born in Perquimans County, NC in 1835 and died July 22, 1910.

Image: undated, Mr. Hugh Cale, who was born in Perquimans County, NC in 1835 and died July 22, 1910.

Note: There are different historical writings about Mr. Cale's life in which some say he was born enslaved, others say he was born free because his parents were free.
We are adding in both types of historical accounts to this post.
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Hugh Cale.
by Lisa Y. Henderson
Historical Documents of Genealogical Interest to Researchers of North Carolina's Free People of Color

Born free in Perquimans County in 1835, Hugh Cale worked at Fort Hatteras and on Roanoke Island during the Civil War. In 1867, he moved to Elizabeth City where he worked as a merchant and held a host of offices including county commissioner.

He was one of thirteen African Americans to serve in the state legislature in 1876, the first of his four terms. In 1882, Cale, an active A.M.E. Zion layman, was appointed a trustee of Zion Wesley Institute in Salisbury, which in 1885 became Livingstone College.

He was among the initial group of nine trustees of the North Carolina Agricultural and Mechanical College for the Colored Race (now North Carolina A. & T. State University) in Greensboro and served in that position from 1891 to 1899.

He was a delegate to the Republican national convention of 1896.In 1891, during his last legislative term, Cale introduced House Bill 383 to establish “Elizabeth City Colored Normal School” for the education of black teachers.

Now known as Elizabeth City -State University, the institution has honored Cale with a scholarship in his name. He died in 1910.

Source: https://ncfpc.net/2013/03/28/hugh-cale/

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FREE BLACKS - NORTH CAROLINA
HUGH CALE
by Benjamin R. Justesen
Published in print:15 March 2013
Published online: 31 May 2013

Excerpt:
"...merchant, public official, religious leader, and longtime state legislator, was born in Perquimans County, North Carolina, the eldest son of free, mixed-race parents John Cail (Cale) and Elizabeth Mitchell, a homemaker, who were married in 1827.

His father worked as a miller, later as a fisherman, and moved his large family—as many as nine children—to Edenton in nearby Chowan County in the 1850s.

Little is known of Hugh Cale's early life or education, although he had learned to read and write by the end of the Civil War.

After the Union army occupied much of northeastern North Carolina in early 1862, Cale began working as a manual laborer for federal installations at Fort Hatteras and Roanoke Island. In 1867 he moved to Elizabeth City North Carolina where he commenced a singularly successful career as a grocer and held a number of local offices during and after

...Source: https://oxfordaasc.com/browse;jsessionid...