John Marshall Stone Chapter 394, United Daughters of Confederacy met by phone on October 17th at 2 pm. We did this due to work schedule and sickness. There were four members to take part. The old business was trying to get new members and what we could do, the new business was also on membership. We each gave our reports and we went over the list of cards to be sent out. Vicky Durham treasurer gave her report and stated that we still had two members that hadn’t paid dues yet. President Sharon Hairrell stated that we were in danger of losing our Chapter. We will have a special meeting to decide what we plan to do. 
Sharon Hairrell presented our program for October: “The Prince of Politicians” Brigadier General Thomas Lanier Clingman. 
Brigadier General Thomas Lanier Clingman’s grandfather Alexander Clingman and his wife moved to Rowan County, North Carolina in the 1730s, they were among the first to arrive. They got a warrant for 620 acres. There were no records found showing that he paid for the land. His name was on no records of the county until 1772. In 1774 he acquired 281 acres, making him the second-largest landowner in the district.
It was hard to make a living just farming and he had a family of seven children. He supplemented his income by trapping and making hats from their fur. His son Jacob was Thomas’s father.
Alexander fought in the American Revolution war. He used his veteran status to buy land as well as unclaimed land. At his death, he owned more than 1,000 acres. By the time he died most of his children were grown and had moved away.
Jacob (Thomas’s father) and his brother moved to Huntsville, N.C.  where his brother owned a general store, and he went into business with him. The brothers Jacob and Peter married sisters. Thomas was one of three children of Jacob and Jane. Jacob died leaving Jane, three children, and another on the way.
Thomas had a strong desire for education. He was educated by private tutors and in public schools in Iredell County, NC. Clingman graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1832, he had the highest ranking in his class, and he was a member of the Dialectic Senate of the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies. He then studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1834, and began practicing in Huntsville. Despite an illness that threatened his sight, he read law at Hillsborough under William Alexander Graham, at that time one of the leading lawyers in the state.
The year 1835 marked Clingman’s entry into politics. Shortly after being admitted to the bar, he was elected from Surry County to the lower house of the North Carolina legislature. There he quickly allied himself with the newly formed Whig party, which was pushing for a revision of the North Carolina Constitution in the interest of more equitable representation for the western part of the state. His bid for reelection in 1836 was unsuccessful. 
In the Confederacy, Clingman served briefly as a commissioner to the provisional government at Montgomery. Though he had no military experience, he was commissioned in September 1861 as colonel and head of the Twenty-fifth North Carolina Regiment; in August 1862 he was made a brigadier general.  He was severely wounded in several battles during the war. After the war, Clingman was prohibited from returning to politics by the amnesty provisions.
After the war, he returned to the mountains to practice law and be a land broker, mineralogist, and writer. Due to bad health and lack of funds he lived with relatives. When his health got so bad he was placed in the State Hospital for the Insane until his death on November 3, 1897.