William Tryon

Tryon was born at Norbury Park, Surrey, England. In 1757, when he was a captain of the First Foot Guards, he married Margaret Wake, a London heiress with a dower of £30,000. In 1764 he was appointed Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina, upon Arthur Dobbs's death in 1765 became governor pro tem., and in December of the same year received his commission as Governor of North Carolina.

Like many other pre-Revolutionary officials in America, he has generally been pictured by American writers as a tyrant. In reality, however, he seems to have been tactful and considerate, an efficient administrator, who in particular greatly improved the colonial postal service, and to have become unpopular chiefly because, through his rigid adherence to duty, he obeyed the instructions of his superiors and rigorously enforced the measures of the British government. By refusing to allow meetings of the Assembly from May 18th, 1765 to November 3, 1766, he prevented North Carolina from sending representatives to the Stamp Act Congress in 1765. To lighten the stamp tax he offered to pay the duty on all stamped paper on which he was entitled to fees. With the support of the law-abiding element he suppressed the Regulator uprising in 1768-1771, caused partly by the taxation imposed to defray the cost of the governor's fine mansion at New Bern (which Tryon had made the provincial capital), and executed seven or eight of the ringleaders, pardoning six others.

From 1771 nominally until March 22, 1780 he was Governor of New York. While he was on a visit to England the American Revolutionary War broke out, and on October 19, 1775, several months after his return, he was compelled to seek refuge on the sloop-of-war Halifax in New York Harbor, but was restored to power when the British took possession of New York City in September 1776, though his actual authority did not extend beyond the British lines. In 1777, with the rank of major-general, he became commander of a corps of Loyalists, and in 1779 invaded Connecticut and burned Danbury, Fairfield, and Norwalk.

In 1780 he returned to England, and in 1782 was promoted to lieutenant-general. He died in London.

References

• Haywood, Marshal D. Governor William Tryon and his Administration in the Province of North Carolina. Raleigh, 1903.
• This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica. Please update as needed.

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