Shipp, Bartlett

8 Mar. 1786–26 May 1869

Bartlett Shipp, lawyer and legislator, was born in that part of Surry County that became Stokes County in 1789 near the future site of Danbury, the son of Thomas and Hannah Joyce Shipp. The elder Shipp, a Virginian, was a veteran of the American Revolution; he was at Yorktown in 1781 but soon moved to Surry County. Largely self-educated, Bartlett Shipp taught school in his youth. During the War of 1812 he volunteered for service and became a private with the Stokes County regiment. After studying law under Joseph Wilson, Shipp practiced briefly in Wilkes County.

In 1818, about the time of his marriage to Susan, the daughter of Peter Forney of Lincoln County, he moved to Lincoln County. Shipp represented that county in the House of Commons for the terms 1824–25, 1826–27, 1828–29, 1829–30, and 1830–31, and in the Senate during 1834–35. In the house he served for a time on the Committee on Education and in 1830 supported a bill to prevent the teaching of enslaved people to read and write, but the measure was defeated. Although an unsuccessful candidate for Congress in 1831, he represented Lincoln County at the constitutional convention in 1835. In 1852, with F. M. Reinhardt, he bought an interest in the former Rehoboth forge near his home when it was known as the Reinhardt furnace.

Shipp and his wife were the parents of a son, William M., who became a jurist in Charlotte, and two daughters, Eliza (m. William Preston Bynum) and Susan (m. V. C. Johnson). He was buried in the Episcopal churchyard in Lincolnton.