Isaac Erwin Avery

He was a graduate of Trinity College, Durham, N. C. ; admitted to the bar in 1893; vice consul general to Shanghai, China, from 1894 to 1897, during which time he delighted and instructed his countrymen by his pen pictures of the Orient. In 1900, he became the city editor of the Charlotte (N. C.) Daily Observer. In this journal, he established a department that he called "A Variety of Idle Comments," and became a popular commentator upon the virtues and vices of men, their merits and their weaknesses. He brought to every discussion the subtlest analysis, and, with a fidelity that was perfect and sometimes startling, "held the mirror up to nature." His vocabulary was rich; his humor, exquisite; his pathos, tear-compelling. He had no superior among contemporaneous newspaper writers for original thought, power, and felicity of expression. While upon the threshold of a career marked for greatness, surrounded by affectionate friends, in love with life and with every incentive to live, "the pallid messenger with the inverted torch beckoned and he went to the undiscovered country," April 2, 1904.

THE GROTON AVERY CLAN, Vol. I, by Elroy McKendree Avery and Catherine Hitchcock (Tilden) Avery, Cleveland, 1912. p. 622, Vol. II, p. 982-4

Judge Avery has had eleven children, among them being Isaac Erwin Avery, the brilliant local editor of the Charlotte Observer, whose untimely death in 1904 was lamented throughout the entire State.

source: Biographical history of North Carolina from colonial times to the present; (1905). Author: Ashe, Samuel A. (Samuel A'Court), 1840-1938. p. 25