Prof. Henry Junius Nott

From the book, South Carolina Portraits, A Collection of Portraits of South Carolinians and Portraits in South Carolina, compiled by The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of South Carolina, edited by Christie Zimmerman Fant, Margaret Belser Hollis and Virginia Gurley Meynard, page 287: Henry Junius Nott was born in 1798, son of Abraham and Angelica (Mitchell) Nott of Columbia (South Carolina). His father, Abraham Nott, was chief of the South Carolina Court of Appeals. Nott graduated from South Carolina College in 1814, practiced law for a few years, then continued his studies in Europe. He married Amelie Aules of Brussels, Belgium in 1823. The couple returned to Columbia in 1824 and Henry joined the South Carolina College faculty. The Notts spent the summer of 1837 studying at the Sorbonne in Paris. On their return trip, their ship was wrecked off Cape Hatteras and both Mr. and Mrs. Nott were lost. They were the parents of Amelia Angelica Nott, who married William McKenzie Parker.

From South Carolina Biographical Dictionary by Jan Onofrio, page 126: Nott, Henry Junius, (1797-1837)-educator and author, was the son of Judge Abraham Nott and Angelica (Mitchell) Nott, and a brother of Josiah Clark Nott. He was born on November 4, 1797, in Union District, South Carolina. His schooling was obtained at the Columbia Academy, from which he entered the sophomore class of the South Carolina College in 1810. Graduating in December 1814, he studied law in the office of William Harper, was admitted to the bar in 1818, and formed a partnership with David J. McCord. The firm did not enjoy a very large practice. The partners published two volumes of law reports, which have been considered valuable, although the reports of cases were very brief. Nott's health failing, he sailed to Europe in 1821, where he spent the next three years in study, for the most part in France and Holland. In the former country he met and married a French woman. On December 7, 1824, he was elected professor of the elements of criticism, logic, and the philosophy of language in his alma mater, and for thirteen years he held the chair with marked success. When the South Carolina College was reorganized in 1835, he alone of the professors was retained; he served during that year as chairman of the faculty. Nott was a frequent contributor to the Southern Review. His Novellettes of a Traveller; or, Odds and Ends from the Knapsack of Thomas Singularity, Journeyman Printer (2 vols., 1834) is the only other work that came from his pen. It was received with enthusiasm at the time and was regarded as "full of fun"; but the modern reader finds in it little merit. The sketch of Singularity is a dull narrative of his by no means interesting adventures. Of the other tales the "Dwarf's Duel" may still engage the attention of the reader. On October 7, 1837, Nott left New York for Charleston on the unfortunate steamer Home. The vessel was wrecked two days later off the coast of North Carolina. He could have saved his life, according to all accounts, but he perished with his wife rather than survive her. He left one daughter.