Tillie Ehringhaus

Ehringhaus was born Matilda Bradford Haughton on October 23, 1890, in Williamston, North Carolina, to Rev. Thomas Benbury Haughton, an Episcopal priest, and Susan Elizabeth Lamb Haughton. She was a member of an aristocratic North Carolinian family, as her father's family were planters in the Albemarle Region. Her granduncle, Thomas Haughton, was a close friend and colleague of Governor James Iredell Jr. and U.S. Congressman Ebenezer Pettigrew. After the war, he served as the parish priest and rector of the Episcopal church of the Advent in Williamston. Through her maternal grandfather, Ehringhaus was a descendant of Colonel Gideon Lamb, a military officer who served in the 6th North Carolina Regiment of the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Her granduncle, Lieutenant Colonel John Calhoun Lamb, was mortally wounded during the Bermuda Hundred campaign in the Civil War. When Ehringhaus was four years old her father died and the family moved to Washington, North Carolina. She attended St. Mary's Junior College, a girls' school in Raleigh, and graduated with a business certificate in 1908. Prior to her marriage, Ehringhaus worked as a secretary. == Public life ==

In 1932 Ehringhaus' husband was elected as the 58th Governor of North Carolina, and assumed office the following January, at which time she assumed the role of First Lady of North Carolina. Ehringhaus co-edited the North Carolina Almanac and State Industrial Guide. == Personal life ==

On January 4, 1912, she married John Christoph Blucher Ehringhaus, an attorney, at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Washington. After the wedding, the couple moved to Elizabeth City, where her husband practiced law. While her husband served in the North Carolina General Assembly the family lived at the Sir Walter Hotel in downtown Raleigh. After her husband finished his term as governor in January 1937, the family moved to a house on Fairview Road in the affluent Five Points neighborhood in Raleigh. In 1946 they moved back to the Sir Walter Hotel, where her husband died three years later. In 1954, she moved to a small farm outside of Edenton, where some of her relatives lived. She remodeled her house there, and two of her grandchildren lived with her while attended school in Edenton. She remained on the farm for twenty years before returning to Raleigh. == Death and legacy ==

She died on June 16, 1980, at a nursing home in Raleigh. == References ==