Robert Dick Douglas was a North Carolina

North Carolina

North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...

 attorney who served as North Carolina Attorney General

North Carolina attorney general

The Attorney General of North Carolina is the head of the state's Department of Justice and provides legal representation and advice to all state agencies. He or she does not have the authority to prosecute specific crimes unless requested to do so by a local district attorney...

 briefly in 1900-1901. He was believed to be the youngest attorney general in the state's history.

Early life and education

Robert was the first son and second child of Robert M. Douglas

Robert M. Douglas

Robert Martin Douglas was a North Carolina Supreme Court justice and political figure. At the beginning of his career, the young attorney served the Republican governor of the state and President Ulysses S...

 and Jessie Madeline Dick. He was a grandson of Sen. Stephen A. Douglas

Stephen A. Douglas

Stephen Arnold Douglas was an American politician from the western state of Illinois, and was the Northern Democratic Party nominee for President in 1860. He lost to the Republican Party's candidate, Abraham Lincoln, whom he had defeated two years earlier in a Senate contest following a famed...

 of Illinois and of Robert P. Dick

Robert P. Dick

Robert Paine Dick was an attorney, North Carolina Supreme Court justice , and United States District Court judge . Originally a Democrat, Dick served as United States attorney for the District of North Carolina from 1853 to 1861...

, a North Carolina state Supreme Court justice. Douglas graduated from Georgetown University

Georgetown University

Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...

 and "read the law" under his grandfather Dick.

Career

At the age of 25, Douglas was appointed by Gov. Daniel L. Russell serve out the remainder of Attorney General Zeb V. Walser

Zeb V. Walser

Zeb Vance Walser was an attorney and North Carolina politician. Named for Governor Zebulon B. Vance, Walser nevertheless became active in the Republican Party rather than Vance's Democrats....

's term. After that he built a practice of law in Greensboro, North Carolina

Greensboro, North Carolina

Greensboro is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is the third-largest city by population in North Carolina and the largest city in Guilford County and the surrounding Piedmont Triad metropolitan region. According to the 2010 U.S...

, where he also served as postmaster

Postmaster

A postmaster is the head of an individual post office. Postmistress is not used anymore in the United States, as the "master" component of the word refers to a person of authority and has no gender quality...

.

In 1932, Douglas gave or sold his grandfather Stephen A. Douglas's papers to the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

.