Dauge (Dozier), Peter

7 Dec. 1739–1 Sept. 1801

Peter Dauge (Dozier), colonel and legislator, was born in Pasquotank County. The first of his family in America was Jacques D' Auge, who moved to Charleston, S.C., from the Province of Berry in France with a band of French Protestants in the early part of the eighteenth century. A son of the D' Auge family, Pierre, moved to Currituck County, N.C., and married Angelica Gregory. One of the large family of children born to this marriage was Peter Dauge, as the name had been anglicized. Around 1706 Peter Dauge crossed over into the Camden area where he met his bride. The interrelated Dauge, Fenner, Ferebee, Boushall, and Etheridge families mainly remained in the counties of Pasquotank and Camden, and some in the Piedmont of North Carolina.

At twenty-six, Dauge was appointed a road overseer in Camden. On 22 Apr. 1776, he was made a major in the Second Regiment of the Pasquotank militia. As second major his first task assigned by the Provincial Congress was for him and Dempsey Gregory to confiscate enslaved people belonging to the Tories Thomas McKnight, James Parker, and Robert Gilmore. The people McKnight was enslaving were moved with dispatch in May 1777 by Dauge's regiment. On 3 May 1776, Dauge was appointed lieutenant colonel in the state militia from the district of Edenton; on 11 May 1776, he was given the rank of colonel. On 8 Aug. 1776, he was appointed lieutenant colonel of the Tenth North Carolina Regiment, Continental Line, which joined General George Washington in 1777 and fought throughout the Revolution. In November 1776 he was also appointed lieutenant colonel of the First Battalion, which was ordered to assist South Carolina.

From 1786 to 1790 Dauge was a member of the House of Commons. He and Lemuel Sawyer represented Camden and often split their votes. Dauge voted in favor of proposals to increase the jurisdiction of the justices of the peace, to prevent the sale of goods except for "hard money," and to abolish recompense for executed or outlawed enslaved people. Sawyer opposed all. On 20 Nov. 1787, while in the house, Dauge was added to the Committee of Claims and on 22 November he was added to the court of claims. The house on 4 Nov. 1788 appointed Dauge and others to act on as a Committee of Propositions and Grievances. On 3 November he was appointed to serve on the Committee of Privileges and Elections.

From 1790 to 1794, Dauge was a member of the state senate where his corepresentative from Camden was Lemuel Sawyer's son, Enoch. They generally voted together on important measures. On 2 Nov. 1790, Dauge was appointed to serve on "a committee to hear and report on such excuses as may be offered by members of this house who failed to give their attendence agreeable to law." Both Dauge and Enoch Sawyer were delegates to the Hillsborough and Fayetteville conventions of 1788 and 1789, respectively. In 1789 Dauge was named a trustee for the newly formed Currituck Seminary of Learning, and in 1799 he was appointed sheriff of Camden.

Dauge was granted 2,057 acres of land on which he developed a plantation. According to the census of 1790, the plantation used enslaved labor, and Dauge enslaved twelve people.

Dauge was married twice: first to Elizabeth Lamb, daughter of Thomas Lamb and Sarah Beckwith of Pasquotank; second to Margaret Sawyer Lamb, widow of Abner Lamb, of Camden. Of the first marriage there were five children, Isaac, Willoughby, Amelia (m. Ezekiel Trotman), Sophia, and Margaret. There were no children of the second marriage. Dauge died in Camden and was buried in the family cemetery at his plantation.