Benjamin Rice Lacy served 28 years as State Treasurer, longer than anyone else in this century, and he did so with great honor and distinction. In his first Treasurer's report, Lacy detailed how he discovered the embezzlement that had occurred during the previous several years.
"When I was installed in this office, I retained the clerks who had served under my predecessor until my appointees were sufficiently familiar with their duties to perform them with ease and accuracy," Lacy wrote in his December 15, 1902 report.
"It is fortunate for the State that I did in this instance, for it resulted in the early discovery of a systematic fraud which had been practiced for five years, and the recovery of $16,060.04 for the State. The State's money was obtained by Major Martin, Institutional Clerk, by altering checks passing through his hands and making corresponding forced balances in his books. The first altered check he attempted to use under the new administration resulted in the detection of the fraud, his confession of guilt, conviction and sentence to the State's Prison for ten years."
During the last eight years of his term, North Carolina launched an unprecedented program of expansion in which the Treasurer's office handled millions of dollars. Lacy's office managed the financing of $50 million in road construction, approved by State voters in 1921. In addition to that, nearly $20 million of school construction occurred during this period. 1
Though Lacy never graduated from college, he was awarded an honorary doctorate of laws degree by Davidson College in 1928 where his father, a Presbyterian pastor for 18 years, had served as president during the 1850s.
Lacy was a "railroad man" for many years, working as an apprentice in the shops of the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad at Raleigh, where he became a foreman and for fifteen years ran a locomotive. He was known for his fairness and his special concern for the working man. After serving as an Alderman for the City of Raleigh, he became commissioner of labor and printing in 1894.
He died just one month after being sworn in for his eighth term.
1 Hugh Talmage Lefler and Albert Ray Newsome, The History of a Southern State, North Carolina Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1963), 566-568.
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