Fisher was born in Salisbury in 1816 to Christine Beard Fisher and her husband, legislator and plantation owner Charles Fisher. His paternal grandfather, Frederick Fisher, had migrated to western North Carolina from Shenandoah County, Virginia, and had served as an officer in the local militia during the American Revolutionary War. His maternal grandparents were Lewis Beard and Susan Dunn, and his maternal great grandfather, lawyer John Dunn, was an ardent Tory during that war. After a local private education, Fisher entered Yale University in 1835, but failed to complete his freshman year. Fisher married Ruth Caldwell, and they would have three children who would be reared by relatives after Fisher's death related below. Although the Fishers were Lutheran or Episcopalian, their orphaned eldest daughter Christine was raised by a Catholic aunt and would convert to Catholicism and later become an author of many novels, some supporting the Lost Cause.
Career
Although he never received a formal educational degree, Fisher became farmer, miner, and journalist in his home Rowan County. His father was a politician for 28 years, much of which time Fisher supported him as copublisher of the Western Carolinian. A Democrat, Fisher won his first political office in 1854, when Rowan County voters elected him as a state senator. The following year, Fisher became president of the North Carolina Railroad, succeeding former governor John Morehead. While still the railroad's president, he was also selected as its principal contractor to build a line to Morganton, North Carolina. Slow construction progress and high costs produced considerable criticism, particularly from Jonathan Worth. In 1859, despite Worth's continued criticism, the railroad's stockholders re-elected Fisher as its president. Fisher became friends with Vermont-born Sewall Lawrence Fremont, a former U.S. Army artilleryman who had become chief engineer and superintendent of the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad in eastern North Carolina in 1854.
During the American Civil War Fisher and Fremont both joined the Confederate States Army. Fisher became a Colonel commanding the 6th North Carolina Infantry Regiment. He died leading a charge on a Union Army battery at the First Battle of Bull Run, supporting North Carolina General Thomas Lanier Clingman as well as Fisher's cousin Jubal Early. Whether the fatal bullet was from friendly fire of the Fourth Alabama or Second or Eleventh Mississippi, or from the New York Zoaves or other Union soldiers from the Sudley Road will never be known.
