US Congressman, Lawyer. He was a United States Representative from the State of North Carolina. He was born one of eight children as Charles Laban Abernethy to John Turner Abernethy (1850-1899), and his wife Anna Martha Scott Abernethy (1850-1912), in Rutherford College, North Carolina, on March 18, 1872. He was educated locally and attended the common public schools in his native Rutherford College, North Carolina, and the Mount Olive High School in Mount Olive, North Carolina. He then relocated to Beaufort, South Carolina, in 1893, where he founded the Beaufort Herald Newspaper, also in 1893. He then studied law at the prestigious University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and was admitted to the bar in 1895 and commenced his practice of law in Beaufort, North Carolina, shortly thereafter. He then served as Solicitor of the Third Judicial Circuit (later the Fifth Judicial Circuit), for twelve years, and then entered politics and served as a Member of the Executive Committee of the North Carolina Democratic Party from 1898 to 1900. He was also a Candidate for Presidential Elector for the State of North Carolina. He moved to New Bern, North Carolina, in 1913, and continued his practice of law there. He then decided to run for a seat in the United States Congress and was elected to represent the Sixty-Seventh Congress in the United States House of Representatives during a special election to fill the seat vacated by the death of the United States Representative Samuel Mitchell Brinson (1870-1922), who had passed away from an unspecified illness in New Bern, North Carolina, on April 13, 1922, at the age of 52. He was re-elected a few months later on November 7, 1922. A Member of the Democratic Party, he then served North Carolina's 3rd District (Sixty-Seventh Congress, Sixty-Eighth Congress, Sixty-Ninth Congress, Seventieth Congress, Seventy-First Congress, Seventy-Second Congress, and the Seventy-Third Congress), in the United States House of Representatives from November 7, 1922, to January 3, 1935. He was re-elected to five more terms in 1924, 1926, 1928, 1930, and 1932. He was defeated for re-election in 1934. Following his term in the United States Congress, he was succeeded in office by the incoming United States Representative Graham Arthur Barden (1896-1967), on January 3, 1935. After leaving the United States Congress, he resumed his practice of law until his retirement in 1938. He passed away from pneumonia at Kafer Memorial Hospital in New Bern, North Carolina, on February 23, 1955, at the age of 82. Following his death, his funeral service was held through the Pollock Funeral Home in New Bern, North Carolina, and he was buried in Cedar Grove Cemetery in New Bern, North Carolina. He was married to Mary Nancy May Abernathy (1872-1959), with whom he had one child, a son named Charles Laban Abernethy Jr. (1899-1968).