Author: Daphne Gentry

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William Cabell (1730–1798)

William Cabell was a prominent Virginia planter, militia officer, and long-serving legislator whose public career spanned the colonial, Revolutionary, and early national periods. Born in Goochland County and raised in what became Amherst County, he accumulated extensive landholdings, held numerous county offices, and served as county lieutenant of the militia. Cabell represented Amherst County in the House of Burgesses from 1761 until the American Revolution, where he became active on influential committees and supported resistance to Parliament, and he attended all five Virginia Revolutionary Conventions, serving on the Committee of Safety and on committees that helped frame the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the first Constitution of Virginia. After independence, Cabell served in the Virginia Senate (1776–1781) and for many terms in the House of Delegates, frequently chairing or ranking on key committees, including those dealing with religion, elections, and grievances. An opponent of ratification of the U.S. Constitution, he represented Amherst County in the 1788 Constitutional Ratifying Convention and voted against adoption, though he later served as a presidential elector and voted for George Washington. Cabell also participated in educational and economic ventures, including the James River Company. He died on March 23, 1798, at Union Hill, his Amherst County plantation, and was buried in the family cemetery there.

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William Brent (July 26, 1733–by ca. April 8, 1782)

William Brent, member of the Fifth Revolutionary Convention, was born in Stafford County on July 26, 1733. He inherited large estates in King George, Prince William, Stafford, and Westmoreland counties. He married Eleanor Carroll of Maryland in about 1754. Although he and his wife descended from notable Catholic families, Brent converted to the Church of England and became closely connected through marriage to leading Virginia and Maryland families. He was a successful thoroughbred breeder who profited from stud fees for his stallions Figure and Don Juan, and owned Ebony, a famous broodmare. He served for decades as a Stafford County justice of the peace, protested the Stamp Act, and played an important role in Revolutionary politics as a member of local enforcement committees and as a delegate to the Fifth Virginia Revolutionary Convention, where he voted for independence, the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and the state constitution. Despite the destruction of his mansion by a British raid in 1776, Brent continued to serve in the House of Delegates and later in the Virginia Senate, remaining influential until his death in early 1782.

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Walter Chiles (1609–after July 6, 1653)

Walter Chiles was a member of the House of Burgesses (serving intermittently through the 1640s), a member of the governor’s Council (1651), and Speaker of the House of Burgesses (1653). The son of a merchant in Bristol, England, Chiles fitted out his own ship and settled in Virginia by 1638. He served as a burgess during the 1640s and sat on the governor’s Council in 1651. Chiles enjoyed success trading with the English and the Dutch, but in 1652 one of his ships was seized off the Eastern Shore for violating Parliament’s Navigation Act prohibiting unauthorized trade with the Netherlands. The resulting controversy spilled over into the General Assembly, where Chiles was elected Speaker of the House of Burgesses on July 6, 1653, in opposition to the governor, Richard Bennett. Having illustrated the independence of the House of Burgesses, Chiles resigned a day later, citing the impropriety of presiding over the body while it arranged a deal to resolve the conflict over his ship. He may have died soon afterwards, but the time and place of his death are not known.

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William Capps (fl. 1609–1630)

William Capps represented Kecoughtan (later Elizabeth City County) in the first General Assembly. An employee of the Virginia Company of London, Capps likely arrived in the colony in 1609. He oversaw the shipment of supplies into the new territory and advised the company’s English officials on Virginia’s affairs, but feuded with its representatives in the colony, including Governor Sir George Yeardley. He was one of a number of colonists who agitated for the Crown’s takeover of Virginia. Subsequently, Capps became a royal agent and conveyed instructions on economic diversification to the settlers. He last appeared in surviving records related to the colony in 1630.

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Carter Burwell (1716–1756)

Carter Burwell was a key member of the House of Burgesses who built Carter’s Grove plantation. The heir of substantial estates from both his father and his grandfather Robert “King” Carter, he became a powerful figure in James City County politics. The constituency’s voters elected him to the House of Burgesses in 1742. He served until 1755, chairing the influential Committee of Privileges and Elections and working as an important ally of John Robinson, the body’s powerful speaker. He is best known for the Georgian home he had built at Carter’s Grove, considered an important example of the era’s architecture.

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George Brooke (d. 1782)

George Brooke was a member of the House of Burgesses (1765, 1771, 1774), the Convention of 1776, and the Senate of Virginia (1776–1779), and served as treasurer of Virginia from 1779 until his death. Born in King William County, he moved to King and Queen County after his marriage and formed a mercantile partnership with one of his wife’s relatives. He earned a reputation as a reliable businessman and was involved in settling the controversial and politically sensitive estate of Speaker John Robinson. During the American Revolution (1775–1783) he sat in the Revolutionary Conventions, although he missed the vote for independence in 1776, and was paymaster to several Virginia regiments. At the end of his life he served as treasurer of Virginia, helping to supervise the transfer of the capital from Williamsburg to Richmond and to keep the state’s fiscal affairs intact during British raids in 1781. He died in 1782.

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John Bracken (bap. 1747–1818)

John Bracken was the rector of Bruton Parish from 1773 until his death, ran the grammar school at the College of William and Mary, and, from 1812 to 1814, served as the school’s ninth president. Bracken was born in England, where he was ordained a minister. His appointment as rector of Bruton Parish, in Williamsburg, was controversial and exposed rifts within the colonial church. In 1775, he took over the college’s grammar school, which closed and reopened and then closed again in the ensuing decades. He became a professor of humanity in 1777 was granted a DD in 1793. In 1812 Bracken was elected William and Mary’s president at a time when the school had only a few dozen students. He was generally ineffective and was asked to resign after two years. In his later years, Bracken served as mayor of Williamsburg and president of the board of Williamsburg’s Public Hospital. He died in 1818.

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Lawrence Bohun (d. 1621)

Lawrence Bohun was a member of the govenror’s Council and physician general of the Virginia colony. Born probably in England, Bohun may have received his medical training at Leiden. He sailed to Virginia in 1610 as personal physician to the governor. Bohun returned to England and in 1612 was named as a shareholder in the third charter of the Virginia Company of London. While practicing medicine in London, he retained his interest in Virginia and may have been involved in an attempt to introduce silk culture there. Appointed physician general of the colony and a member of the Council in 1620, Bohun sailed for Virginia but was killed on March 19, 1621, when Spanish warships attacked his ship in the West Indies.

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Benjamin Bluett (1580–1621)

Benjamin Bluett was a member of the governor’s Council (1620–1621). Born in Surrey County, England, he lived in Sussex and worked as a merchant supplying the Virginia colony. In 1620, the Virginia Company of London appointed Bluett to the governor’s Council and put him in charge of a company of men working to establish an iron-mining and smelting operation in Virginia. He arrived in the colony that summer but died soon after, possibly in an attack by Virginia Indians.

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Theodorick Bland (bap. 1630–1672)

Theodorick Bland was the Speaker of the House of Burgesses (1660) and a member of the governor’s Council (1662–1672). Probably born in London, he was educated there and lived for several years in Spain, where his family worked in the wine business. Bland had moved to Virginia by 1653 to take control of family land and was elected to the House of Burgesses, representing Charles City County, in 1660. That year he presided over two sessions as Speaker, helping to navigate Virginia through the political uncertainty that surrounded the end of the Commonwealth and the restoration of Charles II. Elected again to the House in 1661 and 1662, this time from Henrico County, he was not reelected Speaker, and in 1662, the governor, Sir William Berkeley, appointed him to the governor’s Council. He died in 1672 and was buried at Westover, his estate in Charles City County.

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