USA > Virginia > Some prominent Virginia families, Volume IV > Part 19
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VI. Sarah Pendleton+.
VII. James Pendleton4.
VIII. Lucy Pendleton+.
IX. Thomas Pendleton+.
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VIRGINIA FAMILIES
III. Edmund Pendleton3 (Henry2, Philip1), b. September 9, 1721; d. 1803. Married, first, Elizabeth Roy, who died the same year; married, second (1743), Sarah Pollard. There were no children. (Copied from John S. Pendleton's MS. of "Redwood." Culpeper County, Va., May 1st, 1868.)
The seven children of the first settlers started on a career of multiplication befitting a new country; so that, as late as 1803, if Judge Edmund Pendleton had been in the prime of life, and the most active man in Virginia, it would have been a very serious, if not an impossible, undertaking to have identified and recorded the names of half of them ; whilst he was, in fact, a man of upwards of eighty years of age when he died. He had, for sixty years, withont the intermission of a single year, been laboriously engaged in professional and official duties, usually of great importance. He was for the last twenty years of his life most painfully disabled for any physical activity, by reason of an accident which made him a cripple, and consigned him to crutches for life.
So he started his own, one of the three male lines in the first generation, and then named the females only until they married into other families. Hence, he calls it simply "Chronology," with that precision of language for which tradition reports him as being proverbial.
We are requested to publish the following article as a leaf from a work not yet finished, nor, when finished, intended for general circulation-being entirely of a private and personal nature-but because a number of our friends and readers may possibly take some interest in it !!
The writer says :
There has lately fallen into my hands a very finished and patri- otie discourse, delivered in July, 1855, by Hugh Blair Grigsby before a literary society of the ancient "College of William and Mary," and published by order of the society.
I shall refer to some of the prominent incidents of Mr. Pendle- ton's life as set forth in that discourse, and so far only depart from the plan of a simple chronology.
Mr. Grigsby selected for his theme "The Virginia Convention of 1776." He submitted a performance of over two hundred octavo pages in print, consisting of short biographical sketches of
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eminent members, and a general description and history of the illustrious body.
This body consisted of one hundred and twenty-eight members. When it assembled and proceeded to organize, we are told by Mr. Grigsby that Richard Bland and Archibald Cary, two of the most venerable and distinguished citizens of the Colony. concurred in recommending Edmund Pendleton, of Caroline, for President, and he was appointed.
The anthor says that Mr. Pendleton at that time as a parlia- mentarian had no equal in the House, a superior nowhere.
He had already been a leading member of the "House of Bur- gesses" for five and twenty years, etc .. etc., etc.
After stating his rare combination of qualities, mental and physical, Mr. Grigsby says : "Of such a man it may be safely said that in whatever view we take of him, or whether we look abroad or at home, a more accomplished personage has rarely presided in a public Assembly.
"In 1764 he was selected, with George Wythe and Richard Henry Lee, to prepare the memorial of the King, Lords and Com- mons of England! In 1773 he was made one of the Committee of Correspondence.
"In 1224 he was elected to the Convention of that year. and by that body appointed one of the Delegates to the Continental Con- gress, holding, at the same time, the office of Presiding Justice of Caroline Court, and the important and dignified station of County Lieutenant of that county.
"In 1225 he was re-chosen for Congress, but declined to accept on account of ill health at the time.
"He was elected to the State Convention of 1775, and to that of 1776, and was chosen President of both bodies, in one by a unanimous vote, and the other on a vote divided with Thomas Ludwell Lee, Esq., one of the most accomplished gentlemen in Virginia : and by the unanimous vote of the latter was appointed chairman of the Committee of Public Safety, which was, in point of fact, invested for so long as it lasted with supreme dictatorial power, in civil, as well as military affairs.
"That body consisted of eleven members, was in the interval of the Sessions of the Convention the Executive of the Colony, and was always in Session .- and Mr. Edmund Pendleton, as its head.
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VIRGINIA FAMILIEN
continued from the date of the institution until it was superseded by the Constitutional Government."
At this stage the learned lecturer says :
"Up to this point Mr. Pendleton had been called on, not by one. but by both parties, to fill all the great posts of the day, the duties of which he performed with masterly skill.
"Distinguished as was this remarkable man as a lawyer, as a debater, as a presiding officer of deliberative assemblies, he may be regarded as yet only in the beginning of his wonderful career.
"He was now in his fifty-fifth year, and as he had been engaged since his fourteenth year, either in the wearing drudgery of a clerk's office under the old regime-in the fatigues and privations of an extensive practice in the County Courts, and in the most responsible trust ever committed to a representative, in all of which he performed his part with the strictest fidelity and honour, and with the applause of his country.
"In the possession of an ample fortune, he might now have sought retirement with a becoming grace, and, closing his career with the extinct dynasty, might have left to the new generation the direction of affairs.
"Without doubt, had be consulted his own inclinations, he would have retired upon his well-earned fame and fortune and passed the remainder of his life in honorable repose.
"But Edmund Pendleton had other views of public duty! He was yet to render most important service to his country, and to win his most durable, if not his most brilliant. title to the public regard.
"But if his subsequent course in the House of Delegates, in which he filled the chair of Speaker, mingling, however, in debate with ability confessedly unrivalled, and fighting the battles of a party that was insensibly dwindling away, with a vigor most formidable to his opponents : as a reviser of the laws which still bear the impress of his plastic hand; as a member of the Convention of 1788, in which he presided, and in the debates of which he freely engaged ; and on the bench of the Court of Appeals, in which he filled for yet a quarter of a century the highest seat, presiding with an ease and dignity rarely surpassed, with a fullness of knowledge, and readiness in its application, that received the unlimited respect of the bar, as it inspired the universal confidence of the people ;
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with an industry that quailed not, even beneath the weight of fourscore years, and, above all, with a purity that, even the most delicate case of his life-a case involving issues at once personal, religious and political-the faintest breath of censure never soiled. it is not within the scope of my present design to speak at large."
Mr. Grigsby states in the appendix to his discourse: "It is due to the reputation of Edmund Pendleton, Patrick Henry, and Gov. Nelson, to state a fact which I accidentally discovered some days ago, in the Virginia Gazette of Novmber 2d, 1803. It is there reported that Edmund Randolph, in his address at the funeral of Edmund Pendleton, stated that the resolution instructing our delegates in Congress to declare independence was drawn by Pen- dleton, was offered in Convention by Nelson, and was advocated on the floor by Henry.
"As has already been stated on the authority of Mr. Grigsby, Judge Pendleton was offered, immediately on the organization of the Federal Government, a Judgeship under the Government, which he declined. Preferring his position of Chief Justice of Virginia, he continued to discharge the duties of that office until finally, in October, 1803, he fell, 'with the harness on,' at his official post in the city of Richmond, in his eighty-third year."
The foregoing as applicable to Edmund Pendleton, personally. is derived from the document prepared by Mr. Grigsby, a gentle- man still living (1868), who is well remembered as a very accon- plished young gentleman in 1829, and said to be the youngest member of the celebrated State Convention of that year; a gentle- man well qualified for the task he undertook and so handsomely performed. I believe he was himself descended from one or more of the eminent men in the Convention; and, besides, is connected with more than one of those gentlemen who represented, at the time of the Revolution, some of the best families in the Colony -- a time when it was no reproach to a man to be a gentleman, or to know who his grandfather was-or how long his name had been known among respectable men.
Mr. Grigsby, who is in no degree whatever, I believe, related to Mr. Pendleton, may be fairly supposed to be a competent and entirely impartial witness, and though he has given a large share of his discourse to Mr. Pendleton, I content myself with the few and brief quotations already made.
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VIRGINIA FAMILIES
" Mr. Grigsby's notice of Mr. Pendleton is in a very just and friendly spirit-though he was evidently misled in what he says of the early education of Mr. Pendleton. He was not a college- bred man, for he was a posthumous child, with four brothers and two sisters ahead of him, and therefore had no part of what there was left by his father, as the law then was.
His mother married again while he was yet an infant of tender years, and stepsons in those days were not accustomed to be sent to college, especially if poor. He came to the bar at the age of twenty-one, perhaps as well prepared for his admission as any man that ever qualified at that age at the bar of Virginia, and with a promptness never excelled, certainly, marched right to the front rank and stood there, primus inter pares, for as long as he remained a practitioner in the courts, which was precisely four and thirty years. For the next twenty-five years the reports of the Supreme Court of Appeals are his history.
Mr. Grigsby was evidently misled by adopting the error of Mr. West as to Mr. Pendleton's extremely defective education. As to his origin, there was perhaps not a man in the Convention of whom the idea Mr. Grigsby seems to have adopted might not, with as much or more reason, have been advanced, as the writer of this is abundantly able to show Mr. Grigsby, or anybody else.
It is a surprising circumstance that in so long and so eminent a career Judge Pendleton had never a collision or complaint against him, except in a single instance, and that for an official act, the responsibility of which he divided with ten other gentlemen, and the impropriety or even unkindness of which is very far from being conceded; but on the contrary, to a man in these times it will appear that the offensive act was perhaps a wise and judicious measure, for it was nothing but an imaginary affront to Col. Henry offered by the "Committee of Safety," of which Mr. Pendleton was chairman.
Mr. Grigsby tells the tale so clearly, that it leaves us astonished at the fact that there was ever a moment's irritation about it, if in truth there ever was, in the breast of Col. Henry himself.
Col. Henry had been appointed by the Committee of Safety to the command of a regiment with a tried soldier, Col. Woodford, as Lieutenant-Colonel. Col. Henry, the great orator of the Revo- lution, and undoubtedly as an orator unrivalled in the world,
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certainly in America, took it into his head to be also a soldier, for he was as gallant as he was gifted. and was not disposed. like some of our most distinguished orators ( Mr. Chas. Summer, for ex- ample), to content himself with having made the war, he was willing to fight it! But I adopt the words of Mr. Grigsby as being the best explanation of the transaction :
"But let the question be decided as it may, the result cannot impeach the integrity or honor of Pendleton alone. He was one of the eleven who composed the committee.
"On a question touching the true meaning of an act of Assembly. or the laws of prize, the opinion of Pendleton would have had its proper weight with the body; but when the safety of the State. or the honour of the Soldier and a gentleman was involved, would George Mason, who had recently paid to Henry the most splendid compliment that one man of genius ever paid to another; would John Page, who, alone of all the Council of Dunmore, refused to assent to the proclamation denouncing Henry; would Richard Bland, Thomas Ludwell Lee, Paul Carrington, Dudley Digges, William Cabell, Carter Braxton, James Mercer, and John Tabb. have been guided at such a delicate crisis by a feeling of envy towards a patriot, who, having distinguished himself in the public councils, sought to win honour in another and more dangerous field? On the contrary, if we are disposed to attribute the con- duct of Pendleton and his associates to individual jealousy and the desire to ruin the fortunes of a dreaded rival, would they not have adopted an opposite course and have dispatched Henry, unacquainted as he was with war, through a hostile population to the seaboard, where the British forces, which had been recruited some days before by a reinforcement of regular troops from St. Augustine, were ready to receive him !"
FOURTH GENERATION.
IV. Col. James Pendleton+ (James3, Henry2, Philip1), was for many years a representative of Culpeper County, Va .; in the House of Burgesses and in the State Legislature, under the Com- monwealth, Justice of Culpeper, Colonel of the Army of the Revolution, and High Sheriff of the county. When quite young he married Catherine Bowie, of Maryland. Died 1798, leaving nine grown children. Issue:
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VIRGINIAA FAMILIES
I. John Pendleton3. Married Miss Taylor, of Orange Co., Va.
II. Thomas Pendleton5. Married Jane Farmer.
III. Bowie Pendleton5; d. a bachelor, quite young.
IV. William Pendleton". Married Nancy Strother.
V. Catlett Pendleton5.
VI. Margaret Pendleton5. second, Mr. Morris.
Married. first, R. Slaughter; Issue :
VII. Nancy Pendleton5. Married, first, William Brown; second, Col. Valentine Johnson, of Orange Co .: d. without leaving any descendants.
VIII. Catherine Bowie Pendleton". Married Archibald Tutt. She d. 1818, leaving five sons and four daughters.
IX. Elizabeth Pendleton5. Married Henry Pendleton, her cousin.
IV. Henry Pendleton+ (James?, Henry2, Philip1), lived to the time of his death on his plantation at the fork of the Hazel and Thornton rivers. Married Miss Thomas. He was member of the Culpeper Committee of Safety and of Patriot Convention 1775-76; d. about 1798, leaving three sons and several daughters. Issue :
I. Frances Pendleton5. Married John Browning. Issue :
II. Joanna Pendleton5. Married Mr. Smith.
III. Daughter Pendleton5. Married Armistead Green. Issue : I. Harriet Green".
II. Judith Green6.
III. Caroline Green6.
IV. Edward Pendleton. Married Sarah Strother.
V. Henry Pendleton5. Married Elizabeth Pendleton. Issue : I. Kitty Pendleton6.
II. Marianne Pendleton".
III. Thomas Pendleton6.
VI. Frances Pendleton5. Married Mr. Ward. -
VII. Edmund Pendleton5. Married Elizabeth Ward.
One of the daughters married our grandmother's brother. Mr. William Ward, whose son was Pendleton Ward, of Winchester, Va. Their daughter, Emma, married, first, Duncan Chambers, of Phila- delphia ; second, Judge Bradley, of Rhode Island, by whom she had no children. Her daughter, Helen Chambers, married Judge
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SOME PROMINENT
Bradley's son, and they are living in Washington. (March, 1894. Mrs. Jaquelin P. Wysham.) The three oldest daughters live in Kentucky, and their descendants.
IV. Mary Pendleton+ (Philip3, Henry2, Philip1), married Col. Edmund Waller, second clerk of Spottsylvania. Issue :
I. John Waller5.
II. Leonard Waller5.
III. William Edmund Waller5.
IV. Benjamin Waller5.
V. Ann Wallers. Married (1783) George Mason. Issue :
I. Nancy Mason". Married (1783) George Mason. Issue :
I. Sally Coleman7. Married Chas. B. Claiborne.
II. Emma Coleman ?. Married Henry Rose Carter. Issue :
I. Hill Carter8.
II. Nannie Carter8. Married Judge Redd.
III. Edward Carter8.
IV. Charles CarterS.
V. Mary Carters.
IV. Jemina Pendleton+ (Philip3, Henry2, Philip1), married Richard Gaines. Issue :
I. William Gaines5.
II. Lucy Gaines5. Married Mr. Botts.
III. Rowland Gaines5.
IV. Germina Gaines5. Married Mr. Speak.
V. Benjamin Gaines".
VI. Nathaniel Gaines5.
VII. James Gaines5.
VIII. Judith Gaines5. Married Mr. Chancellor.
IX. Annie Gaines5. Married Mr. Crigler.
X. John Cook Gaines5.
XI. Elizabeth Gaines5. Married Mr. Thomas.
IV. Martha Pendleton+ (Philip3, Henry2, Philip1), married Massey Thomas, son of Massey Thomas of Culpeper County. They moved to Versailles, Woodford Co., Ky., about 1811. All children were born in Virginia. Issue :
I. Fannie Taylor Thomas5, b. 1788. Married Mr. Lewis.
II. Philadelphia Pendleton Thomas5, b. 1789. Married James Dunnica.
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VIRGINIA FAMILIES
III. Sallie Minor Thomass, b. 1791. Married William Hamil- ton Dunnica.
IV. Granville Pendleton Thomas5, fought under Gen'l Har- rison in 1813 to 1815.
V. Virginia Curtis Thomas", b. 1994. Married Mr. Nor- wood.
VI. John Price Thomas3, b. 1794 or 1796.
VII. Martha Curtis Thomas", b. 1798. Married Mr. Ramsey.
IV. Henry Pendleton+ (Philip3, Henry2, Philip1), lived in Spottsylvania, Va. His children were:
I. Henry Pendleton5. Married Miss Custis.
II. Rev. Philip Pendleton". Married Miss Thomas.
III. Robert Pendleton3. Married Miss Burrup.
IV. John Pendleton3. Married Miss Alsop.
IV. Micajah Pendleton+ (Philip3, Henry2, Philip1), married Mary Cabell Horsely, daughter of Wm. Horsely, of Amherst Co., Va. Issue :
I. Martha Pendleton3, d. unmarried.
II. Edmund Pendleton5.
III. Edna Pendleton3.
IV. Joseph Pendleton5.
V. Elizabeth Pendleton3. Married Thomas Emmet. Issue : Pendleton Emmet6, and two daughters.
VI. Letitia Breckenridge Pendleton5. Married Hudson Mar- tin Garland. Issue :
I. Breckenridge C. Garland6.
II. Henrietta Garland6. Married Pleasant S. Dawson.
VII. Robert Pendleton5. Married Mary Taliaferro. Issue :
I. Rosa Taliaferro6. Married Henly.
IV. Nathaniel Pendleton+ (Nathaniel3, Henry2, Philip1), en- tered the army of the first rebellion at the same time and in the same company with his brother, Judge Henry, afterwards of South Carolina, and, I am informed, with a third brother at the same time, but which one I do not know (John S. Pendleton).
This I learn as to the third brother from Daniel F. Slaughter, a son of Captain Philip Slaughter, cousin german to the brothers Pendleton, who volunteered for the war on the same day. Nathan- iel continued in the army until the close of the war, and left it as
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SOME PROMINENT
colonel on the staff of General Greene. He then commenced the practice of law in Savannah, Ga., where he remained until the death of his friend, General Greene. He then left it, and established him- self at the bar of the city of New York, where he soon achieved distinction and success, some years before the close of the last cen- tury. Of his professional career I know but little, except that he was an intimate friend of Rufus King, and Alexander Hamilton, and that he stood by Hamilton in his affair with Aaron Burr, and acted as his executor after he had fallen. Nathaniel Pendleton met with a young lady in Savannah, Susan Bard, whom he mar- ried and carried with him to New York. He was born 1746; died in New York October 20, 1821. Issue :
I. Judge Edmund Henry Pendleton5, M. C., b. in Savannah, Ga. Mr. J. S. Pendleton knew him forty years ago (written 1868) as Representative in Congress from that district in New York to which Hyde Park belonged. He died during the late Civil War, over eighty years of age.
II. Nathaniel Greene Pendleton5, b. Savannah, Ga., Aug. 21, 1793; d. June 16, 1861.
III. John Bard Pendleton5, no issue.
IV. James M. Pendleton5. Married Margaret Jones. Issue : Captain James M. Jones Pendleton6. Since dead.
V. Anne F. Pendleton5. Married Archibald Rogers.
IV. William Pendleton+ (Nathaniel3, Henry2, Philip1), b. 1748, married Elizabeth Daniel, of Culpeper Co., Va .; moved to Berkeley Co., Va .; had a large estate, which he left to his son, William. He was a man of classical education, and composed many sermons and essays. He was a faithful lay reader of the Church of England. He had following issue :
I. Mary Pendleton5. Married Nicholas Orrick. Issue :
I. Cromwell Orrick ; other children.
II. Elizabeth Pendleton5. Married -- Ferguson.
III. Susan Pendleton3. Married Wigginton.
IV. Ellen Pendleton5. Married, first, James Walker. Issue :
William Walker6; second, - - Lindsay.
V. Benjamin Pendleton5. Married five times. Issue :
I. Catherine Pendleton6.
II. James Pendleton6, d. young.
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VIRGINIA FAMILIES
VI. Frances Pendleton5. Married James Campbell.
VII. Nathaniel Pendleton5. Married -, Had issue ; moved to Ohio.
VIII. Emily Pendleton5. Married
Dyer; moved to Mis- souri.
IX. William Pendleton3. Married Susan Snodgrass.
IV. Henry Pendleton+ (Nathaniel3, Henry2, Philip1), b. 1750; d. in South Carolina January, 1789. He is said to have married Anne Knight. He entered, with his brother Nathaniel, the rebel army of the Revolutionary War, into the first regiment organized in the Southern States, known as the Battalion of the "Culpeper Minute Men," the officers of which were: Col. Lawrence Taliaferro, of Orange Co., Va., as colonel; Col. Edward Stevens, of Culpeper. as lieutenant-colonel (afterwards the distinguished General Stev- ens), and Thomas Marshall, father of Chief-Justice Marshall, of Fauquier Co., Va., as major. At the end of the war Henry Pendle- ton resumed his profession of law in South Carolina, where he was distinguished as lawyer and judge. The district in which John C. Calhoun resided was called in his honor.
Of his immediate family Mr. John S. Pendleton is not sufficiently informed at present to give any certain and exact account (1868). Judge Henry Pendleton was living at the time of the boyhood of Mr. John S. Pendleton, but he has no recollection of ever having seen him. He has, however, a distinct recollection of his having been said to be, by members of the family, the most talented man. probably, that ever belonged to it. The writer has no means of fixing the precise date of Judge Henry's emigration from Culpeper County, Va., but supposes it to have been shortly before, or very soon after, the year 1783. This Mr. John S. Pendleton knows that Judge H. Pendleton acquired in South Carolina a high profes- sional and judicial distinction. He was a judge of the Court of Common Pleas, and it has been said by Ramsey, author of a history of South Carolina from 1670-1808, in reference to an experiment on the County Court System of Virginia, that the project was intro- duced and carried through by the talents, address and perseverance of Henry Pendleton, who had witnessed many of the benefits re- sulting from the County Courts in his native state, Virginia. Mr. John S. Pendleton (writer) has always understood that Judge Pendleton was promoted to the highest judicial dignity in the State.
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SOME PROMINENT
IV. Philip Pendleton+ (Nathaniel3, Henry2, Philip1), youngest son of Nathaniel, b. 1752, settled in Martinsburg, W. Va .; then moved to Berkeley County, W. Va. Married Miss Pendleton, and had issue :
I. Philip Clayton Pendleton3 (U. S. District Judge).
II. Edmund Pendleton5, (Washington, D. C.)
III. Anne Pendleton3. Married John Kennedy.
IV. Sarah Pendleton3. Married, first, Hunter. Issue: Hon. R. M. T. Hunter; second, Stephen Dandridge. Issue : seven children.
V. Maria Pendleton5. Married John R. Cooke, celebrated lawyer. Issue :
I. Philip Pendleton Cooke6 (poet ).
II. John Esten Cooke6 (novelist).
VI. Elizabeth Pendleton3. Married David Hunter.
VII. James Pendleton5, d. without issue.
VIII. William Henry Pendleton5, d. bachelor.
IV. Mary Pendleton4 (Nathaniel3, Henry2, Philip1), married John Williams. Died without issue.
IV. Elizabeth Pendleton+ (Nathaniel3, Henry2, Philip1), mar- ried Benjamin Tutt, and had issue :
I. Mildred Tutt5. Married. Burkett Jett, of Loudoun Co., Va.
II. Lucy Tutt5. Married John Shackleford, Commonwealth Attorney, Culpeper Co., Va.
III. Mary Tutt5. Married Capt. John C. Williams.
IV. Susan Tutt5. Married William Broadus.
V. Anne Tutt5. Married Robt. Catlett, of Fauquier Co., Va. All are dead (1868) and left families in all the names herein stated, and in a number of other names and families.
VI. Elizabeth Tutt5.
VII. Charles P. Tutt5. Married Had issue :
I. Daughter Tutt6. Married Charles Bonnycastle. (Prof. Univ. of Va.)
II. Daughter Tutt6. Married Joshua Colston.
III. Daughter Tutt6. . Married Maj. Throgmorton, of Loudoun Co., Va.
TV. Susanna Pendleton+, married Wilson.
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