University of Virginia Library

MEMOIRS
OF
WILLIAM NELSON PENDLETON, D.D.

CHAPTER I.

William Nelson Pendleton, the third surviving son of
Edmund Pendleton, third of that name in the county of Caroline,
Virginia, and Lucy Nelson, was born on December 26, 1809.

The story of his life is one of no common interest.

He was a successful teacher and trainer of other men. For
well-nigh forty-six years he exercised the high and holy calling
of a clergyman of the Church and a faithful parish minister. He
was not only the friend and counsellor of the leaders in a great
national convulsion, but himself took active part therein, and as
a soldier illustrated on many a bloody field his patriotism and
his courage.

It becomes, therefore, the duty of his biographer truthfully
to record the circumstances of his life, and also to indicate the
causes and influences from which sprang the energy of character,
the purity of motive, the intellectual ability, and the physical
vigor necessary for so varied and unusual a career. Prominent
among these influences were the associations and traditions of
his ancestry, which must be given in some detail.

Nathaniel and Philip Pendleton,—the first a clergyman, the other
a school-master,—sons of Henry Pendleton, of Norwich, England,
emigrated to Virginia in 1674. Nathaniel left no children, and
the Pendleton family, with its numerous branches in Virginia,
South Carolina, New York, and Ohio, is descended from Philip.

The Rev. Philip Slaughter, D.D., the historiographer of the
Episcopal Church of Virginia, in his history of St. Mark's Parish,

Culpeper County, devotes a number of pages to an account of
the various divisions of the Pendleton family in Virginia. These
sketches show them to have been upright, intelligent, respectable,
and useful members of society in their different localities. Dr.
Slaughter has, however, strangely omitted any notice of the
Pendletons of Caroline County, from whom the subject of these
Memoirs was directly descended, and who are, on some accounts,
more noteworthy than their kinsmen.

Henry, eldest son of the emigrant Philip, married at the age
of eighteen, his wife being only thirteen. In 1721 he died, four
months before the birth of his fifth son, Edmund, who was to become
the distinguished jurist and statesman of the Revolution,
the most renowned and influential man of his name, and the
virtual founder of the Caroline branch of the family.

Left a young widow, with a large family and small means, Mrs.
Pendleton married again, and her youngest son grew to boyhood,
as he himself has recorded, "without classical education, without
patrimony, without what is called the influence of family connection."

But he had inherited from either father or mother a clear intellect,
a resolute will, an unblemished integrity. In his fourteenth
year he was apprenticed to the clerk of Caroline County, and set
himself at that early age to the diligent study of the law, for
which his position afforded the best facilities of the day. Made
clerk of the Vestry in his sixteenth year, he spent all his small
salary in the purchase of books, which he eagerly read. At the
age of twenty he was, with his master's permission, rigidly examined
by Mr. Barradall, an eminent lawyer, and admitted to the
bar. Previous to this he had married, contrary to the advice of
his friends, the beautiful Bettie Roy, who died in less than two
years. In his twenty-fourth year he married a second wife,—
Sarah Pollard,—who survived him.

From the time of his coming to the bar he was in full practice
in the county courts, and soon passed on to the General Court,
where he had abundant business until 1774, when it was closed
by the Revolution. In 1752 he was sent to the House of Burgesses,
to which he was re-elected until it became extinct. This
was the beginning of his public career, which continued without
cessation until his death in 1803, more than half a century.

Eminently conservative in the cast of his mind, he shrank from
changing the laws and overturning the established order of things.
In his brief autobiography he says, "When the dispute with Great
Britain began, a redress of grievances, and not a revolution of government,
was my wish." To bring about such redress by peaceable
means he hoped and argued and labored. But when remonstrance
and petition had no effect; when such manifestations of
the popular determination to resist oppression as the claim of the
Virginia Burgesses that they alone had a right to levy taxes in
the Colony, the universal opposition to the Stamp Act, the
destruction of tea in Boston harbor, the non-importation agreement,
everywhere enforced, availed nothing; when the British
crown increased its efforts to enforce despotic control over the
lives and liberties of American subjects, the manliness of Pendleton's
character did not hesitate or falter. Finding revolution inevitable,
he gave all his energies to secure the unchanging principles
of justice and truth as the foundation of the new order of things.

Such was the confidence of the great men and patriots with
whom he was associated, in his integrity and ability, that he was
called upon by both parties in the Colony to fill many of the
important posts of the day. In 1764 he was one of the committee
to draw up memorials to the King, Lords, and Commons. In
1773 he was a member of the Committee of Correspondence between
the Colonies. The Virginia Convention of 1774 appointed
him a delegate to Congress. To this position he was re-elected
in 1775, but declined serving on account of sickness. A member
of all the Virginia conventions, he was president of that of 1775,
and of the still more memorable one of 1776. But the greatest
mark of the universal trust which he inspired in his fellows was
his unanimous election by the Convention of 1775 as the head of
the Committee of Safety. This body of eleven members constituted
the Executive of the Colony, and was in perpetual session.
Its duties were responsible, multiform, and perplexing. No rule
or precedent directed its acts. Its powers were discretionary and
almost absolute. Great, therefore, were the wisdom, energy, and
prudence requisite to guide its deliberations. For such a position
Pendleton's calm temper, clear judgment, and resolute character
eminently fitted him. Thoroughly acquainted with the finances,
needs, and resources of the Colony; well versed in all branches

of English law and in the laws of nations; knowing intimately
all the great men of the period, with their widely-differing views
and feelings, no one was better prepared to be head of such a
body; nor would any one have accepted such a position, unless
ready to give up life itself at his country's call.

Mr. Grigsby, in his account of the Virginia Convention of
1776,—in which were assembled such men as Thomas Jefferson,
Patrick Henry, George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, George
Mason, Paul Carrington, James Madison, Thomas Nelson, and
many of their illustrious compeers,—writes of Pendleton as being,
"in an intellectual point of view, one of the accomplished speakers
in the House. Nor," continues Grigsby, "were his physical
powers at all inferior to his intellectual. He was fully six feet in
height, and was in the vigor of life, having reached his fifty-fifth
year; his face still so comely as to have won for its possessor the
reputation of being the handsomest man in the Colony; his noble
form still unbent by that fearful accident which in less than twelve
months was to confine him to the crutch for life;[1] lithe and graceful
in all his movements; his manners polished by an intercourse
of a quarter of a century with the most refined circles of the
metropolis and of the Colony; his voice clear and ringing, so
that its lowest note was distinctly heard throughout the hall; and
a self-possession so supreme as to sustain him in the fiercest collisions
of debate as if in a state of repose."[2]

But, with all this distinction and honor, Edmund Pendleton—
although he had been a member of the House of Burgesses for
twenty-five years—was now, in his fifty-fifth year, only partially
advanced in his noble career.

For twenty-seven years longer he continued in the active and
diligent service of his country. Speaker of the House of Delegates,
where his ability in debate was unsurpassed; member of
the committee to revise the laws of Virginia, where his contemporaries
traced his work by its clearness and precision; president
of the Convention of 1788, which discussed and ratified
the Federal Constitution, where Thomas Jefferson said of him,

"Taken all in all, he was the ablest man in debate I have ever
met with;" presiding judge of the Virginia Court of Appeals
from its organization in 1779 to his death in 1803; the arduous
duties and responsibilities of these various offices were
discharged with ability and fidelity, with ease and dignity, and,
above all, with a purity which the breath of censure never soiled.
Disabled by excessive lameness for twenty-five years, he shrank
from no labor, endured every fatigue, and died in the full possession
of his faculties, and discharge of his duties as judge, at the
age of eighty-two.

His important and incessant political labors did not lessen his
interest and activity in other questions connected with the welfare
of his country and people. "The Vestries were the depositaries
of power in Virginia. . . . In their history we may fairly
trace the origin, not only of that religious liberty which afterwards
developed itself in Virginia, but also of the early and determined
stand taken by the Episcopalians of Virginia in behalf
of civil liberty."[3] We have seen the boy Edmund clerk of the
Vestry in Caroline County. As a man, he was prevented by his
onerous duties as statesman and judge from taking such active
part in church affairs as many of his associates. But his interest
in them continued throughout his life. Writing to Richard
Henry Lee, June 13, 1785, he expresses the interest he felt in the
proceedings of the Convention of the Episcopal Church in the
previous month, and touches on the question of a bishop for the
young Commonwealth.[4]

A petition to the Legislature for the suppression of intemperance,
drawn up with his own hand, is still in existence. His
personal piety is evinced by the devout aspirations with which
he concludes his record of his unparalleled success in life: "Not
unto me, not unto me, O Lord, but unto thy name be the praise."

Beginning life in poverty, Judge Pendleton acquired a large
fortune, and built a handsome house,—Edmundsbury, in Caroline,
—where he lived during his short intervals of leisure, and where
his widow resided for many years. Having no children, he
attached himself specially to his nephew and namesake, Edmund,
the first son of his next older brother, John. This affection

was strengthened by the younger Edmund marrying Millé Pollard,
the youngest sister of his uncle's second wife. The young
couple settled at White Plains, near Edmundsbury. In course
of time two sons and several daughters were born to them. The
second boy was called Edmund, after his father and grand-uncle.
After his birth the old judge arranged with his nephew that this
third Edmund, the one mentioned in the beginning of this chapter,
should become his adopted son and heir. With the estates
he received valuable heirlooms, among them the family Bible,[5]
with its genealogical record, written with rare beauty and distinctness
by the judge, down to 1802, and the old gentleman's
portrait, taken in extreme old age.[6]

Judge Pendleton died in 1803, several years before the birth of
William Nelson Pendleton. But the influence of his character
and example was strong in the family, and constant intercourse
with his aged widow kept the traditions and anecdotes of his
illustrious grand-uncle fresh in the boy's mind. The resemblance
between the two in many points of character and opinion was
marked. And it is difficult to tell how much of such similarity
was due to inheritance, how much the result of early impressions
made by such an example of a noble, useful life upon an ardent,
lofty spirit.

Family influences not less valuable are to be traced on the
maternal side, For more than a century the Nelsons had been
among the most respected and influential families in the Colony.
Thomas Nelson, the founder of the family, from Penrith, in the
north of England, settled at Yorktown in 1705. He soon became
a successful merchant and ship-owner. By energy and skill in
business he amassed a large property, and changed the little
village of York into a flourishing seaport. His sons inherited his
industry and integrity along with his wealth, and became leading
men in the Colony. Thomas, the eldest, was secretary of the
King's Council. William, the second son, was, like his father, a
ship-owner, and imported goods to Philadelphia, Baltimore, and
York. He was for many years president of the King's Council
in Virginia, and at one time—in an interval between two governors

—head of the Colony. The Nelsons were even more remarkable
for their piety and virtue than for their success in business.
So active and earnest was President Nelson in promoting the
interests of the Church and of religion that he had a large dinner
prepared at his mansion in York on every church Sunday, and
invited all, rich and poor, to it, so that those who lived at a distance
from the church might find it less difficult to attend service.[7]
An extract from his funeral sermon ascribes to him "a rational
and firm piety, an active and constant affection for the well-being
and best interests of mankind;" and speaks of him as "constant
in his attendance at the ordinary service of God, and the celebration
of the Lord's Supper."[8]

His eldest son, Thomas, was sent to England and educated
under the care of Dr. Porteus, afterwards Bishop of London.
The letters written by the father to Dr. Porteus exhibit his earnest
wish that his son should be kept from evil company and bad
example, and trained in virtue and godliness, as well as in the
learning and accomplishments required in a young gentleman of
that day. On his return to Virginia, Thomas Nelson was soon
enrolled among the active public men and patriots of the Colony.
Member of the House of Burgesses before he was twenty-one, he
became, in turn, member of the important conventions, member of
Congress, signer of the Declaration of Independence, general of the
Virginia forces, governor of the State. He raised money to supply
her necessities by pledging his private fortune, and when he died,
in 1789, left his widow and children thereby impoverished.

An account given by the Marquis de Chastellux of his visit to
General Nelson's home—Offley, in Hanover County—presents a
most interesting picture of a virtuous and well-ordered Virginia
household just after the Revolution:

"In the absence of the general (who had gone to Williamsburg),
his mother and wife received us with all the politeness, ease,
and cordiality natural to the family. But as in America the ladies
are never thought sufficient to do the honors of the house, five or
six Nelsons were assembled to receive us,—among others, Secretary
Nelson, uncle to the general, his two sons, and two of the

general's brothers. These young men were married, and several
of them were accompanied by their wives and children, all called
Nelson, and distinguished only by their Christian names; so that
during the two days that I spent in this truly patriarchal house it
was impossible for me to find out their degrees of relationship.
The company assembled either in the parlor or saloon, especially
the men, from the hour of breakfast to that of bedtime; but the
conversation was always agreeable and well supported. If you
were desirous of diversifying the scene, there were some good
French and English authors at hand. An excellent breakfast at
nine o'clock, a sumptuous dinner at two, tea and punch in the
afternoon, and an elegant little supper divided the day most happily
for those whose stomachs were never unprepared. It is worth
observing that on this occasion, where fifteen or twenty people
(four of whom were strangers to the family and country) were
assembled together, not a syllable was said about play. How
many parties of tric-trac, whist, and lotto would with us have been
the consequence of such obstinate bad weather!"[9]

General Nelson's second brother, Hugh, one of those mentioned
above, seems to have taken no active part in politics.' But he
was, like his father, diligent in piety and good works. The church
in York being often without a minister, Mr. Nelson acted as lay
preacher, reading the service and a sermon on Sunday. He also
prepared the first class for confirmation in York, shortly after
Bishop Madison returned from England with episcopal consecration.
His daughter Lucy, mother of the subject of this memoir,
used to tell how her father assembled all the candidates for confirmation
—she being the youngest among them—in the parlor
of the old house in York, on the morning of the bishop's visit,
and addressed them on the nature of the solemn vows they were
about to ratify. This private gathering and the scene soon after
following in the church were described as most interesting and
touching.

Ancestors thus conspicuous for intellectual vigor, unswerving
patriotism, honorable discharge of duty in important positions,

devoted piety, and worldly prosperity could not fail to excite
their generous and magnanimous descendants to imitate and
emulate their virtues and excellencies.