I86584: Mary Harrison FITZHUGH (ABT 1870

Notes

Peyton: A prominent patriot during Revolution. He was educated at William and Mary, studied law at the Inner Temple, London, and was appointed Attorney-General for Virginia in 1748; was chairman of the committee of correspondence for VA; presided over the Convention of 1774; was elected to the first Continental Congress, which met that year, and was chosen as presiding officer; had been Speaker of the House of Burgesses.

RANDOLPH, Peyton, patriot, born in Tazewell Hall, Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1721; died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 22 October, 1775, after graduation at William and Mary, studied law at the Inner Temple, London, and was appointed king's attorney for Virginia in 1748, Sir William Gooch being governor. He was also chosen representative of Williamsburg in the House of Burgesses in the same year. At the opening of his career as law officer he was brought in opposition to the apostle of Presbyterianism, the Reverend Samuel Davies (q. v.). The attorney having questioned whether the toleration act extended to Virginia, Davies replied that if not neither did the act of uniformity, which position was sustained by the attorney-general in England. In 1751 the newly appointed governor, Dinwiddie, and his family, were guests of Peyton Randolph, but the latter presently resisted the royal demand of a pistole fee on every land-patent.

In 1754 the burgesses commissioned the king's attorney to repair to London to impress on the English ministry the unconstitutionality of the exaction. He there encountered the crown lawyers, Campbell and Murray (afterward Lord Mansfield), with marked ability. The pistole fee was removed from all lands less in extent than one hundred acres, and presently ceased altogether. Governor Dinwiddie was naturally angry that the king's attorney should have left the colony without his consent and on a mission hostile to his demand. A petition of the burgesses that the office of attorney should remain open until Peyton Randolph's return pointed the governor to his revenge ; he suspended the absent attorney, and in his place appointed George Wythe. Wythe accepted the place, only to retain it until his friend's return. R.andolph's promised compensation for the London mission, £2,500, caused a long struggle between the governor and the burgesses, who made

the sum a rider to one of £20,000 voted for the Indian war. The conflict led to a prorogation of the house. Meanwhile the lords of trade ordered reduction of the pistole fee, and requested the reinstatement of Randolph. “You must think y't some w't absurd," answered Dinwiddie (23 October, 1754), "from the bad Treatm't I have met with. However, if he answers properly w't I have to say to him, I am not inflexible ; and he must confess, before this happened he had greater share of my Favs, and Counten'ce than any other in the Gov't."

The attorney acknowledged the irregularities and was reinstated. There was a compromise with the new house about the money. When tidings of Braddock's defeat reached Williamsburg, an association of lawyers was formed by the king's attorney, which was joined by other gentlemen, altogether one hundred, who marched under Randolph to the front and placed themselves under command of Colonel William Byrd. They were led against the Indians, who retreated to Fort Duquesne. During the next few years Peyton Randolph was occupied with a revision of the laws, being chairman of a committee for that purpose. He also gave attention to the affairs of William and Mary College, of which he was appointed a visitor in 1758. In 1760 he and his brother John, being law-examiners, signed the license of Patrick Henry, Wythe and Pendleton having refused. "The two Randolphs," says Jefferson, “acknowledged he was very ignorant of law, but that they perceived that he was a man of genius, and did not doubt he would soon qualify himself."

Peyton Randolph was one of the few intimate friends of Washington. Jefferson, in a letter to his grandson, declares that in early life, amid difficulties and temptations, he used to ask himself how Peyton Randolph would act in such situation, and what course would meet with his approbation. Randolph drew up the remonstrance of the burgesses against the threatened stamp-act in 1764, but when it was passed, and Patrick Henry, then a burgess, had carried, by the smallest majority, his" treasonable" resolutions, the attorney was alarmed; Jefferson heard him say in going out, " By God, I would have given five hundred guineas for a single vote !" When he was appointed speaker in 1766, Randolph resigned his office as king's attorney and devoted his attention to the increasing troubles of the court-try. The burgesses recognized in his legal knowledge and judicial calmness ballast for the sometimes tempestuous patriotism of Patrick Henry, and he was placed at the head of all important committees.

He was chairman of the committee of correspondence between the colonies in May, 1773, presided over the Virginia convention of 1 August, 1774, and was first of the seven deputies appointed by it to the proposed congress at Philadelphia. On 10 August he summoned the citizens of Williamsburg to assemble at their court-house, where the proceedings of the State convention were ratified, instructions to their delegates given; declaring the unconstitutionality of binding American colonies by British statutes, and aid subscribed for the Boston sufferers. For his presidency at this meeting his name was placed on the roll of those to be attainted by parliament, but the bill was never passed.

Peyton Randolph traveled to Pennsylvania and Continental Congress was officially formed on September 5, 1774 in Philadelphia's Carpenters Hall to petition King George III after England passed the Intolerable Acts. The first unofficial meeting of delegates actually took place the day before in The City Tavern just down the street (yes the true birthplace of the Continental Congress was in a Philadelphia tavern). The debates at tavern meeting were significant as the decision was made to hold the First Continental Congress in a private, rather than in a public hall. When Congress convened the next day South Carolina delegate Thomas Lynch nominated Peyton Randolph to be chairman. Peyton was elected by unanimous vote. Connecticut Delegate Silas Deane wrote of Peyton to Mrs. Deane:

" ... Designed by nature for the business, of an affable, open and majestic deportment, large in size, though not out of proportion, he commands respect and esteem by his very aspect, independent of the high character he sustains ... "

The Journals of the Continental Congress under his presidency report:
http://www.peytonrandolph.com/.

Sir John Randolph, the only colonial born in Virginia to be knighted, died in 1737. He left the house to his wife, Susannah Beverley Randolph, until their second son, Peyton, reached the age of 24.

Peyton Randolph
(Born ca. 1721, died 1775)

When he returned to Williamsburg after presiding over the Continental Congress in 1775, Peyton Randolph was on the black list of patriots the redcoats proposed to arrest and hang. The city's volunteer company of militia offered him its protection in an address that concluded: "MAY HEAVEN GRANT YOU LONG TO LIVE THE FATHER OF YOUR COUNTRY, AND THE FRIEND TO FREEDOM AND HUMANITY!"

If his friend George Washington succeeded him to the title of America's patrimonial honors, Randolph nevertheless did as much as any Virginian to bring the new nation into the world. He presided over every important Virginia assembly in the years leading to the Revolution, was among the first of the colony's great men to oppose the Stamp Act, chaired the first meeting of the delegates of 13 colonies at Philadelphia in 1774, and chaired the second in 1775.

He had been born 54 years before--probably in Williamsburg--the second son of Sir John and Lady Susannah Randolph. His first name was his maternal grandmother's maiden name, just as his older brother Beverley's was their mother's. The surname Randolph identified him as a scion of 18th-century Virginia's most powerful clan.

When he was three or four years old, the family moved into the imposing wooden home on Market Square now known as the Peyton Randolph House. His father, among Virginia's most distinguished attorneys, Speaker of the House of Burgesses, and a wealthy man, died when Peyton was 16, leaving the house and other property for him in trust with his mother. The will also gave Peyton his father's extensive library in the hope he would "betake himself to the study of law." By then, he had a brother John and a sister Mary.

Attentive to his father's wishes, he attended the College of William and Mary, then learned the law in London's Inns of Court. He entered the Middle Temple on October 13, 1739, and took a place at the bar February 10, 1743. Returning to Williamsburg, he was appointed the colony's attorney general by Governor William Gooch on May 7, 1744. His father had filled the office before him, and his brother would assume the role after.

When he turned 24, Randolph reached the age set for his inheritance. On March 8, 1746, he married Betty Harrison, and on July 21 (more than two years after his return), he qualified himself for the private practice of law in York County.

His cousin Thomas Jefferson may have shed some light on the delay in a character sketch he wrote of Randolph years later. "He was indeed a most excellent man," Jefferson said, but "heavy and inert in body, he was rather too indolent and careless for business."

He was, as well, occupied with myriad public duties. In 1747 he became a vestryman of Bruton Parish Church, in 1748 Williamsburg's representative in the house of Burgesses, and in 1749 a justice of the peace. He returned to the House in 1752 as the burgess for the college, and on December 15, 1753, the house hired him as its special agent for some ticklish business in London.

Soon after he arrived in Virginia in 1751, Governor Robert Dinwiddie had begun to exercise a right no governor had before: the imposition of a fee for certifying land patents. For his signature, Dinwiddie demanded a pistole, a Spanish coin worth about 20 shillings. Regarding the fee as an unauthorized tax, Virginians objected, though to no result.

Peyton Randolph was dispatched to England as the house's agent, with directions to go over the governor's head. But as attorney general, it was his duty to represent the interests of the Crown, of which Dinwiddie was the principal representative in Virginia. Randolph was attacking the right of the governor he was appointed to defend.

The governor refused to give Peyton Randolph permission to leave the colony, but he left anyway. In London, he had to answer for his action, and he was ousted from the attorney general's office. Dinwiddie had already named George Wythe as acting attorney general in Randolph's place.

Nevertheless, the London officials pointedly suggested that Dinwiddie reconsider his fee and said that they would have no objection to Peyton Randolph's reinstatement if he apologized. So he did, and subsequently resumed office soon after his return to Williamsburg.

Reelected burgess for the college in 1755, he involved himself the next year in a somewhat ludicrous, though harmless, attempt to promote morale during the French and Indian War. With other prominent men, he formed the Associators, a group to raise and pay bounties for private troops to join the regular force at Winchester. George Washington, in charge of the fort there, wasn't sure what he would do with the untrained men if they arrived. Not enough came, however, to cause any inconvenience.

In 1757, Randolph joined the college's board, and he served as a rector for one year. He was reelected burgess for Williamsburg in 1761, and thus entered the phase of his life that thrust him into a leadership role in the Revolution.

Word of Parliament's intended Stamp Act brought Virginians and their burgesses into conflict with the Crown itself in 1764. Peyton Randolph was appointed chairman of a committee to draft protests to the king, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons maintaining the colony's exclusive right of self-taxation.

The responsibility put him at odds with Patrick Henry, the Virginian most noted for opposition to the tax. At the end of the legislative session in 1765, Henry, a freshman, introduced seven resolutions against the act. Peyton Randolph, George Wythe, and others thought that Henry's resolutions added nothing to the colony's case and that their consideration was improper until the colony had a reply to its earlier protests.

In the final days of the session, after many opponents had left the city, Patrick Henry introduced his measures and made his "Caesar-Brutus" speech. Peyton Randolph, though not yet Speaker, was presiding. When Speaker John Robinson resumed the chair the following day (May 30), Henry carried five of his resolves by a single ballot. A tie would have allowed Robinson to cast the deciding "nay." Jefferson, standing at the chamber door, said Peyton Randolph emerged saying, "By God, I would have given one hundred guineas for a single vote."

Patrick Henry left town, and the next day his fifth (and most radical) resolution was expunged by the burgesses who remained. Nevertheless, it was reprinted with the others in newspapers across the colonies as if it stood.

Peyton Randolph was elected Speaker on November 6, 1766, succeeding the deceased Robinson and defeating Richard Henry Lee. Peyton's brother John succeeded him as attorney general the following June. By now the brothers had begun to disagree politically; John's conservatism would take him to England in 1775 while Peyton joined the rebellion.

Another set of Patrick Henry's resolves, against the Townshend Duties, came before the House in May 1769. This time Peyton Randolph approved their passage, but Governor Botetourt did not. He dissolved the assembly. The "former representatives of the people," as they called themselves, met the next day at the Raleigh Tavern with Speaker Peyton Randolph in the chair. They adopted a compact drafted by George Mason and introduced by George Washington against the importation of British goods. Speaker Randolph was the first to sign.

When the new legislature met in the winter, the governor was pleased to announce the repeal of all of the Townshend Duties, except the small one on tea. Legislative attention turned to other, calmer affairs. The next summer Peyton Randolph became chairman of the building committee for the Public Hospital.

Tempers flared again in 1773, when Great Britain proposed to transport a band of Rhode Island smugglers to England for trial. The implications for Virginia were troublesome, and the burgesses appointed a standing Committee of Correspondence and Inquiry with Speaker Peyton Randolph as chairman. The following May brought word of the closing of the port of Boston in retaliation for its Tea Party.

On May 24, 1774, Robert Carter Nicholas introduced a resolution drafted by Thomas Jefferson that read:

"This House, being deeply impressed with apprehension of the great dangers, to be derived to British America, from the hostile Invasion of the City of Boston, in our Sister Colony of Massachusetts bay, whose commerce and harbour are, on the first Day of June next, to be stopped by an Armed force, deem it highly necessary that the said first day of June be set apart, by the Members of this House, as a day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer, devoutly to implore the divine interposition for averting the heavy Calamity which threatens destruction to our Civil Rights, and the Evils of civil War; to give us one heart and one Mind to firmly oppose, by all just and proper means, every injury to American Rights; and that the Minds of his Majesty and his parliament, may be inspired from above with Wisdom, Moderation, and Justice, to remove from the loyal People of America, all cause of danger, from a continued pursuit of Measure, pregnant with their ruin."

It was adopted.

Governor Dunmore summoned the house on May 26 and told Peyton Randolph: "Mr. Speaker and Gentlemen of the House of Burgesses, I have in my hand a paper published by order of your House, conceived in such terms as reflect highly upon His Majesty and the Parliament of Great Britain, which makes it necessary for me to dissolve you; and you are accordingly dissolved."

On May 27, 1775, 89 burgesses gathered again at the Raleigh Tavern to form another nonimportation association, and the following day the Committee of Correspondence proposed a Continental Congress. Twenty-five burgesses met at Peyton Randolph's house on May 30 and scheduled a state convention to be held on August 1 to consider a proposal from Boston for a ban on exports to England.

Peyton Randolph led the community to Bruton Parish Church on June 1 to pray for Boston, and soon he was organizing a Williamsburg drive to send provisions and cash for its relief. The First Virginia Convention approved the export ban and elected as delegates to the Congress Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, George Washington, Patrick Henry, Richard Bland, Benjamin Harrison, and Edmund Pendleton.

On August 18, 1774, before he left Williamsburg, Peyton Randolph wrote his will, leaving his property to the use of his wife for life. They had no children. The property was to be auctioned after her death and the proceeds divided among Randolph's heirs.

When Congress convened in Philadelphia on September 5, Thomas Lynch of South Carolina nominated Peyton Randolph to be chairman. He was elected by unanimous vote. Delegate Silas Deane wrote Mrs. Deane: "Designed by nature for the business, of an affable, open and majestic deportment, large in size, though not out of proportion, he commands respect and esteem by his very aspect, independent of the high character he sustains."

In October 1774, Peyton Randolph returned to Williamsburg to preside at an impending meeting of the house. Repeatedly postponed, it did not meet until the following June. Nonetheless, on November 9 Peyton Randolph accepted a copy of the Continental Association banning trade with England signed by nearly 500 merchants gathered in Williamsburg.

Peyton Randolph was in the chair again at the Second Virginia Convention in Richmond on March 23 when Patrick Henry rose and made his "Liberty or Death" speech in favor of the formation of a statewide militia. In reaction Governor Dunmore removed the gunpowder from Williamsburg's Magazine on April 21. Alerted to the theft, a mob gathered at the Courthouse. Peyton Randolph was one of the leaders who persuaded the crowd to disperse and averted violence.

Peyton Randolph led the Virginia delegation to the Second Continental Congress in May 1775, and he again took the chair. General Thomas Gage, commander of British forces in America, had been issued blank warrants for the execution of rebel leaders and a list of names with which to fill them. Peyton Randolph's name was on the list. He returned to Williamsburg under guard, and the town bells pealed to announce his safe arrival. The militia escorted him to his house and pledged to guarantee his safety.

The Third Virginia Convention reelected its speaker to Congress in July 1775, and Randolph left for Philadelphia in late August or early September. By this time, John Hancock had succeeded him to its chair.

About 8 p.m. on Sunday, October 23, Peyton Randolph began to choke, a side of his face contorted, and he died of an "apoplectic stroke." He was buried that Tuesday at Christ's Church in Philadelphia. His nephew, Edmund Randolph, brought his remains to Williamsburg in 1776, and he was interred in the family crypt in the Chapel at the College of William and Mary on November 26.

Peyton Randolph's estate was auctioned on February 19, 1783, after Betty Randolph's death. Thomas Jefferson bought his books. Among them were bound records dating to Virginia's earliest days that still are consulted by historians. Added to the collection at Monticello that Jefferson sold to the federal government years later, they became part of the core of the Library of Congress.
Colonial Williamsburg http://www.history.org/Almanack/people/bios/biorapey.cfm.

Randolph, Peyton (1721-1775) Brother-in-law of Benjamin Harrison; uncle of Edmund Jenings Randolph. Born in Williamsburg, Va., 1721. Delegate to Continental Congress from Virginia, 1774-75. Episcopalian. Member, Freemasons. Died in Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, Pa., October 22, 1775. Interment at College of William and Mary Chapel, Williamsburg, Va. Randolph County, N.C. is named for him. See also: congressional biography.

RANDOLPH, Peyton, 1721-1775

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RANDOLPH, Peyton, (uncle of Edmund Jenings Randolph), a Delegate from Virginia; born at Tazewell Hall, Williamsburg, Va., in September 1721; received his early education under private tutors; was graduated from the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Va.; studied law at the Inner Temple, London, England, and was appointed King’s attorney for Virginia in 1748; member of the Virginia House of Burgesses 1764-1774 and served as speaker in 1766; chairman of the committee of correspondence in 1773; president of the Virginia conventions of 1774 and 1775; Member of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, Pa., September 5, 1774, and elected its President but resigned October 22, 1774, to attend the Virginia House of Burgesses; reelected to the Continental Congress, which met in Philadelphia in May 1775 and again served as President; died in Philadelphia, Pa., October 22, 1775; interment beneath the chapel of the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Va.
Bibliography
Reardon, John J. Peyton Randolph, 1721-1775: One Who Presided. Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 1982.

My Southern Family

Mary Harrison FITZHUGH

ABT 1870 - ____

ID Number: I86584

Notes

Sources

William GREGG

1695 - 30 Apr 1747

ID Number: I95867

Notes

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Edward HANCOCK

ABT 1750 - ____

ID Number: I40151

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Robert Anderson HAYNES

1860 - 1920

ID Number: I45518

Notes

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Nathaniel MANSON Sr.

____ - ____

ID Number: I84214

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Dollie Mae MILLER

2 May 1897 - 20 Apr 1904

ID Number: I2845

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Lenora Pauline PALMER

25 Oct 1900 - 21 Mar 1987

ID Number: I99188

Notes

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Nancy Anna PERRY

ABT 1771 - 1824

ID Number: I73980

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Hon. Peyton RANDOLPH

1721 - 22 Oct 1775

ID Number: I47888

Notes

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William J.W.R. SKELTON

19 Feb 1854 - 24 Dec 1911

ID Number: I32914

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Mathew WASHINGTON

3 Sep 1732 - ____

ID Number: I59010

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