John Wayles EPPES, Congress, VA (1773-1823)

EPPES, John Wayles, (son-in-law of Thomas Jefferson), a Representative and a Senator from Virginia; born at Eppington, Chesterfield County, Va., April 19, 1773; attended the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia; graduated from Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia in 1786; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1794 and commenced practice in Richmond, Va.; member, State house of delegates 1801-1803; elected as a Democratic Republican to the Eighth and to the three succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1803-March 3, 1811); unsuccessful candidate for reelection to the Twelfth Congress; chairman, Committee on Ways and Means (Eleventh Congress); engaged in agricultural pursuits; elected to the Thirteenth Congress (March 4, 1813-March 3, 1815); unsuccessful candidate for reelection to the Fourteenth Congress; chairman, Committee on Ways and Means (Thirteenth Congress); elected to the United States Senate and served from March 4, 1817, until December 4, 1819, when he resigned because of ill health; chairman, Committee on Finance (Fifteenth Congress); retired to his estate, ‘Millbrooke,’ in Buckingham County, Va., where he died September 13, 1823; interment in the private cemetery of the Eppes family at Millbrook, near Curdsville, Va.

Bibliography

American National Biography; Dictionary of American Biography; Bailey, James H. “John Wayles Eppes, Planter and Politician.” Master’s thesis, University of Virginia, 1942; Brant, Irving. “John W. Eppes, John Randolph, and Henry Adams.” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 63 (July 1955): 251-56.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present