Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 2.djvu/59

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VIRGINIA BIOGRAPHY

His father, Colonel Thomas Tabb, was one of the richest merchants in Virginia, and was for many years a burgess. John Tabb was born at his father's residence "Clay Hill,'* Amelia county, about 1737; was edu- cated in England, and was a burgess for that county from 1772 to 1776; a member of the committee of safety for the colony, 1775- 1776, and a member of the revolutionary conventions of 1774, 1775 and 1776. He married. February 17, 1770, Frances, daugh- ter of Sir John Peyton, of Gloucester county, \'irginia, and died in 1798. His daughter, Martha Peyton, married, in 1797, William l5. Giles, United States senator, and his son, John Yelverton Tabb, was grandfather of the poet. Rev. John B. Tabb.

Tazewell» Henry, son of Littleton Taze- well, clerk of Brunswick county, and Mary Gray, his wife, daughter of Colonel Joseph Gray, of Southampton county, was born in Brunswick county, Virginia, in 1753. Or- phaned in childhood, he was a student at William and Mary College, read law with ar uncle, rose to prominence at the bar, and from the age of twenty-two was constantly in the public service. In the legislature, 1775-1785, he promoted the abolition of primogeniture and entail, and separation of church and state. In the convention of May, 1776, he was a member of the com- mittee which reported the declaration of rights and the state constitution. He was a judge of the Virginia general court, 1785- 93, and of the supreme court of appeals in 1793; in the United States senate, 1794-99, and president pro tern, in 1795. As a Jeffer- son ian he opposed Jay's Treaty with Eng- land. He died while the senate was in ses- sion at Philadelphia, January 24, 1799. He

was descended from James Tazewell, of Lymington. Somersetshire. England, and from Colonel Edward Littleton, of the \'ir- ginia council.

Tucker, St. George, son of Henry and Anne (Butterfield) Tucker, and a descend- ant of George Tucker, of Milton-next- Cravesend. Kent. England, a leading mem- ber of the Warwick party in the Virginia Company of London, was born at Port Royal, Bermuda. July 9, 1752. Coming to \*irginia in 1771. he was graduated at Wil- liam and Mary College the next year, stud- ied law and began its practice. Embracing the revolutionary cause, he planned and helped to carry out an expedition against his native island, which resulted in the capture of a fort with stores. As lieutenant-colonel at the siege of Yorktown, he received a wound which lamed him for life. In 1778 he became step-father of John Randolph, by marriage with his mother, Frances Bland. He was a member of the state legislature, and of the Annapolis convention of 1786; law professor in William and Mary College from 1790 to 1804, succeeding George Wythe; one of the commission to revise and digest the Virginia laws; judge of the state general court. 1785-1803 ; judge of the supreme court of appeals (1803-11) ; and of the United States district court (1813-27), succeeding John Tyler. He was called the American Blackstone," and noted for taste, wit and amiability." He published a '* Dissert ion on Slavery, with a Broposal for its Gradual Abolition in Virginia" (1796); **Letter on the Alien and Sedition Laws" (1799) ; an annotated edition of Blackstone. and, "How Far the Common Law of England is the Common Law of the

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