John Wayles Eppes was an attorney, a United States Representative and a US Senator from Virginia.
Background
John Wayles Eppes was born at “Appomattox Manor, in the present City Point, near Petersburg, Virginia. His father, Francis Eppes of “Eppington, ” the son of Richard Eppes of Bermuda Hundred, married Elizabeth Wayles, half-sister of Martha Wayles Jefferson.
Education
The early education of “Jack” Eppes was pursued at home under the direction of his father.
In 1791 he went to Philadelphia, under the care of his uncle, Thomas Jefferson, to complete his college course, especially in the sciences, and to study law.
Career
He was admitted to the bar in 1794 and attained prominence in his profession in Richmond. Elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1801, Eppes served in that body until he was elected as a Jeffersonian Republican to the Eighth Congress (1803). He served in four successive congresses to March 3, 1811. The Virginia delegation included Thomas Mann Randolph, Jefferson’s other son-in-law, and John Randolph of Roanoke, the only man who ever defeated Eppes for public office. After the opposition to Jefferson’s foreign policy became organized around John Randolph and his group of friends, Eppes was one of the stanch defenders of the administration both on this question and on the Yazoo Compromise. He served on the ways and means committee, and in the second session of his first Congress narrowly escaped a duel with Randolph (Bruce, post, I, 365). Some time previous to 1811 he left the ancestral home at “Eppington, " where he had lived from childhood till the death of his father, and bought an estate at “Saratoga” in Buckingham County. He soon built a home at “Millbrook” a few miles from “Saratoga” and thus domiciled himself in Randolph’s district. This was a part of Jefferson’s strategy, and, urged by the latter and his friends, Eppes opposed Randolph in 1811, but failed of election to the Twelfth Congress. In 1813 he was elected to the Thirteenth Congress, defeating Randolph on the issue of the war with England, which the latter had violently opposed.
Despite the insistence of his friends and of the Richmond Enquirer he refused to return to public life. He spent the remainder of his days in the care of his estate at “Millbrook” in Buckingham County, where he died and was buried in the family cemetery.
Achievements
Membership
admitted to the bar in 1794
Virginia House oi Delegates
United States Senate
Personality
Eppes was a man of polished manners, well- read, and pleasing in address, though a scholar rather than an orator. He was a successful farmer on a large scale, an active citizen in his own county, and a man without enemies, except those of the Randolph connection.
Interests
farming
Connections
October 13, 1797, he married his cousin, Mary or Maria Jefferson. Only one of their three children, Francis, survived infancy.
Several years after her untimely death at “Monticello” on April 17, 1804, he married Martha, daughter of Collonel Willie Jones, Revolutionary statesman of North Carolina, but maintained friendly personal relations with Jefferson, whom he consistently supported in politics. His second wife, who bore him several children, survived till the second year of the Civil War and was a pronounced opponent of Southern secession.