John Page was an American politician. He was the 13th Governor of Virginia.
Background
John Page was born on April 17, 1743 in Rosewell, Virginia, United States at the great house built by his grandfather, Mann Page. He was the son of Mann and Alice (Grymes) Page and thus represented an alliance of two of the dominant families in Tidewater Virginia. He gave to his grandmother, Judith (Carter) Page, the credit for whetting his appetite for reading and stimulating his inquisitive mind.
Education
At the age of nine, John Page was put in the grammar-school of the Reverend William Yates with some dozen sons of neighboring planters. The arid training he had there was little to his liking, and after a year a private tutor was engaged for him. When he was thirteen he entered the grammar-school at the College of William and Mary and continued there until 1763, when he finished the regular course in the philosophy schools.
Career
In 1785 John Page was a lay delegate from Virginia to the convention of Anglican church in New York. In politics he began his career as a member of the colonial House of Burgesses under the patronage of his kinsmen, the Nelsons, and he had the favor of the governors, Botetourt and Dunmore. When the tide of Revolutionary sentiment rose he helped to direct its flow as a member of the Council and the Committee of Public Safety and then as lieutenant-governor under Patrick Henry. He was a member of the convention that framed the constitution for Virginia in 1776.
John Page served in a military capacity in the Yorktown campaign and contributed of his private means to the Revolutionary funds. In the election for governor of Virginia in 1779 he ran a close second to his friend Jefferson, but this political matching was not allowed to strain the constancy of their friendship. After the Revolution he represented Gloucester in most sessions of the Virginia Assembly until 1789 when he went to Congress. He sat in that body until 1797 when, as he said, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton shut him out.
John Page represented Virginia in determining the boundary between Pennsylvania and Virginia in 1784 with James Madison, 1749 - 1812 and others. He waged an active campaign for Jefferson in 1800. In 1802 he succeeded James Monroe as governor of Virginia and served three successive terms in that office. In the closing years of his life he held the office of commissioner of loans, a federal office to which his friend Jefferson appointed him, recognizing his need of an office with a salary but fearing to place him in a position where his too little discriminating trust in his fellowmen might bring woe to him.
The care of a family of twenty children, the maintenance of the princely mansion of Rosewell and his sociable rather than business inclinations brought Page in his later years to a decline in fortunes. In 1786 he had been the largest slave owner in Abingdon Parish in Gloucester County, counting his black people to the number of 160. At the age of sixty-four, John Page died on October 11, 1808 and was buried in the yard of St. John's Church at Richmond, where many of the stirring scenes of the Revolution took place.
Achievements
Religion
John Page followed the fortunes of the Anglican Church with zeal and such devotion that he was suggested by certain of his friends as the first bishop of Virginia. In his religious convictions, he was orthodox, and he opposed on many occasions the free thinking of certain of his fellow Virginians.
Politics
John Page was a member of Republican Party.
Membership
John Page was a president of the Society for the Advancement of Useful Knowledge, at Williamsburg, a group that sought to play the role of the Royal Society of London in Virginia.
Interests
John Page, with his friend David Jameson, was interested in astronomy and made experiments in measuring the fall of rain and dew. His friends called him "John Partridge" because of his astronomical pursuits, especially in calculating an eclipse of the sun. He confessed in later years that he did not think he had made great proficiency in any study for he was too sociable to shut himself off in solitude for study as did his friend, Jefferson.
Connections
About 1765 John Page married Frances, the daughter of Robert Carter Burwell of Isle of Wight County. They had twelve children, five of whom were married to sons and daughters of Thomas Nelson. In 1789 he married in New York City, Margaret, the daughter of William Lowther of Scotland, who bore him eight children.