French Strother

French Strother (1730–1800) was an eighteenth-century politician and lawyer in Virginia.

Biography

Born in King George County, Virginia, the eldest son of James Lawrence Strother and his wife Margaret, French Strother moved to Falmouth, Virginia with them as a boy when his father received a job inspecting tobacco for export from the Rappahannock River area. When his father died in 1761, French inherited his estate.

Strother studied law, was admitted to the bar, and practiced law principally in Culpeper County. Strother lived on a large estate on the Culpeper/Stevensburg Road and served on the vestry of St. Mark's Parish. He also served as Presiding Justice of the Culpeper County Court for most of his adult life.

French Strother represented Culpeper County in the Virginia General Assembly for more than 25 years, including in the Virginia Convention of 1776, 15 years in the Virginia House of Delegates and another 8 years in the Virginia Senate. In 1788 Culpeper county voters elected French Strother to represent them in the Virginia Ratification Convention, where he allied with Patrick Henry and George Mason and voted against the proposed United States Constitution—although the convention as a whole ratified it.[1]:140 A political opponent of James Madison (before his presidency), Strother was also once defeated by James Monroe.[1]:150

Family ties

French Strother married Lucy Coleman (1742–1790) of Caroline County, Virginia. They had two sons, George French Strother (1764-1840) and Daniel French Strother (1783–1840), as well as five daughters: Margaret French Strother (1763–1849 who married Capt. Philip Slaughter), Lucy Coleman Strother (1767–1778), Mary Strother (1775–1837 who married her first cousin Daniel Gray), Gilly Coleman Strother (1776–1848 who married Col. John Evans), and Elizabeth French Strother (1780–1816 who married Nimrod Evans).[2]

References

  1. 1 2 Richard Labunski, James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights (Oxford University Press, 2006).
  2. ↑ William Armstrong Crozier, Howard Randolph Bayne, The Buckners of Virginia and the Allied Families of Strother and Ashby, (Privately-published for William D. Buckner, 1907), p. 237.
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