Beverley Randolph

Beverley Randolph (1754 – February 7, 1797) was a planter and politician from Virginia. After leading his county militia during the American Revolutionary War, Randolph served in the Virginia House of Delegates several times, each time representing Cumberland County, before fellow legislators elected him as the eighth governor of Virginia (1788-1791).

Early and family life

Randolph was the second son of four children born to Lucille Bolling and her husband, Peter Randolph, a customs collector and clerk of the House of Burgesses, who was the son of William Randolph II. Yorkshire emigrant Willliam Randolph (1651-1711) had founded the Turkey Island Randolph family. Peter was associated with Turkey Island, a plantation in the James River in Henrico County in what was at the time the Colony of Virginia. However, Beverley was born at the Chatsworth plantation in Henrico County. His elder brother, William Randolph married Mary Skipwith, and their younger brother Robert Randolph (1760-1825) married Elizabeth Carter, the daughter of "King" Carter. Their sister Ann Bolling Randolph married William Fitzhugh. That man's second wife and widow was Elizabeth Lightfoot, who then remarried to Robert Burwell. His great nephew (son of his elder brother William's son Peter Randoph, who had married James Southall) also had the same name but married Sarah Rutherford, did not serve in statewide office, and their child died very young.

Cumberland County voters elected him as their (part-time) representative to the Virginia House of Delegates and both failed to and did re-elected him twice, so he served three of the four sessions between 1777 and 1780. In 1787, he was chosen president of the Executive Council of Virginia.

In the 1787 Virginia tax census, Randolph lived in Henrico County and was taxed on six enslaved Black adults, eight enslaved children, six horses, a cow and a four-wheeled conveyance (which was specified as neither a coach nor chariot), as well as held five enslaved Black adults, four enslaved children under 16, six horses and 27 cattle in Cumberland County (which that county's collector noted as not tithable).

Death and legacy

Randolph died on his farm near Green Creek in Cumberland County, Virginia. 30= 31=