Sidney Smith Baxter

Sidney Smith Baxter (November 18, 1802 – December 7, 1879) was a Virginia lawyer who served as Attorney General of Virginia from 1834 until 1852, and who later worked as a commissioner for the Confederate Secretary of War investigating claims of political persecution, particularly in the Commonwealth's western regions.

Early and family life

Probably the third of four sons born to the former Annie Christian Fleming and her husband Rev. George A. Baxter, he had eight siblings. His father's family had emigrated from Ireland, and his father graduated from Liberty Hall Academy (chartered as Washington College in 1813 and which became Washington and Lee University), before becoming an ordained Presbyterian minister, then professor of mathematics, natural philosophy and languages at his alma mater before becoming the institution's president. His maternal grandfather William Fleming had served as Virginia's governor during the American Revolutionary War, but died before this grandson's birth. Sidney Baxter graduated from his father's college in 1821, then read law with attorneys in Lexington. Both his sons died as a result of their Confederate service, one killed in action in 1862 and the other succumbed in 1867 to jail fever contracted while at the federal prison in Elmira, New York. Another daughter died while visiting Baxter in 1871. in Jeffersonville, the Tazewell County, Virginia seat (renamed to Tazewell in 1892) on December 7, 1879, and was buried with full Masonic honors. His letters are in the Stuart-Baldwin Family Papers held by the University of Virginia library, and the Robins and Faulkner family papers held by the Virginia Historical Society.