Representative Nathaniel Herbert Claiborne

Nathaniel Herbert Claiborne (November 14, 1777 – August 15, 1859) was a nineteenth-century Virginia lawyer, planter, and American politician who served in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly and in the United States House of Representatives from 1825 to 1837. Born in Chesterfield, Virginia, he was the son of Mary Leigh Claiborne (1750–1782) and her first cousin and husband, William Claiborne (1748–1809), and belonged to the First Families of Virginia. Through his father he traced his ancestry to William Claiborne (1600–1677), a merchant from Kent, England, who emigrated to the Virginia Colony and became active in political and military affairs in the Chesapeake Bay region. His family was deeply involved in public life: his elder brother William Charles Cole Claiborne served as a congressman from Tennessee, governor of Louisiana, and U.S. senator, while his uncle Thomas Claiborne served five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. Another elder brother, Ferdinand Leigh Claiborne, pursued a military and commercial career, and his younger brothers included Thomas Augustine Claiborne and Charles Augustine Claiborne, as well as a sister, Mary Leigh Claiborne, who married her cousin Bathhurst Claiborne.

Claiborne’s early years were shaped by his family’s shifting fortunes in the aftermath of the American Revolutionary War. His father, born at the Sweet Hall plantation in King William County and raised by his uncle Augustine Claiborne at the Windsor plantation in Sussex County, inherited the Putney plantation in New Kent County but sold it in 1780. By 1782 William Claiborne had moved his family to Manchester, Virginia (now part of Richmond), where he became a merchant after selling additional holdings, including 1,002 acres in King William County. In April 1782, Mary Leigh Claiborne died, and the following year William married the widow Frances Blair Black, who brought no additional children to the family but survived him, dying in 1822 at age seventy-eight. Growing up in this prominent but financially strained household, Nathaniel Herbert Claiborne, like his brothers, received a private classical education at a local academy suited to his social class and read law in preparation for a professional career.

By 1798, Claiborne had been admitted to the Virginia bar and was practicing law in Lee County on Virginia’s western frontier. In 1801 he moved eastward to Franklin County, where he quickly established himself in both legal and civic affairs. That same year he was elected Commonwealth’s attorney (prosecutor) for Franklin County, a position to which he was re-elected several times before resigning in 1810. He simultaneously maintained a private legal practice and, in November 1803, was elected captain of the local militia, reflecting his growing local prominence. Between 1802 and 1806 he purchased approximately 800 acres of land in Franklin County north of the Blackwater River, where he established a plantation he named “Claybrook.” This estate became his principal residence for the remainder of his life. Like many planters of his era, Claiborne farmed using enslaved labor. Census records indicate that he owned 19 enslaved people in 1810; 14 in 1820, including four boys and three girls aged fourteen or younger; 17 in 1830, including three boys and one girl aged ten or younger; and 14 in 1840, including a boy and two girls aged ten or younger.

Franklin County voters first elected Claiborne as one of their representatives in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1809, and he was re-elected annually through 1812. During his service in the House of Delegates he sat on the Committee for Courts of Justice and became known for his criticism of the salaries and slow pace of the Court of Appeals, advocating instead for a more robust system of county-level courts. He also supported resolutions instructing Virginia’s congressional delegation to oppose re-chartering the Bank of the United States, a stance that foreshadowed his later alignment with Jacksonian Democrats, while at the same time voting in favor of establishing a new bank in Lynchburg, which was emerging as a regional commercial center. During the War of 1812, his fellow legislators elected him to the Virginia Council of State, an executive advisory body that assisted the governor and whose service was incompatible with simultaneous legislative office. Claiborne attended Council sessions regularly until his marriage in May 1815 and the winding down of the war, and he resigned from the Council on April 1, 1817. Drawing on his wartime experience and interests, he wrote a series of articles on the conflict that he later collected and published in 1819 as “Notes on the War in the South; with Biographical Sketches of the Lives of Montgomery, Jackson, Sevier, the Late Gov. Claiborne, and Others.”

Claiborne continued to play a role in statewide affairs after the war. In 1818, the governor of Virginia appointed him to the commission that met at Rockfish Gap to determine the location of the new University of Virginia. The commission ultimately chose Albemarle County as the site of the institution, and although Claiborne was offered a professorship at the new university, he declined the appointment. In 1821, voters from Franklin County and the adjoining counties of Henry, Patrick, and Pittsylvania elected him to the Virginia State Senate. He served a single term from 1821 to 1825. During this period he made his first bid for a seat in the United States House of Representatives, running as a Jacksonian Democrat, but was defeated by Jabez Leftwich.

Claiborne’s national political career began two years later, when he ran again for Congress, this time as an Anti-Jacksonian, and defeated Leftwich. He was elected to the United States House of Representatives unopposed in 1825 and went on to serve six consecutive terms from March 4, 1825, to March 3, 1837, representing Virginia during a period of intense partisan realignment and national expansion. In 1827 he was re-elected with 67.71 percent of the vote, defeating Independent candidate William Campbell. He was re-elected unopposed in 1829, 1831, and 1833. In 1835 he secured re-election with 51.31 percent of the vote, defeating Democrat Alexander H. H. Stuart. During his tenure in Congress he rose to a position of influence as chairman of the Committee on Elections, serving in that role from 1831 to 1837. As a member of the Anti-Jacksonian Party representing Virginia, he contributed to the legislative process during six terms in office, participating in the democratic process and representing the interests of his constituents at a time marked by debates over banking policy, internal improvements, and the scope of federal power. In 1837 he lost his bid for re-election to Archibald Stuart, bringing his congressional service to a close.

In his personal life, Claiborne married Elizabeth Archer Binford (1799–1880) of Goochland County in May 1815. She survived him by more than two decades. The couple had six daughters and five sons, several of whom continued the family’s tradition of public service and professional accomplishment. Their second son, Nathaniel C. Claiborne, became active in politics in Virginia and later in Missouri. Their eldest son, Ferdinand Leigh Claiborne (1817–1862), born in Richmond, became a tobacco merchant, married into the Taliaferro family, and died in Baltimore during the Civil War. Another son, William Patrick Claiborne (1827–1891), served in the Confederate Army. Thomas Binford Claiborne (born 1832) became judge of the Franklin County court in 1874. The youngest son, James Robert Claiborne, married Frances Moore. Among their daughters, Susan Magdalene Claiborne and Mary Elizabeth Claiborne married George W. Wilson and Thomas Wilson, respectively; Bettie Herbert Claiborne married James Otey; Ann Claiborne married James B. Wilson; and Catherine Sophronia Claiborne married twice, first to David Franklin Frederick and later to Thomas Bailey Greer. More distant relatives of later generations who achieved political prominence included his nephew John Francis Hamtramck Claiborne, as well as great-great-great grand-niece and nephew Marie Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs and Claiborne de Borda Pell.

After his defeat for re-election to Congress in 1837, Claiborne retired from national politics and returned to his “Claybrook” plantation near Rocky Mount in Franklin County, where he resumed the life of a planter and local notable. He continued to reside there for the remainder of his life, overseeing his estate and remaining connected to the extended Claiborne family network that spanned Virginia and other southern states. Nathaniel Herbert Claiborne died on August 15, 1859, near Rocky Mount, Virginia. He was interred in the family cemetery at his Claybrook estate, closing a life that linked colonial-era lineage, early republican statecraft, and antebellum congressional service.