Richard Lewis Brewer (27 May 1864–5 April 1947), Speaker of the House of Delegates, was born in Prince George County, the son of Richard Lewis Brewer and Judith Anne Robinson Brewer. His father had been the first mayor of Suffolk in 1852, taught school, served as superintendent of the county school system, and owned and operated a jewelry store in Suffolk. Richard L. Brewer Jr., as he referred to himself for most of his life, attended Suffolk Military Academy. He went to work in his father's jewelry store and following his father's death in 1902 was the sole proprietor of R. L. Brewer and Son until he sold the concern in 1923. Brewer developed other business interests as well. By the 1920s he was involved in investments, insurance, and banking. At various times he was chairman of the National Screen Company in Suffolk, vice president of American Bank and Trust Company, and president of the Gloucester-Yorktown Ferry, Inc. He belonged to many of the fraternal organizations of Suffolk, including the Masons, and for all of his adulthood was an active Methodist lay leader. On 28 January 1892 Brewer married Lelia Jackson Vellines, of Isle of Wight County. They had one daughter. Following his first wife's death on 30 April 1930, he married Belle Ashburn, principal of a primary school in Nansemond County, on 23 July 1931.
Brewer was elected mayor of Suffolk in 1892 and served for twelve years. He acquired the honorary title of colonel during the administration of Governor William Hodges Mann. In 1911 Colonel Brewer, as he was usually known thereafter, was elected to represent Nansemond County and Suffolk in the House of Delegates for the first of eleven consecutive two-year terms. At the beginning of his second term, in January 1914, the House created the new Committee on Appropriations. Brewer became its first chairman and held the position for six years. He played an important legislative role in introducing Virginia's first executive budget system, which went into effect in 1920. In January 1920, with support from advocates of Prohibition, Brewer defeated Kenneth N. Gilpin in the Democratic Party caucus and was elected to the first of three consecutive terms as Speaker of the House of Delegates. Brewer later cited the erection of a new state office building in Capitol Square as one of his most important legislative achievements. Another significant development came during his second term as Speaker when the House decided to install the nation's first mechanical vote-recording device. Brewer supported woman suffrage when he became Speaker and actually advised suffragists on strategy for the 1920 session of the assembly.
On 30 June 1921 Brewer attended a ceremony in London at which his daughter unveiled a bronze reproduction of Jean-Antoine Houdon's statue of George Washington, a gift from Virginia to the United Kingdom. In January 1924 Brewer easily survived a half-hearted behind-the-scenes attempt by the state Democratic Party chairman, state senator Harry Flood Byrd (1887–1966), to replace him with Thomas W. Ozlin because Brewer supported the issuance of public bonds to finance road construction. Shortly thereafter Brewer announced that he would not seek a fourth term as Speaker in 1926. He subsequently subsided into the background, although he did not retire from the House of Delegates until 1933. In the meantime, in April 1922 the General Assembly appointed Brewer to the State Board of Charities and Corrections, and he served on that board and its successor, the State Board of Public Welfare, for twenty-five years. Richard Lewis Brewer died in Lakeview Hospital in Suffolk on 5 April 1947 and was buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery in that city.
Sources Consulted:
Philip Alexander Bruce, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, and Richard L. Morton, History of Virginia (1924), 5:491 (portrait); Rogers Dey Whichard, ed., The History of Lower Tidewater Virginia (1959), 3:342–344 (portrait); Marriage Register, Isle of Wight Co., 1892, and Suffolk City, 1931, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia; obituaries in New York Times, Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, and Richmond Times-Dispatch, all 6 Apr. 1947, and Suffolk News-Herald, 7 Apr. 1947, including description of funeral services.
Image courtesy of Virginia Legislature Photograph Collection (1918), Library of Virginia.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Brent Tarter.
How to cite this page:
Brent Tarter, "Richard Lewis Brewer (27 May 1864–5 April 1947)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2001, rev. 2021 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.php?b=Brewer_Richard_Lewis, accessed [today's date]).
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