Wilson-Miles Cary (1733 or 1734–25 November 1817), member of the Convention of 1776, was the son of Wilson Cary and Sarah Blair Cary and was born probably in Warwick County. From 1752 to 1755 he attended the College of William and Mary, and on 25 May 1759 he married his first cousin Sarah Blair, daughter of his uncle John Blair (ca. 1687–1771), then president of the governor's Council. They had three daughters and two sons. Cary was also closely related to the influential Fairfax, Nelson, and Nicholas families, and his siblings and children married into other prosperous and powerful families, including the Amblers, Carrs, and Jeffersons. For some unrecorded reason, he hyphenated his given names.

Cary entered public life in 1757 when he was commissioned a justice of the peace in Warwick County and elected to the parish vestry. The following year he became a lieutenant colonel in the militia. Succeeding his father in 1761 to a customs post as naval officer of the lower district of the James River, he moved to Elizabeth City County early the following year and served on the court of that county for nearly forty years and also as colonel of the militia. In 1767 Cary became an Elizabeth City parish vestryman. From 1766 to 1771 he represented Elizabeth City County in the House of Burgesses, where he served on the Committee for Propositions and Grievances and the Committee for Religion.

Cary signed the nonimportation associations in 1769 and 1770 opposing British tax policies and used his post as naval officer to monitor enforcement of those agreements. After the nonimportation clauses of the Continental Association of 1774 went into effect, he obstructed the flow of banned goods. The following summer, after Cary spread news of the arrival in Virginia of a British warship, the royal governor described him as "one of the most active and virulent of the Enemies of Government." Cary closed his office in the autumn of 1775, an act that may have cost him as much as £500 a year. He was elected to the Elizabeth City County Committee that November and on 25 April 1776 was elected to the fifth and final Revolutionary Convention. A member of the Committee on Privileges and Elections, Cary also served on the ad hoc committee formed to oversee the establishment of the Virginia State Navy. He was almost certainly present for the unanimous votes for independence on 15 May 1776, to adopt the Declaration of Rights on 12 June, and to approve the first constitution of the commonwealth on 29 June.

A member of the House of Delegates during the October 1776 session, Cary again served on the Committee of Privileges and Elections. By the following year he was living temporarily in the new county of Fluvanna and was appointed to its county court and returned to the House in 1777 and 1778. He sat on the Committee for Religion during the former session and the Committees of Privileges and Elections, of Propositions and Grievances, and for Religion during the latter term. By 1780 he was living at Scotchtown, in Hanover County, which he purchased from Patrick Henry. Elected, nevertheless, to the House of Delegates that year from Elizabeth City County, Cary was once again appointed to the Committees of Privileges and Elections and of Propositions and Grievances, but his election was ruled illegal under the Constitution of 1776 because he resided in Hanover County. By 1783 Cary had moved to Warwick County, where voters elected him to the House of Delegates for two consecutive sessions. In 1783 he chaired the Committee of Privileges and Elections, and the next year he again served on that committee, chaired the Committee for Religion, and sat on the Committee of Propositions and Grievances. Cary later returned to Elizabeth City County and was elected to the House in 1795 and 1796. During the 1795 session he chaired the Committee of Religion and served on the Committees of Privileges and Elections, of Propositions and Grievances, of Claims, and of Courts of Justice. He sat on each of these committees except Courts of Justice in the following term.

A devout, lifelong Anglican, Cary attended the first convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Virginia in 1785, at least two subsequent conventions during the next five years, and again in 1797. He became a staunch Federalist during the 1790s and closed his political career in March 1799 by entering his condemnation of the Virginia Resolutions, which opposed the Alien and Sedition Acts, into the Elizabeth City County records.

Cary's wife died on 28 February 1799, and not long thereafter he moved to Williamsburg, where he served on the board of the College of William and Mary. About 1802 he married Rebecca Dawson, daughter of Thomas Dawson, formerly commissary of the bishop of London and president of the college. During his final years Cary shared his house at Carysbrook, in Fluvanna County, with his grandson, his grandson's wife, the writer Virginia Randolph Cary, and their children. Once one of the wealthier men in the colony, he depended after the Revolution on the productions of his plantations, but bad crops and floods, other economic troubles, and heavy spending on hospitality to family and friends severely depleted his wealth. During the 1810s he added several codicils to his will denouncing the governmental policies of the Jeffersonian Republicans, which he blamed in part for his financial difficulties. Wilson-Miles Cary, a respected but heavily indebted old Revolutionary nationalist, died at Carysbrook on 25 November 1817 and probably was buried there.

Sources Consulted:
Fairfax Harrison, The Virginia Carys: An Essay in Genealogy (1919), 108–110, 179–180 (including abstracts of unlocated will and portrait facing 108); Wilson Miles Cary (1838–1914), genealogical notes, with birth year of 1734 and first marriage and death dates, on the Cary family (compiled 1896–1912), Virginia Historical Society, Richmond (VHS); Cary letters in several collections in Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., in Library of Virginia, in University of Virginia, and VHS; earl of Dunmore to earl of Dartmouth, secretary of state, 12 July 1775, Colonial Office Papers 5/1353, fol. 228 (quotation), Public Record Office, London; William J. Van Schreeven, Robert L. Scribner, and Brent Tarter, eds., Revolutionary Virginia, the Road to Independence: A Documentary Record (1973–1983); 1799 declaration in Elizabeth City Co. Deeds, 34:468; Richmond Virginia Argus, 5 Mar. 1799; Richmond Virginia Gazette, and General Advertiser, 5 Mar. 1799; obituary without date of death "in the 84th year of his age" in Richmond Enquirer, 4 Dec. 1817, reprinted in Virginia Patriot, and Richmond Daily Mercantile Advertiser, 5 Dec. 1817.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Peter V. Bergstrom.

How to cite this page:
Peter V. Bergstrom,"Wilson-Miles Cary (1733 or 1734–1817)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2006 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Cary_Wilson-Miles, accessed [today's date]).

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