William Jennings Dickenson (3 December 1827–5 April 1907), member of the House of Delegates, was born in Russell County and was the son of Mary Gray Dickenson and James Dickenson, who served four nonconsecutive terms in the House of Delegates. Although by 1850 he had already begun practicing law, during the 1852–1853 academic session he studied law at the University of Virginia.

In 1859 Dickenson won election to represent Buchanan, Russell, and Wise Counties in the House of Delegates. During his two-year term he sat on the Committee of Schools and Colleges and on the Joint Committee to Examine the Register's Office. He introduced several resolutions, among them measures for internal improvements and to establish a bank in his district. The General Assembly convened in the aftermath of John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in October 1859, an event that drove many moderate Virginians into the secessionist camp. As a Whig, Dickenson had reservations about secession, but as the sectional crisis deepened during the winter of 1860–1861, he voted for resolutions decrying the use of federal force to coerce states into remaining in the Union and approved Virginia's joining a confederacy of slaveholding states should efforts to resolve sectional differences fail.

Dickenson appears not to have served in the military during the Civil War. After the war he and other family members lived in his father's household. In December 1865 Dickenson began a two-year term representing Russell County in the House of Delegates. He sat on the Committees for Courts of Justice, on Enrolled Bills, on Executive Expenditures, and on Resolutions. He also chaired the Committee to Examine the Clerk's Office. In October 1867 Dickenson garnered the second-highest vote total in a four-candidate field in a losing bid to represent Buchanan and Russell Counties in a convention called to rewrite the state constitution. Following his defeat, he directed his energies to his law practice.

In 1877 Dickenson returned to the House of Delegates for the first of three consecutive terms representing Russell County. His committee assignments included appointments to the Committees on Banks, Currency, and Commerce; on Counties, Cities, and Towns; on Courts of Justice; and on Federal Relations and Resolutions. During the 1879–1880 assembly session he chaired the Committee on Immigration. At the 1881–1882 session Dickenson chaired the Committee on Propositions and Grievances and served as ranking member of the Committee on Roads and Internal Navigation. He introduced bills to establish a turnpike company, consolidate railroad companies in his area, and improve roads in Lee and Russell Counties. In votes on the massive public debt, the state's most divisive political issue, Dickenson supported the Readjusters, a biracial coalition that sought to repudiate part of the debt and direct state resources toward pressing social needs, including education. In February 1879 he attended a two-day gathering of Readjusters at which the delegates broke completely with the Conservatives and formed their own party.

On 12 January 1880, in response to a constituent petition, Dickenson introduced a bill to create Dickenson County from parts of Buchanan, Russell, and Wise Counties. After another delegate unsuccessfully attempted explicitly to designate the new division William J. Dickenson County, the House approved the measure on 12 February. The Senate of Virginia passed the bill with amendments, including one renaming the new jurisdiction Stonewall County and its county seat Jackson to honor Confederate general Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson. The Senate subsequently receded its amendments, and in March the governor approved the act creating Dickenson County.

Dickenson did not seek reelection in the autumn of 1883, when Conservatives regained control of the General Assembly. In April 1884 he was named an alternate delegate from the Ninth Congressional District to that year's Republican National Convention, in Chicago. William Jennings Dickenson died at his Russell County home on 5 April 1907 and was buried in the nearby Dickenson family cemetery. He never married. In his will he left property to an adopted daughter provided that she did not marry a specific man of whom Dickenson disapproved.

Sources Consulted:
Birth and death dates from gravestone inscription in Larry Taylor and Pat Taylor, comps., Russell County Cemeteries Book #2 (1995), 2; United States Census Schedules, Russell Co., 1900 (birth date of Dec. 1827), Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.; "Families of Russell County" (typescript, n.d. but before 1973), Russell County Public Library, Lebanon, copy at Library of Virginia; Richmond Daily Whig, 19 Jan. 1860, 7 July 1880, 24 Apr. 1884; Richmond Daily Dispatch, 26 Feb. 1879; Virginia General Assembly, House of Delegates, Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia (1776– ), 1879–1880 sess., 112, 279, 376; Virginia General Assembly, Senate, Journal of the Senate of Virginia (1776– ), 1879–1880 sess., 350; Elihu Jasper Sutherland, "Meet Virginia's Baby": A Brief Pictorial History of Dickenson County, Virginia… (1955), 22 (portrait); will and estate inventory in Russell Co. Circuit Court Will Book, 13:406–407, 457–458; obituary in Washington Post, 8 Apr. 1907 (died "in the seventy-eighth year of his age" on variant date of 7 Apr. 1907).

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Donald W. Gunter.

How to cite this page:
Donald W. Gunter, "William Jennings Dickenson (1827–1907)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2024 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Dickenson_William_Jennings, accessed [today's date]).

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