William Donaldson (ca. 1770–29 October 1847), member of the Convention of 1829–1830, was probably the son of James Donaldson, the only person of that surname who appears in Hampshire County records of the 1780s. His mother's given name may have been Elizabeth. He had at least three brothers and one sister, but very little else is known about him, including his exact birth date, birthplace, and whether he married or had children.
Donaldson served in the Hampshire County militia in 1790. County voters elected him to a one-year term in the House of Delegates in 1805 and returned him to office in three consecutive elections. He served on the Committee of Propositions and Grievances during three assembly sessions and on the Committee of Claims for one session. In October 1812 Republicans meeting in Romney, the county seat, named Donaldson to a committee promoting the election of James Madison (1751–1836) as president and Henry St. George Tucker (1780–1848) as state senator. Donaldson served as a county justice of the peace between 1814 and 1839, as an election commissioner in 1816, and as a school commissioner in 1822.
By 1813 Donaldson was operating a sawmill and a gristmill. He was among several men appointed in 1817 to gather subscriptions in Romney for the sale of stock in the new Bank of the Valley in Virginia, located in Winchester. Donaldson and his brothers owned shares in the bank. By 1818 he had become a director of the Bank of the South Branch of Potomac. In November 1823 he represented Hampshire County at a meeting of delegates from the District of Columbia, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia in Washington, D.C., that recommended improvements to the navigation of the Potomac River and construction of a canal connecting it to the Ohio River.
In May 1825 Donaldson chaired a meeting of Hampshire County residents who called for reforming Virginia's constitution. The meeting selected him and nine other men as delegates to a reform convention that met in Staunton in July and August, but Donaldson did not attend. Campaigning in a field of seven candidates, he and three other men won election in 1829 to represent Berkeley, Hampshire, Hardy, and Morgan Counties at a convention that met in Richmond from 5 October 1829 to 15 January 1830 to revise the state constitution. Appointed to the Committee on the Bill of Rights, Donaldson joined other western reformers in seeking more influence for the counties lying west of the mountains, including more internal improvements and removing the property-ownership qualification for voting in favor of extending the suffrage to all white men of legal age. Like many of his western colleagues, Donaldson became frustrated at the inability to secure change and voted against the constitution on 14 January 1830.
In 1832 he was an elector for an alternative Andrew Jackson–Philip Pendleton Barbour ticket that some Virginians preferred because they no longer supported Martin Van Buren for vice president. Donaldson won election in 1833 to a four-year term representing the counties of Berkeley, Hampshire, and Morgan in the Senate of Virginia. During all five sessions he sat on the joint Committee to Examine the Penitentiary Institution.
During the 1830s he owned 497 acres of Hampshire County land and by 1845 had acquired 400 additional acres. He held twenty-one enslaved laborers at the time of the 1830 census and twenty-seven in 1840. His name last appeared in public records on 4 June 1847, when tax assessors enumerated him in the Hampshire County personal property and land tax lists for that year. William Donaldson died at his residence on 29 October 1847. Memorializing him in glowing terms, the Romney Intelligencer observed, "If any one deserved to have his memory treasured up in the hearts of the community in which he lived, it was William Donaldson, for a more pure, kind and generous heart than his never beat" in any man. The following month his sister, in drawing up her will, referred to herself as heir at law of her deceased brother William Donaldson. He was buried in the graveyard atop Springfield Hill, in Springfield, Hampshire County, with a gravestone no longer readable.
Sources Consulted:
Biography in Robert P. Sutton, "The Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1829–30: A Profile Analysis of Late-Jeffersonian Virginia" (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1967), 282 (with variant life dates of ca. 1765–1848 and other undocumented assertions, including birth in Ireland and having three children); Charles Town, Va., Farmer's Repository, 30 Oct. 1812; Baltimore Patriot and Mercantile Advertiser, 7 Nov. 1823; Richmond Enquirer, 17 June 1825, 29 May 1829, 16 Oct. 1832; Journal, Acts, and Proceedings of a General Convention of the Commonwealth of Virginia [1830], 22, 297; Proceedings and Debates of the Virginia State Convention of 1829–1830 (1830), 882; George Catlin, The Convention of 1829–30, portrait, Virginia Museum of History and Culture, Richmond; Dickson D. Bruce Jr., The Rhetoric of Conservatism: The Virginia Convention of 1829–30 and the Conservative Tradition in the South (1982), 37; last reference in Hampshire Co. Land Tax Book (1847), Accession 37464, and Personal Property Tax Returns, Hampshire Co. (1847), RG 48, both Library of Virginia; estate inventory (dated 29 June 1849) in Hampshire Co. Wills, 15:469; quotation in Romney Intelligencer obituary, reprinted in Charlestown Virginia Free Press, 10 Nov. 1847; "my three deceased Brothers James and Anthony & Wm Donaldson" in Mary Donaldson, will, dated 5 Nov. 1847 and witnessed 7 Nov. 1847, Hampshire Co. Wills (1780–1860), no. 169.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Kenneth R. Bailey and Dictionary of Virginia Biography staff.
How to cite this page:
Kenneth R. Bailey and Dictionary of Virginia Biography staff, "William Donaldson (ca. 1770–1847)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2024 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Donaldson_William, accessed [today's date]).
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