Joseph Draper (25 December 1794–10 June 1834), member of the House of Representatives, was the son of John Draper and Jane Crockett Draper and was born in the part of Wythe County that in 1839 became Pulaski County. After serving as a private and sergeant in the militia during the War of 1812, he studied law with Daniel Sheffey, a former congressman. In 1818 Draper was admitted to the bar in Wythe County, where he earned a reputation as an able speaker and in 1823 became commonwealth's attorney. He executed a marriage bond on 30 June 1820 and on that day or soon afterward married a cousin, Margaret Ingles Sayers. They had three daughters and one son.

In 1828 voters in the counties of Giles, Grayson, Montgomery, and Wythe elected Draper to the Senate of Virginia, where he served on the Committee on Internal Improvements. A supporter of Andrew Jackson, Draper won a special election in 1830 to fill the vacant seat in the House of Representatives from Grayson, Lee, Russell, Scott, Tazewell, Washington, and Wythe Counties. He sat on the Committee on Private Land Claims during the remainder of the Twenty-first Congress and made one recorded speech. On 1 February 1831 Draper introduced and explained a resolution asking that contempt of court in cases involving discussion of public policies be precisely defined in law and strictly limited in order to permit full freedom of speech and publication about politics. He lost his seat to Charles Clement Johnston in the next election with a vote of 1,805 to 3,071 and unsuccessfully contested the result, but following Johnston's death on 17 June 1832, Draper won reelection and served during the second session of the Twenty-second Congress, from 6 December 1832 to 3 March 1833. He did not then seek election to a full term.

Draper's law practice had prospered in the county seat of Evansham (later Wytheville), where he was a member of the local Masonic lodge. By 1834 he owned a large house and lot plus five additional town lots and other property, including forty acres of land outside the town and a farm in Drapers Valley. His library of nearly 440 volumes consisted of law books, history, English literature and poetry, a few works on religion, and one Greek grammar. Draper also owned fifteen slaves, including four children, and oxen, sheep, and numerous cattle and horses. The value of his personal property in that year was more than $6,400. Joseph Draper died in Wytheville on 10 June 1834 and was buried in Oglesby Cemetery, in Wythe County.

Sources Consulted:
Biographies in S. Bassett French MS Biographical Sketches (with birth date), Accession 21332, Personal Papers Collection, Library of Virginia, Lewis Preston Summers, History of Southwest Virginia, 1746–1786, Washington County, 1777–1870 (1903), 757 (portrait), One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary Wythe Fraternal Lodge No. 55, Wytheville Fraternal Lodge No. 82 A. F. & A. M., 1798–1948 (1948), 19–20, and Mary B. Kegley, Early Adventurers in the Town of Evansham, the County Seat of Wythe County, Virginia, 1790–1839 (1998), 110–113; Beverly Repass Hoch and Mary B. Kegley, comp., Wythe County, Virginia, Marriages, 1790–1853 (2006), 108; Register of Debates in Congress, 21st Cong., 2d sess., 560–561, reprinted in C. Bascom Slemp and Thomas W. Preston, eds., Addresses of Famous Southwest Virginians [1939], 77–79; Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States, 22d Cong., 1st sess., 205, 807; Contested Election—Joseph Draper vs. Charles C. Johnston, 22d Cong., 1st sess., 1832, House Rept. 444, serial 226; facsimiles of original will and estate inventory, Wythe Co. Circuit Court clerk's office, and recorded in Wythe Co. Will Book, 4:122–124, 136–147; death notices in Charlestown Virginia Free Press, 3 July 1834, and Washington Daily National Intelligencer, 7 July 1834; death date and memorial resolutions of county court in Wythe Co. Order Book (1833–1837), 142–143.

Image in Lewis Preston Summers, History of Southwest Virginia, 1746–1786, Washington County, 1777–1870 (1903).

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Beverly Repass-Hoch.

How to cite this page:
Beverly Repass-Hoch, "Joseph Draper (1794–1834)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2024 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Draper_Joseph, accessed [today's date]).

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