Alexander Dudley (13 June 1820–10 September 1869), president of the Richmond and York River Railroad, was born in King and Queen County and was the son of Thomas Dudley and his wife and cousin Caroline Dudley. He married Martha Ellen Jackson in the autumn of 1842. Before she died on 5 July 1866, they had at least seven sons and three daughters.

In 1850 Dudley began practicing law with Samuel Fauntleroy Harwood, who had served several terms in the Senate of Virginia. On 10 February 1849 the Mattaponi Baptist Church expelled Dudley for engaging in unchristian conduct at King and Queen Court House. Ten years later he and Harwood numbered among the trustees of the new Quintinoco (later Immanuel) Episcopal Church. In July 1857 at a convention in Old Point, Dudley chaired the business committee that reported resolutions favoring establishing transatlantic steamship service between Chesapeake Bay and Milford Haven, in Wales, in order to protect southern commercial interests and resources.

Dudley helped found and served as the first president of the Richmond and York River Railroad, which the General Assembly incorporated on 31 January 1853. In the autumn of 1854 stockholders selected a route that began at Rocketts Landing, in Richmond, passed through the New Kent County town of White House with a bridge over the Pamunkey River, and terminated at West Point, in King William County. Plans faltered in 1856, when the General Assembly failed to authorize a $500,000 increase in the company's stock, to which the state would have subscribed two-fifths. After the legislature authorized the company to borrow $500,000, Dudley issued 8-percent bonds and courted northern investors. He had sold no bonds by the end of 1857, however, in part because of the financial panic of that year, and had to suspend most construction. The assembly subscribed to $200,000 in preferred stock, and in June 1858 work on the railroad resumed.

Dudley and his associates envisioned building a town at the railroad's York River terminus and on 13 February 1856 incorporated the West Point Land Company. In 1859 it bought 530 acres at West Point from William Penn Taylor, a former congressman and one of the largest stockholders in the railroad. With Dudley generally serving as president during the next decade, the company had limited success drawing European settlers to the planned entrepôt at West Point. After the Civil War, in February 1866 he and seven other men sought incorporation as trustees of the Virginia Land, Trust and Immigration Company. They were authorized to issue capital stock valued at not less than $300,000 nor more than $5 million and to hold no more than 35,000 acres of land at a time.

About a month after completing the track from Richmond to White House, in November 1859 the Richmond and York River Railroad began providing transportation between White House and Norfolk using a leased steamer. By 11 June 1860 the company had purchased its own steamship, the West Point, to make these triweekly trips. The railroad section from White House to West Point opened in August 1860 with a half-mile temporary track at the company's wharf on the Mattaponi River. By early in October, West Point was the eastern terminus of the railroad with steamer connections, and by late in March 1861 the wharf and permanent track at West Point had been completed and were in use.

In November 1860 Dudley had withdrawn his name for renomination as railroad president. From July through October 1861 he served as a purchasing agent at Yorktown for the Confederate army's Quartermaster Department, but he declined an offer of appointment as chief quartermaster of the army. After a year's hiatus from managing the Richmond and York River Railroad, Dudley was reelected on 6 November 1861 to the combined office of railroad president and superintendent. The Richmond and York River Railroad suffered severely during the Civil War. In the Seven Days' Battles, Union forces destroyed rolling stock and the White House wharf and damaged the Chickahominy River Bridge. In addition, the Confederate government and the Union army removed at least twenty-seven of the thirty-eight miles of track.

Because Dudley possessed property valued at more than $20,000, he was required after the war to petition for a presidential pardon, which he received on 6 July 1865. Not long afterward the military commander of Virginia required Dudley to surrender the pardon, reportedly because he had expressed disloyal sentiments, but the president quickly restored it. Dudley then began the immense task of rebuilding the railroad. A stockholders meeting on 16 November 1865 authorized the president and directors to borrow up to $300,000 to reconstruct and reequip the rail line. Dudley persuaded most of the company's bondholders to accept a promise of 8 percent interest and allow their certificates to be subordinated to the new offering. He also proposed that the Richmond and Danville Railroad Company's depot in Richmond connect with the Richmond and York River Railroad, whose rail gauge would be refitted to match the Richmond and Danville's. Shareholders agreed to the project late in 1865, but it remained incomplete at Dudley's death.

In February 1868 the wharves and twelve miles of track from the Pamunkey to West Point still required rebuilding at an estimated cost of $115,000. Dudley asked that the Richmond and Danville Railroad Company finance the completion to West Point in exchange for $125,000 in Richmond and York River Railroad bonds, and by the summer of 1869 passenger trains were running between Richmond and West Point, with steamer connections to Baltimore. On 2 June 1868 a number of stockholders petitioned the governor and the Board of Public Works to remove Dudley as president for mismanagement and for breaking a pledge to abandon intemperance. Although many later sought to strike their signatures from the petition because they believed they had been misled about the nature of the appeal, Dudley had resigned the presidency by the end of the month.

Alexander Dudley died suddenly in Richmond on 10 September 1869. He was buried in the family cemetery at Benvenue, his farm near King and Queen Court House.

Sources Consulted:
Elizabeth C. Johnson, "Alexander Dudley, Entrepreneur," Bulletin of the King and Queen County Historical Society of Virginia, no. 49 (July 1980): 1–2; Martin Stakes Lane, "Alexander Dudley: Lawyer, Railroad Executive, Land Developer," Bulletin of the King and Queen County Historical Society of Virginia, no. 105 (July 2008): 1–2; Mary Adelaide Rowe Garrett (sister-in-law), dictated to Martha Jackson Garrett Moffett, "The Dudley Family" (typescript, ca. 1918), with marriage in Oct. or Nov. 1842, and other genealogical materials, King and Queen Historical Society; Dudley and Harwood law practice account book (1856–1862), King and Queen Historical Society Papers, Virginia Museum of History and Culture, Richmond; Richmond and York River Railroad Company Records (1836–1873) in Virginia Board of Public Works, Accession 30030, Record Group 57, and Richmond and York River Railroad Company Records (1854–1877), Accession 20627, Business Records Collection, both Library of Virginia, Richmond; Virginia Case Files for United States Pardons (1865–1867), United States Office of the Adjutant General, Record Group 94, National Archives and Record Administration, Washington, D.C.; New York Herald, 4 Aug. 1857, 27 Aug., 6 Sept. 1865; Baltimore Sun, 5 Sept. 1865, 30 June 1868; Richmond Daily Dispatch, 8 Jan. 1868, 6 Jan. 1869; Stuart Bowe Medlin, "The York River Railroad: 1851–1881" (M.A. thesis, University of Richmond, 1968); Alonzo Thomas Dill, York River Yesterdays: A Pictorial History (1984), 57 (portrait), 58–59, 61, 63–65, 71–72; death notices in Richmond Daily Whig, 14 Sept. 1869 (with birth date), and Petersburg Index, 15 Sept. 1869 ("aged 59 years").

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Martin Stakes Lane.

How to cite this page:
Martin Stakes Lane, "Alexander Dudley (1820–1869)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2024 (https://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Dudley_Alexander, accessed [today's date]).

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