Edwin Steele Duncan (18 June 1789–4 February 1858), member of the Convention of 1829–1830, may have been born in Shenandoah County, although some twentieth-century biographies give variant birthplaces of Berkeley County or Botetourt County. The name of his father is unknown. In April 1791 his mother, Jane Steele, married James Allen, a Shenandoah County attorney who became a judge on the General Court. Duncan's half brothers John James Allen and Robert Allen both served in the House of Representatives.
Most likely Duncan studied law with his stepfather before moving to Randolph County about 1810. He was admitted to the bar in 1811 and served for a short time in the militia during the War of 1812. Duncan executed a marriage bond and on 9 June 1813 or a few days later married Prudence Wilson, also of Randolph County. They had two sons and one daughter.
Duncan represented Randolph County in the House of Delegates during the 1812–1813 session, when he sat on the Committees on the Clerk's Office and of Propositions and Grievances. In May 1814 he became commonwealth's attorney for the county. Duncan moved to Clarksburg, in Harrison County, in 1816 and the next year was appointed commonwealth's attorney for nearby Lewis County. Between the 1810s and the 1840s he served as a Harrison County building inspector, an agent for the overseer of the poor, and treasurer for the local schools. Long interested in education, Duncan told the 1841 Education Convention of Northwest Virginia that he desired free education throughout the state and lamented that residents of western Virginia did not benefit from the University of Virginia. From 1819 until he resigned in 1822 he served as a director of the Monongalia Navigation Company, which sought to expand navigation along the West Fork River in order to connect Clarksburg to the Monongahela River. In January 1831, as a member of the Board of Public Works, he played a key part in having the company dissolved after allegations of impropriety cast doubt on its ability to accomplish its objectives.
Duncan represented the district comprising Cabell, Harrison, Kanawha, Lewis, Mason, Randolph, and Wood Counties for one term in the Senate of Virginia from 1820 to 1824. He sat on the Committee of Claims, as ranking member for three years, and on the Committee of Privileges and Elections, as ranking member for two years. In 1823 Duncan mounted an unsuccessful campaign for the House of Representatives from Brooke, Harrison, Monongalia, Ohio, Preston, and Tyler Counties. From 1824 to 1829 he was a United States attorney for the Western District of Virginia.
In 1829 voters of Cabell, Harrison, Kanawha, Lewis, Logan, Mason, Randolph, and Wood Counties elected Duncan and three other men to a convention that met from 5 October 1829 to 15 January 1830 to revise the state's constitution. A member of the Committee on the Executive Department, Duncan championed increasing representation of the western counties to give them more influence based on their growing population and significance to the state. Dissatisfied with the draft constitution, he voted against its adoption on 14 January 1830. On his return to his district, his opposition to the new constitution was so effective that residents cast only 8 votes for ratification, compared to more than 1,100 against.
After the new constitution went into effect, the General Assembly elected Duncan on 19 April 1831 as judge of the General Court and of the Circuit Superior Court of Law and Chancery for the Eighteenth Circuit of the Ninth District, which encompassed Fayette, Harrison, Lewis, Nicholas, and Randolph Counties. In December 1836 William Alexander Harrison, an attorney and delegate from Harrison County, brought charges of conduct unbecoming a judge, especially conflicts of interest, against Duncan. On 16 March 1837, following an investigation by the House Committee for Courts of Justice, delegates unanimously cleared Duncan of any wrongdoing. He resigned from the bench early in 1848 to focus on agricultural pursuits. Duncan owned nine enslaved persons in 1850 and at the time of his death paid taxes on ten slaves age twelve or older. In 1858 he owned nine lots in Clarksburg and about 2,000 acres of land in Harrison County, where he also operated a textile mill.
In 1851 the governor appointed Duncan to represent Virginia as a commissioner to London's Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations. Edwin Steele Duncan died at his Clarksburg home on 4 February 1858 and was buried in Elkview Masonic Cemetery.
Sources Consulted:
Biographies in Henry Haymond, "Judge E. S. Duncan," West Virginia Historical Magazine Quarterly 2 (Apr. 1902): 74–76 (with birth date and birthplace of Berkeley Co.), George W. Atkinson, ed., Bench and Bar of West Virginia (1919), 18 (birthplace of Shenandoah Co.), and Dorothy Davis, History of Harrison County, West Virginia (1970), 138–139 (portrait on 96); information, including undated typescript biography, provided by Mary Allen Cassady Black (1997); some Duncan correspondence in John James Allen Papers, Virginia Museum of History and Culture (VMHC), Richmond, and in Monongalia Navigation Company Records, Board of Public Works Records, Record Group 57, Library of Virginia (LVA); Richmond Enquirer, 4 Apr. 1823, 2 June 1829, 5 June 1829, 7 Nov. 1829, 9 Sept. 1851; Journal, Acts, and Proceedings of a General Convention of the Commonwealth of Virginia [1830], 7, 22, 296–297; portrait in George Catlin, The Convention of 1829–30, VMHC; Dickson D. Bruce Jr., The Rhetoric of Conservatism: The Virginia Convention of 1829–30 and the Conservative Tradition in the South (1982), 37; court appointment and resignation in Virginia General Assembly, House of Delegates, Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia (1830–1831 sess.), 330, and (1848–1849 sess.), 18; judicial charges in Journal of the House of Delegates, (1836–1837 sess.), 30, 104, 289, and appended Docs. 12, 13, 21, 24, 27, and in Speaker of the House of Delegates, Executive Communications, 16 Mar. 1837, Accession 36912, Record Group 79, LVA; death notices in Cooper's Clarksburg Register, 5 (died "yesterday morning about 4 o'clock"), 12 (birthplace of Shenandoah Co. and died "in the sixty eighth year of his age") Feb. 1858, Richmond Daily Dispatch, 8 Feb. 1858 (age "about sixty-eight years"), and Richmond Enquirer, 9 Feb. 1858 (with variant death date of 5 Feb. 1858 at age "about 68 years").
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, "Edwin Steele Duncan (1789–1858)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2024 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Duncan_Edwin_Steele, accessed [today's date]).
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