Thomas Edmunds (d. by 8 September 1791), member of the Convention of 1788, had been born probably by 1750 or 1751 in the part of Surry County that became Sussex County in 1753. His father, John Edmunds, was a prominent planter, lawyer, and surveyor who represented Sussex in the House of Burgesses from 1754 until his death in 1770; his mother was most likely Rebekah Browne Edmunds. He received some schooling in the household of William Allen, of Surry, and it is likely he received more formal education while he lived in England as a youth. From 1772 to 1774 Edmunds resided in Williamsburg, where he may have practiced law.

Edmunds enlisted in the Continental army with the 15th Virginia Regiment during the early stages of the Revolutionary War. On 25 November 1776 he was appointed a captain in that regiment, which became the 11th Virginia in September 1778. Although seriously wounded in one leg at the Battle of Brandywine on 11 September 1777, Edmunds continued fighting throughout the balance of the war. He served with the army at Valley Forge and at Eutaw Springs, where he was wounded again on 8 September 1781. Edmunds transferred to the 3d Virginia Regiment in February 1781 and to the 1st Virginia Regiment in January 1783. On 30 September of the latter year he was brevetted a major. In 1786 the county court recommended that Edmunds be appointed colonel of the local militia, but he refused the commission. Later references to Colonel Edmunds may have been rendered out of respect rather than official designation.

After his mother's death in 1778, Edmunds came into complete possession of Farnham, a plantation of nearly 3,000 acres on the Blackwater River in Sussex County. The purchase of an additional quarter-tract of 600 acres of land in September 1779 made him the largest resident landowner in the county. Edmunds subsequently acquired a 950-acre plantation in Charlotte County, and by 1787 he possessed more than sixty slaves and a four-wheeled carriage. He also received a bounty of 4,000 acres for his war service. On 31 October 1782 Edmunds executed a bond in Surry County and on that day or soon thereafter married Martha Short, whose brother William Short later served on the Council of State and as Thomas Jefferson's private secretary. They had one daughter, who died in childhood, and one son.

In April 1784 Sussex County voters elected Edmunds to the House of Delegates. He was reelected the following year but finished third in a contest for the county's two seats in 1786. Edmunds was returned to the House in 1787 and won election to four more one-year terms. During most of his tenure he sat on the Committee of Propositions and Grievances, but he also received an appointment to the Committee for Courts of Justice in 1784 and to Commerce in 1785.

In April 1788 Edmunds and John Howell Briggs were elected as antifederalist representatives from Sussex to the convention called to consider ratification of the proposed constitution of the United States. Edmunds attended the entire proceedings, which began in Richmond on 2 June, but did not speak during the debates. He reflected his region's disdain for ceding governmental control to a remote and more centralized authority. On 25 June Edmunds joined the minority in voting for a resolution requiring prior amendments to the Constitution protecting specific rights of the people. Later that day he voted against the ratification of the Constitution, and on 27 June he voted to limit the taxing power of Congress.

Edmunds's popularity as a wounded veteran may have been a factor in his decision to seek in 1790 the vacant Ninth District seat in the United States House of Representatives. Although he won Sussex and four other counties in the special election held on 6 September, he was defeated by William Branch Giles, who carried six of the eleven counties in the large south-central Virginia district. In April 1791 Edmunds won reelection to the House of Delegates, but he did not attend the ensuing session. Thomas Edmunds attended a meeting of the Sussex County Court on 1 September 1791 and died between that date and 8 September, when his death was reported to the newspapers. He was buried at Farnham.

Sources Consulted:
Family information in Lyndon Hobbs Hart III and Henry Wilkins Lewis, A Genealogy of the Southern Virginia Blunts including the Descendants of Howell Edmunds of Surry (1987), 40–43; Surry Co. Marriage Bonds; Compiled Service Records, War Department Collection of Revolutionary War Records, Record Group 93, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.; John P. Kaminski et al., eds., The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution: Ratification of the Constitution by the States, vols. 8–10: Virginia (1988–1993), 10:1539, 1541, 1557, 1566; Walter A. Watson, "Notes on Southside Virginia," Bulletin of the Virginia State Library 15 (Sept. 1925): 31; estate inventory in Sussex Co. Will Book, E:169–171, 215, 283–284; presence at county court on 1 Sept. 1791 documented in Weaver and Carrell v. Harris and Carrell (1795), Loose Court Papers, Sussex Co. (1754–1870), 1795-214; obituary under dateline of 8 Sept. 1791 in Richmond Virginia Gazette, and General Advertiser, 14 Sept. 1791.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Gary M. Williams.

How to cite this page:
Gary M. Williams,"Thomas Edmunds (d. 1791)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2015 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Edmunds_Thomas, accessed [today's date]).

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