Joseph Eggleston (24 November 1754–13 February 1811), member-elect of the Council of State and member of the House of Representatives, was the son of Joseph Eggleston and his first wife, Judith Segar Eggleston. He may have been born in his mother's native Middlesex County or in Amelia County, where his father owned several tracts of land, including a plantation called Egglestetton. His nephew William Segar Archer served in the House of Representatives and the United States Senate. Probably after receiving instruction from private tutors, Eggleston matriculated in 1773 at the College of William and Mary, where he received one of the Botetourt medals the following year.

In 1776 or 1777 Eggleston joined the Continental army as a lieutenant and paymaster in a troop of cavalry, called light dragoons. During most of the Revolutionary War he served in the battalion that Henry "Light-Horse Harry" Lee commanded. Eggleston won promotion to captain effective 5 September 1779 and was taken prisoner at Elizabethtown, New Jersey, on 25 January 1780. Following his exchange, he fought in most of the principal battles in the South during the remainder of the war and had at least one horse shot from under him. As second in command of Lee's battalion during the final campaigns in the South, Eggleston served with distinction at Guilford Court House and in the siege of Augusta, Georgia, in 1781. That year he received a field promotion to major.

Eggleston returned to Amelia County after the war and in 1785 began the first of three consecutive one-year terms in the House of Delegates. In his first term he was appointed to the Committees of Claims and of Propositions and Grievances, and in his second he also sat on the Committee for Courts of Justice. In his third he again served on the Committee of Propositions and Grievances. On the most important issue to come before the General Assembly, Eggleston voted for the bill establishing religious freedom when it passed the House of Delegates on 17 December 1785, but he was not present on 16 January 1786 when the House accepted the Senate of Virginia's amendments. On 7 November 1787 the assembly elected Eggleston to a vacant seat on the Council of State, but he did not take office when his term began the following June because by then he was planning to marry Sarah (or Sally) Meade, which he did on or soon after 23 July 1788. They had three sons before she died on 10 December 1794. Eggleston married a cousin, Judith Cary Eggleston, on 8 May 1796. They had one daughter who survived infancy.

In 1791 Eggleston again won election to the House of Delegates and was reelected every year through 1798. He became one of the leading members of the House. During all his terms he served on the Committees of Privileges and Elections (which he chaired in 1795 and 1796) and for Courts of Justice (of which he became ranking member in 1796). In 1795 and 1796 he sat on the Committee of Religion, from 1792 to 1797 on the Committee of Propositions and Grievances, and from 1795 to 1797 on the Committee of Claims, as ranking member in 1795. Eggleston also served as an officer in a company formed to improve the navigation of the Appomattox River and in 1791 became a trustee for an academy that the Freemasons had established.

On 1 November 1798 Eggleston won a special election to fill a vacant seat in the House of Representatives from the district that embraced Amelia, Chesterfield, Dinwiddie, and Nottoway Counties. He defeated Alexander McRae to win a full term the following spring and served until 3 March 1801. Eggleston had spoken out against Federalist policies and the Jay Treaty with England during debates in the House of Delegates in 1795, and in Congress during the winter of 1798–1799 he criticized the Alien and Sedition Acts and President John Adams. With other Virginia members of Congress he signed a petition in February 1799 urging James Madison (1751–1836) to reenter politics.

Eggleston did not seek reelection in 1801. He continued serving on the county court until his death and raised wheat, horses, cattle, hogs, and sheep at Egglestetton, where in 1811 his personal property included eighty-seven enslaved persons and was valued at more than $26,500. In December 1805 the General Assembly elected Eggleston a major general of militia, but he declined the office because of his age and infirmity. He nevertheless traveled to Richmond in May 1807 when summoned to serve on the United States District Court grand jury that indicted Aaron Burr for treason. Following amputation of a diseased or injured leg, Joseph Eggleston died, probably at Egglestetton, on 13 February 1811 and was buried in the cemetery of Grub Hill Episcopal Church, in Amelia County. In 2023 the Richmond Chapter, Virginia Society, Sons of the American Revolution dedicated a commemorative plaque at the church to honor Eggleston's military service.

Sources Consulted:
Birth date and variant death date of 15 Feb. 1811 on gravestone; family history in P. Hamilton Baskervill, Andrew Meade of Ireland and Virginia: His Ancestors, and Some of His Descendants and Their Connections (1921), 119–128; Robert B. Eggleston, unpublished biographical notes (2000), Acc. 11673, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia (UVA), Charlottesville (with Middlesex Co. birthplace and variant marriage dates of 8 Mar. 1788 and 17 Oct. 1796); Amelia Co. Marriage Bonds (bond dated 23 July 1788); Eggleston Family Papers (1777–1899), Virginia Museum of History and Culture, Richmond (including Eggleston to Speaker of House of Delegates, 27 Dec. 1805); a few Eggleston letters at UVA, Duke University, Durham, N.C., at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and at Library of Virginia (LVA), including Eggleston to Edmund Randolph, 23 June 1788, House of Delegates Executive Communications, Record Group 79; Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Applications Files, Record Group 15, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. (including widow's affidavit with date of second marriage and death on 13 Feb. 1811); Land Office Military Certificates (1782–1876), Virginia Land Office, Record Group 4, LVA; Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1787–1788 sess., 35 (election to Council), 1805–1806 sess., 31, 54 (election as major general); Henry Lee, Memoirs of the War in the Southern Department of the United States (1812); Alexander Garden, Anecdotes of the Revolutionary War in America (1822), 123–125; Richard K. Showman et al., eds., The Papers of General Nathanael Greene (1976–2006), vols. 7–11; Kathleen Halverson Hadfield and W. Cary McConnaughey, eds., Historical Notes on Amelia County, Virginia (1982), 44, 58, 67, 71, 287, 489; will, inventory, and estate accounts in Amelia Co. Will Book, 7:603–611; death notice with death date of 13 Feb. 1811, Richmond Enquirer, 22 Feb. 1811; eulogy in Richmond Virginia Argus, 22 Feb. 1811, and Richmond Enquirer, 26 Feb. 1811.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by John R. Van Atta.

How to cite this page:
John R. Van Atta, "Joseph Eggleston (1754–1811)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2024 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Eggleston_Joseph, accessed [today's date]).

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