Benjamin Estill (13 March 1780–14 July 1853), member of the House of Representatives, was born in the part of Washington County that in 1786 became Russell County. His father, Benjamin Estill, of French Huguenot extraction and a half-brother of James Estill, a Continental army officer, died in 1782. His mother, Catharine Moffett Estill, became renown throughout the region because as a young woman she and a half-brother had briefly been held captive by an unidentified Virginia tribe. She later married Samuel Edmiston, a member of the Convention of 1788. Estill attended Liberty Hall Academy (after 1798 Washington Academy and later Washington and Lee University) during the 1790s before reading law and commencing his practice in Abingdon, in Washington County. Like many other young attorneys of the day, he got a professional boost by serving for a time as the commonwealth's attorney. He is likely the Benjamin Estill who married Eleanor Irwin on 21 September 1801, in Woodford County, Kentucky. The 1811 will of Estill's maternal uncle, who left a bequest to Estill's eldest daughter, suggests that Estill had married by that date and had at least two daughters.
Estill lost a race for the Senate of Virginia to Henley Chapman in 1812 and lost again four years later to former congressman Francis Preston. In 1814 he won election to the first of three consecutive one-year terms in the House of Delegates representing Washington County. Estill sat on the Committees for Courts of Justice and on Finance. He supported charters for several banks in southwestern Virginia, but he was best known for his effective advocacy of the creation of a new county, something that residents in portions of the large counties of Lee, Russell, and Washington had long desired. The new county of Scott, created in 1814, was named for Winfield Scott, a Virginia army officer who had gained fame during the War of 1812. At the request of some of the men who lived in Scott County, the county seat was named Estillville for the bill's sponsor. It was renamed Gate City in 1890.
Estill practiced law in Washington County and occasionally prosecuted cases in neighboring Grayson County. He campaigned for Congress in 1817 in the district that encompassed Grayson, Lee, Russell, Scott, Tazewell, Washington, and Wythe Counties but lost to Alexander Smyth. He ran against Smyth and lost again in 1823, but two years later, when Smyth retired, Estill defeated two other candidates to win the seat in the House of Representatives. He served on the standing Committee on the Public Lands and in 1826 on a special committee to reapportion the seats in the House. In general a supporter of President John Quincy Adams, Estill enjoyed a good relationship with Daniel Webster. He did not seek reelection in 1827.
In Frankfort, Kentucky, on 20 January 1825 Estill married Patsey Hickman Sproule, whose first marriage had terminated in divorce in December 1823. They had three daughters and one or more other children who died young. His family resided for the most part in Kentucky, where, he stated, his children could receive a better education than in Virginia. About 1844 Estill moved to a farm he owned in Lee County. He also invested in property in Kentucky and Mississippi, but he complained that his income proved inadequate to maintain himself and his family.
On 19 April 1831 the General Assembly elected Estill a judge of the General Court and of the Circuit Superior Court of Law and Chancery for the Fifteenth Circuit, which embraced Lee, Russell, Scott, Tazewell, and Washington Counties. In 1837 word reached the assembly that Estill had apparently left Virginia and no longer resided in his circuit. He had gone to Mississippi to investigate a business partnership and returned via Kentucky to visit his family. Estill explained to the legislature that he had fully intended to return in time for the spring session of court, and he complained that low salaries for judges forced them to seek other income. The legislators quietly quashed the proceedings against him.
Late in 1850 a petition from nearly one hundred Washington County residents asked the assembly to remove Estill from office because of his mental and physical incapacity to hold court and effectively render justice. The petitioners also stated that Estill had moved his family to Kentucky and that he no longer lived in Virginia. A larger number of men filed a counterpetition in Estill's support. He wrote a long defense of his conduct in which he stated that rather than be forced out of office by "bitter personal enemies," because of his age he intended to relinquish his office after the creation of a revised judicial system that he anticipated would be adopted by the constitutional convention then meeting. The assembly investigated and published the relevant documents but then let the matter drop. Estill presided over his court for the last time in Lee County on 3 September 1851. He was also eligible, as one of the senior General Court judges, to serve on the Special Court of Appeals that the assembly created to relieve a backlog of cases in the Supreme Court of Appeals. Estill attended a few sessions in Richmond between 19 December 1850, when the legislature was investigating his fitness for the bench, and 11 February 1852.
In the summer of 1851 Estill drafted his will. He then owned a 200-acre farm in Oldham County, Kentucky, a house and lot in Louisville, eleven enslaved workers in Virginia, and his house and a small lot where he lived in Lee County. Leaving office in 1852, he also finally and officially left Virginia to join his wife, daughters, and son-in-law on the Kentucky farm. Benjamin Estill died of a disease of the bowels in Oldham County, Kentucky, on 14 July 1853 and was buried probably on or near his property.
Sources Consulted:
Biographies in Lewis Preston Summers, History of Southwest Virginia, 1746–1786, Washington County, 1777–1870 (1903), 769–770 (with birth date and portrait), and Birg E. Sergent, Lee County, Virginia, Circuit Court Judges, 1792–2005 (2005), 15–17; Alma Lackey Wilson, "Estill Family," Register of the Kentucky State Historical Society 43 (1945): 121–126; correspondence in Lyman C. Draper Papers, MSS 8ZZ17, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, in Library of Virginia (LVA), and in Daniel Sheffey Papers and Preston Family Papers, both Virginia Museum of History and Culture, Richmond, and printed in Charles Wiltse et al., eds., The Papers of Daniel Webster, ser. 1 (1974–1986), 3:49–51, and in Mary W. M. Hargreaves et al., eds., The Papers of Henry Clay (1959–1992), 6:14–15; Kentucky Marriage Records, Madison County Courthouse, Richmond, Ky; Lexington Kentucky Reporter, 31 Jan. 1825; Richmond Enquirer, 15 Apr. 1825, 29 Apr. 1825, 3 May 1825, 6 May 1825; Legislative Petitions, Scott Co. (7 Dec. 1815), Washington Co. (9 Dec. 1850), and Lee Co. (31 Dec. 1850) (quotation), Record Group 78, LVA; Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia (1830–1831 sess.), 328–329, (1836–1837 sess.), 135, 246–247 (with letter, 20 Feb. 1837, to Speaker), (1850–1851 sess.), 65, 72, 74, 81–84, 104, 109, 116, 119, 133, 134–135, House Docs. nos. 30, 33, 42 ("seventy years old" on 30 Dec. 1850 on 6); Journal of the Senate of Virginia (1836–1837 sess.), 69, 70, 72, 74, 102–103, 120 (with letter, 20 Feb. 1837, to Fayette McMullen); Special Court of Appeals (Richmond City), Orders, 1:192, 294; Oldham Co., Ky., Will Book, 3:529–531 ("aged seventy at present" [11 July 1851] on 529); Oldham Co., Ky., Death Register with death date at age seventy-three; death notice in Baltimore Sun, 19 July 1853.
Image in Lewis Preston Summers, History of Southwest Virginia, 1746–1786, Washington County, 1777–1870 (1903), 769 .
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by E. Lee Shepard.
How to cite this page:
E. Lee Shepard, "Benjamin Estill (1780–1853)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2024 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Estill_Benjamin, accessed [today's date]).
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