Charles Everette (1767–4 October 1848), member of the Council of State, was the son of Ruth Denny Everitt and her first husband, Thomas Everitt, and most likely was born in Lancaster or Northumberland County. Although his surname frequently appears as Everett in public records, he consistently signed his name as "Chs Everette." After Thomas Everitt died early in 1772, his widow married William Griggs, of Lancaster County, who became guardian of her two minor sons. By 1792 Charles Everette had become acquainted with Thomas Jefferson, who encouraged him to continue his education in Philadelphia. In May 1795 Everette received a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania after completing and publishing An Inaugural Dissertation on the Function of Menstruation. He returned to Lancaster County to practice medicine. By 1797 Everette had sold 250 acres of land that he had inherited and his share in a Lancaster County gristmill and had settled in Albemarle County. In addition to eighteen town lots in Charlottesville and another one in Milton, he acquired in 1811 a 636-acre Albemarle County estate called Belmont, and in 1821 he purchased from Jefferson an adjoining 400-acre tract for $5,000.

Everette became a justice of the Albemarle County Court in June 1807 and won election representing that county in the 1813–1814 sessions of the House of Delegates, where he served on the Committee of Privileges and Elections. Despite his limited formal political experience, on 29 January 1814 the General Assembly elected him to fill a vacancy on the Council of State. Everette took the oath of office on 14 February 1814 and thereafter attended more than half of the Richmond meetings. During the final year of the War of 1812, the Council authorized him in September 1814 to travel to Washington, D.C., and there to appeal to his friend James Monroe, then secretary of war, for federal assistance in providing supplies for troops defending Virginia from British incursions. Everette last attended a Council meeting on 12 March 1818 and resigned on 23 March of that year to stand unsuccessfully for election to the General Assembly. Late in 1819 he replaced the newly elected governor, Thomas Mann Randolph, as Albemarle County's representative in the House of Delegates. Everette won election to full one-year terms in 1820 and 1821 and during both assemblies sat on the Committee on Roads and Internal Navigation.

Late in 1822, during Monroe's second administration, Everette succeeded the president's son-in-law as his private secretary. Although he received a salary of $600 and considerable leeway, he did not seem to like the position and took long absences from Washington, including one of at least six months in 1823. To relieve Everette's secretarial burdens Monroe offered to engage other amanuenses to copy out his messages to Congress, but Everette's service remained sporadic through March 1825 and caused John Quincy Adams to characterize his efforts as inefficient.

In the course of his medical practice, Everette had acted for Monroe in 1812 when Monroe sued two men for abusing an enslaved person whom he had leased to them. A regular consultant to Jefferson on medical affairs, Everette also treated Jefferson's ill and frostbitten enslaved workers and served as a consulting physician during Jefferson's final illness in 1826. In the autumn of 1831 he traveled to Philadelphia as one of a large contingent of Virginia delegates to a free trade convention, which adopted resolutions calling on the federal government to reduce tariffs that the convention regarded as unconstitutional.

Charles Everette never married and on 4 October 1848 died at Belmont, where he was buried. Later, his remains were moved to the cemetery at nearby Grace Episcopal Church. In his will he emancipated his enslaved workers, appropriated to their support all debts due him in the form of bonds (including interest about $70,000), and directed his nephew to remove them to Africa. Instead, Everette's executor helped the thirty-nine freed persons settle in Mercer County, Pennsylvania, in November 1854 and dispersed the final funds of the estate to them in February 1858.

Sources Consulted:
Biographies in Edgar Woods, Albemarle County in Virginia (1901), 189–190, and Robert Louis Everett, comp., The Everetts of Albemarle County, Virginia (1992), 17–27 (portraits on 21); initial burial and gravestone inscription in Nancy S. Pate, "Belmont" (typescript dated 25 Oct. 1937), Works Progress Administration, Virginia Historical Inventory, Library of Virginia (LVA); correspondence and accounts in James Barbour Executive Papers, Record Group 3, Acc. 41557, LVA, and Coolidge Collection of Thomas Jefferson Manuscripts, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, and printed in Julian P. Boyd et al., eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (1950– ), 24:733, J. Jefferson Looney et al., eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series (2004– ), 3:196, 529, James A. Bear Jr. and Lucia C. Stanton, eds., Jefferson's Memorandum Books: Accounts, with Legal Records and Miscellany, 1767–1826 (1997), William P. Palmer et al., eds., Calendar of Virginia State Papers and Other Manuscripts, 1652–1869 (1875–1893), 10:391–393, 395–396, 473, and Tyler's Quarterly Historical and Genealogical Magazine 4 (1923): 96–108, 405–411, and ibid. 5 (1923): 11–28; Albemarle Co. Deed Book, 22:389; Virginia General Assembly, Senate, Journal of the Senate of Virginia (1776– ), 1813–1814 sess., 36; Council of State Journal, 1813–1818, Record Group 75, Acc. 35356, LVA; Washington Banner of the Constitution, 28 Sept., 6 Oct. 1831; Philadelphia Hazard's Register of Pennsylvania, 26 Nov., 3 Dec. 1831; Washington National Era, 7 Dec. 1854; Noble E. Cunningham Jr., The Presidency of James Monroe (1996), 124; will and estate accounts in Albemarle Co. Circuit Court Will Book (1798–1904), 107–108, and Albemarle Co. Fiduciary Book, 1:42–114; death notice in Richmond Whig and Public Advertiser, 10 Oct. 1848.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Kristofer Ray.

How to cite this page:
Kristofer Ray, "Charles Everette (1767–1848)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2025 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Everette_Charles, accessed [today's date]).

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