Daniel Fisher (1736 or 1737–by 22 January 1795), member of the Convention of 1788, was born in England, probably in Gloucestershire, and was the son of Daniel Fisher, a merchant who had lived in Yorktown in the 1720s, and his first wife, whose maiden name may have been Jane Ravenscroft. Fisher's father and two other children, his stepmother, and four half-brothers and half-sisters returned to Virginia in 1750 and lived for several years in Williamsburg. Fisher probably read law there with one of the barristers (lawyers educated in the Inns of Court in London and called to the bar) with whom his father was friendly. He began his career as an attorney when he qualified to practice before the Southampton County Court on 10 March 1757. On 10 November of that year he was the king's prosecuting attorney for the county, and he took his oath as surveyor of the county on 9 March 1758 and as coroner and as a lieutenant in the militia in August 1759. Fisher also practiced law in Surry County and in Sussex County and served briefly as king's attorney for Surry from July 1763 to December 1764 and for Sussex County beginning in May 1771.
In 1761 Fisher purchased 270 acres of land near the fork of the Blackwater and Nottoway Rivers. About four years later he moved to the part of Brunswick County that in 1781 became Greensville County and settled on a plantation he owned on Three Creeks. Fisher practiced law there and succeeded Richard Starke as king's attorney for the county on 5 February 1765. By May 1767 he had married a woman named Mary, whom circumstantial evidence indicates was Mary Starke, a sister of Richard Starke and daughter of Dr. William Starke and Mary Ann Bolling Starke, of Prince George County. They had at least two daughters and at least five sons. Fisher was almost certainly one of the members of the bar who after Richard Starke's death in 1772 worked to complete for publication his Office and Authority of a Justice of Peace, published in 1774 as a replacement for George Webb's outdated 1736 manual of the same title.
Fisher retained his job as the county prosecutor in Brunswick and Sussex Counties at independence when the office became the attorney for the commonwealth. When the government of Greensville County was organized in February 1781 he qualified as the new county's first commonwealth's attorney and also continued to serve as prosecutor in Sussex County until he resigned in November 1789 and in Brunswick and Greensville Counties until 1790. Fisher was commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the Brunswick County militia in August 1777 and in November of that year took charge of supplying clothing for the local troops. He became county lieutenant, the commander of the county militia with the rank of colonel, of Greensville County in February 1781. A British raiding party took Fisher captive in his home later that summer or autumn, but because he was a militia officer and not an officer in the Continental army he was released on parole. He nevertheless continued to act in his military capacity as county lieutenant, which would have violated the terms of his parole and made him a prisoner of war had the British not surrendered soon thereafter.
At Three Creeks Fisher managed a plantation of about 1,000 acres. He also owned farms in Sussex and Southampton Counties. In 1787 he paid taxes in two counties on almost fifty slaves and on two carriages, including a stage coach, indicating his substantial financial success. At the time of his death his whole estate may have been worth as much as £12,500. Fisher could afford to advance large sums of money to at least one insolvent neighbor in nearby Sussex County.
Fisher won election as one of Greensville County's two members of the House of Delegates in 1787. He was reelected in 1788 and 1789 for two more one-year terms. He was a member of the Committees of Privileges and Elections, Propositions and Grievances, Courts of Justice, Commerce, and Religion. On 31 December 1787, Fisher and three other delegates, including John Marshall, were appointed to draft a bill for punishing people who sold free African Americans as slaves, which the assembly adopted in January 1788. Fisher was also a member of the committee that drafted the 1788 law that reformed the state's judiciary and created eighteen district courts in Virginia.
In 1788 Fisher won election from Greensville County to the convention that met in Richmond in June to consider ratification the new Constitution of the United States. His sentiments in favor of ratification were well known and set him apart from his colleague from Greensville County, William Mason, who opposed ratification. Fisher served on the convention's Committee of Privileges and Elections. On 25 June 1788, he voted with the majority against requiring amendments before ratification and later on the same day voted with the majority to ratify the constitution. Fisher also voted against a proposed amendment to limit the taxing power of Congress. Although he did not speak during the debates, his unwavering support of a stronger national government may have influenced Mason to vote in favor of ratification.
Fisher suffered from serious prostate trouble that began about 1786–1787 and forced him to relinquish his law practice in 1789. As was typical for the time, he sought relief by traveling to one of the medicinal springs of Virginia. Fisher also received some treatment from Dr. James McClurg, of Richmond, but wracked with pain, in 1791 he traveled to Philadelphia where he spent several months with his longtime political friend, United States Attorney General Edmund Randolph. Another friend, Henry "Light-Horse Harry" Lee, procured and paid for medical advice from a New York physician. Fisher may have returned to Philadelphia in 1793.
Shortly before his trip to Philadelphia in 1791, Fisher wrote his will. He did not mention his wife, which suggests that she had died by then. He left property to his two sisters, who may have lived in his household with his children during his prolonged absences. He executed a deed in Sussex County on 1 October 1794 and he was probably still living when his attorney appeared in the Greensville County Court on his behalf on 28 November. Daniel Fisher died, probably at his home, some time between then and 22 January 1795, when his will was proved in the Greensville County Court. He was probably buried on his plantation in a grave that is not now marked.
Sources Consulted:
Age about seventeen in 1754 given in father's journal printed in Louise Pecquet du Bellet, Some Prominent Virginia Families (1907), 2:778–779; numerous references in deed and order books for Brunswick, Greensville, Southampton, Surry, and Sussex Counties; letters in Executive Papers of Governor Thomas Nelson, 1781, Record Group 3, Accession 44502, Library of Virginia, some abstracted or printed in William P. Palmer et al., eds., Calendar of Virginia State Papers and Other Manuscripts, 1652–1869 (1875–1893), 2:339, 369, 559–560, 3:347, 379; 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), 9:909, 10:1539, 1540, 1557, 1566; F. Claiborne Johnston Jr., ed., "Federalist, Doubtful, and Antifederalist: A Note on the Virginia Convention of 1788," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 96 (1988): 341; Fisher's declining health cited in Sussex Co. Court, Loose Court Papers, #1791-51 and #1793-135, and in William T. Hutchinson et al., eds., The Papers of James Madison (1962–1991), 14:63–65; will in Greensville Co. Will Book 1:271–273; Greensville Co. Order Book 2, p. 314.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Gary M. Williams.
How to cite this page:
Gary M. Williams,"Daniel Fisher(1736 or 1737–by 1795)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2015 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Fisher_Daniel, accessed [today's date]).
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