Phillip Pendleton Barbour 1799

Phillip Pendleton Barbour was a Representative from Virginia and was born at Frascati, which is near Gordonsville, Orange County, Va. on May 25, 1783.

Barbour attended common and private schools and graduated from the College of William and Mary, in 1799. He then studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1800 and commenced practice in Bardstown, Ky. He returned to Virginia in 1801 and practiced law in Gordonsville, Orange County and was a member of the State House of Delegates from 1812-1814.

He was elected as a Republican to the Thirteenth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of John Dawson. He was reelected as a Republican to the Fourteenth through the Seventeenth Congresses, reelected as a Crawford Republican to the Eighteenth Congress and served from September 19, 1814, to March 3, 1825.

Barbour served as the Speaker of the House of Representatives in the Seventeenth Congress but was not a candidate for renomination in 1824. He was then offered the professorship of law in the University of Virginia in 1825, but declined.

Barbour was appointed a judge of the general court of Virginia and served for two years, resigning in 1827; elected as a Jacksonian to the Twentieth and Twenty-first Congresses and served from March 4, 1827, until his resignation on October 15, 1830. He was the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary in the Twentieth Congress. He served as the president of the Virginia constitutional convention in 1829.

Barbour was appointed by President Jackson, June 1, 1830, judge of the United States Circuit Court for the Eastern District of Virginia -- then declined the chancellorship and the post of attorney general. He also refused nominations for judge of the court of appeals, for Governor, and for United States Senator.

He was appointed Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court and served from March 15, 1836, until his death in Washington, D.C., February 25, 1841. Barbour is buried in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C.

-- Source: WMAA

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