Dudley Digges (patriot)
Dudley Digges was a Virginia attorney, planter, military officer and politician who served in the House of Burgesses and all the Virginia Revolutionary conventions representing York County. Possibly the most famous of three related men of the same name who served in the Virginia legislature during the 18th century, this man was the third son of Yorktown merchant Cole Digges who served in both houses of the Virginia legislature.
Early and family life
The third son born to the former Elizabeth Foliott Power and her husband Cole Digges, he was born in late 1728 or early 1729 at Yorktown, in a house his father had built after purchasing the no. 42 lot in 1713, and which remained in the Digges family until 1784, when this man sold it to David Jameson.His great-grandfather Edward Digges had established the E.D. plantation in York County, where his father was born. He had at least two elder sisters who married into the prominent Harrison family, and elder brothers Edward Digges and William Digges. This Digges received a private education appropriate to his class, including studies at the College of William and Mary.
This Dudley Digges married twice. His first wife, the former Martha Burwell Armistead bore at least a son, Cole Armistead Digges and a daughter, Martha Armistead Digges, who survived to married Capt. Nathaniel Burwell. He remarried in 1760 to Elizabeth Wormeley, the daughter of prominent landowner Ralph Wormeley of Rosegill plantation, who was on the Virginia Governor's Council with this man's father. They had a son Dudley Wormeley Digges who moved to Louisa County, as well as daughters Elizabeth Wormeley Digges, Mary Wormeley Digges, Lucy Wormeley Digges and Judith Wormeley Digges.
Career
Following admission to the local bar, Digges practiced law. His father and elder sister Mary both died in 1744.In 1749, Digges received his first government position in York County, which includes part of the town of Williamsburg. In that year Digges became colonel of horse and foot, the local militia which included cavalry and infantry. He also became the county's receiver of military fines. In 1763, he became the county lieutenant.
In 1752, York County voters elected him to replace his brother Edward Digges as one of their representatives in the House of Burgesses, alongside merchant John Norton, who had replaced Yorktown merchant and planter Thomas Nelson Jr. when that merchant was elevated to the Council of State. Digges repeatedly won re-election until the last Virginia colonial governor, Lord Dunmore, dismissed the assembly in 1776. Robert Carter Nicholas replaced Norton in the legislative session which began in 1756 and Thomas Nelson Jr. replaced Nicholas as the other York County burgess in 1761, and both he and Digges then continued to win re-election. Digges and Thomas Nelson Jr. represented York County during all five Virginia Revolutionary conventions, from the first session until Nelson's election to the Continental Congress in 1776, when William Digges Jr. replaced Nelson.
By 1773, Digges was a member of the committee of correspondence between the Virginia legislature and those of other counties, alongside Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Peyton Randolph, Benjamin Harrison, Dabney Carr, Edmund Pendleton, Archibald Cary, Richard Bland, Robert Nicholas and Richard Henry Lee. In 1775 was a member of the York County Committee of Safety.
Fellow legislators elected Digges to the Revolutionary governor's council, and he was elected lieutenant governor while Thomas Nelson Jr. served as governor during the conflict. However, days before he was to ascend to that office, on June 4, 1781, British raiders captured Digges in Charlottesville. Furthermore, his Yorktown house was heavily damaged during the Siege of Yorktown, making it uninhabitable, so he moved to Williamsburg but also ended his political career.
In the 1788 Williamsburg city tax list, Digges paid taxes on twelve enslaved people and three horses, and his cousin Maria owned one slave. By 1787 he also owned 36 adult slaves, 41 enslaved teenagers, 9 horses and 62 cattle in still-developing Louisa County, Virginia.