[2] His maternal great-grandfather, Rowland Jones, was the first rector of now historic Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg, the colony's capital for most of this man's life.
Meanwhile, this man's father, John Dandridge followed his brother to the Virginia colony and became clerk of New Kent County in 1730, which position he held until his death in 1756.
John Dandridge also served as an officer in the local militia and operated a plantation called Chestnut Grove about four miles away, using enslaved labor.
His father died in Fredericksburg in August 1756 while visiting his niece and her husband, Col. John Spottswood, when Bartholomew was 19 years old, just under legal age.
In 1782, Bartholomew Dandridge paid taxes on the land, where his lived with his wife and family, which included Burbidge widow, who may have held a life estate.
John (1758-1799) became a lawyer and would also serve as in the Virginia House of Delegates; he might have died at Pamocra, but also practiced law in Charles City County, where his wife Rebecca Jones Minge, came from, and their daughter Lucy married J.W.
Complicating matters, his cousin Bartholomew Dandridge (1760-1803), son of his uncle William Dandridge, married Elizabeth Clayton (daughter of Col. William Clayton who served as a legislator with his father), and after her death married the only daughter of Major William Armistead of New Kent County, Susan Baker Armistead, who bore a son Bartholomew Dandridge (d. 1829) who eventually became the Clerk of New Kent County, after being partly raised by his stepfather David Dorrington.
[7] Bartholomew Dandridge studied law and quickly made an outstanding reputation, as well as operated his mother-in-law's and wife's estate using enslaved labor.
However, dissatisfaction with British policy was growing, and when Virginia's royal governor, Lord Dunmore, suppressed the legislature in 1775, Dandridge and fellow planter Burwell Bassett (with whom he had served in the House of Burgesses) were elected as the county's representatives to the first four Virginia Revolutionary Conventions; Dandridge served on the fifth Revolutionary Convention alongside Col. William Clayton, whom he had succeeded in 1772.
On June 29, 1776 he was elected to the Council of State, which held administrative powers as well as advised Governor Patrick Henry, but Dandridge resigned that position to attend family business on January 8, 1778.
[13] John Dandridge would follow in his father's career path, including representing New Kent County in the Virginia House of Delegates beginning in 1788.