[4] The Poindexter family of Virginia frequently used the names George, Thomas, and John; as a result, their genealogy is difficult to trace.

[6] He was admitted to the bar in 1800 and began to practice in Milton, an Albemarle County town along the Rivanna River which no longer exists.

[15] Poindexter was elected as a delegate to the United States House of Representatives from the Mississippi Territory; he served in the 10th, 11th and 12th Congresses (1807 to 1813).

[16] Poindexter also worked to resolve and standardize land titles in Mississippi, where residents possessed deeds and grants from Spain, France, England, and the United States, due to the number of times the area had changed hands.

[21] In 1811, Poindexter's outspoken opposition to the Federalist Party resulted in a duel with wealthy merchant and planter Abijah Hunt.

[2] Poindexter did not run for reelection in 1812; after his final term in Congress ended, he was appointed federal Judge for the Mississippi Territory and served from 1813 to 1817.

[23] After the Battle of New Orleans, a Poindexter letter dated January 20, 1815, was published in the Mississippi Republican, which claimed that Pakenham's troops had used "Beauty and Booty" as a watchword.

[27] The "beauty or booty" story had a profound effect on how the war was perceived and became central to contemporary accounts of Jackson's victory because it made the British appear to be degenerates bent on rape and plunder, while the Americans were depicted as benevolent and morally superior for the charity and medical aid they rendered to British troops after the fighting.

[30] Poindexter was appointed to the United States Senate in 1830 to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Robert H. Adams and served from 1830 to 1835.

Poindexter introduced a bill to grant Randolph 50,000 acres in Virginia, with the idea she could sell the land to raise money to live on.

Poindexter's tenure as chair of the Committee on Private Land Claims had been then considered moderately controversial.

Poindexter was thought to have made these claims to support President Andrew Jackson's fight with the Second Bank of the United States.

In 1804 Poindexter married Lydia Carter (1789–1824),[34][35] the daughter of a prominent Natchez businessman and plantation owner.

[38] In 1820 Lydia Carter Poindexter married Reverend Lewis Williams and moved to Brimfield, Massachusetts.

When several years before, Representative Richard Mentor Johnson of Kentucky was criticized for his common-law marriage with Julia Chinn, an enslaved woman; he said, "Unlike Jefferson, Clay, Poindexter and others, I married my wife under the eyes of God, and apparently He has found no objections.

"[40] Historian Burke has written, During slavery times, there was no particular stigma attached to the fact that many southern plantation owners, along with their white overseers, often fathered mulatto children born of black slave women.

As long as the white father denied the facts, the customs that created miscegenation were usually overlooked by Southern society.