Hugh Blair Grigsby

In addition to representing Norfolk in the Virginia House of Delegates before the American Civil War, he served as the 16th Chancellor of the College of William & Mary from 1871 to 1881.

He could trace his descent from the First Families of Virginia, including John Blair, who helped to found the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg.

He had one half brother, John Boswell Whitehead, who would name a son in Grigsby's honor, although another slightly older nephew would fight for the Confederacy as a VMI cadet.

She too could trace her descent from the First Families of Virginia, and her father had been a patriot in the American Revolutionary War before representing Charlotte County in the House of Delegates in 1789.

Admitted to the Virginia bar, Grigsby had a private legal practice near Norfolk, but his growing deafness caused him to turn to journalism.

Decades later (after the American Civil War and the creation of the state of West Virginia), Grigsby would publish a history of that convention, which would later be criticized for anti-Appalachian bias and downplaying western reformers such as Philip Doddridge.

"[5] After his 1840 marriage, except for short period in Norfolk, as well as travels within Virginia to deliver historical talks, Grigsby remained at Edgehill the rest of his life, operating the plantation using enslaved labor until the American Civil War, as well as modernizing its agricultural methods.

[9][13] While the Edgehill plantation house which Col. Carrington had constructed burned in the 1930s, several outbuildings, including the kitchen survive and are on the Virginia landmarks register.