John Chiswell

1710 – October 14, 1766), was a planter, land speculator, early industrialist and member of the Colonial House of Burgesses who in his final years caused a scandal which led to his well-publicized death, possibly a suicide on the eve of his trial for killing a merchant in western Virginia.

In addition to cultivating tobacco on that plantation, Charles Chiswell was also a land speculator and at times Clerk of the General Court of Virginia.

[4] When his father died in 1737, Chiswell inherited the Scotchtown plantation, and the following year he became the colonel of the Hanover County militia.

He would continue to operate Scotchtown using overseers and enslaved labor until selling it to his political ally, business partner and son-in-law, Speaker John Robinson his father's land speculation westward, accumulating tens of thousands of acres.

[5] Chiswell began representing Williamsburg in the House of Burgesses in 1756, after Armistead Burwell died circa 1754 and was briefly replaced by the scholarly lawyer George Wythe.

About 1760 he formed a partnership with Robinson, William Byrd and Francis Fauquier (then the colony's resident lieutenant governor).

In 1762, Chiswell traveled to England to have the ore analyzed as well as hire miners to work alongside enslaved laborers.

"..the treaty at Fort Stanwix, John Stuart on behalf of Great Britain had negotiated with the Cherokee tribe the treaty of Hard Labor, South Carolina, October 14, by which the boundary line was continued direct from Tryon Mountain to Colonel Chiswell's mine (present Wytheville, Virginia), and thence in a straight line to the mouth of the Great Kanawha.

At least one of the justices, William Byrd, was, in fact, Chiswell's friend and also a business partner in the lead mining operation.