[1][2] One source incorrectly states that his cousin John Henry Peyton, also born in Stafford County but whose birth and death dates as well as plantation location are unspecified, was the Prince William delegate.
[4] His father, John Rowzée Peyton (1754-1798) was serving in the Virginia Line of the Continental Army at the time, and was often away during this boy's early years.
[4] The Virginia tax census of 1787 confirms that John Rowzee Peyton owned slaves in Stafford County, as did his youngest brother, Dr. Valentine Peyton (1756-1815), this man's uncle who served as a surgeon in the Virginia Line of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, then operated a boarding school at Tusculum, before serving as clerk of Stafford County during the War of 1812.
[9][10] In June 1812, a month after Admiral Cockburn's incursion into Chesapeake Bay and raids along the Maryland and Virginia shore, Peyton became a member of Augusta County's committee of correspondence for a military association in Staunton, which initially wanted to establish a school to instruct potential recruits before what seemed a potential engagement with Great Britain.
[12][13][14] By 1810, John Peyton had moved to Augusta County, Virginia,[15] where in 1811 he bought land about a mile west of town that he developed into his Montgomery Hall plantation residence.
[16] Alternately, Peyton initially was appointed as assistant prosecutor by the Augusta circuit court in 1809, and in 1812 won election to formally succeed the county's long-term Commonwealth attorney, Chapman Johnson.
[12] Voters in Augusta and nearby Rockbridge Counties elected him to the Virginia Senate in 1839 (where he replaced multi-term veteran David W. Patteson) and re-elected him until his death, when Samuel McD Moore filled the remainder of his term.
Peyton was one of the signatories of a letter to Bishop James Madison urging his consecration of a local Methodist minister, who became rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Staunton (1811-1818).
An Alexandria newspaper published an obituary noting this "high merit and distinguished reputation" but incorrectly stated he was born in Prince William county.