After reading law and being admitted to the Virginia bar, around 1836, Thomas Gholson also invested in the Brunswick Land Company, as did his elder and politically active brother and several other prominent local men (including Rev.
When the complainant, R. H. Collier, who had also publicly assaulted one of the Gholsons, refused to testify under oath before the appointed committee, the legislative investigation was dropped, but his brother died the following year.
[4] Thomas Gholson was a legal and possibly legislative mentor to Hugh White Sheffey who served in the legislature and also became Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates during the American Civil War, and later a judge.
He defeated Petersburg lawyer Charles Fenton Collier (son of Robert Ruffin Collier, possibly the complainant years earlier) and represented Prince George County, Virginia(which adjoins Petersburg) as well as nearby Nottaway, Amelia, Powhatan and Cumberland Counties from 1864 until the war's end in 1865.
[8] Gholson died on 12 December 1868, in Savannah, Georgia, and his remains were returned to Virginia for burial at Blandford Cemetery.