Wilson Cary Nicholas

Wilson Cary Nicholas (January 31, 1761 – October 10, 1820) was an American politician who served in the U.S. Senate from 1799 to 1804 and was the 19th Governor of Virginia from 1814 to 1816.

The son of Robert Carter Nicholas Sr. and his wife Ann Cary was born into the First Families of Virginia and would have ten siblings (of whom seven reached adulthood).

Their youngest brother, Philip Norborne Nicholas (1776–1849), served as Virginia's attorney general from 1800 to 1819 before becoming a state judge.

[5] However, Nicholas would have a longstanding feud with the Scott family over the location of the tobacco and wheat warehouses along the James River in Albemarle County.

[6] In the 1787 Virginia tax census, Nicholas enslaved 39 adults and 23 children, as well as 22 horses and 49 cattle and a four-wheeled phaeton in Albemarle County.

[7] In the final census in his lifetime, Nicholas enslaved 57 people in Albemarle County, of whom 32 worked in agriculture, including 9 girls and 8 boys under age 14, and 6 men and 6 women more than 45 years old.

[8] Meanwhile, Albemarle County voters elected (and re-elected) Nicholas as one of their two members of the Virginia House of Delegates several times, and he served in that part-time position from 1784 to 1785 and again from 1788 to 1789.

[9] Both he and his brother George (who served several times when W.C. Nicholas did not run) represented Albemarle County in the ratifying convention of 1788.

The Nicholas family (and that of relative Edward Carter of Blenheim) remained Federalists for years, despite the popularity within the county of Thomas Jefferson.

[12] Fellow legislators elected Nicholas as a Democratic-Republican to the U.S. Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Henry Tazewell.

However, after Nicholas' death, his lands were worth only a third of that amount, and the estate was insolvent, which indebtedness considerably worsened Jefferson's financial situation, as described below.

Colony of Virginia
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