The Honorable John Bacon Clopton of Virginia

John Bacon Clopton was born in Richmond, Virginia on February 12, 1789/90. He was the son of United States Congressman John Clopton and Sarah Bacon Clopton. He married Maria Gaitskell Foster on May 4, 1820. Maria, born February 9, 1789, was the daughter of John Foster, a merchant and Mayor of Richmond in 1802, and Jane Gandy Foster. He died March 29, 1860 at Old Point Comfort, Virginia. Maria died at Manchester, Virginia on November 23, 1873.

They had thirteen children, although some publications fail to note the birth of one son, Thomas Bacon Clopton who was born May 18, 1830 and died about 1865. Thomas married Mary Boyd, the daughter of James McGruder Boyd and Dorothea Ann Maury Tatum Boyd, according to Claiborne of Virginia, Descendants of Colonel William Claiborne, by Claiborne T. Smith, Jr., MD and John Frederick Dorman.

The other children were: John Bacon Clopton, Sarah Jane Clopton Pulliam, Marie Adelaide M. St. G. de la Croix Clopton, Katherine Flood McCall Clopton, Francis Bacon Clopton, Ann Churchill Clopton, Namee Clopton Nichols, Joyce Wilkinson Clopton Wallace, Jack Clopton, and William Izard Clopton.

Judge Clopton, who attended William and Mary College, was a member of the Virginia Senate and a veteran of the War of 1812. He is considered one of Virginia's most prominent Jurists and was serving on the Bench of the Supreme Court of Virginia at the time of his death in 1860. His portrait hangs in the Capitol at Richmond.

Both Ancestry of William Clopton of Virginia, by Lucy Lane Erwin and The Clopton Family, by Gene C. Clopton, relate the following story of how a Clopton almost became President of the United States:

At the Whig Convention of 1840, after Gen. William Henry Harrison had been nominated for the presidency and a recess was taken, the party leaders gave the Virginia delegation to understand that whomever they might nominate for Vice President would receive the vote of the convention. In a caucus held during the recess two names were considered, those of Judge John Bacon Clopton and John Tyler. Tyler having a majority of one vote, Clopton thus narrowly missed becoming the Vice President, and on the death of President Harrison two months after his inauguration, President of the United States.

In Gene C. Clopton's The Clopton Family, an excerpt from an article appears from the July 1958 issue of Virginia Magazine relating to Judge Clopton. Written by Ralph Hardee Rives, the story recounts a 1857 celebration by residents of the Jamestown/Williamsburg, Virginia area of the first colonists' landing on Jamestown Island in 1607. This event, held every fifty years, featured speeches by prominent citizens.

Ex-President John Tyler, having two and a half centuries of history to cover, felt that he needed two and a half hours for his oration. (An elderly) Judge John B. Clopton, arriving after a hot walk through rough fields, became exhausted and repeatedly asked his son, William to take him "to the stand." When, after having been led through the crowd to a point immediately below the rostrum he reiterated the request, William remarked in some confusion, "Father, we are at the stand where President Tyler is speaking." "Oh," said the old gentleman, "I don't want to hear John Tyler now, take me to the stand where the mint julep is."

[#190]

Contributed by :

Isabel Lancaster (Clopton) Steiner
and Suellen Clopton Blanton, bblanton@fast.net
Based on An Article Originally Appearing in the August 9, 1988 Issue of the Clopton Newsletter