|
|
Facts and Events
About Jesse Bledsoe
Jesse Bledsoe (April 6, 1776 – June 25, 1836) was a Senator from Kentucky.
Life and Career
Jesse Bledsoe was born in Culpeper County, Virginia in 1776. When he was very young, his family migrated with a Baptist congregation through Cumberland Gap into Kentucky. Many of the adults in this traveling congregation were property: Negro slaves. Jesse attended Transylvania Seminary and Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, where he studied law. He was admitted to the bar about 1800 and commenced practice.
In 1808, Bledsoe was appointed Secretary of State. He was a member of the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1812. Afterwards he was elected as a Democratic Republican to the United States Senate and served from March 4, 1813 until his resignation on December 24, 1814. He then became a member of the Kentucky State Senate in 1817, serving until 1820.
Bledsoe was judge of the Lexington circuit in 1822. He settled in Lexington and was professor of law in Transylvania University. He then became minister in the Disciples Church. He moved to Mississippi in 1833 and to Texas in 1835. He died near Nacogdoches, Texas under circumstances his contemporaries and kinfolk could only describe as a significant fall from grace.
Sometimes a volatile being, he earned the sobriquet "Hot headed" Jesse Bledsoe. Besides being a brilliant jurist he was a fascinating maternal uncle to 1) Robert Emmett Bledsoe Baylor, who studied law with him, 2) Thomas Chilton who likewise represented Kentucky in Congress, and 3) William Parish Chilton who would rise to political prominence in Alabama and the Confederacy.
- the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia
Jesse Bledsoe (April 6, 1776June 25, 1836) was a slave owner and Senator from Kentucky.
References
- ↑ Family Recorded, in Collins, Lewis, and Richard H Collins. History of Kentucky. (s.n., 1847)
203.
JESSE BLEDSOE was born on the 6th of April, 1776, in Culpepper [sic] county, Virginia. His father, Joseph Bledsoe, was a Baptist preacher. His mother's maiden name was Elizabeth Miller. In early life, Judge Bledsoe's health was delicate, and from weakness in his eyes, could not be sent regularly to school. When his health and sight were restored, which was not until he had become quite a large boy, (having emigrated with an elder brother to the neighborhood of Lexington, Kentucky), he went to Transylvania seminary, and by the force of talent and assidious industry, became a fine scholar. Few men were better or riper classical scholars; and to the day of his death it was his pleasure and delight to read the Grecian orators and poets in their original tongue. After finishing his collegiate course, he studied law, and commenced its practice with success and reputation.
Judge Bledsoe was repeatedly elected to the house of representatives of the Kentucky legislature, from the counties of Fayette and Bourbon; and was also a senator from the latter county. He was secretary of state, of Kentucky, under Gov. Charles Scott; and during the war with Great Britain, as elected a senator in the congress of the United States from the state of Kentcuky, for an unexpired term, serving in that capacity for two or three years. In 1822, he was appointed by Gov. Adair, a circuit judge in the Lexington district, and removed to Lexington, where he received the appointment of professor for five or six years, when he resigned both, and again commenced the practice of law.
In 1833, he removed to Mississippi, and in the fall of 1835 or spring of 1836, he emigrated to Texas, and commenced gathering materials for a hisory of the new republic. In May, 1836, he was taken sick in that portion of Texas near the line of the United States, and not far from Nacogdoches, where he died.
At an early age, he married the eldest daughter of Colonel Nathaniel Gist, and his widow is still living in Frankfort.
|
|
