Wilson Cary Nicholas

At 59 years old, Wilson Cary Nicholas physical status not available right now. We will update Wilson Cary Nicholas's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Nicholas was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1778, and returned to Albemarle County after the war. By 1794, he settled his family at a plantation along the James River which he called "Mount Warren". Like his father and relatives, Nicholas farmed and operated his household using enslaved labor. Tobacco was the main crop in Albemarle County, but in the 1790s, Richmond merchant Robert Gamble convinced W.C. Nicholas to switch to wheat, when everyone was aware of the damage erosion and tobacco's nutrient demands made to the local soil, and wheat prices had risen. 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. Nicholas temporarily won in 1789, as the town of Warren was established on his lands, but by 1817, the terminus of the Rockfish Gap turnpike became Scottsville. In the 1787 Virginia tax census, Nicholas owned 39 adult slaves and 23 enslaved children, as well as 22 horses and 49 cattle and a four-wheeled phaeton in Albemarle County. In the final census in his lifetime, Nicholas owned 57 slaves 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.

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 1788 to 1789.

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. They favored adoption of the federal Constitution. During the convention's debates, on June 6, 1788, Wilson Cary Nicholas countered Patrick Henry's objection that correcting defects in the new national Constitution by way of the Article V convention would be excessively difficult. Nicholas said, "The conventions which shall be so called will have their deliberations confined to a few points; no local interest to divert their attention; nothing but the necessary alterations. They will have many advantages over the last Convention. No experiments to devise; the general and fundamental regulations being already laid down." The Convention ultimately voted to ratify the federal Constitution, despite opposition of most other representatives of Piedmont counties. The Nicholas family (and that of relative Edward Carter of Blenheim) remained Federalists for years, despite the popularity within the county of Thomas Jefferson. From 1794 to 1800, Nicholas again won election and several times on re-election as one of Albemarle County's two representatives in the House of Delegates.

Fellow legislators elected Nicholas as a Democratic-Republican to the U.S. Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Henry Tazewell. Nicholas served as one of Virginia's senators from December 5, 1799, until May 22, 1804, when he resigned to become collector of the port of Norfolk 1804–1807.

Nicholas re-entered the public arena and won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in the Tenth and Eleventh Congresses. He served from March 4, 1807, until his resignation on November 27, 1809. He was elected Governor of Virginia in 1814 and served until 1816, when he retired from office, as the state constitution forbad second terms.

Nicholas became president of the Richmond branch of the Second Bank of the United States, charted by fellow Virginian and President James Madison in 1816, after Nicholas' daughter Jane married Thomas Jefferson Randolph, eldest and favorite grandson of Nicholas' longtime neighbor and friend, Thomas Jefferson. The bank made several loans to the former president, beset with high expenses from a constant flow of visitors to Monticello. However, Nicholas also speculated in western lands, which put him in serious debt during the Panic of 1819. Jefferson had endorsed two of Nicholas's notes for $10,000 each, believing that Nicholas' plantations were worth more than $350,000. However, after Nicholas' death, his lands were worth only a third of that amount, and the estate was insolvent, which indebtedness greatly worsened Jefferson's financial situation, as described below.

Source