William Byrd III
William Byrd III (September 6, 1728January 1 or January 2, 1777) was a prominent Virginia planter and member of the House of Burgesses. Early life. The son of William Byrd II and Maria Taylor Byrd. He was the grandson of William Byrd I. Career. He inherited his family's estate of approximately 179,000 acres of land in Virginia and continued their planter prestige as a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses. He chose to fight in the French and Indian War rather than spend much time in Richmond. In 1756 he was colonel of the Second  Virginia Regiment. William Byrd III had a reputation as a notorious gambler. He initiated what was said to have been the first major horse race in the New World, involving fellow Virginia planters John Tayloe II, Francis Thornton, and Samuel Ogle & Benjamin Tasker Jr. of Maryland. After he squandered the Byrd fortune on building a magnificent mansion at Westover Plantation, gambling, and bad investments, Byrd parceled up much of the land he had inherited from his father and sold it off to raise money to pay his debts. He also sold the enslaved African laborers who had worked on his  estate. Although his sale of land and slaves generated a huge sum it still was not enough to pay off his creditors. Later, Byrd resorted to a lottery, the prizes of which would come from his estate, Belvidere, at the falls of the James River. However the lottery failed to generate sufficient revenue. Marriage and family. In 1748, Byrd married Elizabeth Carter, daughter of Robert Carter I, who had recently died. and had been the colony's richest man as well as served in the House of Burgesses and then the colony's Governor's Council (eventually becoming its president  by seniority. They had five children before her death in 1760. Byrd remarried, and fathered ten more by his second wife, Mary Willing, daughter of Charles Willing of Philadelphia. Despondent and nearly broke, Byrd committed suicide on January 1 or 2, 1777. He was buried in the cemetery at the old Westover Church. The 10 children of his second marriage (to Mary Willing) were: