Robert Brooke (Virginia governor)
Robert Brooke ( 1760February 27, 1800) was a Virginia planter, soldier, lawyer and politician who served as the tenth Governor of Virginia as well as in the Virginia House of Delegates, and as Attorney General of Virginia at the time of his death. Early and family life. Robert Brooke was the second son born to the former Anna Hay Taliaferro and her husband, Richard Brooke (1732-1792), at a family plantation (possibly "Smithfield") in Spotsylvania County in the Colony of Virginia. His birth year is uncertain; probably 1751 but possibly near 1760 or even 1761. His grandfather  Robert Brooke, a skilled surveyor, had been one of Lt. Governor Alexander Spotswood's "Knights of the Golden Horseshoe Expedition" and the family was important in nearby Essex County. Brooke had at least three brother: Dr. Lawrence Brooke, Judge Francis T. Brooke and John T. Brooke. All became patriots in the American Revolutionary War, and the latter two also served in the Virginia General Assembly. Thus, Brooke was born into the First Families of Virginia, and received a private education suitable for his class. He sailed to Scotland for further studies at at Edinburgh University. In 1766, Brooke married Mrs.  Mary Ritchie Hopper (the Ritchies being another prominent Essex County family) in Tappahannock, Virginia, the Essex county seat, and they had several children, including Richard Brooke (1787-1824), who would marry Selina Poe in Richmond and have children. Career. As he returned home at the beginning of the revolution, British admiral Howe captured his ship, and sent Brooke back to England. He then traveled to Scotland, then to France, and reached Virginia in a French vessel carrying arms for the continentals. Brooke joined Captain Larkin Smith's cavalry company, was captured at Westham near Richmond by Simcoe in 1781, was  exchanged, and rejoined the army's 7th Continental line. After the war, Brooke read law, and on February 7, 1785, he and future U.S. Supreme Court justice Bushrod Washington were admitted to the Virginia bar and began their legal careers in Fredericksburg and surrounding counties. In 1787 Virginia property tax records, Brooke did not live in Essex county but owned 23 adult slaves and 18 children there (as well as 9 horses and 51 cattle) and like his brother John T. Brooke also owned a house in Fredericksburg (Gustavus Wallace paid tax on both city homes). In that state tax  census, their father owned 22 adult slaves and 20 children on his Spotsylvania County plantation and their brother Dr. Lawrence Brooke owned 6 adult slaves and 8 children in Spotsylvania. Their grandfather's still-unresolved estate owned 20 adult slaves and 19 children in nearby King William county. His brother Francis T. Brooke owned property in Fauquier County, but the tax was paid by Humphrey Brooke because Francis was underage. In 1791, Spotsylvania County voters elected Robert Brooke as one of their representatives in the Virginia House of Delegates, alongside Francis Thornton (who had owned 18 adult slaves and 3  children in Spotsylvania County, 10 adult and 8 child slaves in King George County and 11 adult and 18 child slaves in Gloucester county, all in the tax census four years earlier). Both men won re-election the next year, but in 1793 his brother John T. Brooke succeeded Thornton and in 1794 John W. Willis (whom Robert Brooke had succeeded three years earlier) replaced John T. Brooke. In that 1794 session, Governor Light Horse Harry Lee resigned and left the Commonwealth in command of federal forces to quell the Whiskey Rebellion, so fellow legislators elected Brooke governor in his  stead. Brooke took the gubernatorial oath of office on December 1, 1794 and served two years. In 1795 Robert Brooke built a home in Fredericksburg upon Federal Hill, which looked over Sandy Bottom to Marye's Heights, a thousand yards away. When Brooke left office in 1796, legislators elected him, a Democratic-Republican, as the state's attorney-general to replace James Innes, who had resigned to accept a federal position as commissioner under Jay's treaty. Fellow Fredericksburg attorney Bushrod Washington, President Washington's nephew, had also sought the position as state attorney general. Brooke was a prominent Freemason  in Virginia. In November 1795 he succeeded James Mercer as Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Virginia, and would in turn be succeeded by Major Benjamin Day of Fredericksburg in 1797. Death and legacy. Brooke died in Fredericksburg while still attorney general on February 27, 1800. The Library of Virginia holds his executive papers as governor. His former Fredericksburg home, which he named "Federal Hill", was occupied by Union forces during the American Civil War (as was his plantation in Spotsylvania County). The Fredericksburg house survives today, as private residence (with door and door canopy replaced from the adjacent  photograph) although listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1796, the Virginia General Assembly split what had been vast trans-Appalachian Ohio County, and created Brooke County), which they named to honor the outgoing governor, though since the American Civil War it has been in West Virginia. Ancestry. Brooke (England) AND Taliaferro (Venice, Italy)