Nathaniel Herbert Claiborne (November 14, 1777 – August 15, 1859) was a nineteenth-century Virginia lawyer and planter, as well as an American politician who served in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly and in the United States House of Representatives (1825-1837).
Early and family life
Born in Chesterfield, Virginia to Mary Leigh Claiborne (1750-1782) and her first cousin and husband, William Claiborne (1748-1809), Claiborne was born to the First Families of Virginia. He could trace his ancestry to William Claiborne (1600–1677), a merchant who emigrated to the Virginia Colony from Kent, England, and became active politically and militarily in the Chesapeake Bay region. His elder brother William Charles Cole Claiborne would also become politically active, including as Governor of Louisiana, Tennessee congressman and U.S. Senator. Their uncle Thomas Claiborne, served five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. His father had been born at the Sweet Hall plantation in King William County, but was young when his father died and was raised by his burgess uncle Augustine Claiborne at the Windsor plantation in Sussex County. On coming of age, William inherited the Putney plantation in New Kent County, but advertised it for sale in 1780 and was living in Hanover County in 1783. He also owned 1002 acres of land in King William County in 1782, but sold it later that year. Financial reverses as a result of the American Revolutionary War, led William to move his family to Manchester, Virginia (now a district of Richmond, Virginia) by 1782, where he became a merchant. In April 1782, his wife (this boy's mother) died, and William Claiborne remarried the following year to the widow Frances Blair Black, who did not bear children in this marriage but would survive her husband and died aged 78 in 1822. The family included elder brothers Ferdinand Leigh Claiborne who married Mary Magdalene Hutchins, William C.C. Claiborne who had a distinguished political career, this Nathaniel Herbert Claiborne, and younger brothers Thomas Augustine Claiborne (who married twice) and Charles Augustine Claiborne (who was borne in 1777), and a daughter Mary Leigh Claiborne (who married her cousin Bathhurst Claiborne). Like his brothers, Nathaniel received a private classical education at a local academy appropriate to his class, and also read law.
Career
By 1798, Claiborne had been admitted to the Virginia bar and was practicing in Lee County, on the new state's western frontier. In 1801 Claiborne moved to Franklin County and soon won election as the Commonwealth's attorney (prosecutor), and would win re-election several times before resigning in 1810 to become a part-time member of the Virginia House of Delegates, as described below, as well as maintain his own private legal practice. Claiborne also won election as captain of the local militia in November 1803.
Between 1802 and 1806, Claiborne purchased about 800 acres of land in Franklin County north of the Blackwater River, and established a plantation he called "Claybrook". That became his principal residence for the rest of his life. Claiborne farmed using enslaved labor. He owned 19 slaves in 1810, 14 slaves in 1820 (of whom 4 boys and 3 girls were 14 years old or younger),, 17 slaves in 1830 (of whom 3 boys and a girl were 10 years old or younger), 14 slaves in 1840, of whom a boy and 2 girls were 10 years old or younger.
Franklin County voters in 1809 first elected Claiborne as one of their representatives in the Virginia House of Delegates, and he won re-election until 1812. During his first legislative terms, he sat on the Committee for Courts of Justice and objected to salaries earned by members of the Court of Appeal as well as to the time required to adjudicate cases. Claiborne instead favored instead county-level courts. He also voted to instruct Virginia's congressional delegation to oppose re-chartering of the Bank of the United States, foreshadowing his future allegiance with Jacksonian Democrats, but also voted in favor of establishing a new bank in Lynchburg, which was becoming a commercial hub. During the War of 1812, fellow legislators elected Claiborne to Virginia's Council of State, which assisted the Commonwealth's Governor in running the state, and which precluded simultaneous legislative service. He attended sessions regularly until his marriage in May 1815 (and the war's slowing down), and resigned that position on April 1, 1817. Claiborne also wrote several articles about the conflict, which he consolidated in 1819 and republished as Notes on the War in the South; with Biographical Sketches of the Lives of Montgomery, Jackson, Sevier, the Late Gov. Claiborne, and Others.