Thomas Blackburn

Thomas Blackburn (January 15, 1742 – July 8, 1807) was a Virginia officer, planter and politician who represented Prince William County, Virginia in the last sessions of the House of Burgesses and in most of the Virginia Revolutionary Conventions alongside future general and Virginia Governor Lighthorse Harry Lee. He may today be best known as a correspondent with Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, as the father of two women who married owners of Mount Vernon plantation, or for his plantation, Rippon Lodge, the remnants of which were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 and are now operated as a park in Prince William County. Early and family life The youngest son born to the former Mary Watts (d. 1775; widow of Col. Henry Ashton of Westmoreland County) and her master builder husband Richard Blackburn (d. 1757) was born at Rippon Lodge, the plantation house which his English-born father had built around 1745, and which he inherited because his elder brothers died before their father. His elder half brother was among the six people who died in a boating accident on the Potomac River in 1752. His sister Alice married Col. Thomas Ellzey of nearby Loudoun County. On January 21, 1759/60, Thomas Blackburn married Christian Scott (1745-1815), the daughter of Rev. James Scott of Overwharton Parish, and who survived him by nearly a decade. Both their sons began military careers. Richard Scott Blackburn would continue his father's political career by twice winning election to serve as one of Prince William County's representatives in the Virginia House of Delegates before accepting a commission as captain in the U.S. Army by 1800, and was promoted to major before dying while on duty in Georgia in late 1803. His younger brother Thomas Blackburn Jr. served under his brother in the militia as a private before accepting a lieutenant's commission in the U.S. Army in 1799, but he resigned and become a planter ("Yorkshire" plantation being on both sides of Bull Run in Prince William County and Fairfax County) before dying in 1813.