William Douglas Meriwether (1761–1845) was a miller, surveyor, and land speculator who inherited Cloverfields, a large estate in Albemarle County. His milling operations on the Rivanna River in and near Charlottesville and Milton produced wool, cotton, flour, and timber, and in 1810 he was a director of the Rivanna Company, incorporated in 1806 to make improvements on the river. Meriwether represented Albemarle County in the Virginia House of Delegates, 1809–10, and served as sheriff in 1801 and 1828–30. After the death of his cousin Meriwether Lewis, he became agent for settling his affairs, having been his guardian since Lewis’s father died. In the years after TJ’s return to Monticello, Meriwether became a leading opponent of his development efforts at Milton (Louisa H. A. Minor, The Meriwethers and Their Connections [1892], 24; William D. Meriwether to Charles Meriwether, 14 July 1830 [NcU: Meriwether Family Papers]; Lay, Architecture description begins K. Edward Lay, The Architecture of Jefferson Country: Charlottesville and Albemarle County, Virginia, 2000 description ends , 16, 29, 72, 157, 162; Woods, Albemarle description begins Edgar Woods, Albemarle County in Virginia, 1901, repr. 1991 description ends , 272; McGehee and Trout, Jefferson’s River description begins Minnie Lee McGehee and William E. Trout III, Mr. Jefferson’s River: The Rivanna, 2001 description ends , 19).