Creed Taylor to Thomas Jefferson, 8 March 1823
From Creed Taylor
Richmond 8. Mar. 1823.
Dear Sir,
Will you have the goodness to accept a copy of the journal of the law school; and believe me, when I assure you, how much gratified I should be, if the system should meet your approbation, and you would allow me, to make it known, through the medium of the press.
Permit me, as one of your fellow citizens, to tender you, my most sincere thanks, for your unwearied exertions in the establishment of the University of Virginia, and for the prospect of its accomplishment.
That you may long live, in the enjoyment of good health and happiness, to witness its prosperity and benefits to the community, is the most sincere wish, dear Sir,
of yours most respectfully, and truly.
Creed Taylor
RC (MHi); at foot of text: “Thomas Jefferson, Esquire, late president of the United states”; endorsed by TJ as received 15 Mar. 1823 and so recorded in SJL. Enclosure: Taylor, Journal of the Law-School, and of the Moot-Court Attached To It, at Needham, in Virginia: with an Appendix, comprising a variety of precedents adapted to the proceedings of the courts, agreeably to the revised code, of 1819; and of the pleadings in law and equity, with complete records thereof (Richmond, 1822; , 10 [no. 585]).
Creed Taylor (ca. 1767–1836), attorney and public official, was born in Cumberland County, where he studied law in the county clerk’s office before beginning his own legal practice in 1791. Taylor represented Cumberland in the Virginia House of Delegates, 1788, and Amelia, Chesterfield, Cumberland, Nottoway, and Powhatan counties in the Senate of Virginia, 1798–1805, serving in the last two sessions as Speaker. A Republican who was a presidential elector for TJ in 1800, Taylor supported James Monroe in the presidential election of 1808, and he allied himself with John Randolph and John Taylor. He sat briefly on the General Court, 1805–06, and in the latter year he became chancellor for the Richmond district of the Superior Court of Chancery. In 1814 the Lynchburg district was added to his jurisdiction, and Taylor served as chancellor until the the court system was reorganized under the state constitution of 1831. He attended the Rockfish Gap Meeting in 1818 as a commissioner to help create the University of Virginia. In 1821 Taylor established a law school at Needham, his Cumberland County estate, which lasted nearly a decade. He owned six slaves in 1810 and fifty-eight in 1830. Taylor died at Needham (; ; W. Hamilton Bryson, ed., Legal Education in Virginia, 1779–1979: A Biographical Approach [1982], 589–95; ViU: Taylor Papers; ; Rockfish Gap Report of the University of Virginia Commissioners, 4 Aug. 1818, document 5 in a group of documents on The Founding of the University of Virginia: Rockfish Gap Meeting of the University of Virginia Commissioners, 1–4 Aug. 1818; DNA: RG 29, CS, Richmond, 1810, Cumberland Co., 1820, 1830; Richmond Enquirer, 28 Jan. 1836).
On 21 Dec. 1822 Taylor sent a copy of the enclosed Journal to James Madison (, Retirement Ser., 2:617–8).
Index Entries
- Jefferson, Thomas; Books & Library; requested to review books search
- Jefferson, Thomas; Books & Library; works sent to search
- Journal of the Law-School, and of the Moot-Court Attached To It, at Needham, in Virginia (C. Taylor) search
- law; books on search
- law; study of search
- Madison, James (1751–1836); works sent to search
- schools and colleges; law search
- Taylor, Creed; and establishment of University of Virginia search
- Taylor, Creed; identified search
- Taylor, Creed; Journal of the Law-School, and of the Moot-Court Attached To It, at Needham, in Virginia search
- Taylor, Creed; letter from search
- Virginia, University of; Establishment; TJ as founder of search