Joseph Tate (1796–1839), attorney and public official, was born in Richmond. He was practicing law in Philadelphia by 1818. Having returned to Richmond, in 1823 Tate published there A Digest of the Laws of Virginia, which are of a permanent character and general operation; illustrated by Judical Decisions: to which is added, an Index of the Names of the Cases in the Virginia Reporters. He served as mayor of Richmond from 1826 until his death. Tate owned three slaves in 1830 (John Adems Paxton, The Philadelphia Directory and Register, for 1818 [(Philadelphia, 1818)]; W. Asbury Christian, Richmond: Her Past and Present [1912], esp. 546; DNA: RG 29, CS, Richmond, 1830; Richmond Enquirer, 28 May 1839; gravestone inscription in Shockoe Hill Cemetery, Richmond).

Benjamin Tate (ca. 1765–1823), tanner, currier, and public official, was born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. By 1798 he moved permanently to Richmond, where he owned a leather tanning and currying business. Tate sat on the city’s common council, 1803–12, was chosen an elector for the 1808 presidential election, and served one term as mayor of Richmond, 1811–12. He was a founding director of the Farmers’ Bank of Virginia in 1812 and an officer of the Mutual Assurance Society in 1821. Tate owned six slaves in 1810 and two a decade later (Richmond Virginia Argus, 20 Nov. 1798, 9 Apr. 1803, 7 Apr. 1804, 9 Aug. 1808; Christian, Richmond, esp. 83, 546; Richmond Enquirer, 6 Apr. 1805, 5 Apr. 1811; Richmond Virginia Patriot, 7 Apr. 1812; The Richmond Directory, Register and Almanac, for the Year 1819 [Richmond, 1819], 19, 71; DNA: RG 29, CS, Richmond, 1810, 1820; Richmond Enquirer, 17 July 1821, 29 Apr. 1823; Henrico Co. Will Book, 6:139–40).

In the enclosed prospectus, not found, but also printed in the Richmond Enquirer, 9 Jan. 1823, Thomas Ritchie & Company proposed to publish Joseph Tate’s Digest of the Laws of Virginia, which would use the Revised Code of 1819 to supply those state laws “of a permanent character and general operation,” adding legislation enacted up to the date of publication and the texts of the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Virginia state constitution; noted that, in order to safeguard against readers relying only on the text of each law, the work would also include “the judicial construction of the words of the Legislature, by the Court of Appeals, and by the General Court; referring, occasionally, to the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, on the Virginia laws, and to analogous cases, from the judicial tribunals of England, and of our sister States”; anticipated that the digest “will be useful to our citizens, generally,” as well as “to those professional gentlemen who attend the circuits; to our inferior courts; and, to professional gentlemen of our sister States”; stipulated that the volume would run between 500 and 650 pages, including an index, cost subscribers $5 and nonsubscribers $6.50, and be printed as soon as three hundred subscribers were obtained; and concluded with a testimonial to the proposed publication’s utility signed by Francis Brooke, William H. Cabell, John W. Green, and William Brockenbrough. When Tate published the work later this year, the Richmond firm of Shepherd & Pollard printed it.