Charles Broadwater (1722 or 1723–20 March 1806), planter, was the only child of Charles Broadwater and Elizabeth Semmes Turley West Broadwater. Born in that part of Stafford County that became Fairfax County in 1742, he grew up in an extended family that included children born of his mother's two previous marriages. His father was a former sea captain who made several trips to Virginia between 1710 and 1717, settled in Stafford County, and died in 1733 or 1734, leaving his son 1,700 acres. By the 1760s Broadwater ranked with Fairfax County's largest land- and slaveholders.

Broadwater became a justice of the peace in the 1740s and served until 1803. He had an eye for good terrain and a talent for negotiation with landholders, gained perhaps when he served as a chain carrier for his uncle Guy Broadwater on surveying expeditions to the frontier areas as early as 1741. The county court accordingly directed him almost every year from 1749 to 1790 to plan and supervise the route and construction of new roads in the county's northern quadrant. He also worked to improve old routes and maintain existing roadbeds and inspected, repaired, and maintained the Broad Run and Difficult Run bridges that linked Fairfax to points west.

When Broadwater accepted public offices he served with loyalty and diligence. As a justice he sat with remarkable regularity and attended more than 500 times out of 1,200 sessions. Broadwater held the post of county coroner from 1747 until 1803. He also served two terms as sheriff, from 1751 to 1753 and 1755 to 1757. After accepting a militia commission in 1749, Broadwater served in the field in 1756 during the French and Indian War, became a major in 1758, and had risen to colonel by 1789. He also sat continuously from 1744 to 1797 on the Truro and Fairfax Parish vestries.

As befitted a leading planter and officeholder, Broadwater supervised repair and maintenance of official tobacco warehouses, first at the Falls of the Potomac and later at Alexandria's Hunting Creek. When he and other tobacco planters turned more to grain cultivation, he set up a gristmill.

Broadwater signed the 1770 nonimportation association that George Washington publicly posted to pressure British merchants to persuade Parliament to repeal obnoxious taxes. In 1774 Broadwater and Washington represented Fairfax County in the first Virginia Convention, and the next year voters elected Broadwater to the second, third, and fourth of the Revolutionary Conventions.

In the summer of 1774 Broadwater and George Washington were elected to represent Fairfax County in the House of Burgesses. When the assembly met in June 1775 Washington was attending the Continental Congress and Broadwater was the only member from Fairfax County in Williamsburg. He served on the Committees of Propositions and Grievances and on Religion, and he was a member of special committees appointed to revise a draft bill for improving the navigation of the Potomac River and to prepare a bill to regulate smallpox inoculation in Virginia. Following the American Revolution, Broadwater represented the county in the House of Delegates in 1782 and 1783.

Between 1745 and 1750 Broadwater married Ann Amelia Markham Pearson, a widow with two sons and two daughters. They had a son and four daughters. Following his wife's death on 29 June 1796, Broadwater married Sarah Ann Harris, the widow of Benjamin Harris. They had no children. Charles Broadwater died on 20 March 1806 at Springfield, his Fairfax County home in what became Vienna, and was buried there.

Sources Consulted:
Deposition by Broadwater giving age as "48 or 49" on 19 Sept. 1771 in Fairfax Co. Land Records of Long Standing (1742–1770), 347–349; estate records of father in Prince William Co. Will Book, C:8–11, 33–34, 86–88, 189, 228–230; Donald A. Wise, "Some Eighteenth Century Family Profiles," Arlington Historical Magazine 6 (Oct. 1977): 18–20; Beth Mitchell and Donald M. Sweig, An Interpretive Historical Map of Fairfax County in 1760 (1987), 24, 67; service in county offices documented in Fairfax Co. Court Order Books, 1749–1803; William J. Van Schreeven, Robert L. Scribner, and Brent Tarter, eds., Revolutionary Virginia, the Road to Independence: A Documentary Record (1973–1983), vols. 1–6; will and estate inventory and accounts in Fairfax Co. Will Book, I-1:471–475, L-1:84–92, 112–118; age given as eighty-six in obituary in Alexandria Daily Advertiser, 21 Mar. 1806.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by James D. Munson.

How to cite this page:
James D. Munson, "Charles Broadwater (1722 or 1723–1806)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2001 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Broadwater_Charles, accessed [today's date]).

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