Edward Carrington (11 February 1749–28 October 1810), Continental army officer and member of the Confederation Congress, was born on his family plantation in the part of Goochland County that became Cumberland County later that year. He was the son of George Carrington (1711–1785), who emigrated from Barbados and became a major landowner, and Anne Mayo Carrington, and was also a younger brother of Paul Carrington (1733–1818), a member of the Conventions of 1776 and 1788 and a judge of the Virginia Court of Appeals. During the summer of 1771 Carrington traveled to Barbados to make arrangements to collect his father's part of an inheritance. He returned to Virginia in the autumn of 1772, studied law, and was licensed to practice in Cumberland County in June 1773.

In March 1775 Carrington accompanied his brother Paul Carrington to the second of the Revolutionary Conventions, which met in Richmond, and stood outside the Henrico Parish Church to watch Patrick Henry make his "liberty or death" speech. According to a tradition set down more than a century later, Carrington was so impressed that he stated then that he wished to be buried on the spot where he stood. In 1775 and 1776 he was a member of, and sometime secretary for, the Cumberland County Committee, which in the summer of 1775 sent him to Philadelphia to purchase gunpowder for the county militia. In the autumn of that year Carrington became captain of a company of minutemen that he recruited in Cumberland County, and in February 1776 the Virginia Committee of Safety commissioned him a second lieutenant in one of its new artillery companies.

On 30 November 1776 the Continental Congress named Carrington lieutenant colonel of the 1st Regiment of Virginia Artillery, his commission to date from the creation of the regiment on 26 November. Described by Thomas Jefferson as being "industrious but not always as discreet as well meaning," Carrington clashed with Governor Patrick Henry the following summer over the appointment of officers, for which he apologized after Congress threatened to dismiss him. Carrington had a distinguished and successful military career and became deputy quartermaster general in January 1781. As chief of artillery under Nathanael Greene later in the year, he commanded artillery at the Battles of Guilford Court House and Hobkirk's Hill, as well as at the siege of Yorktown. On 26 April 1782 Congress rejected Carrington's application to become commander of a Pennsylvania artillery regiment because that state reserved the right to make the appointment.

In the spring of 1783 when Carrington's service in the army concluded, he returned to Cumberland County and the following year was elected to the first of two consecutive one-year terms in the House of Delegates. He was a member of the Committees for Courts of Justice and of Propositions and Grievances in the May 1784 session and in the session of October 1785 added to those two assignments a seat on the Committee of Privileges and Elections. In June 1784 the General Assembly designated Carrington to present to the Confederation Congress the state's claim for compensation for wartime expenditures in the Northwest. The next November he fell one vote short of being elected to the Council of State.

On 15 November 1785 the assembly chose Carrington as one of Virginia's five delegates to Congress. Reelected in November 1786 and October 1787, he attended from 3 March to 4 December 1786, from 26 March to 10 November 1787, and from early in May to 10 October 1788. Service in Congress reinforced the nationalist outlook that Carrington and many other Continental army officers had developed during the war. He joined attempts to reform the nation's militia and to strengthen its finances. Although he had a few reservations about the proposed constitution submitted to the states for ratification late in 1787, Carrington supported the document and in the spring of 1788 sought election to the Virginia ratification convention from Powhatan County, but Patrick Henry's numerous local allies who opposed the Constitution defeated him

That defeat was the result of Carrington's advocacy of the Constitution, not of personal unpopularity. A few weeks later Powhatan County voters elected him to the House of Delegates. By then Carrington had returned to New York, where Congress was meeting, and therefore he missed the summer session of the assembly that year, but he kept Virginia's supporters of the Constitution posted on the progress of ratification in the northern states. On 24 October 1788, shortly after Carrington took his seat in the assembly and was appointed to the Committees of Commerce, for Courts of Justice, of Privileges and Elections, and of Propositions and Grievances, Patrick Henry engineered a vote depriving him of his seat in the House of Delegates, based on a law forbidding any person to be simultaneously a member of the General Assembly and of Congress. Carrington was immediately reelected and named to the Committees of Claims, of Privileges and Elections, and of Propositions and Grievances. During the final weeks of the session he opposed calls for a second constitutional convention. In 1789 he won election for a second term as a delegate from Powhatan County and was again assigned to the Committees for Courts of Justice and of Privileges and Elections. He had made an unsuccessful campaign for presidential elector earlier that year but lost to an opponent of the Constitution. Carrington might have run for a seat in the House of Representatives in 1789 had he believed that an advocate of the Constitution could have been elected.

An occasional visitor at Mount Vernon, Carrington advised George Washington on appointments and Virginia politics. On 26 September 1789 the president appointed him United States marshal for the District of Virginia. In that capacity Carrington administered the 1790 federal census in the state. He received the more lucrative office of supervisor of federal excise revenue for Virginia in the spring of 1791, and his old army friend Alexander Hamilton, then secretary of the treasury, later seriously considered him for appointment as comptroller of the Treasury Department. Although Carrington shared the reservations of his good friend James Madison about federal assumption of the state debts, he supported Hamilton's financial program, including federal chartering of a national bank. Along with John Marshall, he organized a public meeting in Richmond on 17 August 1793 to condemn the French minister, Edmond-Charles-Édouard Genet, who had encouraged anti-Federalist opposition to Washington's administration, and to defend Washington's proclamation of neutrality during the conflict between France and Great Britain. In 1795 Carrington declined presidential invitations to serve as a commissioner supervising construction of public buildings in the District of Columbia and as secretary of war. Three years later when possible war with France threatened, Washington suggested that Carrington be appointed quartermaster general of the United States Army.

On 8 December 1792 Carrington married a childless Richmond widow, Elizabeth Jaquelin Ambler Brent, daughter of Jaquelin Ambler, then treasurer of Virginia. She helped found the Female Humane Association of the City of Richmond. They had no children. Carrington had moved to Richmond by then, and he became one of the city's leading citizens. He was a charter member and officer of the Society of the Cincinnati, joined the Henrico Parish vestry in 1797, was a founding trustee in 1803 of the Richmond Academy, and was an original member of the board of the Bank of Virginia, chartered in 1804. In June 1808 he joined other Richmond citizens in forming a committee to promote manufacturing. Carrington served as mayor of Richmond for one-year terms beginning in April 1807 and April 1809, and he was the foreman of the trial jury that on 1 September 1807 acquitted Aaron Burr of treason.

Edward Carrington died at his home in Richmond on 28 October 1810. The city council held a massive funeral, featuring a procession of state, city, and church officials. Carrington was buried outside the east entrance of the Henrico Parish (later Saint John's Episcopal) Church, near where he had stood listening to Patrick Henry in March 1775.

Sources Consulted:
Garland Evans Hopkins, "The Life of Edward Carrington, A Brief Sketch," Americana 34 (1940): 458–474; Charles Konigsberg, "Edward Carrington, 1748–1810, 'Child of the Revolution': A Study of the Public Man in Young America" (Ph.D. diss., Princeton, 1966), with bibliography of manuscripts; birth date and extensive biographical notes in Carrington family Bible records, Peyton Rodes Carrington Collection, Accession 22517, Personal Papers Collection, Library of Virginia (LVA); Carrington correspondence and documents in several collections at Library of Congress, Library of Virginia, University of Virginia, Virginia Museum of History and Culture, and the Papers of Continental Congress, Record Group 360 National Archives and Records Administration; James C. Brandow, "A Young Virginian's Visit to Barbados, 1771–1772," Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society35 (1976): 73–86; William Wirt Henry, Patrick Henry: Life, Correspondence and Speeches (1891), 1:270; William J. Van Schreeven, Robert L. Scribner, and Brent Tarter, eds., Revolutionary Virginia, the Road to Independence: A Documentary Record (1973–1983); Richard K. Showman et al., eds., The Papers of General Nathanael Greene (1976– ); Harold C. Syrett et al., eds., The Papers of Alexander Hamilton (1961–1987); Julian P. Boyd et al., eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (1950– ), quotation on 10:225; John P. Kaminski et al., eds., The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution: Ratification of the Constitution by the States, vols. 8–10: Virginia (1988–1993); William T. Hutchinson et al., eds., The Papers of James Madison (1962–1991); Herbert A. Johnson et al., eds., The Papers of John Marshall (1974–2006); Paul H. Smith et al., eds., Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774–1789 (1976–2000), vols. 23–25; W. W. Abbot, Dorothy Twohig, et al., eds., The Papers of George Washington: Confederation Series (1992–1997); Dorothy Twohig, W. W. Abbot, et al., eds., The Papers of George Washington: Presidential Series (1987– ); W. W. Abbot, Dorothy Twohig, et al., eds., The Papers of George Washington: Retirement Series (1998–1999); Henrico Co. Marriage Bonds; Richmond Virginia Gazette, and General Advertiser, 12 Dec. 1792; Virginia Cavalcade 36 (1987): 103 (portrait); obituaries and accounts of funeral in Richmond Enquirer, 30 Oct. 1810, 2 Nov. 1810 and Richmond Virginia Patriot, 30 Oct. 1810, 2 Nov. 1810 and Richmond Virginia Argus, 30 Oct. 1810.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Stuart Leibiger.

How to cite this page:
Stuart Leibiger, "Edward Carrington (1749–1810)" Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2025 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Carrington_Edward, accessed [today's date]).

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