Paul Carrington (5 March 1733–22 June 1818), member of the Convention of 1776 and of the Convention of 1788 and judge of the Virginia Court of Appeals, was the son of George Carrington (1711–1785) and Anne Mayo Carrington and was born in the southern portion of Goochland County that in 1749 became Cumberland County. His father, an emigrant from Barbados, was a surveyor and member of the House of Burgesses, and one of his younger brothers, Edward Carrington, was a member of the Confederation Congress. Details of Carrington's early education are unclear, but in 1750 he went to Lunenburg County to read law under Clement Read, then the county clerk and a member of the House of Burgesses. In May 1755 Carrington received a license to practice law, and on 1 October of that year he married Read's daughter, Margaret Read. They lived at Mulberry Hill on the Staunton River in the part of Lunenburg that in 1764 became Charlotte County. Before she died on 1 May 1766, they had two daughters and three sons, including George Carrington (1758–1809), who was a member of the Convention of 1788, and Paul Carrington (1764–1816), who briefly served as Speaker of the Senate of Virginia and was a judge of the General Court.

Soon after he began practicing law, Carrington was appointed king's attorney for Bedford County on 3 May 1756, and during the next twenty years he also served as king's attorney for several other counties, including Charlotte, Lunenburg, and Mecklenburg. He became a major in the Lunenburg County militia in 1761 and was a colonel in the Charlotte County militia in 1764. On 11 April 1772 the governor appointed him county lieutenant, or commander, of the Charlotte County militia. Carrington represented Charlotte County in the House of Burgesses from 1765 to 1776. He was a member of the Committees of Propositions and Grievances, of Privileges and Elections, of Religion, and to Examine the State of the Treasury. From 17 November 1772 until August 1776 Carrington was clerk of Halifax County. He was a founding trustee of Hampden-Sydney College and served on its board for forty-three years, from 1775 until his death in 1818.

Carrington consistently supported the colony's protests against British taxes on and regulation of American commerce during the 1770s, and in January 1775 he organized and was elected chair of the Charlotte County Committee formed to enforce the nonimportation resolutions that the Virginia Convention and the First Continental Congress had adopted and to prepare for the defense of the colony. Carrington represented Charlotte County at all five of the Revolutionary Conventions held between August 1774 and July 1776. On 17 August 1775 the Third Convention appointed him to the Virginia Committee of Safety that in effect governed the colony between September 1775 and July 1776. At the Fifth Convention, which met between 6 May and 5 July 1776, Carrington served on the Committee of Privileges and Elections and the committee charged with preparing a Virginia declaration of rights and the first Virginia constitution. Present for forty-seven days of the fifty-two-day convention, Carrington voted for independence, approval of the Declaration of Rights, and adoption of the Constitution of 1776.

Carrington represented Charlotte, Halifax, and Prince Edward Counties in the new Senate of Virginia during the 1776 and 1777–1778 assemblies. He chaired the Committee of Privileges and Elections during his first year and was ranking member during the second year. As one of the wealthiest and most respected men in Charlotte County, he was a natural choice to represent the county in the convention called in 1788 to consider the proposed constitution of the United States. He and his son George Carrington made one of two father-son pairs in the convention. Carrington attended every day from 2 June through 27 June 1788 and served on the Committee of Privileges and Elections and the committee to recommend amendments to the Constitution. He did not speak often during the proceedings, but on the first day he nominated his close friend Edmund Pendleton for president. Carrington voted against requiring amendment of the Constitution before ratification but supported restrictions on congressional taxing authority. Although he reportedly had reservations about the Constitution, he voted for ratification on 25 June 1788.

When the commonwealth established its first judicial system, the General Assembly elected Carrington on 23 January 1778 one of the original judges of the new General Court. As a member of the court, he was ex officio a judge of the Court of Appeals (consisting of members of the General Court, the High Court of Chancery, and the Court of Admiralty) after its creation in May 1779. Carrington was chief judge of the General Court from 1780 until 1788. When the state's judiciary was reorganized on 22 December 1788, he was one of the first five judges appointed to the new Court of Appeals. After forty-two years of public service and twenty-nine years as a judge, Carrington retired on 1 January 1807. He did not want to remain too long as some of his colleagues had done, holding on until their deaths.

Carrington was a quiet, unassuming jurist who rarely took the lead but preferred instead to cede that role to such strong-willed judges as Edmund Pendleton and Spencer Roane. Known for his impartiality, Carrington wrote opinions that were concise and direct, based more on practical judgment than on complicated legal learning. His integrity was so well respected that family members and biographers often recounted the story of how he settled the estate of his father. George Carrington died in 1785 without completing his will, leaving Paul Carrington heir to all of his father's estate, which included thousands of acres of land and more than £1,300 in personal property. Rather than keep the whole himself, Carrington tried to divide it among his siblings as his father had wished.

On 6 March 1792 Carrington married fifteen-year-old Priscilla Sims in Halifax County. Before she died on 15 September 1803, they had at least two sons, and their only daughter married Walter Coles, a five-term member of the House of Representatives. Following his retirement in 1807, Carrington returned to Mulberry Hill in Charlotte County. One of his last public acts was to serve as a presidential elector in 1808. Paul Carrington died at his estate on 22 June 1818 and was buried there between his two wives.

Sources Consulted:
Birth date in Carrington family Bible records, Peyton Rodes Carrington Collection, Accession 22517, Personal Papers Collection, Library of Virginia (LVA); birth and death dates from Paul Carrington family Bible as recorded in Agnes Gamble Carrington Marshall, comp., genealogical notes on the Carrington family (1861), Virginia Museum of History and Culture (VHMC), Richmond; birth date incorrectly adjusted for calendar change in Alexander Brown, The Cabells and Their Kin: A Memorial Volume of History, Biography, and Genealogy, 2d ed., rev. (1939), 223–226, and repeated in several other accounts; biographies in Cases Decided in the Court of Appeals of Virginia (4 Call), 8:xviii, Hugh Blair Grigsby, The Virginia Convention of 1776 (1855), 97–105, and Henry C. Riely, "Paul Carrington," Virginia State Bar Association Proceedings (1927), 450–464; Alice Read, The Reads and Their Relatives (1930), 119–122; confusion with namesake son in Grigsby, The History of the Virginia Federal Convention of 1788 (1890–1891), 2:369–370, repeated in several other accounts; Carrington Family Papers, LVA and VMHC; Lunenburg Co. Index to Marriage Bonds (1755); Halifax Co. Marriage Bonds Register, 1:25 (1792); Richmond Virginia Gazette, and General Advertiser, 4 Apr. 1792; Alfred J. Morrison, The College of Hampden-Sidney: Calendar of Board Minutes, 1776–1876 (1912), 171; Herbert Clarence Bradshaw, History of Hampden-Sydney College, vol. 1: From the Beginnings to the Year 1856 (1976), portrait plate xiv; Timothy S. Ailsworth et al., Charlotte County, Rich Indeed: A History from Prehistoric Times through the Civil War (1979), 279–281; numerous references in William J. Van Schreeven, Robert L. Scribner, and Brent Tarter, eds., Revolutionary Virginia, the Road to Independence: A Documentary Record (1973–1983), vols. 1–7, and 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); David John Mays, Edmund Pendleton, 1721–1803: A Biography (1952), 2:191, 228, 270, 274, 298–299, 348; Charlotte Co. Will Book, 4:195–196; obituary in Richmond Enquirer, 7 July 1818 (with variant death date of 23 June 1818).

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by John G. Deal.

How to cite this page:
John G. Deal, "Paul Carrington (1733–1818)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2006 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Carrington_Paul_1733-1818, accessed [today's date]).

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