John Dandridge (delegate)

He was the first son born to the former Mary Burbridge, the second wife of prominent lawyer, politician and planter Bartholomew Dandridge. His name honors his paternal grandfather, John Dandridge, also a prominent planter and politician in the area (serving as New Kent County's Clerk for 26 years), who had died two years earlier. His uncle William Dandridge and his family inherited the main "Chestnut Grove" plantation.^[2] His maternal grandfather Julius King Burbridge had acquired the nearby "Pamocra" plantation where this man lived most of his life (as did his paternal grandmother Frances Jones Dandridge from Chestnut Grove's sale in 1768 until her death in 1785), before moving to nearly Prince George County a few years before his death. As an adult this John Dandridge remembered spending considerable time at the nearby "Eltham" estate, the home of his aunt Anna Marie Dandridge Bassett (who died in 1777) and her husband, Burwell Bassett Sr. Eltham was one of several plantations inherited by John Bassett, who briefly served in the Virginia House of Delegates a decade before this man. His sister Judith Bassett married Peter Lyons, who became a member of the Virginia Supreme Court.^[3] Complicating matters, this John Dandridge also had two distant cousins of the same name: one born 1756 (one of the four sons of Capt. Nathaniel West Dandridge who served in the House of Burgesses from Hanover County) and one the son of Francis Dandridge and who with his brother William Dandridge III inherited and sold the Huntington estate in New Kent County.^[4]

This John Dandridge had three younger brothers, none of whom married. The most notable of them may have been Bartholomew Dandridge Jr. who became the personal secretary to President George Washington (whose wife, the former Martha Dandridge Custis, was their aunt) and then began a diplomatic career, dying as the American consul in Haiti in 1802. His brother William Dandridge worked many years as the cashier of the Bank of the United States in Richmond. Junius Burbridge Dandridge also died unmarried. Their three sisters all married. Martha Washington Dandridge to Scotland-born Dr. William Halyburton, Mary Dandridge to Mr. Willison, and Frances Dandridge to George Minge, brother of this man's wife.^[5] The family also included two elder half-sisters.

A member of the First Families of Virginia, this John Dandridge received an education appropriate to his class, then read law with his father's encouragement.

He married Rebecca Jones Minge, daughter of David Minge of Charles City County. Their daughter Lucy would marry James Walker Murdaugh of Williamsburg,^[6] who would serve in the House of Delegates representing Norfolk a decade after this man's death.