Christopher Greenup

Christopher Greenup (c. 1750 – April 27, 1818) was an American politician who served as one of Kentucky’s first two U.S. Representatives and as the third governor of Kentucky. He was most likely born in Fairfax County in the Virginia Colony around 1750. Little is known about his family background, but his early education was attained in local schools. As a young man he learned surveying and studied law under Colonel Charles Binns in Charles City County, Virginia, acquiring the legal and technical training that would later underpin his public career on the Kentucky frontier.

During the American Revolutionary War, Greenup entered the Continental service and served as a lieutenant in Grayson’s Additional Continental Regiment. He may have seen action at the battles of Brandywine and Germantown. He resigned his Continental commission during the Valley Forge encampment in 1778, but continued his military involvement as a colonel in the Virginia militia. After the war, in 1781 he moved west and helped settle the trans-Appalachian regions of Virginia, particularly the area that would become Lincoln County, Kentucky, where he worked as a surveyor and land speculator. He was admitted to practice law in the Lincoln County court in 1782. When Virginia organized Kentucky County and later the district court at Harrodsburg, he was admitted to the bar there in 1783 and served as clerk of the district court from 1785 to 1792. In 1783 he became one of the original trustees of Transylvania Seminary, later Transylvania University, and he purchased two lots in Lexington, serving as clerk to the town’s trustees.

Greenup’s political and civic prominence grew rapidly in the 1780s. In 1785 he was elected to represent Fayette County for a single term in the Virginia House of Delegates. During that service he sat on a committee with Benjamin Logan and James Garrard charged with recommending further divisions of the Kentucky district and revising laws and surveys related to land and water rights. The committee recommended creation of three new counties—Bourbon, Madison, and Mercer—and when Mercer County was formed later in 1785, Greenup was appointed a justice there. In 1786 he served as quartermaster in General Benjamin Logan’s expedition against the Shawnees in the Ohio country. At the same time he continued to practice law in Fayette County and engaged in a variety of intellectual and economic enterprises. He was a founding member of the Danville Political Club, joined the Kentucky Society for Promoting Useful Knowledge in 1787 alongside future governors Isaac Shelby and James Garrard and future Supreme Court justice Thomas Todd, helped organize the Kentucky Manufacturing Society in 1789, and later served on the Kentucky River Company, which sought to improve navigation and infrastructure on the Kentucky River. On July 9, 1787, during a brief return to Virginia, he married Mary Catherine (“Cathy”) Pope of Hanover County; the couple had two children, Nancy and William.

Greenup played an active role in the movement to separate Kentucky from Virginia and secure statehood. He served as clerk of the first Kentucky statehood convention at Danville in 1784 and was elected a delegate to the second and sixth conventions in 1785 and 1788, respectively. He was also a trustee of the city of Danville in 1787. Although biographer H. E. Everman later observed that Greenup’s lack of oratorical flair limited his prominence in the debates, his legal training and legislative experience made him an important working member of the conventions. When Kentucky was admitted to the Union on June 1, 1792, Greenup moved to the new capital at Frankfort. In recognition of his efforts on behalf of statehood, he was chosen as an elector for the state’s first U.S. senators and governor and served in the first Kentucky Senate. He was appointed to the court of oyer and terminer but resigned almost immediately to accept election to the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming one of Kentucky’s first two representatives in Congress.

Greenup served in the U.S. House of Representatives for three successive terms, from November 9, 1792, to March 3, 1797. After leaving Congress he returned to state politics. In 1798 he was elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives, representing Mercer County, and from 1799 to 1802 he served as clerk of the Kentucky Senate. He was a candidate for governor in 1800 in a four-way race with James Garrard, Benjamin Logan, and Thomas Todd. Greenup carried a majority of the vote in fifteen counties—just one fewer than Garrard—but Garrard’s strength in the more populous central Kentucky counties gave him 8,390 votes to Greenup’s 6,746, with Logan receiving 3,996 and Todd 2,166. Governor Garrard subsequently appointed Greenup judge of the circuit court in 1802. When the Kentucky Senate refused to confirm Secretary of State Harry Toulmin as registrar of the land office, Garrard nominated Greenup for that post, but at Greenup’s request the nomination was withdrawn so that he could prepare another campaign for the governorship.

On June 5, 1804, Greenup resigned his circuit judgeship to run again for governor. By this time he enjoyed such broad popularity that he faced no opposition and was elected unopposed. He served as governor of Kentucky from September 4, 1804, to September 1, 1808. His administration saw the chartering of the Bank of Kentucky and the Ohio Canal Company; Greenup himself became a director of the Bank of Kentucky in 1807. He advocated an ambitious program that included the establishment of public education and reforms of the state militia, the courts, the revenue system, and the penal code, but he was unable to secure enactment of much of this agenda. His term was marred by accusations, promoted by a partisan Frankfort newspaper, that he had been involved in the Burr Conspiracy to detach western territories and align Kentucky with Spain prior to its separation from Virginia. Greenup vigorously and successfully rebutted these charges, and to guard against any potential threat from the conspiracy he deployed the Kentucky militia along the Ohio River, though the danger had largely dissipated by 1807.

Greenup’s personal life was marked by tragedy during his governorship. On October 22, 1807, his wife Mary Catherine died in the Governor’s Mansion in Frankfort. Local legend later held that her ghostly image appeared in clock faces and mirrors within the mansion. After leaving office in 1808, Greenup gradually withdrew from the front rank of politics, though he continued to hold public responsibilities. He served as a presidential elector for the Democratic-Republican ticket of James Madison and George Clinton, reflecting his continued alignment with the dominant Jeffersonian party in Kentucky. In 1812 he became a justice of the peace in Franklin County. That August, Kentucky Secretary of State Martin D. Hardin recommended to Governor Isaac Shelby that Greenup be appointed Assistant Secretary of State. Shelby made the appointment, and when Hardin resigned on December 15, 1812, Shelby nominated Greenup as Secretary of State. The Kentucky Senate confirmed him on February 3, 1813, and he served in that capacity until his resignation on March 13, 1813.

In his later years Greenup remained a respected elder statesman but took a less active role in public life. Afflicted with rheumatism, he traveled to the Blue Lick Springs Resort in Kentucky seeking relief. There he died on April 27, 1818. He was buried in the Frankfort Cemetery. In recognition of his contributions as a Revolutionary officer, frontier lawyer, statehood advocate, congressman, and governor, Greenup County, Kentucky, and its county seat of Greenup were named in his honor, ensuring his continued association with the state whose early development he had helped to shape.