George Coke Dromgoole

General George Coke Dromgoole (May 15, 1797 – April 27, 1847), nicknamed the “Brunswick Lion,” was a nineteenth-century Virginia lawyer, military officer, planter, and Democratic politician who served in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly representing his native Brunswick County, as well as in the United States House of Representatives representing first Virginia’s 4th congressional district and later Virginia’s 2nd congressional district. A prominent figure in Southside Virginia politics during the Jacksonian and antebellum eras, he was the youngest son of Irish-born pioneer Methodist circuit rider and patriot Rev. Edward Dromgoole and his wife Rebecca Walton (or Wallton), and he was the uncle of Congressman Alexander Dromgoole Sims of South Carolina.

Dromgoole was born in Lawrenceville, the county seat of Brunswick County, Virginia. His father, Edward Dromgoole, was born in County Sligo, Ireland, in 1751 and trained as a linen weaver before converting from Roman Catholicism to Methodism, then a reform movement within the Church of England. This conversion caused discord with his family, and by about 1770 he had emigrated to Frederick, Maryland, where he worked as a tailor while studying for the Methodist ministry under the Irish-born Rev. Robert Strawbridge, who had established a religious school in New Windsor, Maryland, in 1763. Assigned first to the Baltimore Circuit and then the Kent Circuit, Rev. Dromgoole became in 1775 one of four Methodist preachers appointed to the new Brunswick Circuit, which covered Southside Virginia and parts of North Carolina. A noted patriot, he is remembered for reading the Declaration of Independence aloud in North Carolina. In 1777 he married Rebecca Walton, whom he had converted, and her father gave the couple a 200‑acre farm in Brunswick County as a wedding present. By 1784 Rev. Dromgoole had largely ceased extensive circuit riding, concentrating on chapels near his home and operating a store he called “Sligo.” In the mid‑1790s he financed the construction of a house on another plantation he named “Canaan.” Although Methodism’s founder, John Wesley, and Rev. Strawbridge opposed slavery, Brunswick County’s first personal property tax list in 1782 recorded John Walton as owning 12 enslaved people and taxed Edward Dromgoole on 7 enslaved people, reflecting the entrenched slaveholding society into which George Coke Dromgoole was born. The youngest of six sons and two daughters who survived to adulthood (two other children died in infancy), he was raised on these plantations in Brunswick County, received an education appropriate to the planter class, and read law in preparation for a legal career.

After completing his legal studies, Dromgoole was admitted to the bar and established a private legal practice in southern Virginia, also handling matters that extended into neighboring areas of North Carolina. Alongside his legal work, he became active in the local militia, ultimately achieving the rank of brigadier general, a title by which he was commonly known. As a planter, he participated fully in the slave-based agricultural economy of Southside Virginia; the 1840 federal census, the last taken during his lifetime, recorded him as owning 20 enslaved persons. He was also known for breeding racehorses, the most famous of which was “Wagner,” and he developed a reputation for heavy drinking. Contemporary accounts later claimed that he declined an offer to run for vice president on a ticket with William Henry Harrison in 1840 because it was conditioned on his abstaining from alcohol.

Dromgoole’s political career began at the state level. Brunswick County voters elected him to the Virginia House of Delegates, a part‑time position, and he served from 1823 to 1826. He then won election to the Virginia Senate, where he served from 1826 to 1835, representing his region during a period of growing sectional and partisan realignment. In 1829 he was chosen as a delegate to the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1829–1830, which addressed issues of representation, suffrage, and the balance of power between eastern and western counties. Identifying with the Jacksonian movement and later the Democratic Party, he became a leading voice for his Southside constituency, which was dominated by slaveholding planters.

In 1834, running as a Jacksonian Democrat, Dromgoole defeated Whig James H. Gholson to represent Virginia’s 4th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives. He took his seat in the Twenty‑fourth Congress on March 4, 1835, and served continuously in that district through the Twenty‑sixth Congress, until March 3, 1841. In the 1835 election he received 55.65 percent of the vote against Gholson; he was re‑elected unopposed in 1837; and in 1839 he was re‑elected with 57.12 percent of the vote, again defeating Gholson. His service in Congress, totaling six terms overall, occurred during a significant period in American history marked by debates over banking, internal improvements, territorial expansion, and slavery. As a Democratic representative from Virginia, he participated in the legislative process and represented the interests of his constituents in these national controversies.

Dromgoole’s congressional career was marred by a violent personal episode that influenced his political trajectory. In early November 1837 he fought a duel with Daniel Dugger, the owner of a hotel in Lawrenceville, during which Dromgoole shot Dugger, who died 21 days later. Although Dromgoole was re‑elected to Congress in 1837 and again in 1839, many contemporaries complained that Dugger had been unfairly urged into the duel. The lingering public disapproval contributed to his decision not to stand for re‑election in 1840. In the years that followed, he reportedly made temperance pledges in 1843 and 1844 and sought to atone in part by providing financial support to Dugger’s widow and by funding the education of Dugger’s sons, Macon and John. John Dugger may later have represented Brunswick County in the Virginia House of Delegates immediately after the Civil War, a testament to the enduring local connections between the families.

After a brief absence from national office, Dromgoole returned to Congress representing a different constituency. In 1842 he was elected as a Democrat to the United States House of Representatives from Virginia’s 2nd congressional district. Beginning with the Twenty‑eighth Congress on March 4, 1843, he defeated Whig William Robertson with 87.72 percent of the vote. He was re‑elected in 1845 with 56.97 percent of the vote, defeating Whig George W. Bolling, and again in 1847 with 50.24 percent of the vote, once more defeating Bolling. In total, he thus served in the House from 1835 to 1841 and from 1843 until his death in 1847, contributing to the work of Congress during the administrations of Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, and James K. Polk. His later terms coincided with the annexation of Texas, the Mexican–American War, and intensifying national disputes over the expansion of slavery, in which he aligned with the pro‑slavery Democratic position typical of his region.

George Coke Dromgoole died in office on April 27, 1847, at his estate in Brunswick County, Virginia, while still serving as the representative of Virginia’s 2nd congressional district. He was interred in the family cemetery south of the Meherrin River in Brunswick County. In recognition of his service in the national legislature, a cenotaph was erected in his honor at the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C., placing him among the members of the United States Congress who died while in office between 1790 and 1899.