James French Strother

James French Strother (September 4, 1811 – September 20, 1860) was a nineteenth-century American politician and lawyer from a noted Virginia political family of lawyers, military officers, and judges. He was the grandson of French Strother, who served in the Continental Congress and in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly, the son of Congressman George Strother, and the grandfather of Congressman James F. Strother, a West Virginia politician. As a member of the Whig Party representing Virginia, he contributed to the legislative process during one term in the United States Congress, participating in the democratic process and representing the interests of his constituents during a significant period in American history.

Strother was born in Culpeper County, Virginia, to lawyer George F. Strother and his wife, the former Sarah Green Williams. Through both parents he was connected to the First Families of Virginia, and his lineage was steeped in public service. His grandfather French Strother had represented Culpeper County for decades in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly after serving in the Continental Congress. His father served in the Virginia House of Delegates and the U.S. House of Representatives before moving with his family and enslaved laborers to Missouri after voting for the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Against this backdrop of political engagement and westward movement, James French Strother received a private education in both Virginia and Missouri.

Strother pursued higher education at St. Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri, before reading law, following the professional path established by earlier generations of his family. After completing his legal studies, he returned to Virginia and was admitted to the bar. He established his legal practice in Washington, the county seat of Rappahannock County, on the eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains. As his wealth grew, both through his practice and inheritance, he appears to have invested in land and enslaved labor. The 1840 federal census records him as owning four enslaved persons, in addition to a household of seven white persons, five of them children. However, he does not appear in the surviving slave schedules for Rappahannock County in 1850 or 1860, and Virginia state slave censuses for that period are not available online.

Strother married Elizabeth Richardson, with whom he had a large family. They had seven sons and one daughter who survived to adulthood: George French Strother (1834–1877), John R. Strother (1837–after 1850), Philip Williams Strother (1839–1922), who later became a lieutenant in the Confederate Army and a judge; James French Strother (1841–1927), who became a lawyer and later a congressman from West Virginia; William Henry Strother (1843–1862), who served as a sergeant in the Confederate forces; John Hunt Strother (1845–1862); William Johnson Strother (1849–1942), who became a physician; Maj. Lewis Harvie Strother (1855–1908); and Sarah Williams Strother (1854–1932). The family’s subsequent prominence in law, politics, and military service reflected the enduring influence of the Strother name in Virginia and, later, in West Virginia.

Strother entered elective office in 1840, when he won election to the Virginia House of Delegates representing Rappahannock County. He was reelected multiple times and served continuously in the House of Delegates until 1851. During his tenure, he aligned with the Whig Party, which at the time advocated internal improvements, a cautious approach to territorial expansion, and a balanced relationship between federal and state authority. When the Whigs gained control of the House of Delegates in 1847, Strother was chosen Speaker of the House, a position he held until the party lost its majority in 1848. Thereafter, the Whigs remained the minority party in Virginia for the rest of his life. In 1850 he further distinguished himself as a delegate to the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1850, representing Fauquier and Rappahannock counties alongside fellow lawyers Robert E. Scott and Samuel Chilton. That convention addressed apportionment, suffrage, and other structural issues in Virginia’s state government during a period of growing sectional tension.

In the wake of his state-level prominence, voters of Virginia’s 9th congressional district elected Strother as a Whig to the United States House of Representatives in 1850. He defeated fellow Whig Jeremiah Morton and served one term in the Thirty-second Congress, from March 4, 1851, to March 3, 1853. His congressional service coincided with the turbulent decade preceding the Civil War, marked by debates over the Compromise of 1850, enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, and the intensifying national dispute over slavery and sectional power. Although specific details of his committee assignments and floor activity are sparse, his tenure placed him among the Southern Whigs attempting to navigate the increasingly polarized national political landscape. In the election for the Thirty-third Congress, he was defeated by Democrat John Letcher, a future governor of Virginia, and thus concluded his federal legislative career after a single term.

After leaving Congress, Strother resumed the practice of law, this time in Culpeper, Virginia. He continued his legal work there until his death near Culpeper on September 20, 1860. He was interred in the Masonic Cemetery. Within a year of his death, the American Civil War began, and the region in which he had lived and practiced law became a contested and devastated theater of war. His cousin James E. Slaughter became a brigadier general in the Confederate Army, and several of Strother’s sons volunteered to fight for the Confederate States of America. Philip Williams Strother served as a lieutenant, William Henry Strother as a sergeant, and George F. Strother as an assistant commissary officer; William Henry died of disease in 1862, while the others survived the conflict. Union forces gained control of the Rappahannock–Rapidan area after the Battle of Culpeper Court House in September 1863, and what had been Strother’s political base was heavily damaged before General Robert E. Lee’s final survey from Clark Mountain on May 4, 1864.

Despite the upheavals of war and reconstruction, the Strother family’s political and legal tradition endured. Philip Williams Strother became a Virginia judge in Pearisburg, extending the family’s judicial legacy into the postwar era. James French Strother’s grandson and namesake, James F. Strother, served as a lawyer and later as a congressman from the newly formed state of West Virginia, while another descendant of the same name became a Virginia circuit judge in Rappahannock County. Through these successive generations, the influence of James French Strother’s lineage continued to shape public life in Virginia and beyond.