John Critcher

John Critcher (March 11, 1820 – September 27, 1901) was a U.S. Representative from Virginia and a prominent lawyer, legislator, Confederate officer, and judge whose public career spanned the antebellum, Civil War, Reconstruction, and post-Reconstruction eras. A member of the Democratic 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.

Critcher was born at Oak Grove in Westmoreland County, Virginia, on March 11, 1820, to John Critcher and his wife, the former Sally Winter Covington. He had a younger brother, Henry Payson Critcher (1826–1904). His mother died shortly after the birth of a daughter, Sarah, who herself died in infancy, leaving the two sons to be raised without their mother. Critcher attended Brent’s Preparatory School and then continued his education in Charlottesville, Virginia, at the University of Virginia, from which he graduated in 1839. Seeking further intellectual and cultural training, he pursued higher studies in France for three years, an experience that broadened his education beyond the United States and was notable for a young Virginian of his generation.

Upon his return to Virginia, Critcher read law and was admitted to the bar in 1842. He commenced the practice of law in Westmoreland County, where he became an established attorney and planter in the Northern Neck region. His family’s plantation interests included “Waterview,” where his father died on November 10, 1857, in Hampton, Virginia. That same year, 1857, Critcher entered electoral politics at the national level when he ran for the U.S. House of Representatives on the American Party (Know-Nothing) ticket; he was defeated in that race by Democrat Muscoe R. H. Garnett. About three years after his father’s death, Critcher married Elizabeth Thomasia Kennon Whiting. Their first daughter, Elizabeth Whiting Critcher (1858–1863), died in childhood, but several of their other children survived to adulthood: Anne Wythe Mallory Critcher Gatewood (1860–1924), their son John Critcher (1861–1939), born at the plantation “Audley” in Oak Grove, Louisa Kennon Critcher (1866–1939), and the painter Catharine Carter Critcher (1868–1964), who later achieved distinction in the arts.

As sectional tensions deepened, Critcher entered state politics. He served in the Virginia State Senate in 1861 and was also a member of the Virginia secession convention that year, participating in the deliberations that led the Commonwealth to leave the Union. During the American Civil War, he enlisted in the Confederate States Army and served in the cavalry arm. He rose from the rank of major to lieutenant colonel in the 15th Virginia Cavalry, reflecting both his commitment to the Confederate cause and his leadership responsibilities in the field. His wartime service placed him among those Virginia political figures who combined legislative experience with active military command.

After the war, Critcher resumed public service under the reconstituted state government. The Virginia General Assembly appointed him judge of the eighth judicial circuit, recognizing his legal experience and standing at the bar. However, his judicial tenure was cut short by Congressional Reconstruction. Under a resolution dated February 18, 1869, which required the removal from office within thirty days of anyone who had borne arms against the United States, Critcher was dismissed from his judgeship. With the end of Reconstruction and the restoration of local control in Virginia, he later returned to the bench as a judge in Alexandria, Virginia, by 1894, reflecting his continued influence and the changing political climate of the postwar South.

Critcher’s most prominent federal service came in the early 1870s. When former Union officer Richard S. Ayer declined to run for re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives, Critcher was elected as a Democrat to the Forty-second Congress. He was chosen unopposed in the 1870 election and served from March 4, 1871, to March 3, 1873. As a member of the Democratic Party representing Virginia, he contributed to the legislative process during his single term, representing a district in the Northern Neck during the complex period of Reconstruction, when issues of readmission, civil rights, economic recovery, and the reintegration of former Confederate states dominated national politics. His service placed him among those Southern Democrats who worked to reassert local and regional interests in the federal legislature after the Civil War.

Following his term in Congress, Critcher returned to state politics. Northern Neck voters again elected him to the Virginia Senate, then still a part-time body, and he served another four-year term from 1873 to 1877. At the conclusion of this service he was succeeded by William Mayo. During these years he continued to balance public duties with his private affairs. The 1880 census recorded him as operating a farm in Westmoreland County, indicating that he maintained his agricultural and plantation interests even as he remained a figure in Virginia’s legal and political circles. By the 1890s he had relocated to Alexandria, Virginia, where he was serving as a judge by 1894, underscoring his long-standing engagement with the law and public service late into his life.

John Critcher died in Alexandria, Virginia, on September 27, 1901. He was interred in Ivy Hill Cemetery in that city. His life traced the trajectory of a nineteenth-century Virginia lawyer and planter who became a state legislator, Confederate officer, Reconstruction-era congressman, and judge, and whose career reflected the profound political and social transformations of Virginia and the United States during his lifetime.