Joseph William Chinn

Joseph William Chinn (November 16, 1798 – December 5, 1840) was a Virginia lawyer, plantation owner, and politician who served in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly and in the United States House of Representatives. A member of the Jacksonian, or Jackson, Party representing Virginia, he contributed to the legislative process during two terms in Congress, participating in the democratic process and representing the interests of his constituents during a significant period in American political history.

Chinn was born at “Epping Forest” near Nuttsville in Lancaster County, Virginia, the home of his maternal grandfather Colonel Joseph Ball, who was also a maternal grandfather of George Washington. His father, also named Joseph Chinn, married Elizabeth Griffin, one of Colonel Ball’s daughters, and continued the family’s tradition of public service by representing Lancaster County in the Virginia House of Delegates alongside Henry Towles from 1792 until 1794, after which he was elected to the Virginia Senate to represent the Northern Neck counties of Lancaster, Richmond, and Northumberland. Chinn’s paternal grandfather, yet another Joseph Chinn, had earlier served in the colonial-era Virginia House of Burgesses, representing Lancaster County from 1748 until 1750, when he was elected Lancaster County’s coroner and later served as its sheriff. Through these family connections, Chinn grew up in a milieu that combined landed wealth, public service, and longstanding ties to Virginia’s political and social elite.

Chinn received a private education locally on Virginia’s Northern Neck before traveling to Schenectady, New York, to pursue higher education. He graduated from Union College in 1819, an institution that at the time drew students from across the young republic and was known for training many future lawyers and public officials. After completing his collegiate studies, he returned to Virginia and read law at the newly established proprietary Needham Law School operated by Judge Creed Taylor in Needham, Virginia. This legal training prepared him for admission to the Virginia bar in 1821 and for entry into both professional and political life in his home region.

Upon his admission to the bar, Chinn began practicing law on the Northern Neck while also developing his interests as a landowner and planter. He owned land and eventually farmed using enslaved labor, reflecting the plantation-based economy of eastern Virginia in the early nineteenth century. In 1820, his plantation near Stafford, Virginia, included ten persons and no slaves, indicating a relatively modest establishment at that time. By 1830, however, his household in Lancaster County, Virginia, included four white persons and thirteen enslaved people, demonstrating the growth of his holdings and his increasing reliance on enslaved labor. Chinn married Mary Ann Smith, daughter of Charles Smith of Morattico Hall, further linking him to prominent Northern Neck families. The couple had a son, also named Joseph William Chinn (1836–1908), who would inherit the family plantation, fight for the Confederacy during the American Civil War, become a lawyer, and father Virginia Supreme Court justice Joseph W. Chinn (1866–1936).

Continuing the family’s political tradition, Lancaster County voters first elected Joseph William Chinn to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1826, and he was re-elected once, serving in the lower house of the General Assembly. He subsequently advanced to the upper chamber when voters from Lancaster and neighboring counties elected him to the Virginia Senate, where he served from 1829 until 1831. His tenure in the Senate ended when he resigned after winning election to the United States House of Representatives, marking his transition from state to national politics.

As a Jacksonian Democrat, Chinn entered Congress during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, a period marked by intense debates over federal power, banking policy, and internal improvements. In 1830 he defeated anti-Jacksonian Congressman John Taliaferro to represent Virginia’s 13th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. Following redistricting, he won re-election and served as the representative for Virginia’s 10th congressional district. During his second term, from 1833 to 1835, he served as chairman of the Committee on the District of Columbia, giving him a role in overseeing legislation affecting the nation’s capital. Although he successfully secured a second term, Chinn lost his bid for a third consecutive term in 1834 to his earlier opponent Taliaferro, who would later be re-elected as a Whig. Over the course of his two terms, Chinn participated in the legislative work of the Jackson Party, representing Virginia’s interests in a period of partisan realignment and expanding democratic participation.

After leaving Congress, Chinn moved to Richmond County, Virginia, where he resumed the practice of law and the management of his plantation. He continued to live as a member of the planter-lawyer class that dominated the political and economic life of the Northern Neck. He maintained his estate, known as “Wilna,” near Farnham, Virginia, where he lived until his death. Chinn died at Wilna on December 5, 1840. Following his death, his widow Mary Ann and their young son Joseph moved to Tappahannock in Essex County, Virginia, where they resided with the family of merchant Robert Hopkins.

By 1860, Chinn’s son, Joseph William Chinn (1836–1908), had reached legal age, claimed his inheritance, and married, residing with his wife Gabriella in Richmond County. He left the University of Virginia in July 1861 at the outset of the Civil War to enlist as a private in the 40th Virginia Infantry and became the regimental sergeant major in 1862 before transferring to the 9th Virginia Cavalry. He survived the war and received a presidential pardon on September 9, 1865, after only mentioning his clerical service. Continuing the family’s legal and public-service tradition, his son—Joseph William Chinn (1866–1936), the original congressman’s grandson—became a justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia (now the Supreme Court of Virginia). The family’s Richmond County home, Wilna, remains a private residence. The Chinn family left Wilna in 1890 to relocate to Sunnyside Plantation in nearby Warsaw.

Although several generations of this Chinn family achieved political office and remained prominent on Virginia’s Northern Neck, the Chinn name is also associated with a distinct and unrelated African American family in Prince William County, Virginia. In that county, a historical marker near Minnieville and Old Bridge Roads, as well as the 98-acre Chinn Regional Park, Chinn Regional Library, and Chinn Aquatic Center, commemorate the legacy of an early and distinguished African American family descended from the nineteenth-century emancipated slaves Thomas Chinn and his wife Nancy, who purchased 500 acres between Telegraph and Davis Ford Roads at the end of the American Civil War. Their daughter Mary Jane Chinn (1827–1907) became the matriarch of that family. While this later Chinn family is not descended from Congressman Joseph William Chinn, both lineages illustrate the complex and evolving history of landownership, emancipation, and public memory in Virginia.