Joseph Neville

Joseph Neville Jr. (December 2, 1733 – March 4, 1819) was an American soldier, planter, surveyor, and politician from Virginia who played a prominent role in the political and military life of Virginia’s trans-Appalachian frontier during the late colonial, Revolutionary, and early national periods. In addition to military service during the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, Neville represented Hampshire County in the Virginia House of Burgesses, in several of the Virginia Revolutionary Conventions, and in the Virginia House of Delegates during the Revolutionary era. Fellow legislators twice elected him to the United States House of Representatives, where he served from 1793 until 1795. He died at the age of 85 in what became Hardy County during his lifetime.

Neville was born on December 2, 1733, in Gloucester County in the Colony of Virginia, the son of Joseph Neville Sr. and his second wife, Ann Bohannon Neville. His father, a landowner of the same name, did not serve in combat during the American Revolution because of his age but supported the patriot cause by providing troops with food and supplies. Joseph Neville Jr. grew up in a large family; at least five of his brothers and two of his sisters survived to adulthood. The family name appears in early records in several variant spellings, including Neavil, Nevil, Nevill, and Neavel. His eldest brother, John Neville, became a career soldier, first serving on the Appalachian frontier in the French and Indian War and later rising to general’s rank in the Revolutionary era. Two younger brothers, Captain William Neville and Private James Neville, also served in the Virginia militia or Continental Army, reflecting the family’s deep engagement in frontier defense and the Revolutionary struggle.

By the mid-eighteenth century, Neville had moved westward from the Tidewater region to Virginia’s interior and then across the Appalachians. In 1764 he married Agnes Brown in Bedford County, Virginia. The couple would have ten children. Like many settlers in the trans-Appalachian region, Neville combined agriculture with land speculation and public service. Over time he became a substantial farmer and cattle raiser, fattening cattle for the Baltimore market and participating in the commercial life of the South Branch Valley. He also held an interest in a general store in the town of Moorefield, then in Hampshire County, operated by Isaac Hider.

Neville’s public career began in the last years of the colonial period. In 1772, when Alexander White accepted the position of king’s attorney (prosecutor) for Hampshire County, Neville (or possibly his father, who bore the same name) replaced him as one of the county’s part-time delegates to the Virginia House of Burgesses. Although a relatively recent settler, Neville served alongside nonresident lawyer and real estate investor John Mercer, and both men were reelected in 1774 during Lord Dunmore’s War, when Neville’s brother John served as a Virginia militia officer. As tensions with Britain escalated under what Virginians termed the Intolerable Acts, Neville signed the non-importation agreement in May 1774, joining other colonial leaders in economic protest. After the royal governor dissolved the colonial legislature, Hampshire County voters continued to elect Neville and Mercer to represent them in the first four Virginia Revolutionary Conventions, held in Williamsburg and later Richmond, although surviving records show Neville’s attendance only at the Fourth Convention in the winter of 1775–1776. In the early years of the new state government, voters elected Neville and Col. Abraham Hite to the Virginia House of Delegates for the 1777–1778 term, though Enoch Innis replaced Neville for the 1778 session. Hampshire County voters returned Neville to the House of Delegates for a final term in 1780, when he served alongside Robert Parker.

During the American Revolutionary War, Neville held the position of county lieutenant for Hampshire County, with the rank of colonel in the Virginia militia. His responsibilities included organizing local defense and supporting Continental forces. In May 1776 he was reimbursed 381 pounds for “necessities for Captain Abel Westfall’s Company,” a unit of the 8th Virginia Regiment recruited in Hampshire County that defended Charleston, South Carolina, until February 1777. The 8th Virginia was later consolidated with the 12th Virginia Regiment, also raised in Hampshire County under Col. Abraham Hite, and it withstood a siege at Charleston before surrendering in May 1780. Neville’s services to the revolutionary government extended beyond military duties. The Virginia legislature commissioned him, together with Enoch Innis, to dispose of the confiscated estate of John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, the last royal governor of Virginia, following Dunmore’s ouster. Neville’s brother John, meanwhile, advanced through the Continental Army, serving at Trenton, Princeton, Germantown, and Monmouth and later becoming a federal tax collector in western Pennsylvania. John Neville’s role in enforcing the federal excise tax on whiskey led to the burning of his house by an anti-tax mob in 1794 and contributed to the federal response in the Whiskey Rebellion; he died in 1803 in what became Neville Township, Pennsylvania.

Neville’s expertise as a surveyor and his familiarity with the frontier brought him into important boundary work after the Revolution. In 1782 he and Colonel Alexander McLean of Pennsylvania were hired to extend the Mason–Dixon Line beyond its earlier limits, which had defined the Maryland–Pennsylvania border, in order to establish Pennsylvania’s western boundary. They submitted their report to Virginia Governor Benjamin Harrison and the Virginia General Assembly. The settlement of this boundary helped determine the fate of the region then known as West Augusta County; the area Virginians called Yohogania County became Washington County, Pennsylvania, while the remaining territory was organized as Ohio County and Monongalia County in Virginia (later West Virginia). The Virginia legislature accepted the corrected boundary report in 1784, and when the line was rechecked in 1849 in connection with another dispute involving those counties and a bridge over the Ohio River, it was found to be substantially accurate. Also in 1784, Neville became one of the trustees of the relatively new town of Moorefield in Hampshire County. In 1785, delegate Isaac VanMeter successfully sponsored legislation to divide Hampshire County and create Hardy County, with Moorefield as the county seat. The VanMeter and Neville families both resided in the new county, and Neville became Hardy County’s first sheriff as well as its first surveyor. Records from the 1780s and 1790s show Neville as a slaveholder: in 1785 he owned four adult enslaved people in Hardy County, and by 1795 he owned seven adults. The 1787 Virginia census lists two men named “Joseph Nevil” at opposite ends of the Commonwealth, one in Isle of Wight County and one in Hardy County; both entries, including the Hardy County listing that records him as owning three enslaved Black men and three Black boys, describe “Joseph Nevil” as a nonresident, perhaps reflecting his surveying and land-related travels.

Neville’s prominence in land matters continued into the 1790s. After the future chief justice John Marshall began selling lands that had been part of the South Branch Manor of Lord Fairfax, Neville was among the many local residents who purchased parcels of this formerly proprietary estate, which later figured in the landmark Supreme Court case Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee. His growing stature in regional affairs was matched by advancement in the Virginia militia. On December 2, 1792, the Virginia Assembly passed an act reorganizing county militias into brigades and divisions. Neville was appointed to command the 18th Brigade of the Virginia militia, which included the 14th, 46th, and 77th Regiments. He accepted his commission as brigadier general on December 24, 1803, and continued in that post until his death. His brigade formed part of the 3rd Division of the state militia.

Neville’s legislative experience and standing among his peers led to his election to the United States House of Representatives. Fellow legislators in the Virginia General Assembly chose him to fill a seat in the Third Congress, and he served one term in the national legislature from 1793 until 1795. As a member of an as-yet-undeclared or “unknown” party affiliation representing Virginia, he participated in the legislative process during a formative period in the early republic, representing the interests of his trans-Appalachian constituents in debates over federal policy, frontier security, and the organization of the new government. His service in Congress coincided with the administration of President George Washington and the emergence of the first party divisions, though Neville himself is not clearly identified with either of the developing Federalist or Democratic-Republican factions in surviving records.

Neville remained active in public life into the second decade of the nineteenth century. During the War of 1812 he continued to lead the Virginia militia from Hardy County with the rank of brigadier general. His duties were primarily in a reserve capacity, but he contributed to the state’s defense by sending 55 men under Colonel Jacob VanMeter and his own son, Colonel Jethro Neville—who would later serve as a delegate—to help defend Norfolk, Virginia, against British attack. An 1814 letter from the adjutant general’s office in Richmond listed Neville among several militia generals ordered to hold their brigades in readiness to mobilize “at a moment’s warning,” underscoring his continuing role in Virginia’s military organization even in advanced age.

In his later years Neville continued to reside in Hardy County, overseeing his agricultural interests and maintaining his position as a respected local leader. His wife, Agnes Brown Neville, predeceased him by two years. Joseph Neville Jr. died in Hardy County, Virginia, on March 4, 1819, at the age of 85. His long life spanned the colonial, Revolutionary, and early national eras, and his career as soldier, surveyor, planter, and legislator reflected the development of Virginia’s western frontier into a settled and politically integrated region.