Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell | Page 4

he became
clerk of the court, dying at the early age of thirty-three. The son of this
marriage was Henry, the father of our departed townsman, who also
studied law, became a judge of the general court, a judge of the court of
appeals, a senator of the United States, and twice president of the
senate.
The mother of Mr. Tazewell was Dorothea Elizabeth Waller, a
daughter of Judge Benjamin Waller, of Williamsburg. We are told by
Dr. Johnson, in the Lives of the Poets, that Benjamin, the eldest son of
the poet Waller, was disinherited by his father as wanting common
understanding, and sent to New Jersey. It was not, however, from this
Benjamin--a name still popular in the family--that the Virginia Wallers
derive their origin. The first person of the name in Virginia was
Edmund Waller, who bore the name of the poet, and was probably his
grandson, and who came over in the beginning of the eighteenth
century. His son Benjamin, the future judge, was born in 1716, was
probably educated at William and Mary, and entered a clerk's office, in
the duties of which he was profoundly versed. He was appointed clerk
of the general court before the revolution, and attained to such
distinction as a judge of law, that he was frequently consulted by the
court, and is said to have given more opinions as chamber counsel, than
all the lawyers of the colony united. He was appointed chief of three
commissioners of admiralty under the republic, and as such was a
member of the first court of appeals. It is said that his decisions were

always sound law, but that he would never assign reasons for them. On
the subject of the law of admiralty, his opinions were equally
conclusive with the court and with clients. He died in 1786, at the age
of 70. His influence, after the death of his daughter, on the mind of his
grandson, will presently be seen.
Dorothea, the mother of our Littleton, was a lovely girl. Her name,
which, from the ugly abbreviation of Dolly, has gone out of vogue, was
popular with our fathers. It was borne by the brides of Patrick Henry, of
James Madison, and of Henry Tazewell. It was honored in the strains of
Spenser, in the sparkling prose of Sir Philip Sidney, and in the flowing
verse of Waller; and finely shadows forth what a true woman ought to
be and is--the gift of God. It was a favorite name in England, and
evoked the sweetest measures of the poet Waller; and has ever been,
probably from this circumstance, a family name among the Wallers of
Virginia. A sweet portrait of Dorothea Waller, one of the finest
productions of the elder Peale, always adorned the parlour of her
distinguished son. In less than three years after the birth of Littleton,
she died suddenly, and Mr. Tazewell had no recollection of his mother.
It has often occurred to me that the true secret of the early retirement of
Mr. Tazewell from the bar, might be found in the shortness of the lives
of his progenitors. His grandfather Littleton died at the age of
thirty-three, and his mother at the age of twenty-three; and when Mr.
Tazewell retired from the bar, vigorous as he was, he was some years
older than his father was at the time of his decease. It is believed that
this same conviction was an element in that love of retirement which
was the characteristic of Washington.
In a long, low wooden house, which may still be seen with its roof of
red shingles, at the head of Woodpecker street, on the south side, in the
city of Williamsburg, the residence of Judge Waller, and still owned by
his grandson Dr. Robert Page Waller, and in a small room up stairs, at
the north-east corner, looking on the street, in which his mother was
born before him, on the seventeenth day of December, 1774, Littleton
Waller Tazewell first saw the light. He was a healthy child, and, like all
the children who were born about that time between the waters of the
York and the James, was destined to frequent locomotion to avoid the

marauding parties of the British, who for several years afterwards
infested that region. As his mother died when he was in his third year,
and as his father, who was engaged during the youth of Littleton in the
Conventions, in the House of Delegates, or on the bench, was rarely at
one place for any length of time, he lived, excepting a short interval in
Greensville, with his grandfather Waller, who regarded with intense
affection the beautiful orphan boy, preparing a trundle-bed for him in
his own chamber, and watching him with parental solicitude. Until
1786 he lived