John Wayles Eppes

Eppes was born in April 1772 at Eppington, in Chesterfield County in the Colony of Virginia, the sixth child and only son of Elizabeth (née Wayles) and Francis Eppes, who would serve one term in the House of Delegates a decade later. A member of the First Families of Virginia, he was related through both his parents to Martha Jefferson, his mother's half-sister and the wife of Thomas Jefferson, with whom Eppes was close. After being taught by tutors as was customary in his planter class, Eppes attended the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia, and graduated from Hampden–Sydney College in Virginia in 1786. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1794, commencing practice in the state capital, Richmond. ==Marriage and family==

Eppes married his first cousin Mary Jefferson (known as "Polly" in childhood and "Maria" as an adult) on October 13, 1797, at Monticello. Maria and John had three children: • Unnamed daughter Eppes (December 31, 1799 – January 1800) On April 15, 1809, Eppes married Martha Burke Jones, daughter of Willie Jones, a prominent North Carolina planter and politician. They had six children. According to her descendants, Hemmings became a concubine to Eppes in a relationship that began when he was a young widower. They had a son, Joseph, likely named for her brother. She named their daughter Frances, and when she died in 1857, was buried next to John Wayles Eppes in the family cemetery there. ==Political career==

Eppes was a member of the Virginia House of Delegates from 1801 to 1803 alongside Matthew Cheatham. On March 4, 1803, he won election as a Democratic-Republican to the Eighth United States Congress and the next three succeeding Congresses, so he was frequently away from his plantations. He chaired the Ways and Means Committee for the Eleventh Congress but lost his re-election attempt so did not serve in the Twelfth, but instead spent the next two years at his Milbrook plantation. Eppes won election to the Thirteenth Congress (March 4, 1813 – March 4, 1815) and again chaired the Committee on Ways and Means. After losing the election to the Fourteenth Congress, he was elected to the United States Senate and served from March 4, 1817, until December 4, 1819, when he resigned because of ill health. He chaired the Committee on Finance during the second session of the Fifteenth Congress. ==Retirement and death==

Late in life Eppes suffered from various ailments. He died at Millbrook on September 13, 1823, and was buried in the Eppes family cemetery at Millbrook. ==References==