He was born in 1780, the son of Thomas Gholson and Jane Parry.
Career
After reading law, he was admitted to the bar and began his legal practice in Brunswick County, Virginia. He served as member of the Virginia House of Delegates from 1806 to 1809. Gholson was elected as a Democratic-Republican to the Tenth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Dr. John Claiborne of Brunswick County. He was reelected to the Eleventh and to the three succeeding Congresses (November 7, 1808 – July 4, 1816), although due to the redistricting after the 1810 census, he was re-elected for the final two times from Virginia's 18th congressional district rather than Virginia's 17th congressional district (both congressional districts having by now become obsolete). During the War of 1812, the British invaded Washington, D.C. and Gholson became a volunteer aide on the staff of General Peter Buell Porter. Wounded, he recovered enough to remain in office and win re-election, although he would ultimately die from its effects two years later. During his final stint (in the Twelfth Congress), Gholson served as chairman of the Committee on Claims. Thomas M. Nelson, who captained Virginia infantry regiments during the War of 1812, succeeded to his congressional seat.
Personal life
On July 28, 1806, Thomas Gholson Jr. married Anne Yates, the daughter of a former Virginia militiaman on General Washington's staff, and granddaughter of Rev. William Yates, the College of William & Mary's fifth president (1761–1764) and the namesake for Yates Hall on the college's campus;[2][3] and a descendant of William Randolph, a colonist and land owner who played an important role in the history and government of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Thomas and Ann were the parents of the following children: William Yates Gholson who married Martha Anne Jane Taylor on Christmas Day 1827; Cary Ann Gholson; and Thomas Gholson, III.[4]
Death and legacy
Thomas Gholson Jr. died on July 14, 1816[5] in Brunswick County, Virginia from the lingering effects of his war wound.[6] After his death, his widow married as her second husband, George Washington Freeman, the second Episcopalbishop of Arkansas and Provisional Bishop of Texas. Their first born son, William Y. Gholson became a lawyer like his father and moved to Mississippi, where he developed strong anti-slavery views. He later freed his slaves, moved to Ohio because it did not permit slavery, then became the law partner of Salmon P. Chase and also active in the new Republican Party. He ran for a position on the Ohio Supreme Court and won in 1869, and served for four years before resigning and returning to his private legal practice in Cincinnati, Ohio. However his son Dr. Samuel Creed Gholson (1828-1910), educated in Virginia, enlisted in Mississippi forces, survived the war, and remained in Mississippi.[7]
Congressman Gholson's nephews James Herbert Gholson and Thomas Saunders Gholson became lawyers and slaveholders and remained in Southside Virginia as well as speculated in Texas real estate. They also became politicians and local judges, although subject to complaints for partiality; Thomas Saunders Gholson married this Thomas' daughter and later became a member of the Second Confederate Congress. A second cousin was Richard D. Gholson, a Kentuckian who like the brothers Gholson invested in Texas and favored the Confederate cause.
^Higginson, Thomas Wentworth Volume 2 of Harvard Memorial Biographies, Thomas Wentworth Higginson Civil War unit histories (Sever and Francis, 1866), p. 252
