Biographical Details
Date of Birth: December 28, 1814
Birth Location: Accomack County, VA, USA
Graduation Year(s): 1834
Degree(s) Earned: Bachelors
Date of Death: October 7, 1889
Death Location: Accomac Court House, VA, USA
William Henry Bagwell Custis
Life Experience
William Henry Bagwell Custis was born in Virginia to a slaveholding plantation owner. His father died when he was two years old. As the only surviving son, he had legal rights to inherit the plantation when he became of age. His mother remarried when he was four years old. She married a man whose last name was also Custis, and gave birth to more children. His mother died when he was thirteen. In 1839, his stepfather died. His stepfather’s will denied Custis any inheritance from his estate (prescribing “not to inherit one cent that ever belonged to me”) and forbade him to entangle himself financially with any of his half-siblings.
Custis was educated at Margaret Academy in Accomack, Virginia. He graduated from Indiana College (later to become IU) in 1834 at age nineteen with his bachelor’s degree. He served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1842 to 1847. He served on various and numerous committees to examine the public library, the clerk’s office, trade, militia laws, and executive expenditures.
Custis sat out of politics, tending to his family farm, until 1860 when he supported Democratic candidate Stephen Douglas. His county sent him to the Convention of 1861, which lasted from February 13 to May 1. During this convention, he gave a famous speech stating “to enter my most solemn protest against the passage of this ordinance.” He vowed to “stand here solitary and alone and do it,” even if no other delegate voted against secession. He protested that he would rather cut off his arm than sign the Ordinance of Secession. He voted against secession twice. However, Virginia’s populace voted to secede from the Union. Custis endured the war, staying loyal to the Union while living in a Confederate state. His biographers agree he was a Unionist sympathizer, but his Civil War activities are unrecorded. In 1864 he was mentioned in the U.S. Congressional record as an active hero to the North, and after his death a fellow confidante revealed that Custis had visited Wheeling, West Virginia (Union territory) in 1863, giving information to the Union cause, but other wartime exploits appear to have been kept secret to his grave.
After the Civil War, Custis affirmed that he had not borne arms against the United States or otherwise supported the Southern cause. He was elected to the 39th Congress to represent Virginia, but was denied his seat, along with all other members elected from the former Confederate states. Radical Republicans had instructed the clerk to omit those states from the roll call. He returned to public office in March 1869 when Major General George Stoneman appointed him clerk of the Circuit Court and County Court of Accomack, Virginia, a position he held for the next eighteen years.
In 1872, Custis moved from his family estate to a 3.75-acre parcel in the county seat, where he and his wife, Emeline, lived for the rest of their lives.
Marriage and Family
Custis fell in love with his stepfather’s ward, Emeline Conquest, whose father had died when she was seven months old. He married her in 1840. They had nine children together.
References
- Wylie
- edu.lva.virginia.gov
- encyclopediavirginia.org
- espl-genealogy.org/MilesFiles/site/
- Indiana American 10/13/1837
- The Congressional Globe (1864, 1st Session)
- Hall, Granville Davisson (1902) The Rending of Virginia (Chicago, IL: Mayer & Miller)
- Reese, George H., and William H. Gaines Jr. (1965) Proceedings of the Virginia State Convention of 1861
- Bearss, Sara B. (1998) “William H. B. Custis (1814-1889)” in Kneebone, John T., et al. Dictionary of Virginia Biography (Richmond, VA: The Library of Virginia)