U.S. Data Repository http://www.us-data.org/ -- USGenNet Inc. -- Please read the U.S. Data Repository Copyright Statement on the following page: ------------------------------------------------------------------- Grundy, Felix (1777-1840) ------------------------------------------------------------------- Aler's History of Martinsburg and Berkeley County, West Virginia by F. Vernon Aler, 1888 Printed for the Author by The Mail Publishing Company, Hagerstown, MD. CHAPTER VIII. Historical Pen Sketches of the Early Residents of Berkeley County by the late Hon. Chas. James Faulkner. Pages 123-124, FELIX GRUNDY Was born on Back Creek, in the County of Berkeley, on the 11th of September, 1777. His father was a native of England, who settled in early life in the valley of Virginia. In 1780 he removed to Kentucky. The early childhood of Mr. Grundy was passed amid the perils and sufferings of Indian warfare. A striking picture is given in his own eloquent language in a speech delivered by him in the Senate of the United States in February, 1820, from which, however, we can only take a very short ex- tract: "Mr. President, I was too young to participate in these dangers and difficulties, but I can remember when death was in almost every bush, and every thicket concealed an ambuscade. If I am asked to trace my memory back and name the first indescribable impression it received it would be the sight of my eldest brother, bleeding and dying under the wounds inflicted by the tomahawk and scalping knife. Another and another went in the same way. I have seen a widowed mother plundered of her whole property in one single night, and from affluence and ease reduced to poverty in a moment, and thereby compelled to labor with her own hands to educate her last and favorite son, who now addresses you." He was educated at Bardstown Academy, studied law, and soon became distinguished at the bar. He commenced his public career at the age of twenty-two, as a member of the convention for the revising of the constitution of Kentucky; was afterward, for six or seven years, a member of the legislature of that State. In l805 he was elected one of the judges of the Supreme Court of Kentucky, and was soon after made Chief Justice. In 1807 he removed to Nashville, Tenn., and became eminent as a lawyer. From 1811 to 1814 he was a representative in Congress from Tennessee, and during that period gave to the war measures of President Madison against Great Britain such ardent support that he was familiarly know as the "war hawk" of democracy. From 1829 to 1838 he was United States Senator, and in the latter year was appointed by President Van Buren Attorney General of the United States; in 1840 he resigned this position and was again elected Senator. He died at Nashville, Tenn , Dec. 19th, 1840. Whilst a member of the Senate he made a visit to Berkeley County to examine the spot where he had passed his early boyhood. But he found nothing but a dilapidated stone chimney to mark the place where had stood the cabin with its clapboard roof which had shielded his childhood from the storms of winter. ------------------------------------------------------------------- If you've reached this file through a SEARCH, you can access other biographies for Berkeley County, WV by going to the following URL: http://www.us-data.org/wv/berkeley/bios.html -------------------------------------------------------------------