isplayed extraordinary boldness in
opposing the British tyranny. He was afterwards appointed colonel of a
Virginia regiment. In 1775 and 1776 he was a member of Congress. There
is a fine portrait of him still preserved, taken, it is said, while he
was a student at Eton, (by an artist named Chamberlin, London, 1754,)
the only portrait of him for which he ever sat.[653:C]

The first of the Nelsons of Virginia was Thomas, son of Hugh and Sarah
Nelson, of Penrith, Cumberland County, England. This Thomas Nelson was
born in February, 1677, and died in October, 1745, aged sixty-eight. He
married, first, a Miss Reid, secondly, a widow Tucker. Coming from a
border county, he was styled "Scotch Tom." He was an importing merchant.
Yorktown was in his day, and for a long time, the chief sea-port town of
Virginia. Of his two sons, Thomas being long secretary of the council,
was known as Secretary Nelson. Three of his sons were officers in the
army of the Revolution.

William, the other son of the first Thomas Nelson, imported goods not
only for Virginia, but at times for Baltimore, and even Philadelphia.
Negroes were a principal subject of importation; merchants and planters
of chief note, some of them leading men in the colony, and patrons of
the church, engaged in it; and no odium appears to have been attached to
a business in which British capital was so largely interested, which was
so constantly encouraged and protected by the British government, and
which had been so long an established feature of the colonial system,
and so generally concurred in. John Newton, while personally engaged in
the slave-trade on board of a Guinea ship, appears to have entertained
at the time no scruples whatever on the subject of his employment. It is
no matter of surprise that a Virginia consignee of slaves should have
received them with a like indifference.

William Nelson married a Miss Burwell, a granddaughter of King Carter.
Having been long president of the council, and at one time acting
governor, he came to be known by the title of President Nelson. He died
in November, 1772, aged sixty-one, leaving an ample estate. His sons
were Thomas, Hugh, William, Nathaniel, and Robert. A daughter, Betsy,
married, in 1769, Captain Thompson, of his majesty's ship Ripon, which
brought over Lord Botetourt. The portion descending to Thomas, oldest
son of President Nelson, and who had been associated in business with
him, was estimated at forty thousand p