Male

1799

1872

Lunenburg County, VA

Orange, VA
Richmond, VA

Roberts (unknown)
Nancy Beirne (April 16, 1835)

William MacFarland was the son of James MacFarland a merchant who had emigrated from Glasgow, Scotland to Lunenberg County, Virginia. William attended the college of Hampden Sydney in 1815 and then attended William and Mary the following year. In 1818 he undertook the study of the law in Litchfield, Connecticut. He married a Miss Roberts of Norfolk, Virginia and then a Nancy Beirne of Monroe County, Virginia (now West Virginia).

William MacFarland was both a lawyer and financier during his lifetime. His earliest work outside of his profession was for the Philanthropic Society at the College of Hampden Sydney (his name appears in their 1813 minutes).

MacFarland became a secretary in 1834 for The American Colonization Society, which sought to create colonies in Africa for freed ...slaves. In 1840, he became the Alumni Association Orator for his alma mater and was also elected an honorary member of the Union Society. His interests in business led him to serve as the president of multiple banks (Farmers Bank of Virginia, Planters National Bank, and the States Bank of Virginia), and he also ran a business firm with partner Powhatan Robers called "MacFarland & Roberts".

He served as a member of the Provisional Congress of the Confederacy, and the Secession Convention during the Civil War in 1861 and 1862 and his home was considered a center of Confederate society. After the war ended, he became the first president of the State Bank of Virginia. William owned Montpelier mansion from 1854 until 1855, during which time he was the head trustee and a member of the board of directors for Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia.

In 1856 MacFarland served as the 2nd Vice-president of the Viriginia Historical and Philosophical Society. He also was a member of the vestry of St. Paul's Church in Richmond. MacFarland served as counsel for Jefferson Davis with his charge of treason. In later life he remained active at William and Mary, serving on the Board of Visitors in 1871 and as the Rector of the College from 1869 to 1871. MacFarland passed away in 1872.
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"Judge Christian quotes a disrespectful characterization of MacFarland as 'the curly-headed poodle from Richmond, nearly overcome with dignity and fat.'"

'His long residence in our midst, his ... varied talents, his refinement and tact, the urbanity of his manners, the prominent posts which the confidence of the people assigned him as statesman, jurist and man of pure and lofty character, placed him on an eminence which few have reached, and made him for years the representative man of our city'

Gave James Madison's Eulogy in 1836.

1818

Graduated from Hampden-Sydney College in 1815 and studied law at the College of William & Mary in 1816.

Lawyer; Business

Whig

State Representative (VA) 1822-1824, 1830-1831

Catalogue of the Litchfield Law School Hartford, CT: Press of Case, Tiffany and Company, 1849.

Scott, Mary Wingfield: Houses of Old Richmond, pp. 199-200 Richmond, Va.: The Valentine Museum, 1941

Bell, Landon C.: The Old Free State. A Contribution to the History of Lunenburg County and Southside Virginia. Vol. II, pp. 310-311. Richmond: William Byrd Press, Inc., 1927.