Edward Cunningham (9 August 1771–14 March 1836), manufacturer, was born in Maghera Parish, County Down, Ireland, and was the son of Richard Cunningham and Elizabeth Hoope Cunningham. According to family tradition, he and an elder brother may have immigrated to Virginia as early as 1784 to establish a mercantile firm. He had certainly arrived in the state by 3 May 1790, when he took a citizenship oath in Petersburg. Settling in Cartersville, Cumberland County, Cunningham worked with his brother in the mercantile firm of John Cunningham and Company. He married a Richmond widow, Ariana Gunn McCartney, on 18 August 1796. Three of their four sons and one of their two daughters lived to adulthood.
After the American Revolution the economy of Richmond shifted from tobacco shipment to new commercial and manufacturing enterprises. Although Cunningham continued to live in Cumberland County, he became one of several Europeans who established prominent businesses in Richmond during the early years of the republic. He entered the expanding flour-milling business in the city in 1799 when he and his brother joined Joseph Gallego in leasing a mill on the James River canal. Cunningham had moved to Richmond by 1812, at which time he began milling flour with Thomas Rutherfoord. After one year Cunningham continued the operation on his own. During the War of 1812 he served for ten days in March 1813 as a private in the 19th Regiment, Virginia militia. That year he purchased a lot in Richmond and two years later built a house designed by the eminent architect Robert Mills.
Cunningham's flour business thrived until the mid-1820s, when he began increasingly to shift his mills to processing cotton and tobacco. In 1829 he sold part of his property and mills to his son Richard Hoope Cunningham and a partner. In December 1831 Cunningham leased Richmond Mills, his remaining property along the canal, to a group of businessmen that included the prominent flour manufacturer Peter Joseph Chevallié. Cunningham joined his sons and several others in January 1832 in incorporating the Richmond Manufacturing Company, a manufactory of cotton, iron, and wool. After his death in 1836 the Richmond Mills passed to his two other surviving sons, Edward Cunningham and John Atkinson Cunningham, and his son-in-law Francis Browne Deane. The following year they incorporated the Tredegar Iron Company, which merged with the Virginia Foundry Company in 1838 to establish what later became Tredegar Iron Works.
Cunningham served as a director of the Bank of Virginia and of the Mutual Assurance Society, against Fire on Buildings, of the State of Virginia. He also was a member of the Richmond common council from December 1820 to July 1821 and a vestryman of Saint James Northam Parish, in Goochland County. In 1825 Cunningham sold his house in Richmond and moved to Howard's Neck, a parcel of land along the James River in Goochland County that he had purchased in 1807. There he built a Federal-style residence, perhaps also designed by Robert Mills, which later became a registered state historic landmark and was also added to the National Register of Historic Places. Edward Cunningham died at his Goochland County residence on 14 March 1836 and was buried in the family cemetery at Howard's Neck.
Sources Consulted:
Biography in Valentine Museum, Richmond Portraits in an Exhibition of Makers of Richmond, 1737–1860 (1949), 54–55 (portrait); Cunningham family genealogical materials (including birth, marriage, and death dates), correspondence, and business papers, all Richard E. Cunningham Papers, Virginia Historical Society (VHS), Richmond; other Cunningham correspondence in Ambler Family Papers and John Randolph Papers, both VHS; Richmond and Manchester Advertiser, 3 Sept. 1796; Henrico Co. Deed Book, 5:693–695; Richmond City Hustings Court Deed Book, 7:370–371, 23:107–109, 27:540–547; Mutual Assurance Society Declarations, nos. 1694–1698, 2267 (all 1815), 3460, 4442–4445 (all 1822), 6928–6930 (all 1829), Library of Virginia (LVA), Richmond; Tredegar Iron Works Records (1836–1957), esp. volume entitled Copies of Deeds, Agreements, etc., Involving the Company (ca. 1812–1925), 14–15, Accession 23881, LVA; Thomas S. Berry, "The Rise of Flour Milling in Richmond," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 78 (1970): 387–408; will in Goochland Co. Deed Book, 30:517–518; obituary in Richmond Whig and Public Advertiser, 18 Mar. 1836.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Marianne Buroff Sheldon.
How to cite this page:
Marianne Buroff Sheldon, "Edward Cunningham (1771–1836)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2006 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Cunningham_Edward, accessed [today's date]).
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