Sydney Parham Epes (20 August 1865–3 March 1900), member of the House of Representatives, was born in Nottoway County and was the son of Richard Epes, clerk of the county court, and Agnes Atkinson Batte Epes. Of his cousins, Branch Jones Epes won election to the Convention of 1901–1902, James Fletcher Epes served in Congress, and Louis Spencer Epes sat on the State Corporation Commission and the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. Sometime in the 1870s the family moved to Simpson County, Kentucky, where Epes attended public schools. In 1884 he returned to Nottoway County, where he married Lucy A. Jones on 19 January 1887. They had four daughters and one son. After working at various times as a druggist and a schoolteacher, Epes established and began editing the Blackstone Courier, whose first issue appeared on 30 October 1890. He sold the weekly Democratic newspaper in 1896.
In 1891 Epes won election to a one-year term in the House of Delegates representing Amelia and Nottoway Counties. He served on the Committees for the Chesapeake and Its Tributaries and for Schools and Colleges. The governor appointed Epes as register of the Land Office to complete an unfinished term in January 1895, and later that year the General Assembly unanimously elected him to a full term. Epes chaired the Democratic Committees for Nottoway County and for the state's Fourth Congressional District. He also served on the Virginia State Democratic Committee and as a delegate to several Democratic State Conventions in the 1890s.
Campaigning on the issue of free silver, Epes garnered 54.5 percent of the vote in November 1896 to defeat the Republican incumbent, Robert Taylor Thorp, and an Independent Republican for election to the House of Representatives from the Fourth District, comprising Petersburg and the counties of Amelia, Brunswick, Dinwiddie, Greensville, Lunenburg, Mecklenburg, Nottoway, Powhatan, Prince Edward, Prince George, and Sussex. Epes took his seat in the Fifty-fifth Congress (1897–1899) on 15 March 1897 and served on the Committees on Immigration and Naturalization and on the Revision of Laws. Thorp, however, who had secured his seat in the Fifty-fourth Congress by successfully contesting the election of a Democrat, challenged the 1896 results. After a formal inquiry, completed on 10 February 1898, the Committee on Elections, chaired by James Alexander Walker, a Virginia Republican and former lieutenant governor, concluded that because of numerous illegal and fraudulent acts, including disenfranchisement of many African Americans in the black-majority district, thousands of the 12,894 votes cast for Epes should be thrown out, while a significant number of other votes should be granted to Thorp. The committee's report awarded Thorp enough ballots to declare him the winner by 307 votes (of 23,683 cast). The Republican-controlled House voted along party lines to recognize Thorp's victory and officially replaced Epes on 23 March 1898.
Epes returned to Nottoway County and began a campaign to reclaim his seat. Receiving 57.5 percent of the vote in November 1898, Epes defeated Thorp and three other candidates for a seat in the Fifty-sixth Congress (1899–1901). He introduced only minor pieces of legislation, many involving relief and war claims or the improvement of the Appomattox and James Rivers, and he voted with the other Democrats on major issues, including the free coinage of silver. He sat on the Committee on Territories and served as vice president of the congressional campaign committee.
Just after midnight on the morning of 3 March 1900, Sydney Parham Epes died of appendicitis at a Washington hospital. Congress set aside 24 March and 4 June for eulogies. He was buried in Lakeview Cemetery, in Blackstone.
Sources Consulted:
Biographies in Official Congressional Directory, 55th Cong., 2d sess., 1897, Senate Doc. 22, serial 3591, 130 (with birth date), Official Congressional Directory, 56th Cong., 1st sess., 1899, Senate Doc. 15, serial 3845, 114–115, and A. B. Cummins, Nottoway County, Virginia: Founding and Development with Biographical Sketches (1970), 122–123; Nottoway Co. Marriage Register; Papers of Sydney Parham Epes, Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va.; Notice of Contest of R. T. Thorp vs. Sydney P. Epes, for the Seat in the 55th Congress of the United States from the Fourth Congressional District of Virginia (1896); R. T. Thorp, Contestant, vs. Sydney P. Epes, Contestee. Contested Election Case from Fourth District of Virginia, . . . Answer of Contestee to Contestant's Notice of Contest (1897); Sydney P. Epes, Contestee, ads. R. T. Thorp, Contestant. Contested Election, Fourth District of Virginia: Brief of Facts and Authorities Relied on by Contestee [1897]; R. T. Thorp vs. Sydney P. Epes, 55th Cong., 2d sess., 1898, House Rept. 428, serial 3718; Journal of the House of Representatives, 55th Cong., 2d sess., 363, 369–370; variant death date of 2 Mar. 1900 on gravestone; obituaries in Richmond News, Richmond Times (died "this morning"), and Washington Post, all 3 Mar. 1900, and in Richmond Dispatch, 4 Mar. 1900; editorial tributes in Petersburg Daily Index-Appeal, 4 Mar. 1900, and Farmville Herald, 9 Mar. 1900; memorial resolutions of the Democratic City Central Committee of Petersburg in Petersburg Daily Index-Appeal, 6 Mar. 1900 (variant death date of 2 Mar. 1900); Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of Sydney P. Epes (Late a Representative from Virginia), Delivered in the House of Representatives and Senate, 56th Cong., 1st sess., 1900, House Doc. 755, serial 4008 (with frontispiece portrait).
Image courtesy of Library of Virginia.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Michael Peter Charles Smith.
How to cite this page:
Michael Peter Charles Smith,"Sydney Parham Epes (1865–1900)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2015 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Epes_Sydney_Parham, accessed [today's date]).
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