Paul Carrington (20 September 1764–8 January 1816), Speaker of the Senate of Virginia and judge of the General Court, was born at Mulberry Hill, the Charlotte County estate of his parents, Paul Carrington (1733–1818) and his first wife, Margaret Read Carrington. His father was a delegate to the Conventions of 1776 and 1788 and a judge of the General Court and of the Virginia Court of Appeals. His uncle Edward Carrington served in the Confederation Congress, and his elder brother George Carrington (1758–1809) was a delegate to the Convention of 1788. Carrington probably entered Hampden-Sydney College in 1776, but according to family tradition he left while still a teenager in order to fight in the Revolutionary War. He saw action at the battles of Guilford Court House in March 1781 and of Green Spring, in James City County, in July of that year. After the war he studied at the College of William and Mary, from which he graduated in 1783. In Halifax County on 24 August 1786 Carrington married Mildred Howell Coles, whose uncle Isaac Coles was a member of the Convention of 1788 and of the House of Representatives. They had five sons and two daughters.
Carrington represented Charlotte County in the House of Delegates during the 1786–1787 and 1787–1788 assemblies. He served on the Committees of Propositions and Grievances and of Courts of Justice. He was elected to represent Charlotte, Halifax, and Prince Edward Counties in the Senate of Virginia for the four-year term beginning in 1791. Carrington chaired a committee to revise the rules and orders of the Senate in 1791 and the following year was ranking member of a committee to examine enrolled bills. During the 1793 session he served on the Committee of Privileges and Elections and a committee to examine the treasurer's accounts. On 13 November 1794 Carrington was elected Speaker of the Senate. He resigned on 18 December of that year in order to accept an appointment to the General Court. Carrington's was the shortest tenure of any Speaker of the Senate of Virginia.
As a judge of the General Court, Carrington presided at trials in Charlotte and surrounding counties and heard appeals from county courts. He also met from time to time in Richmond with other members of the court to hear appeals in criminal cases, the General Court being then the only court with appellate jurisdiction in such instances. In February 1808 the General Assembly established twelve Superior Courts of Law to relieve the congestion of the General Court in the adjudication of common law actions. Each court was presided over by a judge of the General Court who held sessions twice a year in each county of the district. These courts were often referred to as circuit courts. Carrington was probably assigned to the Third District comprising the counties of Bedford, Campbell, Charlotte, Franklin, Halifax, Henry, Patrick, and Pittsylvania. In 1809 the legislature added another district consisting of Charlotte, Franklin, Halifax, Henry, Mecklenburg, Patrick, and Pittsylvania Counties. Carrington was reassigned to this Sixth District, which first met in April 1809. He served as judge for both the Superior Court and General Court until his death.
Like his father, Carrington was a trustee of Hampden-Sydney College and served on its board from 1803 until at least 1814 and probably until his death. He owned nearly 1,500 acres of land and at the time he died possessed more than seventy enslaved workers and a library of 327 volumes. After a month-long illness Paul Carrington died at his Sylvan Hill estate in Charlotte County on 8 January 1816. His widow died on 24 April 1840. Both are buried at Berry Hill, in Halifax County.
Sources Consulted:
Birth date from Paul Carrington family Bible as recorded in Agnes Gamble Carrington Marshall, comp., genealogical notes on the Carrington family (1861), Virginia Museum of History and Culture (VMHC), Richmond, and on gravestone; Louis H. Manarin, Officers of the Senate of Virginia, 1776–1996 (1997), 24–25 (portrait); Alice Read, The Reads and Their Relatives (1930), 240–242; incorrect identification as member of the Convention of 1788 in Hugh Blair Grigsby, The History of the Virginia Federal Convention of 1788 (1890–1891), 2:369–370, repeated in many later accounts of Carrington and of the convention; Carrington Family Papers, Library of Virginia and VMHC; Halifax Co. Marriage Bonds Register, 1:10; Alfred J. Morrison, The College of Hampden-Sidney: Calendar of Board Minutes, 1776–1876 (1912), 175; Herbert Clarence Bradshaw, History of Hampden-Sydney College, vol. 1: From the Beginnings to the Year 1856 (1976), 105; Timothy S. Ailsworth et al., Charlotte County, Rich Indeed: A History from Prehistoric Times through the Civil War (1979), 281–284, 422, 453; will and estate inventory in Charlotte Co. Will Book, 4:52, 62–65; obituary in Richmond Enquirer, 23 Jan. 1816.