William Drew (d. by 20 December 1785), member of the Convention of 1776, was born before the end of the 1740s, possibly in, or in the vicinity of, Surry County, where members of the Drew family had lived for several generations. The names of his parents are not known. Most likely he trained in Williamsburg in the office of the secretary of the colony, the usual path young men took to advance into the influential and potentially profitable office of county clerk. From November 1771 until early in May 1772 Drew served as clerk of Isle of Wight County. On 19 May 1772, bearing a commission from the secretary of the colony, he took office as clerk of the new county of Berkeley. About that same time he acquired a copy of the first American edition of Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England.
During the autumn of 1775 Berkeley County voters elected Drew one of the county's two delegates to the Revolutionary Convention that met in December. He served on three select committees, including one to revise a draft bill to provide arms and ammunition for the colony's defense. Reelected in April 1776, Drew attended the fifth and final Revolutionary Convention, which met in Williamsburg from 6 May through 5 July of that year. He sat on the Committee of Public Claims, on a committee to draft an ordinance to increase the size of the colony's new army, and on three select committees. Drew was almost certainly present on 15 May when the convention instructed the colony's delegates in the Continental Congress to propose a resolution of independence, on 12 June when it unanimously adopted the Declaration of Rights, and on 29 June when it unanimously adopted the constitution for the new Commonwealth of Virginia.
A few days after the convention adjourned, Drew became clerk of the new Board of Commissioners to Superintend and Direct the Naval Affairs of This Colony and subsequently resigned the seat to which he was entitled in the first session of the House of Delegates. While working in Williamsburg, he married Hannah Powell, daughter of local builder Benjamin Powell, who constructed the public hospital, shortly before 15 November 1776. So far as is known, they had one son who survived infancy. Drew worked for the Navy Board until 18 June 1779, when he became clerk of the Senate of Virginia. He retained the county clerkship during the nine years that he worked off and on in the capital, but whether he employed an assistant in Berkeley County is uncertain. By 1785 Drew owned more than 125 acres of land there, a new two-story house filled with elegant furnishings and household wares, at least sixteen enslaved workers, a phaeton, a share in some land in Kentucky, and stock in a new company formed to improve navigation of the Potomac River.
Drew was in poor health when he wrote his short will on 26 September 1785. About that time he must have sent a letter to the Speaker of the Senate resigning his clerkship. A misunderstanding of the reason why Drew did not return to Richmond when the senators reconvened on 17 October led to the publication of a brief death notice of the "late Clerk to the Senate" in the Richmond Virginia Gazette, or the American Advertiser of 29 October 1785. That false report was the source of a similar notice printed in the Virginia Journal and Alexandria Advertiser of 3 November 1785. On 12 November the Senate elected a successor to Drew, who was in fact still alive and working as clerk of Berkeley County. He appeared in court on 15 and 16 November and may also have been present when the justices of the peace investigated a theft on 21 November.
William Drew died, probably in Berkeley County, on an unrecorded date between then and the next regularly scheduled meeting of the court on 20 December 1785, when the justices' first order of business was to elect a new clerk, "The Death of William Drew Esqr. late Clerk of this Court having occasioned a vacancy in that office." The second order of business was to prove his will and authorize his executors to settle his estate. The place of Drew's burial is not recorded, but a 1794 account referred to constructing a wall around his gravesite.
Sources Consulted:
Louis H. Manarin, Officers of the Senate of Virginia, 1776–1996 (1997), 293; marriage without date in Williamsburg Virginia Gazette (Purdie), 15 Nov. 1776; clerkships documented in Isle of Wight Co. Deed Book, 12:441–484, Isle of Wight Co. Will Book, 8:104–152, and Berkeley Co. Order Book, 1:2, 7:227, 231, 234; William J. Van Schreeven, Robert L. Scribner, and Brent Tarter, eds., Revolutionary Virginia, the Road to Independence: A Documentary Record (1973–1983), 5:27, 28–29, 209–210, 314, 316, 6:397, 7:21, 78, 221, 235, 260, 306, 507; journals, letter book, and ledger of the Navy Board, Record Group 2, Library of Virginia (LVA); Virginia General Assembly, Senate, Journal of the Senate of Virginia (1776– ), May–June 1779 sess., 39; Land and Personal Property Tax Returns, Berkeley Co. (1785), Auditor of Public Accounts, Record Group 48, LVA; Virginia Journal and Alexandria Advertiser, 26 May, 3 Nov. 1785, 12 Oct. 1786; Richmond Virginia Gazette, or the American Advertiser, 29 Oct. 1785 (first quotation); will, estate inventory, and accounts in Berkeley Co. Will Book, 1:407–408, 2:386–393; death recorded in Berkeley Co. Order Book, 7:283 (second quotation), 284.