Charles Taylor Duncan (9 July 1838–29 September 1915), member of the Convention of 1867–1868, was born in Scott County and was the son of Elizabeth "Ibby" Carter Duncan and John Duncan, who is said to have died about 1843. Following Virginia's secession from the Union, Duncan enlisted as a private in May 1861 at Estillville (later Gate City). On 1 July, while serving in northwestern Virginia as part of the 37th Regiment Virginia Infantry, he was promoted to second lieutenant. Having failed to win election in April 1862, Duncan was relieved of duty and demoted to private but the next month became ordnance sergeant. In June he rendered conspicuous service at Port Republic during the Shenandoah Valley campaign and received promotion to lieutenant the following month. After being wounded at the Battle of Sharpsburg (Antietam) in September, Duncan returned home to recover. Captured near Spotsylvania Court House in May 1864, he was imprisoned first at Point Lookout, Maryland, and then at Fort Delaware. Having taken an oath of allegiance to the Union, he was released in June 1865.
While in prison Duncan began to read law, and after returning to Scott County he established a mercantile business, probably in partnership with his brother. Supported by white voters but with only one black vote, Duncan was one of two delegates elected on 22 October 1867 to represent Lee, Scott, and Wise Counties in the constitutional convention that met in Richmond from 3 December 1867 to 17 April 1868 in compliance with federal Reconstruction legislation. He served on the Committees on Military Affairs, on Prisons, and on the Prevention and Punishment of Crime.
Validating the military governor's description of him as unreconstructed and as an "Original Secessionist," Duncan consistently voted with the Conservatives and in mid-December 1867 attended a Conservative meeting in Richmond, intended to organize concerted political action on both the state and the local levels to guarantee the preservation of white rule. During the constitutional convention he opposed John Curtiss Underwood's presidency and supported an investigation of his conduct while in office, fought Radical attempts to disfranchise white southerners who had supported secession and the Confederacy and to bar them from holding office, favored racially segregated schools, and opposed the adoption of the new constitution that was passed on 17 April 1868. Duncan joined twenty-eight fellow Conservative delegates in signing a public address protesting most of the proposed constitution's provisions and calling on whites to oppose its ratification. On 6 July 1869 Virginians overwhelmingly approved the constitution but rejected the exclusion of former Confederates from office.
On 20 September 1868 Duncan married Mary Louise Martin, of Lee County. Before her death on 28 July 1885, they had five daughters, two of whom died in infancy, and one son, who also died young. On 15 March 1888 Duncan married Mary Ella Holliday, with whom he had two sons. Sometime after 1870 the family moved to Jonesville, in Lee County, where on 29 August 1874 Duncan appeared before the county court as a licensed attorney. He established a law practice, sat as counsel for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, became one of the area's principal farmers, and served as master of the Masonic lodge in 1873, 1877, 1888, and 1909. In August 1881 Duncan was a delegate to the Conservative Democratic Party State Convention, in which he sat on the Committee on Permanent Organization. He served two consecutive four-year terms as commonwealth's attorney from 1 July 1875 to 30 June 1883. Commissioned a county judge on 21 December 1885, he sat on the bench for about four years before returning to private practice.
Charles Taylor Duncan died in Gate City on 29 September 1915, shortly after delivering an oration commemorating the centennial of Scott County's founding. He was buried in the Jonesville town cemetery, sometimes called the Confederate Cemetery.
Sources Consulted:
Biographies (with birth date) in Anne Wynn Laningham, comp., Early Settlers of Lee County, Virginia, and Adjacent Counties (1977), 1:78, 115–116 (with variant death date of 30 Sept. 1915), and Birg E. Sergent, Lee County, Virginia, Circuit Court Judges, 1792–2005 (2005), 61–64 (portrait on 61); Marriage Register, Lee Co. (1868, 1888), Bureau of Vital Statistics (BVS), Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia (LVA); Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers (1861–1865), War Department Collection of Confederate Records, Record Group 109, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.; United States War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (1880–1901), 1st ser., 12, pt. 1, 773–774; Secretary of the Commonwealth, Election Records, 1776–1941, no. 427, State Government Records Collection, Record Group 13, LVA; Richard L. Hume, "The Membership of the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1867–1868: A Study of the Beginnings of Congressional Reconstruction in the Upper South," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 86 (1978): 481; Richard G. Lowe, "Virginia's Reconstruction Convention: General Schofield Rates the Delegates," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 80 (1972): 356 (quotation); Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Virginia (1868), 60, 105; Journal of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Virginia [1868], 389; Richmond Daily Dispatch, 20 Apr. 1868; Lee Co. Circuit Court Order Book, 4:14–15; Lee Co. Order Book, 13:7, 14:102, 15:33, 450–451; BVS Death Certificate, Scott Co. (with variant birth date of 11 Aug. 1840); memorial in Confederate Veteran 24 (1916): 322.