Samuel Edmiston (3 May 1738–by 17 May 1808), member of the Convention of 1788, was born in Cecil County, Maryland, a few years before his parents, John Edmiston and Margaret Edmiston (maiden name unknown), moved the family to Virginia and settled on land near Moffett's Creek in what later became Rockbridge County. Details of his education are not recorded. Edmiston served as a sergeant during part of the Seven Years' War. He married, possibly a woman named Elizabeth, and is believed to have had at least four sons and three daughters, but the name of his wife and the dates of their marriage and of her death are not known for certain. Contemporaries spelled the family name Edmiston, Edmondson, Edmondston, and several other ways, complicating the documentation of his life and career, and some of his descendants adopted spellings other than the one that he employed.
With a land grant that he obtained as a result of his wartime service, Edmiston moved to the upper reaches of the Holston River early in the 1770s. He participated in 1773 in bringing to the region the Presbyterian minister Charles Cummings, probably the first clergyman of any denomination to reside in that area of southwestern Virginia, and in 1776 he signed the petition that led to the creation of the new county of Washington. Edmiston's activities during the Revolutionary War are not well documented, but in 1780 he and his brothers took part as militia officers in the Battle of Kings Mountain, a notable American victory in the southern department.
Edmiston was appointed to the Washington County Court in June 1783, but the incomplete county records do not indicate when or whether he took his seat. In the spring of 1787 he won election to a one-year term representing Washington County in the House of Delegates, where he served on the Committee of Propositions and Grievances. The following spring, Edmiston was one of two men from the county elected to the convention that met in Richmond from 2 to 27 June 1788 to consider whether to ratify the proposed constitution of the United States. He did not speak during the debates. As did many of the other convention members from southern and southwestern Virginia, Edmiston voted on 25 June to require amendment of the draft constitution before ratification, and after that motion failed he voted against ratification. Two days later he supported a long list of amendments that the convention proposed, including one to reduce the taxing power of Congress.
Edmiston returned to the House of Delegates in 1788, in 1789 (when he joined the Committee of Religion), and in 1790 (when he also served on the Committee of Claims and the Committee of Propositions and Grievances). He either did not seek reelection or did not win in 1791, but he won election again in 1792, 1793, and 1794. He resumed his seats on the Committees of Claims and of Propositions and Grievances beginning in the 1792 session and his seat on the Committee of Religion in the 1793 session. During his last assembly session, he was added to the Committee for Courts of Justice. Edmiston played a conspicuous role in keeping the governor informed of the scheme that Arthur Campbell initiated in the 1780s to create a new state of Franklin from land in southwestern Virginia and western North Carolina. Edmiston also served as the foreman of the grand jury in Washington County in 1792, but it is not clear whether it was he or a namesake son or nephew who began a term as sheriff in January 1799. The name of one of them appeared on documents early in 1800 identifying men who supported the election of Thomas Jefferson to the presidency that year.
Sometime in or after the spring of 1782, Edmiston married Catharine Moffett Estill, a widow who had once spent time as a captive of an unidentified Virginia tribe. One of her two sons from her first marriage, Benjamin Estill, later served in the House of Representatives and as a judge of the General Court and of the Circuit Superior Court of Law and Chancery. Edmiston and his second wife evidently had no children before she died about 1805. At the time of his death three years later he owned approximately 4,000 acres of land on the Elk River and about a dozen enslaved workers, and the whole value of his personal property, including livestock and debts payable, exceeded $5,000. Samuel Edmiston wrote his will on 27 April 1808 and died on an unrecorded date between then and 17 May 1808, when the will was proved in court. The place of his burial is not recorded.
Sources Consulted:
"Descendants of John Edmiston/Edmondson, Rockbridge Co., Virginia & James Harreld/Harrold, Washington Co., Virginia, & William Davis, Prince Edward & Charlotte County, Virginia" (ca. 2002), 1–2, Accession 39275, Library of Virginia (LVA); birth date in deposition, 18 Apr. 1806, given in Representatives of Joseph Borden et al. v. B. Borden et al., Augusta Co. Chancery Causes, 1834-041; incomplete family history in Lyman C. Draper Papers, MSS 10DD56, 2QQ156, 8ZZ17, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, Wis., and in "The Edmondson Family" genealogical data (with erroneous death date of 4 Apr. 1808, first wife's given name as Elizabeth, and first marriage in 1760), Brentwood Library, Brentwood, Tenn.; John P. Kaminski et al., eds., The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution: Ratification of the Constitution by the States, vols. 8–10: Virginia (1988–1993), 10:1539, 1541, 1557; several letters in Edmund Randolph and Beverley Randolph Executive Papers, State Records Collection, Record Group 3, LVA; will and estate inventory in Washington Co. Will Book, 3:68–70, 71–75.