Nicholas Faulcon (d. by 24 September 1793), member of the Convention of 1776, was the son of Nicholas Faulcon, of Surry County. Faulcon included "Jr." in his signature until his father died in 1783. He was born probably late in the 1730s, but there are no reliable surviving family records to establish the date, identify his mother with precision, or give the maiden name of Lucy, his first wife, or the date of their marriage. They had at least three sons and two daughters. References in the Surry County records indicate that for at least part of his adult life Faulcon was a partner with his brother Jacob Faulcon and with Hartwell Cocke in a local business styled Jacob Faulcon and Company.
Faulcon became a lieutenant in the county militia on 19 June 1764. He sat for the first time as a justice of the peace on 19 February 1765 and regularly served on the court for the next twenty years. He took office as county sheriff on 18 February 1766. By an act of assembly passed early in 1772 Faulcon became one of the founding trustees of the town of Cobham. In March 1773 he won election to fill a seat in the House of Burgesses left vacant when Hartwell Cocke died, and when the assembly next met, in May 1774, Faulcon was appointed to the Committee of Trade. Following the dissolution of that assembly, he signed the association of former burgesses on 27 May 1774 protesting Parliament's closing of the port of Boston. Reelected to the assembly later in the summer, he served on the same committee at the last meeting of burgesses in June 1775.
Faulcon's reelection in the summer of 1774 made him eligible to attend the first of Virginia's Revolutionary Conventions, which met in Williamsburg in August. He signed its nonimportation association of 6 August 1774 and later in the year or very early the following year was elected a member of the Surry County Committee formed to enforce the terms of the association and of the nonimportation association that the first Continental Congress had adopted. Faulcon also attended the second Revolutionary Convention in March 1775 and the third convention in the summer of that year but departed early. During the fourth convention that met in December 1775 and January 1776 he served on a committee to draft amendments to an ordinance for supplying the new army regiments with arms.
Reelected to the county committee in February 1776, Faulcon also won reelection in April as one of two members representing Surry in the fifth and last of the Revolutionary Conventions, which met from 6 May until 5 July 1776. Largely untested in a legislative capacity and perhaps unknown to most of the other delegates, he was an inconspicuous convention delegate and a low-ranking member of the Committees of Privileges and Elections and of Propositions and Grievances. Faulcon missed more than half the convention and may or may not have been present when the delegates voted unanimously in favor of independence, unanimously adopted the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and unanimously adopted the first constitution of the independent Commonwealth of Virginia. During the winter of 1775–1776 and into the spring he was frequently in Williamsburg, where he received payment for supplies and arms that he furnished to Surry County's recruits or that he received in order to pay men at home who had supplied them. Other references indicate that he continued to act in that capacity from time to time during the rest of the Revolutionary War.
Faulcon attended the first House of Delegates in the autumn of 1776 and served on the Committees of Privileges and Elections and of Propositions and Grievances. He either did not stand for reelection in the spring of 1777 or lost.
Through inheritance and purchase Faulcon acquired more than 1,500 acres of land in Surry County, and during the mid-1780s he owned as many as forty-seven enslaved workers. He distilled apple brandy in quantity and at the time of his death had on hand between 400 and 500 gallons. His wife died on an unrecorded date between 12 April 1787 and 19 April 1790, when Faulcon executed a bond and on that date or soon afterward married Elizabeth Clements, of Southampton County, where he thereafter resided. After completing his will on 28 July 1792, Nicholas Faulcon died on an unrecorded date, probably late in the summer of 1793 and possibly at his new residence in Southampton County, where he may also have been buried. His will was proved in the Surry County Court on 24 September 1793.
Sources Consulted:
Family relations established in father's will in Surry Co. Will Book, 12:17–19; first wife named in Surry Co. Deed Book, 12:260–261; Southampton Co. Marriage Bonds (bond dated 19 Apr. 1790); Williamsburg Virginia Gazette (Rind), 1 Apr. 1773; numerous references in Surry Co. Order and Deed Books and in William J. Van Schreeven, Robert L. Scribner, and Brent Tarter, eds., Revolutionary Virginia, the Road to Independence: A Documentary Record (1973–1983); Surry Co. Land Tax Returns (1782) and Alterations (1784), Auditor of Public Accounts, Record Group 48, Library of Virginia; Surry Co. Will Book, 1:46–48; estate sales advertised in Richmond Virginia Gazette, and General Advertiser, 27 Nov. 1793, 14 Jan. 1795.