Talk:Richard Thomas Walker Duke

Richard Thomas Walker Duke (1822–1898) was a nineteenth-century congressman and lawyer from Virginia.

On June 6, 1822, Richard Thomas Walker Duke was born in the Charlottesville area of Albemarle County to Richard Duke and Maria Walker. In 1846, he married Elizabeth Scott Eskridge (1820-1896), daughter of William Scott Eskridge and Margaret Frances Brown. Their children were:

A. William Richard Duke (1848-1929) m. (1894) Edith May Coleman (1873-1943)

B. Margaret Brown Duke (1850-1851)

C. Richard Thomas Walker Duke, Jr. (1853-1926) m. (1884) (1) Edith Ridgeway Slaughter (1863-1921)

m. (1923) (2) Mary Richardson Slaughter (“Maymee”), sister-in-law of first wife, Edith Ridgeway Slaughter (m. 1890 Samuel Garland Slaughter).

D. Maria Walker Duke (1855-1856)

E. Mary Willoughby Duke (1857-1883) m. (1882) Dr. Charles Slaughter

Before civil war disrupted his legal and political career, he had built an office at 20 Court House Square; acquired a partner in James D. Jones; and served as one of the Town of Charlottesville's first alderman, as mayor, and as Commonwealth’s Attorney.

Attended private schools; was graduated from the Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, Va., in 1844; was graduated from the law department of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va., in 1850; elected Commonwealth attorney for the county of Albemarle in 1858 and continued in that office until 1869; during the Civil War entered the Confederate Army; became colonel of the Forty-sixth Regiment, Virginia Infantry; elected as a Conservative to the Forty-first Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Robert Ridgway; reelected to the Forty-second Congress and served from November 8, 1870, to March 3, 1873; member of the State house of delegates in 1879 and 1880; “Colonel” Duke died at his country estate, "Sunny Side," near Charlottesville, Albemarle County, Va., on July 2, 1898; interment in Maplewood Cemetery, Charlottesville, Va. The University of Virginia library holds his family's papers.

Members of the local chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans had named theirs the R. T. W. Duke chapter in his honor.

R. T. W. Duke, Sr. was his youngest son’s hero and role model. Writing after his father’s death, R. T. W. Duke, Jr. recalled of his childhood, “I worshiped him then with a devotion, which neither age nor years ever diminished.” (Recollections I. 13) Inspired by such devotion, the younger Duke followed closely in his father and namesake’s footsteps–into the University of Virginia, the legal profession, the Democratic Party, and the celebration of the South’s Lost Cause.

R. T. W. Duke, Jr. co-founded in 1889 the John Bowie Strange Camp of the United Confederate Veterans (UCV). This camp was "only the fourteenth of its kind in any Southern state and symbolized the depth of Confederate feeling in the community."