Lot C 51
In the extreme southeast corner of the cemetery, there is a monument memorializing the life of Charles King Mallory, Sr. Mallory was an attorney by profession and very active in the political life of Hampton and Elizabeth City County. Mallory owned several plantations and lived in a mansion located between the town and Fort Monroe.
A few months after the presidential election of 1860, voters in the county elected Mallory, a so-called “Douglas Democrat”, to represent them at a convention to determine the question of secession. Delegates met in Richmond during the winter and spring of 1861. Like most Virginians, Mallory was a unionist and the prospect of secession was extremely distasteful. When the convention voted on secession, the notion was overwhelmingly defeated.
However, a few days later with the opening of hostilities at Fort Sumter and President Lincoln’s call for troops to crush the rebellion, the convention voted again. If disunion was distasteful, federal coercion and the prospect of fighting against their southern kinsmen were anathema. The convention voted solidly for secession. Mallory voted with the majority both times. Days later, Virginia voters overwhelmingly endorsed the convention’s decision.
Mallory was a slaveowner. In fact, the three slaves who escaped to Fort Monroe and became the first contrabands of war—Frank Baker, James Townsend, and Sheppard Mallory—belonged to him. During the war, Mallory served as a Colonel in the Confederate army. For most of the war, Elizabeth City County was controlled by federal troops. As a consequence, Mallory’s plantations and his mansion were confiscated by the government. (Eventually, only his mansion was returned to his family and that only after his death.)
Charles King Mallory, Sr. and his wife, Martha Skinner Mallory, were the parents of 12 children. Four died as infants or adolescents and 3 died during naval service.
In 1871, Charles King Mallory, Sr. ran for the Virginia state senate. He was defeated by Daniel Norton—a former slave. Upon his death in 1875, a funeral was held at St. John’s. A contemporary newspaper reported that “the funeral was attended by the largest concourse of people that ever gathered in Elizabeth City County.” A long procession of carriages and mourners carried Mallory’s casket from St. John’s to the family burial site at Winder farm—8 miles away.
Mallory’s monument in our cemetery may just memorialize him and not identify his gravesite. Perhaps the same is true of the monument beside him for Charles King Mallory, Jr., who died as a result of severe burns received due to the explosion of the CSS Chattahoochee in May of 1863.
Originally published in St. John’s Newsletter, September 2021.