Cuthbert Bullitt
Cuthbert Bullitt was an American colonial planter and lawyer from Prince William County, Virginia. He was a local and colonial political leader during the American Revolution.Biography
Bullitt was descended from French Huguenots. His grandfather, Benjamin Bullett, was a French Huguenot from Languedoc, Southern France who escaped France during the religious persecutions of Hugenots, following the Edict of Fontainebleau, and settled in the Province of Maryland in 1685 as a planter, operating a plantation near Port Tobacco in Charles County. Bullitt was one of the five children of Benjamin Bullitt, the son of Benjamin the Huguenot, and Elizabeth Harrison Bullitt. He was born on his parents' plantation in Fauquier County, Virginia. He and his brother, Thomas Bullitt, both settled in Prince William County and became locally prominent, Cuthbert as a planter and lawyer and Thomas as a soldier.
Bullitt developed his plantation, known as Mount View, on a peninsula where Quantico Creek enters the Potomac River. He married Helen Scott, a member of a wealthy colonial Virginian family, in 1760 and had six children: Alexander Scott Bullitt, who became a pioneer settler in Louisville, Kentucky, Thomas James, Frances, Sarah, Helen, and Sophia.
On 24 September 1765 Bullitt shot and killed Virginia Burgess John Baylis in a duel. Baylis had insulted Bullitt's brother-in-law, 18-year old John Scott. He was acquitted on grounds of self defense.
As the American Revolutionary War neared, Bullitt became more active politically. He joined Prince William County's Committee of Safety along with Lynaugh Helm and Henry Lee. In 1776 he and Henry Lee III were the county's delegates to a revolutionary Provincial Congress of Virginia. That meeting became a constitutional convention, producing an interim constitution used by the province for the next several years.
Under the new state's government, Bullitt became the Commonwealth Attorney in Prince William County. He served at this post until he was appointed to the bench of a state court in 1780. When the Virginia Ratifying Convention met to ratify the United States Constitution in 1788, Judge Bullitt was again the delegate for the County and voted against ratification.
He remained a judge until his death at Mount View in 1791. His will was dated May 16, 1791.
