William L. Brent

William L. Brent
Born	20 February 1784
Died	7 July 1848(aged 64)

William Leigh Brent— (February 20, 1784 – July 7, 1848) was a lawyer, plantation owner, and slaveholder inMarylandandLouisiana,and three-termU.S. RepresentativerepresentingLouisiana's 3rd congressional district.

Early and family life

Maria Fenwick Brent

Brent was born atPort Tobacco,Charles County, Maryland,on February 20, 1784, the first child of Robert Brent (1759–1810) and Dorothy Leigh Brent. His father's family (including lawyer/nunMargaret Brent) had owned land in that area of Maryland since about 1640, but some had fled to Virginia before theAmerican Revolutionary War.His maternal grandfather, William Leigh, owned St. Bernards, a plantation near the Port Tobacco River atPomonkey,which he gave to Robert and Dorothy when they married.

Robert Brent built a house which he named Brentfield (the manor house which later burnt to the ground was about a mile fromBel Alton, Maryland). However, because William Leigh Brent married a local heiress, his father secured William's consent to leaving it to his younger brother, George Brent (1817–1881), who became a Judge of Maryland's Seventh Judicial District and of the Circuit Court of Appeals. Virginia congressman and SenatorRichard Brent(1757–1814) was a paternal cousin. Another paternal cousin wasRobert Brent(1764–1819), who became the first mayor of Washington, D.C., and freed his slaves in his will.

William Leigh Brent studied law and was admitted to the bar ofMaryland.In 1809 he married his first cousin Maria Fenwick (daughter of Col. James Fenwick and Teresa Brent), with whom he would have nine children (as discussed in the Legacy section below).

Career

William Leigh Brent and his new wife soon moved to Louisiana, where Brent began his legal career. PresidentJames Madisonnamed him Deputy Attorney General for the western district of theTerritory of Orleans.After the international slave trade became illegal, many Maryland and Virginia-born enslaved people were shipped through Port Tobacco to the sugar plantations of Louisiana; prosecuting fugitive slave cases was part of his job.

In 1822 Brent was elected as anAdams-Clay Republicanto theEighteenth Congressand moved to Washington, D.C. The following year, his father-in-law died and he and Maria inherited an estate called Pomonkey on the creek of the same name near a village called Fenwick. W.L. Brent remained in Washington and Maryland until 1844, when he returned to Louisiana. He was Louisiana's representative in Congress from March 4, 1823, until March 3, 1829, having been elected as anAdamsRepublican to theNineteenth,andTwentieth Congresses.

Representative Brent was a founding member of Louisiana'sWhig Party,but was not again a candidate for public office. His successor wasJacksonian DemocratGeneralWalter Hampden Overton,whose family had moved from Virginia when he was young, who became a war hero at theBattle of New Orleansand whose daughter married one of W.L. Brent's sons.

As his political career ended, Brent resumed the practice of law in Louisiana and inWashington, D.C.

Death and legacy

Brent died inSt. Martinville, Louisiana,on July 7, 1848. He is buried in St. Martin's Catholic Cemetery. An inscription on his gravestone indicates his especial popularity with theAcadianpopulation of Teche Bayou in St. Martin Parish.

Four of their sons became lawyers and politicians. Their eldest sonRobert James Brent(1811–1872) remained in Maryland, having married Matilda Lawrence ofHagerstown, Maryland.He practiced law inBaltimoreandWashington, D.C.,and was the last Attorney General under the Maryland constitution replaced in 1851 (that Brent having helped to legislate himself out of what had been a lifetime office). Another son, James Fenwick Brent (1814–1847) became a prominent lawyer in Louisiana, and married the daughter of GeneralWalter Hampden Overton.He predeceased his father (and within two years of serving as a delegate to Louisiana's constitutional convention of 1845). Another son,Joseph Lancaster Brent(1826–1905), became a lawyer after studying atGeorgetown University,married a Louisiana heiress, served two terms in the California legislature, then returned to serve in the Confederate Army as Major (rising to the rank of Brigadier General). After the American Civil War, Joseph L. Brent returned to Louisiana to manage his wife's estates and served two terms in the Louisiana legislature. The youngest son, Charles Vivian Brent (1831–1906) was born at Pomonkey and married a daughter of Maryland SenatorWilliam D. Merrick(his uncle George marrying another of Merrick's daughters). Although their children died young, C.V. Brent edited theSouthern Maryland Independentnewspaper as well as practiced law with his elder brother Robert in Baltimore. C.V. Brent also served in Maryland's post-war Constitutional Convention, and then was a lawyer in theInterior Departmentuntil his death inGeorgetown.