Robert Carter Nicholas (1779-1780)

Further reading:

Joseph Allen Ernst, Money and politics in America, 1755-1775: a Study in the Currency Act of 1764 and the Political Economy of Revolution (1973).

Victor Dennis Golladay, “The Nicholas Family of Virginia, 1722-1820” (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1973).

Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 (1982), 209-240. Nicholas was a vestryman at Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg in 1772 when the vestry voted to dismiss a new rector. Isaac uses the incident to illustrate social change in Virginia during the late colonial period.

David John Mays, Edmund Pendleton, 1821-1803, A Biography II (1952), 152-153.

Samuel M. Rosenblatt, “Merchant-Planter Relations in the Tobacco Consignment Trade: John Norton and Robert Carter Nicholas,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 72, No. 4 (Oct., 1964), pp. 454-470.


Research collections:

Founders Online from the National Archives and Records Administration provides access to letters, 1756-1778, between Nicholas and Washington in the Papers of George Washington; and two letters from Nicholas, then serving as Treasurer of Virginia, to the Virginia delegation at the Continental Congress in 1775 (Papers of Thomas Jefferson). In February 1758 Nicholas writes Washington about a false rumor of Washington’s death while commanding troops in the French and Indian War; in 1760, he and George Wythe write Washington with legal advice about a case he has pending in the Virginia courts; and in 1776, Nicholas writes Washington offering condolences on the death of General Richard Montgomery during the failed invasion of Quebec in December 1775.

Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library)
Williamsburg, Va.
John Norton & Sons Papers, 1750-1902; 2294 items.
Represented.

Library of Congress (Manuscripts Division)
Washington, D.C.
Papers of Wilson Cary Nicholas, 1765-1831 [Robert Carter Nicholas’ son]; 3 containers.
Represented.

Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (Great Britain) records, 1757-1773; 25 items (photocopies).
Represented.