Author: Heath, James Ewell
Biography:
HEATH, James Ewell (1792-1862: WBIS)
The son of John Heath, a planter and politician, he was born and died in Virginia. Knight says he was a lawyer but that is unconfirmed. He was elected to the state legislature in 1814 and served three terms, after which he became the State auditor (till 1849) and then Commissioner of Pensions (1850-3). He was married twice: first to Fannie Weems and then in 1820, after her death, to Elizabeth Ann Macon. There were at least three children. Besides his official papers and his early volume of verse, he published some history; a novel, Edge-Hill (1828), with an antislavery message; and a satirical play, Whigs and Democrats (1839), that was published anonymously. He was the founding editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, started in 1835. (Susan J. Tracy, In the Master's Eye [2009] 49-65; Charles Lanman, Biographical Annals of the Civil Government of the United States [1876] 229; Knight) HJ