Author: Weaver, William Augustus
Biography:
WEAVER, William Augustus (1792-1846: ancestry.com)
The son of George Frederick Weaver and his wife Catherine Adams, he was born in Dumfries VA and educated at Georgetown College (now Georgetown University) in nearby Washington DC. In 1811 he joined the US navy as a midshipman and served in the War of 1812. Severely wounded when his ship the Chesapeakewas captured by the Shannon, he was taken prisoner but managed to write a poem about the engagement which he sent to "a young female friend" and later published in the College magazine. Promoted to Lieutenant, he later served in the Mediterranean but in 1824, on account of what Appleton calls "a misunderstanding as to his leave of absence," he was court-martialled and dismissed from the navy. He married Jane Van Wyck of New York in 1826 and they had eleven children--one of them Aaron Ward Weaver, whose naval career lasted 73 years and who rose to the rank of rear-admiral. Weaver combined farming in Virginia with work for the State Dept. in Washington, where he was employed especially on Spanish-language issues. In 1834 he was Commissioner to Mexico; in 1840 he became the first superintending Clerk of the Census. He died suddenly at home in Dumfries and was buried in Bath Springs Cemetery. (ancestry.com 14 Jan. 2021; Appleton; census.gov/history 14 Jan. 2021; Daily Union [Washington DC] 23 Sept. 1846) HJ