Maund, John J.
Birth
Death
First Name
Middle Name
Last Name
Person Biography
John James Maund was born in Wales in 1764 or 1765. It is unknown when he immigrated to the United States. Maund married Harriet “Lucy” Carter, daughter of prominent Virginia planter Robert Carter III, on 30 July 1789 in Baltimore County, Maryland. The couple had eight children.
Maund did business both in Maryland and Virginia as an attorney and port manager. While he was originally based in Baltimore County, Maund bought a “1790-acre parcel [of land] on the Yeocomico River adjacent to the ‘Town of Kinsale’ and part of the town” in 1791. This purchase was likely a factor in his appointment as superintendent of the Port of Yeocomico in Westmoreland County, Virginia, in 1793, his first year as a Virginia state senator. As superintendent, Maund was in charge of overseeing the “Quarantine performed by all vessels” that arrived at the port during the ongoing yellow fever epidemic. In addition to their land in Westmoreland County, Maund and his wife briefly owned 1,100 acres of land in Fredericksburg where the Old Masonic Cemetery currently stands.
Though Maund’s legal work diminished when he was at his post in Yeocomico, he resumed his practice of law in four Virginia counties as well as the District Court and High Court of Chancery from 1799 until his death. Maund most likely appears in the Mason family manuscript account book due to his work at the Port of Yeocomico, and potentially also as a result of his ties to Robert Carter III, who likely knew the Masons due to the intertwined community of wealthy planters in Virginia. It is also possible that Maund engaged in legal consulting or business with the Masons, as there were many lawyers in the Mason family.
John James Maund died of what was likely a stroke on 26 October 1802 at the Westmoreland County courthouse in Montross. The Washington Federalist reported that “when in the act of pleading a cause…he dropped in a kind of apoplexy and expired in a few hours.” He is buried alongside his wife and his daughter Frances in Nomini Hall Cemetery in Hague, Virginia.
by Amanda Kopf
