Robert Weakley

Robert Weakley was born on July 20, 1764, in Halifax County, Virginia. He attended schools in Princeton, New Jersey, and married Jane Locke of Salisbury, North Carolina, in 1791, with whom he had four children: Mary, Narcissa, Robert Locke, and Jane Baird. At age sixteen, Weakley joined the Revolutionary Army, serving until the end of the American Revolutionary War and participating in battles at Alamance and Guilford Courthouse. In 1782, he moved to Rowan County, North Carolina, to study surveying under General Griffith Rutherford. By 1785, he settled in what later became Tennessee, engaging in agriculture. Weakley was a delegate to the 1789 North Carolina convention that ratified the U.S. Constitution and served as brigade inspector of the Mero District militia in 1791. He represented Davidson County in the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1796 and was colonel of the 2nd Regiment of the Davidson County Militia by 1798. Weakley co-founded the town of Jefferson in Rutherford County, Tennessee, with Thomas Bedford, establishing it as the county seat and a hub for early economic development. In 1819, he petitioned to form the Nashville Bridge Company, leading to the construction of the first covered bridge over the Cumberland River by 1823. He served in the Tennessee Senate multiple times between 1799 and 1819 and was elected as a Democratic-Republican to the U.S. House of Representatives from 1809 to 1811. Later, he was commissioner for treaties with the Chickasaw Indians and Speaker of the Tennessee Senate from 1819 to 1821 and again ...