Charles Willing Byrd
American politician (1770-1828)
Charles Willing Byrd (July 26, 1770 – August 25, 1828) was an American politician who was the Secretary of the Northwest Territory, acting Governor of the Northwest Territory and a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Ohio.
Education and career
Born on July 26, 1770, on Westover Plantation in Charles City County, Colony of Virginia, British America, Byrd read law in 1794, with Gouverneur Morris in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and was admitted to the bar. He was a land agent for Philadelphia financier Robert Morris in Lexington, Kentucky from 1794 to 1797. He was in private practice in Philadelphia from 1797 to 1799. He was appointed Secretary of the Northwest Territory by President John Adams on October 3, 1799, serving from 1799 to 1802. Byrd took his oath of office before Governor Arthur St. Clair on February 26, 1800. While serving as Secretary of the Northwest Territory, Byrd also served as a Hamilton county delegate to the 1802 Ohio Constitutional Convention. He was acting Governor of the Northwest Territory from 1802 to 1803. Byrd served as Secretary of the Northwest Territory until Ohio became a state on March 1, 1803.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1066466. VIAF identifies the subject as 101570276. The Library of Congress control number is no2009172575. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1770, 1828, 1794 and 1797.
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This entry incorporates text from “Charles Willing Byrd” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.