James Madison Sr.
American planter and politician
Col. James Madison Sr. (March 27, 1723 – February 27, 1801) was a prominent Virginia planter and politician who served as a colonel in the Virginia militia during the American Revolutionary War. He inherited Mount Pleasant, later known as Montpelier, a large tobacco plantation in Orange County, Virginia and, with the acquisition of more property, had 5,000 acres and became the largest landowner in the county. He was the father of James Madison Jr., the Founding Father and 4th president of the United States, who inherited what he called Montpelier, and Lieutenant General William Madison, and great-grandfather of Confederate Brigadier General James Edwin Slaughter.
Early life
Madison's parents were planter and politician Ambrose Madison and his wife Frances Taylor (daughter of James Taylor and aunt of Richard Taylor). and was born in 1723 in Orange County, Virginia. When he was nine, his family moved to their new plantation of Mount Pleasant in 1732. His father had hired slaves and an overseer to clear it, work that had been going on for five years to establish cultivation. That summer (1732) his father died at age 36 in August after a short illness.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american planter and politician. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3806658. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1723, 1801 and 1732.
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This entry incorporates text from “James Madison Sr.” 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.