Elizabeth Corbin Braxton
Wife of Carter Braxton, Signer of the Declaration of Independence
1747 – 1814 A.D.

Four years after the death of his first wife, Mr. Braxton married Elizabeth Corbin of “Laneville,” King and Queen County, daughter of Colonel Richard and Elizabeth Tayloe Corbin, a family dating back to 1650 when Hon. Henry Corbin came from England and established “Buckingham House,” in Middlesex County. Colonel Richard, grandson of “Henry, of Buckingham House,” received his education in England and was a devoted churchman (Episcopal). Bishop Meade tells of his furnishing gratuitously the bread and wine for the communion and boarding the unmarried ministers who served the parish, without charge. He was President of the King’s Council and Receiver General of the Colony.

By his second wife Carter Braxton had sixteen children, several of whom died in infancy or early childhood. Elizabeth, the eldest child of Elizabeth Corbin Braxton, married Colonel Samuel Griffin, who served in the Revolution and afterward was a member of Congress; Carter, of King William County, who married a “Miss Sayre, granddaughter of Hon. Philip Ludwell”; and Colonel George Braxton, of “Chericoke,” who married Mary, daughter of Hon. Charles and Mary Carter of “Shirley,” Charles City County.

Mr. Braxton was a member of the house of Burgesses as early as 1765, and began taking an active part in Colonial matters, and, being a man of considerable force of character and personal influence, acquired such prominence that upon the death of Peyton Randolph, in 1775, he was elected his successor in the Continental Congress.

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Reference: The Pioneer Mothers of America: A Record of the More Notable Women of the Early Days of the Country, and Particularly of the Colonial and Revolutionary Periods by Harry Clinton Green and Mary Wolcott Green, A.B. Third Volume, Published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons.