Robert Jefferson Breckinridge

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Birth Date

1800-03-08

Death Date

1871-12-27

Gender

Race Description

White

Entity Type

Person

"Robert Jefferson Breckinridge" in the Civil War Governors of Kentucky Digital Documentary Edition, discovery.civilwargovernors.org/document/N001013, (accessed November 4, 2025).

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Danville, Kentucky, politician, pastor, educator, and editor. Fayette County, Kentucky, native. Son of John Breckinridge and Mary Hopkins Cabell Breckinridge. Attended Princeton College in Princeton, New Jersey. Attended Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Graduated from Union College in Schenectady, New York, in 1819. Married Ann Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge in 1823. Father of Mary Cabell Breckinridge Warfield, Robert Jefferson Breckinridge, Jr., Marie Lettice Preston Breckinridge Handy, William Campbell Preston Breckinridge, and Joseph Cabell Breckinridge. Married Virginia Hart Shelby in 1847. Member of the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Kentucky from 1825 to 1830. Pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, Maryland, from 1832 to 1845. President of Jefferson College in Washington, Pennsylvania, from 1845 to 1847. Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Lexington, Kentucky from 1847 to 1853. Superintendent of Public Instruction of the Commonwealth of Kentucky from 1847 to 1853. Owned thirty-seven enslaved persons in Fayette County in 1850. President of the Danville Theological Seminary in Danville, Kentucky, from 1853 to 1869. Owned thirty-seven enslaved people in Kentucky in 1860. Editor of the Danville Quarterly Review in Danville, Kentucky, from 1861 to 1864. Temporary President of the National Union Convention in Baltimore, Maryland, on June 7, 1864.

Seventh Manuscript Census of the United States (1850), Slave Schedules, Kentucky, Fayette County, District 1.
"National Union Convention," New York Times, June 8, 1864.
Will D. Gilliam, Jr., "Robert J. Breckinridge: Kentucky Unionist" Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 69, no. 4 (Oct. 1971): 362-85.
Luke E. Harlow, "Religion, Race, and Robert J. Breckinridge: The Ideology of an Antislavery Slaveholder, 1830-1860" Ohio Valley History 6, no. 3 (Fall 2006): 1-24.
James C. Klotter, "Robert Jefferson Breckinridge" in The Kentucky Encyclopedia, John E. Kleber, ed. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1992), 120.

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