Charles Fenton Mercer (June 16, 1778 – May 4, 1858) was a nineteenth-century politician and lawyer from Loudoun County, Virginia who served in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Virginia General Assembly. Early and family life The younger son of Virginia planter, lawyer and politician James Mercer and his wife the former Eleanor Dick was born in Fredericksburg about a decade after the death of his grandfather, noted colonial lawyer, author and land speculator John Mercer. His mother died when he was two (the year his father became a judge), and he was orphaned when he was fifteen. The need to educate his sons may have led James Mercer to become a trustee of the Fredericksburg Academy, for James Mercer would write his friend George Mason about the new school's advantages over the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg (where James Mercer and his brothers had studied), Hampden-Sydney college and schools in Richmond, the new state capital. His elder brother John Fenton Mercer (named after an uncle who died and was scalped in the French and Indian War) would also follow their grandfather's and father's career path—admitted to the Virginia bar in Fredericksburg, and operate the family plantation in Spotsylvania County using enslaved labor as well as serve in the Virginia House of Delegates—like their father and uncle John F. Mercer (who also served in the U.S. Congress and as Maryland governor). His first cousins Robert Selden Garnett and James Mercer Garnett, both also served as members of Congress. Mercer did not travel to Williamsburg for higher studies, but rather to Princeton, New Jersey, after the American Revolutionary War. He graduated from Princeton College in 1797. The following year Mercer accepted a commission as captain of cavalry from President George Washington, who expected a war with France, which did not happen. Mercer returned to Princeton, took a postgraduate course, received a further degree in 1800, then toured Europe in 1802-1803. Upon returning to Virginia, he read law. Career Admitted to the bar in 1802, Mercer began his private legal practice in Loudoun County. In 1810 he helped to found the village of Aldie, Virginia, near his mill. Loudoun County voters elected Mercer as one of their representatives in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1810 and he won re-election multiple times until 1817. In his final term, he introduced a bill to establish a system of free public