Francis Corbin (1759/60-May 23, 1821) was a Virginia lawyer, planter and politician, who represented Middlesex County in the Virginia House of Delegates and the Virginia Ratifying Convention and later moved to Caroline County. Early and family life The youngest son of Richard Corbin and his wife Elizabeth (Betty) Tayloe, was born to the First Families of Virginia. Both his paternal and maternal ancestors had emigrated from England and become gentry in the Virginia colony (many serving in the House of Burgesses and some including his father since his childhood on the Governor's Advisory Council and others only holding local office) as they also operated plantations using enslaved labor. He received a private education appropriate to his class. In 1773 his family sent him to England to complete his studies, and he probably attended schools at Canterbury and Cambridge. He was admitted to study law at the Inner Temple on January 23, 1777 but found himself unable to return home during the American Revolution. He petitioned the King in 1779 for financial assistance because his Loyalist father could no longer do so. Career After returning to Virginia in 1783, Corbin continued the families's planter and political traditions. Planter Thus, Corbin farmed using enslaved labor, although for much of his life he objected to slavery on moral and economic grounds, and expressed fear that the Union could rupture in the future over the issue. Thus in 1797 he wrote to James Madison that he was considering moving his family to Connecticut or Rhode Island because they did not allow slavery. Nonetheless, in the Virginia tax census of 1787, Corbin paid taxes on 11 enslaved adults and 12 teenage slaves, as well as four horses and 26 cattle in Middlesex County. He moved to Caroline County about 1795, and focused on managing "The Reeds", his plantation that by 1811 expanded to more than 3700 acres. In the 1810 census, Corbin paid taxes on 134 slaves in Caroline County. A decade later, Corbin owned 142 enslaved people. Corbin died the following year, and his estate included 70 slaves aged 12 or older. Politician Corbin's political career began in the spring of 1784, when Middlesex County voters elected him as one of their representatives in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1784, and he won re-election annually for a decade, as well as served as one of Middlesex County's delegates to the Virginia Ratifying Convention