William Byrd III

Who was William Byrd III?

William Byrd III was the son of William Byrd II and the grandson of William Byrd I. He inherited his family's estate of approximately 179,000 acres of land in Virginia and continued their planter prestige as a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses.

He chose to fight in the French and Indian War rather than spend much time in Richmond. In 1756 he was colonel of the Second Virginia Regiment.

William Byrd III had a reputation as a notorious gambler. He initiated what was said to have been the first major horse race in the New World, involving other planters Samuel Ogle, John Tayloe II, Francis Thornton, and Benjamin Tasker, Jr.

Byrd III eventually fathered five children by his first wife, and fathered ten more by his second wife, Mary Willing, daughter of Charles Willing of Philadelphia. After he squandered the Byrd fortune on building his magnificent mansion at Westover Plantation, gambling, and bad investments, Byrd III parceled up much of the land he had inherited from his father and sold it off to raise money to pay his debts. He also sold the enslaved African laborers who had worked on his estate.