Abraham Watkins Venable

Abraham Watkins Venable (October 17, 1799 – February 24, 1876) was a nineteenth-century US politician and lawyer from North Carolina. He was the nephew of congressman and senator Abraham Bedford Venable.

Biography

Born in Springfield, Virginia, he graduated from Hampden-Sydney College. He studied medicine for two years before turning to law. He later graduated from Princeton University in 1819 and was admitted to the bar in 1821. He practiced law in Virginia in both Prince Edward and Mecklenburg counties until 1829 when he moved to North Carolina. He later got involved politics and was elected to the thirtieth congress as a Democrat, serving from 1847 to 1853, and ran unsuccessfully for reelection in 1852. He was a presidential elector in the 1860 presidential election on the Democratic ticket for John C. Breckinridge and Joseph Lane. When his state seceded from the Union, he went with it to the Confederacy and was elected to the Provisional Confederate Congress. He was later elected to the first Confederate congress, serving from 1862 to 1864. He died in Oxford, North Carolina in 1876 and was interred at Shiloh Presbyterian Churchyard in Granville County, North Carolina. Like many other members of the Venable, Watkins, and Daniel families (including Patriot Nathaniel Venable and Patriot Elizabeth Venable,) he was an ancestor of Isabelle Daniel Hall Fiske (Barbara Hall), the cartoonist, artist, and co-creator of Quarry Hill Creative Center in Vermont (founded 1946 and still extant).

United States House of Representatives
Preceded by James C. Dobbin	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from North Carolina's 5th congressional district March 4, 1847 – March 3, 1853	Succeeded by John Kerr, Jr.
Confederate States House of Representatives
Preceded by (none)	Representative to the Provisional Confederate Congress from North Carolina 1861	Succeeded by (none)