Captain, C.S.A.

Parents: William Dandridge (1810–1884) and Mary Elizabeth Pendleton (1818–1891). Spouse: Isabella Lawrence (1846–1914) Children: Edmund Pendleton Dandridge (1880–1959) and others who died in infancy. Kinship: Husband of the second cousin four times removed of the post–World War II Smith generation.

Early Life and Ancestry

Lemuel Dandridge was born at Elm Hill, Hanover County, Virginia, in 1842, into one of the state’s historic landed families. His father, William Dandridge (1810–1884), was a descendant of Col. William Dandridge of “Elsing Green” (1689–1743), a member of the Virginia Governor’s Council and brother of John Dandridge of Chestnut Grove, father of Martha Dandridge Custis Washington. His mother, Mary Elizabeth Pendleton, belonged to the distinguished Pendleton family of Louisa County and was a great-niece of the Revolutionary jurist Edmund Pendleton (1721–1803)

Education and the Civil War

Educated privately and at the Hanover Academy, Lemuel entered the University of Virginia in 1859 to read law. His studies were interrupted by the outbreak of the Civil War. In May 1861 he enlisted in the 15th Virginia Infantry (Company D), “Hanover Dragoons,” serving throughout the conflict under Generals Pickett and Mahone. He participated in the Peninsula Campaign, Cold Harbor, and the siege of Petersburg, attaining the rank of captain before surrendering at Appomattox Court House in April 1865.

Postwar Career and Removal to New York

Following the war, Dandridge readmitted himself to the bar but found the practice of law in postwar Virginia unremunerative. In 1871 he removed to New York City, where family and business connections offered new prospects. By the mid-1870s he was employed as a legal adjuster and insurance underwriter for the New York Mutual and later the Atlantic Fire Insurance Company, maintaining offices on Cedar Street, Manhattan. He became active in the Episcopal Church and in Southern expatriate circles, frequently contributing to the Southern Churchman on church affairs and reconciliation.

Marriage and Family

On November 16, 1876, at Flushing, Long Island, he married Isabella Lawrence (1846–1914), daughter of John Watson Lawrence (1812–1888) and Elizabeth Bowne (1815–1891), thereby uniting two prominent colonial lines. The Lawrences were an old Quaker mercantile family descended from John Lawrence (1618–1699), one of the founders and later mayor of New York, and from the Bownes and Townsends of Flushing. Their marriage symbolized the reconciliation of Northern and Southern elites after the Civil War — Virginia gentry meeting New York Quaker merchants through shared education, Anglican worship, and civic standing.

Their only surviving child, Edmund Pendleton Dandridge (1880–1959), educated at Virginia, Oxford, and Sewanee, became Bishop of Tennessee (1938–1953). Lemuel’s piety, reserve, and sense of duty deeply influenced his son’s clerical vocation.

Ancestry and Family Connections

The Dandridge family descends from John Dandridge (1700–1756) of “Chestnut Grove,” New Kent County, Virginia, and his wife Frances Jones (1710–1785), whose daughter Martha Dandridge married George Washington in 1759. The branch from which Bishop Dandridge descended stemmed from William Dandridge (1699–1743), brother of John, who settled at “Elsing Green” on the Pamunkey River. Members of this collateral line removed to western Virginia and, by the early nineteenth century, to New York and New Jersey.

His mother’s family, the Lawrences of Flushing, descended from John Lawrence (1618–1699), an early mayor of New York and brother of Thomas and William Lawrence, founders of the family’s numerous American branches. Through his maternal grandfather John Watson Lawrence (1812–1888), a prominent Flushing Quaker merchant, Bishop Dandridge was related to the Lawrence, Bowne, and Townsend families, whose marriages interlinked the leading Quaker mercantile clans of Long Island and New York City.