Charles Sterling Hutcheson

Charles Sterling Hutcheson (July 23, 1894 – October 24, 1969) was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Early life and education Born in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, to Mary Hutcheson Young and her lawyer husband, Mecklenburg county clerk Herbert Farrar Hutcheson, C. Sterling Hutcheson would have six brothers and a sister. His family had been large landowners and influential in Mecklenburg County for more than a century. His grandfather, Joseph C. Hutcheson (1816–1890) was one of the county's largest landowners and a justice of the peace, although he lost his one attempt at election to the Virginia House of Delegates (in 1855). Young Sterling was named for a great-uncle, Col. Charles Sterling Hutcheson (judge)(1804–1881), a plantation owner who served one term as a Whig in the Virginia House of Delegates, then became the county's circuit judge and raised a regiment for the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War, and after receiving a pardon from President Andrew Johnson, remained in Mecklenburg county to care for a disabled son (also C.S. Hutcheson, rather than move to Texas to join his son Joseph Chappell Hutcheson, who survived his Confederate service and became a U.S. Congressman and leading citizen in Houston, although his eldest son, lawyer and CSA Captain John William Hutcheson, died of wounds received defending Richmond at the Battle of Cold Harbor. His next-eldest brother, John Young Hutcheson (1896–1973) served as the deputy clerk under their father, but their brother Nathaniel Goode Hutcheson succeeded their father as the county clerk, and another brother, Joseph Collier Hutcheson would represent the county in the Virginia Senate (1906–1972) during Massive Resistance. Their brother Herbert Farrar Hutcheson (1899–1980) would become an executive with Imperial Tobacco Company and begin writing the family's history, which C. Sterling Hutcheson would help finish after his retirement. Meanwhile, C. Sterling Hutcheson attended the University of Virginia and the College of William & Mary. He served as a private in the United States Army from 1918 to 1919. Early career After admission to the Virginia bar, Hutcheson entered private practice in Boydton, Virginia from 1920 to 1944. During the Great Depression, he served as the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia from 1933 to 1944.