Biography
Walter Daniel Leake was an American lawyer, planter and politician. After serving in the American Revolutionary War and in the Virginia House of Delegates, he moved to the Mississippi Territory where he became a judge, and after statehood a United States Senator from Mississippi (1817–1820), as a circuit court judge in 1821, and as third Governor of Mississippi (1822–1825). He was the first Governor of Mississippi to die in office. A relative, Walter D. Leake, served in the Virginia House of Delegates for many terms beginning in 1842 and also represented Goochland County in the Virginia Secession Convention long after this man's death.