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The West Virginia Encyclopedia
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The West Virginia Encyclopedia
State founder Francis Harrison Pierpont (January 25, 1814-March 24, 1899) was the first and only governor of the Reorganized Government of Virginia. Born near Morgantown, Pierpont was a great-grandson of Col. Zackquill Morgan, founder of Morgantown. He received his middle name in honor of Gen. William Henry Harrison, under whom his father was serving at the time of his birth. Often called ‘‘the Father of West Virginia,’’ Pierpont’s statue stands in Statuary Hall in the Capitol Building in Washington, one of two West Virginians so recognized.
While Pierpont was an infant, his family moved to a farm in Marion County and later, when he was 13, to Fairmont, where his father built and operated a tannery. After early education in a log schoolhouse near his home, Pierpont entered Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, in 1835. Following graduation, he taught school in Harrison County. He also studied law and was admitted to the bar at Fairmont on May 2, 1842. Among the friends of his youth and young adulthood were Waitman T. Willey, Gordon Battelle, and John S. Carlile, all of whom played key roles in the West Virginia statehood movement.
In 1848, Pierpont began an association with the Baltimore & Ohio (B&O) Railroad, serving as a right-of-way attorney in Marion and Taylor counties. He started a coal mine on family property in 1854 and entered into a partnership with coal pioneer James Otis Watson, whose family later controlled Consolidation Coal Company. On December 26, 1854, Pierpont married Julia Augusta Robertson of Wisconsin. Beginning in 1856, he helped to found Fairmont Male and Female Seminary, forerunner of both Fairmont State University and Pierpont Community and Technical College.
In the opening days of the Civil War, Pierpont spoke frequently and forcefully for the Union and against secession. He was a representative to the First and Second Wheeling Conventions in 1861, working with other conservatives such as Willey to delay the immediate declaration of a new state, which he believed to be unconstitutional. On June 20, 1861, Pierpont was unanimously elected governor of the unionist Reorganized State of Virginia, whose capital was at Wheeling until West Virginia entered the Union two years later. Meanwhile, old Virginia had voted to secede, and the state had two governments from 1861 to 1865.
Pierpont worked assiduously to obtain funds for the loyal government, raise troops for the state militia, defend northwestern Virginia from guerrillas and keep as much of it as possible under federal control, and protect the B&O and Northwestern Virginia railroads. He also worked hard for the recognition and admission of West Virginia, with Reorganized Virginia now providing the necessary Constitutional consent. Following the establishment of the new state, he headed a loyal Virginia government at Alexandria. At the end of the Civil War and at the direction of President Andrew Johnson, Pierpont in May 1865 proceeded to Richmond, where he continued as governor of Virginia for nearly three years. As a result of the creation of a military government in Virginia under the Military Reconstruction Act of 1867, Pierpont was removed from office on April 4, 1868, by Gen. John Schofield, the military governor.
Following his return to West Virginia, Pierpont served a term in the West Virginia House of Delegates but lost his seat when the Democrats ‘‘redeemed’’ the government and took control of the young state. His business partnership with Watson, a Democrat, was dissolved due to political tensions. In his retirement Pierpont helped to found the West Virginia Historical Society and served as president of the General Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church. He died at the home of his daughter in Pittsburgh and was buried with military rites at Woodlawn Cemetery, Fairmont.
In June 2015, a statue of Francis H. Pierpont was erected at West Virginia Independence Hall in Wheeling, the first capital of the Reorganized Government of Virginia and the birthplace of West Virginia.
Written by Philip Sturm
Ambler, Charles H. Francis H. Pierpont. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1937.
Francis H. Pierpont Papers. West Virginia & Regional History Collection, West Virginia University Libraries.