| Back to e-WV
The West Virginia Encyclopedia
| Back to e-WV
The West Virginia Encyclopedia
U.S. Senator Frank Hereford (July 4, 1825-December 21, 1891) was born in Fauquier County, Virginia. He graduated from McKendree College, Lebanon, Illinois, in 1845 and in 1849 went to California, where he practiced law. He was Sacramento district attorney from 1855 to 1857.
Soon after the Civil War, Hereford returned east, establishing himself in Union, the county seat of Monroe County in the new state of West Virginia. He married Alice B. Caperton of the prominent Monroe County family. Hereford was among the Democrats who agitated successfully to restore the vote and other political privileges to West Virginia’s ex-Confederates, and he was among those soon to benefit by this change. He served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1871 to 1877. In 1877, he was elected by the state legislature to fill the unexpired U.S. Senate term of his fellow townsman, cousin by marriage, and fellow Democrat, Allen T. Caperton, who had died in office. Hereford was defeated by industrialist Johnson Newlon Camden when he sought reelection to the Senate in 1881.
Hereford returned to practice law in Monroe County after leaving the Senate. He served as a presidential elector in 1888. Frank Hereford died in Union, and is buried in the local Green Hill Cemetery.
Ambler, Charles H. & Festus P. Summers. West Virginia: The Mountain State. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1958.
Summers, Festus P. Johnson Newlon Camden. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1937.