U.S. Data Repository -- USGenNet Inc. -- Please read the U.S. Data Repository Copyright Statement on the following page: History and Progress of the County of Marion, West Virginia by George A. Dunnington, Publisher 1880 Pen Sketches of Prominent Citizens FRANCIS H. PIERPONT. The subject of this sketch is a man whose history is inseperably connected with that of Virginia during a period when the eyes of the whole world were directed upon her. Ex-Governor Francis H. Pierpont was born on the 25th of June, 1814 and is the son of Francis and Catharine Pierpont*, the former a son of John Pierpont, who settled near Morgantown about the close of the Revolutionary War. His parents removed to a plantation on West Fork while he was quite a child, where they lived some twelve years, at the end of which time they moved to Fairmont. Here he worked upon his father's farm and in his tan-yard until he arrived it the age of twenty-one years, when he determined to acquire a collegiate education, and selected Allegheny College, at Meadville, Pa., distant 180 miles from his home as the place where he would prosecutehis studies. No railroads, and scarce a stage coach then connected the little village of Fairmont with the outside world; hence this journey was undertaken and accomplished on foot. Up to this time he had had but the advantages of a common school education, pursuing his studies under many adverse circumstances and he entered the preparatory department of the college--graduateing in four years and a half. Gordon Battelle, Bishop Simpson, Bishop Kingslea and Homer Clarke were connected with the college, at that time, and between them and Mr. Pierpont a strong and lasting friendship was formed. After graduating he taught school in West Virginia for eight months, and for a year in Mississippi, during which time he studied law. The failing health of his father brought him home from Mississippi, and he entered upon the practice of law in Fairmont, in which he was engaged until the breaking out of the Rebellion. He was during this time actively engaged in politics, though never a candidate, nor held any office, except that of Presidential Elector, until he was made Governor. He was a thorough Abolitionist, and did more than any other man in West Virginia to cultivate anti- slavery sentiment. By public speeches and through the press, Mr. Pierpont denounced the oppressive clause in the new constitution, regarding the taxation of the slaves of the east, and the unjust taxation of the free labor of the west, and attached to it all the odium possible. After the passage of the Ordinance of Secession in 1861, he addressed the people at all places he could reach in the western part of the State, urging then to resistance, and was threatened with arrest for resisting the civil authorities of the State; but with extraordinary pluck he defied all threats in the very face of the military organizations. Mr. Pierpont was strongly in favor of a division of the State, but at the convention of May 12, 186, he opposed a movement to organize Western Virginia into a new State, giving for his reasons that it was premature. He then induced the convention to appoint a Committee of Vigilance to determine "what was best to be done for Virginia." He laid his plans before this committee- which were to ask the General Government to organize the State Government by declaring vacant the offices of all Secessionists holding office in the State, call a convention at Wheeling, June 18th, to elect a new Governor and State officers, and call it the "Restored Government of Virginia." The matter was decided feasible and the programme was carried out. Mr. Pierpont was unanimously made Provisional Governor by the convention, and at the end of the year he was regularly elected Governor by the people. At the expiration of two years he was re-elected for four years more. After the division of the State, in 1863. Governor Pierpont removed the seat of government from Wheeling to Alexandria, where he had a small Legislature. After the surrender of General Lee he removed the seat of government to Richmond, arriving there in the spring of 1865. Here his old neighbors and fellow citizens who had joined the Confederacy, greeted him cordially. The long and cruel war that lay between them and him was forgotten, and they greeted each other with almost dramatic feeling. In a few months after his arrival, Pierpont had completely restored the State Government. Nearly the whole Judiciary was changed, and it has been said by the leading journals and statesmen of the south that he gave Virginia the best Judiciary it ever had. It is worthy of note that there never was a word of suspicion, or any dishonest transaction about any officers connected with the State Government during his administration, He was the first Governor of Virginia who ever proclaimed a Thanksgiving. At the expiration of his term of office, Governor Pierpont returned to his boyhood's home in Fairmont where he has since resided. During these years he has served one term in the Legislature, and was a Judge in the shoe and leather department of the Centennial Exposition, at Philadelphia, in 1876. In 1871, he was elected President of the General Conference of the M. P. Church, held at Pittsburgh, being the only layman that has ever held that position, and for which he received many congratulations from the press and clergy throughout England and America. The position is. equivalent to that of a bishop in the Episcopal Church. *PIERPONT is the correct name, though it is often spelled PIERPOINT In giving John Pierpont a title, a careless clerk thus misspelled the name, and the infant. heirs were afterwards obliged to assume the superfluous "i" in consequence.