James Harvey Ferguson (14 April 1817–21 June 1898), member of the Convention of 1850–1851, was born in Montgomery County. In his 1865 marriage record he identified his parents as John Ferguson and Mary Ferguson, but a 1939 biographer repeated a rumor that he was instead possibly the child of James Harvey Ballard and an unmarried woman named Ferguson. As a young man he moved to Cabell County, where he studied law while working as a cobbler. Appointed the county's jailer in 1839, Ferguson was admitted to the bar the following year and then moved to Wayne County, where he established a law practice. Early in the 1840s he married Elizabeth Derton. They had three daughters, one son, and one other child who died as an infant. By 1845 Ferguson had moved to Logan County, where he became prosecuting attorney.
Virginia House of Delegates
In 1848 voters in Boone and Logan Counties elected Ferguson to the first of three consecutive one-year terms in the House of Delegates. A Democrat, he sat on the Committee for Courts of Justice for all three terms, the latter two as chair. Addressing constituents' concerns, Ferguson sought to eliminate conflicting land claims west of the Appalachian Mountains and worked to improve transportation. Although he did not own enslaved workers, he vigorously defended slavery; made impassioned speeches against the Wilmot Proviso, an unsuccessful amendment twice introduced in Congress that would have barred slavery from the territories the United States had acquired during the Mexican War; and condemned other states for not enforcing the federal Fugitive Slave Act. Opposing the dissolution of the United States, he generally supported the provisions of the Compromise of 1850.
Convention of 1850–1851
In August 1850 Ferguson placed third among the six candidates vying for three seats representing Boone, Cabell, Logan, Mason, Putnam, Wayne, and Wyoming Counties at a convention that met in Richmond from 14 October 1850 to 1 August 1851 to revise the state constitution. He chaired the Committee on Printing and sat on the Committees on Western Land Titles and on the Right of Suffrage and Qualifications of Persons to Be Elected. Ferguson also served on a committee to study the report of the second auditor on the amount of bonded indebtedness for internal improvements attributed to each of the state's four geographic regions. He introduced resolutions to establish a state board of education and a public school system.
Ferguson advocated extending the suffrage to all adult white men, defended western Virginians' right to fair representation in the legislature, and emphasized the importance of internal improvements to his section of the state. He tried to allay the fears of eastern delegates who argued that newly empowered westerners would use state funds to enhance trade with Baltimore at the expense of Richmond. On 8 April 1851 Ferguson commented on a demand by Mason County residents that he withdraw from the convention if western counties did not receive greater representation in the General Assembly. Warning that the issue could lead to the convention's, and possibly the state's, dissolution, he observed that the west could survive without the east but questioned whether the reverse was true. On 16 May 1851 Ferguson voted with the majority in favor of a compromise on the basis of legislative apportionment that established a western majority in the House of Delegates but retained an eastern majority in the Senate of Virginia. On 31 July he voted for the new constitution that the convention successfully submitted to popular referendum later that year.
Under unknown circumstances, Ferguson abandoned his family during the mid-1850s and left Logan County and probably Virginia. His wife died sometime before the Civil War. In 1864 Ferguson suddenly reappeared in Cabell County and returned to practicing law. He never revealed where he had gone or what he had done. Ferguson reestablished his household, into which he brought his two youngest daughters, and on 14 January 1865 married Elizabeth J. Ong (or Ongs) Barnett, a widow.
Political Career in West Virginia
Having been absent during much of the war, Ferguson carried no political baggage and was apparently welcomed with open arms. Elected to the West Virginia House of Delegates on the Union ticket in the autumn of 1864, he introduced a bill abolishing slavery and sponsored test-oath legislation that prevented former Confederates from holding political office, practicing law, teaching school, and voting, although in 1865 he signed a petition to restore their right to practice law. Ferguson organized a company of Unionist Home Guards and served as its captain from April through August 1865. He lost his bid for reelection in 1865 amid suspicion that he was a Democratic sympathizer, but he returned to the House as a Union Party candidate the following year. While in office Ferguson saved Marshall College (later University) from collapse by having it incorporated as a state normal school.
In November 1868 he was elected judge of the circuit court encompassing Boone, Cabell, Lincoln, Logan, and Wayne Counties, but he resigned in July 1870 because of financial problems. Ferguson ran successfully as a Democrat for the House of Delegates in 1870. After filing for bankruptcy in 1872, he moved in 1875 to Charleston, where he had several years earlier opened a law practice, and recovered financially. His second wife died on 27 July 1878, and on 24 July 1879 he married Ann Elizabeth "Lizzie" Creel in Barboursville, Cabell County.
Ferguson represented Kanawha County in the House in 1878, 1881, and 1891, where he once again chaired the Committee on the Judiciary. He became a force in the state Democratic Party and earned a reputation as an "alleged evil genius" because of his behind-the-scenes manipulations of the political process. Ferguson worked to make Charleston the permanent capital of West Virginia. Because of his legal expertise, the legislature selected him to edit the first Code of West Virginia.
Ferguson served as chief counsel for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company in West Virginia from 1885 to 1889. A reformed drinker, he became a strong advocate of temperance and served as the state's Grand Worthy Chief Templar of the International Order of Good Templars. In 1884 he ran for attorney general of West Virginia on an unsuccessful temperance slate. James Harvey Ferguson died at his Charleston home on 21 June 1898 of complications from several strokes and was buried in Spring Hill Cemetery.
Sources Consulted:
George W. Atkinson and Alvaro F. Gibbens, Prominent Men of West Virginia (1890), 282–285, W. S. Laidley, History of Charleston and Kanawha County, West Virginia, and Representative Citizens (1911), 465–467, George W. Atkinson, ed., Bench and Bar of West Virginia (1919), 93–94, Sarah Elizabeth Bosely, "James Harvey Ferguson" (M.A. thesis, West Virginia University, 1939), and Kenneth R. Bailey, Alleged Evil Genius: The Life and Times of Judge James H. Ferguson (2006), with letters to Ann Elizabeth Creel Ferguson, portrait on 44, and quotation on 70; parents identified in Cabell Co., W.Va., Marriage Register (1865), 2:13; James H. Ferguson Collection, West Virginia State Archives (WVSA), Charleston, W.Va.; West Virginia Marriage Register (1879), WVSA; Richmond Enquirer, 8 May 1849, 13 Sept. 1850; Register of the Debates and Proceedings of the Va. Reform Convention (1851), 10–11, 13–14, 21, 44–45; Journal, Acts, and Proceedings of a General Convention of the State of Virginia [1851], 30, 58, 226, 419, and Appendix, 22; numbered and dated convention supplements issued with the Richmond Enquirer, Richmond Examiner, Richmond Times, Richmond Republican, Richmond Republican Advocate, and Richmond Whig (1850–1851), esp. nos. 30, 37, 38, 41, 45, 46, 51, 53, 55; Kanawha Co., W.Va., Death Register; obituaries in Charleston [W.Va.] Daily Gazette, Washington Post, and Wheeling Register, all 22 June 1898.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Kenneth R. Bailey and Dictionary of Virginia Biography staff.
How to cite this page:
Kenneth R. Bailey and Dictionary of Virginia Biography staff, "James Harvey Ferguson (1817–1898)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2024 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Ferguson_James_Harvey, accessed [today's date]).
Return to the Dictionary of Virginia Biography Search page.
