Francis H. Pierpont Home

Francis H. Pierpont Home. “Father of West Virginia”. Ahead near Pierpont Avenue stood the home of Francis Harrison Pierpont, governor of the Restored Government of Virginia and the “Father of West Virginia.” Here he brought his bride, Julia Augusta Robertson Pierpont, in 1854. Here their four children were born. In his library building in April 1861, Pierpont devised plans that restored loyal Virginia to the Union and gave life to West Virginia. , On April 29, 1863, Confederate forces under Gen. William E. Jones captured Fairmont and destroyed the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad bridge over the Monongahela River. Pierpont was in Wheeling, serving as the governor of the Restored State of Virginia, while his family was with relatives in Washington, Pennsylvania. Angered at not finding Pierpont, the Confederates burned the books from his library in the street. A Confederate tried to save the family Bible. Retrieved by a neighbor, it now rests at the West Virginia State Museum in Charleston. , After the Commonwealth of Virginia seceded in April 1861, representatives of the Unionist counties of northwestern Virginia, meeting in Wheeling, effected the plan that Pierpont devised here. Declaring Virginia’s governmental offices vacant, they established a "restored" government of Virginia, electing Pierpont governor. In 1863, under Pierpont’s leadership, West Virginia became a state with Wheeling as the capital, and Arthur I. Boreman was elected governor. Pierpont moved the capital of Restored Virginia to Alexandria. After the war ended in 1865, he relocated Virginia’s government and his family to Richmond, Va. In 1868, Pierpont, replaced by a military governor, returned to Fairmont. , Pierpont resumed his law practice, held political office, and taught school for former slaves. Falling ill in 1896, he stayed with his daughter in Pittsburgh, Pa. He died in 1899 and was buried in Fairmont’s Woodlawn Cemetery. , (sidebar) You are standing on the site of the Methodist Protestant Church. Here two major events occurred as a result of the Civil War. In 1865, the West Virginia Normal School began providing teacher training for the state’s new free schools. It later became Fairmont State University and Pierpont Community and Technical College. Here also, in 1869, under Pierpont’s leadership, efforts were begun to reunite the Methodist Church, which had split over slavery. The reunion occurred in Baltimore Md., in 1877.