Henry Gassaway Davis (16 November 1823-11 March 1916) was a Democratic US Senator from West Virginia from 4 March 1871 to 3 March 1883, succeeding Waitman T. Willey and preceding John E. Kenna.
Biography[]
Henry Gassaway Davis was born in Woodstock, Maryland in 1823, and he worked on the railroad before meeting politicians Henry Clay, Thomas Hart Benton, Lewis Cass, Benjamin Wade, Thomas Corwin, and Stephen A. Douglas after railroad company president Thomas Swann made him a passenger conductor. In 1858, he and his brother cofounded a general store, and, during the American Civil War, Davis opposed Virginia's secession and admired Abraham Lincoln. In 1865, Davis was elected to the West Virginia House of Delegates from Harrison County, and he founded his own railway company. He became a state senator in 1869 and was elected to the US Senate in 1870, serving from 1871 to 1883. He practiced banking and coal mining in Elkins and came to own a successful company which owned 135,000 square miles of land, employed 1,600 men of 16 nationalities, and operated over 1,000 coke ovens and 9 mines. In 1904, he was the Bourbon Democrat Alton B. Parker's running mate in the 1904 presidential election, as he was a capable fundraiser; at age 80, he was the oldest vice-presidential candidate in American history. He helped found Davis & Elkins College after the defeat in 1904, and he died in 1916.