Graves of the Pierponts - Civil War Discovery Trail Sites on Waymarking.com

Frances H. Pierpont, governor of the Restored Government of Virginia and the “Father of West Virginia,” dies on March 24, 1899. He is buried here with his wife, Julia Augusta Robertson Pierpont. They first met when he interview her in 1847 for a governess’s position for his neighbor Judge Thomas Haymond. She accepted the position. In 1854, she married Pierpont. Three of their four children are also buried here. The fourth, Mary Augusta, died in Laurel, Maryland, where the family lived while Pierpont served as Virginia’s governor in Alexandria. Two West Virginia governors, 113 civil War veterans, and West Virginia’s first state school superintendant are buried elsewhere in the cemetery.

Pierpont and his family returned from Richmond, Virginia, to Fairmont and their Quincy Street house in 1868 when his term as governor ended. He resumed his career as an attorney, served in the West Virginia legislature, and taught school for Fairmont’s African Americans. Before coming ill in 1896, he lived with his daughter Anna Siviter in Pittsburgh until his death.

Julia Pierpont died in Fairmont on March 25, 1886. While in Richmond, in May 1866, she and her children and several friends cleaned and decorated the neglected graves of Union soldiers in Hollywood Cemetery. In this event and others elsewhere are the origins of our nation’s Memorial Day.

On April 20, 1910, during daylong ceremonies in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Governor William E. Glasscock presented a statue of Pierpont to the United States Congress. In his presentation address, Glasscock said of Pierpont, “He was the benefactor of Virginia, assisting her … to rise, phoenix-like, from her own ashes. Had there been no restored government (of Virginia), there would have been no State of West Virginia.

Type of site: Cemetery Address: 335 Maple Ave Fairmont, WV USA 26554 Admission Charged: No Charge Website: [Web Link] Phone Number: Not listed Driving Directions: Not listed

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Date Logged Log User Rating   06/23/2011 dukemartin visited it